If I Could Play God
Time Magazine gave the world an article titled, “The 25 Best Inventions of the Year.” If I could play God, I would be one of those inventors. A Olympic-size swimming pool that floats in a dirty body of water and cleans the dirty water flowing into it from its surrounding. A procedure to change a person’s memory–like in the science fiction films. That, in the right hands, would be used to help people suffering from things like PTSD. A light generated by a weight on a very slow-motion pulley that would replace dangerous and polluting kerosene lanterns all across the…
Meeting God after Disaster
In the aftermath of disaster, people worship. It’s happened in the Philippines after the great Typhoon. And we see it wherever there are believers. We’d like to think that when disasters strike, churches would be miraculously exempt from damage. After all, they’re God’s houses. But if they were, I wonder what effect it would have. Would it really make a positive difference? Somehow I think not. I suspect we would start to lean toward a magical take on our beliefs rather than living them out by faith. We would focus on what happened or didn’t happen versus meeting God in…
How Much Life on Other Planets?
I used to have what I called “Star Trek Theology.” I figured that there may be all kinds of creatures or people on other planets and that God may well have given them a revelation of himself something like he did to us on earth. Then I learned that physics are constant throughout the universe, and that the parameters for intelligent life are so incredibly fine tuned that the likelihood of life on another planet is extremely small. Almost to say: “We’re it.” Along comes a new report from the National Academy of Sciences that Earth-size planets orbiting sun-like stars…
American or Kingdom Citizen
The German magazine Der Spiegel reports evidence that the National Security Agency has been spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone since 2002. God help us all. Angela Merkel has long proven herself to be among the world’s finest national leaders. And she’s one of my heroes. The revelation that my country has been tapping her cell phone–along with earlier revelations in France, and now Spain, and who knows how many more national leaders and citizens whose victimization haven’t yet been revealed–is a shock, and I am left ashamed of my own country’s betrayal of our closest allies. It…
Will You Adopt Me?
Davion had been born to a mother in jail, grown up in foster care and group homes and lived his life in a rage. When he finally tracked down his mother. She was a drug addict, in and out of prison, and had died only weeks earlier. That changed him. He turned around his behavior, his grades, even his weight. He desperately wanted to be accepted into a family. Tampa Bay Times reports that he heard God would help those who help themselves, so with his case worker’s support (the two are in the photo), he nervously went to a…
