Fear and Trembling

A bridge in Minneapolis collapses. Nuclear weapons experimentation makes Kazakhstan home to people with awful disfigurements. A train wreck in Brazil kills eight and injures over 100. Civil war tears apart the hopes and dreams of children in Africa. ISIS continues its reign of terror in the Middle-east.  Seemingly countless murders tear apart families. Evil, defined for this article as sin or injustice against another human being, is all around us. I am not about to try to give a comprehensive explanation for how evil came to be. I do not claim to be the kind of person who can do that.  God created men with the ability to sin and the ability not to sin, but I cannot reason beyond that. I do not know how evil came to be; I just know that evils exists. Evil is present. Evil is real. What must exist in order for evil and suffering to be truly wrong? Does not the existence of evil itself require a standard of good? Should we just accept evil as a part of the way...

I was very ill as a young child. I had a lung disease that left me breathless after walking a few feet, much more out of breath when trying to run, climb, or jump. I was thirteen before I began to grow out of it, but I had been through a lot before then. My illness always hit me hard when it came time for PE, physical education, class. That was when we divided up into teams to play sports. I was never the first one chosen for the team. I was usually chosen last. Everyone knew I would have little to contribute. My best contribution would be just to stay out of the way. Little League Baseball was and is more than a sport in Obion County, Tennessee, where I grew up. It is more like a religion. Parents had a lot to say about the make-up of the teams, and they organized try-outs. I tried hard, but I was never picked to be part of the best team. I always wanted to be part of the winning team. Christianity offered me the chance to be a part of the winning team, to be part...

There is no other religious leader like Jesus Christ. Many of us do not have a respect for authority in and of itself. In general, we do not care what a person’s position is, because we will respect them only if they are worthy of respect. Just because his title is “boss” or “professor” doesn’t mean that we will blindly follow his directives or uncritically do what he says.  We do not follow people who jump of cliffs. We do not care how many titles a person has, we will only listen to their teaching if we are convinced they are intelligent and trustworthy. That’s why Christ’s credentials as a teacher are so very important to us. What makes a good teacher? Some qualities of a good teacher include the fact that his teachings are true, and he can prove it. He follows his own teaching. He cares for those whom he teaches. And his teachings make a difference in the world. (Please note that I do not think a person must be male to be a good teacher. I use the masculine pronoun...