Safe Haven

I was talking with God last night, and I remember saying, "I'm ready to do Your will, O God, because I'm ready to be happy." I know that God is my happiness, not as merely a fact that I recite through gritted teeth as I desire something else, but as my desire. I don't even know what I'm saying, but I know it's true. You might be one of those people who sins, not because of any great malice in the doing, but because happiness scares you. Love scares you. The unconditional kind. The kind that changes whatever it touches into itself. If so, you will eventually say, "I'm ready to be happy," because the sorts of people who say this start out telling God that He's obviously a lunatic for even bothering. The plain love-drenched truth is that no matter what happened to you from the beginning until now, whatever has kept you from your destiny in God is a lie, and built on a lie. Maybe some of us need to re-think that clever definition of grace...

I think it may seem so, because the ethical system from which a person might claim this is fully consistent with a supernatural worldview, (and the Christian one) and many people who make the claim are Christians. It's a funny thing about our public space today: people find it easier to assess and dismiss others, rather than engage their arguments. I'm the worst at this. If I don't like someone, it's really difficult to engage in a meaningful way. I'm still learning.  The full claim as an argument would be something like, "Human life begins at conception. It is morally wrong to take innocent human life at any stage of development. Therefore, governments around the world should enact laws prohibiting the taking of innocent human life at any stage of development." If someone makes a claim that abortion is morally acceptable in some circumstances--while conceding that abortion ends a human life--accompanied by the claim that the aborted fetus is a ...

I have always wanted to read this book. I have a complicated relationship with President Obama. As many of you may know, I cast my vote for him in 2008. I remember the speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 that launched him as a political superstar. Two years later, at a march on Washington to bring the nation's attention to genocide around the world, I heard Obama speak. I predicted after that speech that he would be our president. We will always be at a variance over abortion and other moral issues, such as the meaning of marriage, and increasingly, religious freedom. My disagreement with President Obama has never been personal. Indeed, I could say in some sense that I like President Obama. I've been at times very critical, and even downright mad, but I feel differently on that level than most people. It might be my undergraduate training in political science. Politics in America is like a brotherhood; when the sides aren't fighting, most folks have a dee...

It's hard not to be overcome with paschal joy. Jesus rose from the dead; whatever reasons I have to be downcast just don't compare. Joy is different than a momentary feeling of happiness, or pleasure. I can remember watching the Cardinals win the World Series in 2006. For a split second, I thought I had never been so happy in my whole life. But it was part of a second. The next few seconds and minutes and hours were much like the seconds, minutes, and hours before. No new reality had been created. Something reminded me--whatever it was--that it's only baseball, and in the grand scheme, baseball isn't that important. Let me emphasize that I love baseball, and specifically Cardinals baseball, more than you do. I see different things when I watch a game, that more than likely, a casual observer would not see. I say this so you understand that I'm not getting spiritual in contrast to a thing I'm indifferent about. At some infinitely lesser level, I live and die wi...