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U is for Umbrage

February 17, 2012 in GODSTUFF with 2 Comments 

[My middle daughter, Kyra, and I are continuing our commitment to blog all the way through the alphabet. Rather than lasting 26 days, we're going on almost a year now, but we're gonna get it done.]


UMBRAGE


Definition:


    

  1. [noun] a feeling of anger caused by being offended; “he took umbrage at my question”
    
Synonyms: offense, offence
    2. 



Source: Elook.org


In the religious environment in which I grew up, being offended was a sign of spiritual zeal. The more offended you were, the closer to God you were. Back then we were offended about all kinds of things:


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				Response to responses to the death of Whitney Houston			
		

		
	

		
			February 14, 2012		 in 
		
			GODSTUFF, REFLECTIONS		 with 
		
			2 Comments		
	

	

		
			
							
		
		

			

											
										


I cannot talk meaningfully about the death of Whitney Houston. I don’t have anything productive to add to the dialogue. But I can respond to some of the other responses to Whitney’s death. When Whitney Houston ruled the world I was in high school and her music was not my style. But there was never a time when I did not have the highest and deepest respect for her craft. She was, and is, the greatest vocal talent in the history of recorded music. It will be a very, very long time before someone of her caliber comes along again.


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				Religion, rights, politics, anger, hope			
		

		
	

		
			February 10, 2012		 in 
		
			GODSTUFF		 with 
		
			21 Comments		
	

	

		
			
							
		
		

			

											
										
I support love. I support freedom and pluralism, grateful that I live in a country where I am free to believe in God but where no one HAS to. I believe that other people’s sexual lives are none of my business. Religiously, I believe that God is speaking to all people in all situations and all places, and that I don’t have to worry about trying to make other people live the way I think they should live. Everyone has the personal obligation to live according to their best understanding of how they should live. Everyone, including me, has the right to be wrong, both religiously and politically. No one, including me, is nearly as right about most things as we believe we are, including religion and politics. But my understanding of God is that even if someone else is wrong, that’s between them and God. I believe deeply (and hope passionately) that God will show others the same love and mercy that I hope God shows to me when I am wrong, and when I am doing the best I can but still failing or somehow missing the point.


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				Living in peace			
		

		
	

		
			February 9, 2012		 in 
		
			COUNSELING, GODSTUFF		 with 
		
			7 Comments		
	

	

		
			
							
		
		

			

											
										
 




This is one of the world’s most popular photos. The burning man is Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk who burned himself to death in June, 1963 to protest persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam’s Catholic government. Photographer Malcolm Brown won a Pulitzer Prize for it. President John F. Kennedy said of the photo, “no news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.” Continue Reading…

		

		

	



	
		
			

			
				All sin is not the same			
		

		
	

		
			February 2, 2012		 in 
		
			GODSTUFF		 with 
		
			5 Comments		
	

	

		
			
							
		
		

			

											
										
One of the church’s teachings that is most easily shown to be (at least partially) wrong is the teaching that all sin is the same. All sin, quite clearly, is NOT the same. This teaching is based mostly on the passage where Jesus says,


Matthew 5:27-28 (NIV) 

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’

28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.


The  standard teaching, based on this passage, is that lust and actual adultery are equivalent in the eyes of God. In a way this is nice because it has an equalizing effect. I shouldn’t be able to look down on the murderer because I have sinned too. Maybe my sins seem smaller to me, but to God they are the same. That’s the idea. The problem is that it’s not true, and cannot be true.


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