God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

In a recent Sunday School session, one of the attendees asked our Lutheran pastor what the Bible means when it says we are made in the image of God. This is a question that has bedeviled the church and synagogue for thousands of years. Our good pastor gave a credible and modern answer to the inquirer. It is certainly not our physical characteristics that make us in God’s image. After all, Jesus told us that “God is Spirit, and He seeks those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth.” It is our intellect, the pastor explained, our ability to know right from wrong, to dream, create, emote, and relate to God as our Father. I agree with all of that. After all, God the Father does not have genitalia. He does not need to pee after a drink of water. Only we do that. There are several ways to unpack the two creation accounts in Genesis 1-4. In Genesis one, “the Adam” is a title applied to both male and female. God speaks and things pop into existence, including man and woman, both at the sa...

  When a Blackhawk helicopter crashed into a commercial passenger jet on January 29, 2025, newly elected President Trump came to the podium to offer the expected condolences and clarify new information. He surprised the nation by suggesting that DEI (Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion) may have had something to do with the crash. By the time he addressed the nation he had obviously been briefed that the two Blackhawk pilots were women. The suggestion to anyone not half asleep is that women shouldn’t be flying helicopters because they are not as fit as men. Which leaves the question, would they say the same about a Black or Latino pilot? A kerfuffle on The View TV show arose when the women began to discuss the new press secretary for the Trump administration, blond, 25-year-old Karoline Leavitt. At some point Joy Behar exclaimed that she got the job because Donald Trump thought she was a “10.” That actually got Behar fired from the show. As a comeback, Alina Habba, Counselor to th...

A dive into Hebrew Bible metaphors that we can apply today I am often inspired in my writings by things I heard in adult Sunday School class or in a sermon. Last Sunday the topic in Sunday School was George Friderick Handel’s Messiah. We heard the soloist sing the passage in Malachi 3:2, 3: “But who may abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a refiner’s fire. And He shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.” (All passages are NKJV, biblegateway.com) I love to study biblical metaphors. Refiner’s fire…a process in which the impurities of an ore are burned away, changing the nature of the ore, leaving the pure substance like gold or silver. We discussed how fire is good…it cooks our food, gives us light, and keeps us warm. It has the capacity to drastically change the substance of what it burns. It can purify metal, sterilize or cauterize a wound, or turn a house into ash. Fire has to be...

On Tuesday mornings, I join a Zoom Bible study called Text Talk, led by my former Citrus Heights ELCA Lutheran pastor. The topic this week was Jeremiah 36, where King Jehoiakim sliced and burned the prophetic scroll dictated by Jeremiah the prophet to his scribe Baruch. Sources:  2 kings; 2 Chronicles; Jeremiah 31-39; Lutheran Study Bible notes; biblegateway.com; Wikipedia. Backstory and timeline 721 BC, as prophesied by Isaiah and others, Northern Israel fell to Assyria. Her people were removed to Mesopotamia, and foreigners were imported into the region. This squelched national identity and made it impossible for captive rebels to stage an escape. Nor could Judah decide to ally with the north to strengthen resistance to invasion. It was genius, really. So, the towns and villages of Judah were the remnant of the people of Israel. 640 BC:  8-year-old Josiah became king of Judah in Jerusalem. Under the tutelage of faithful priests, he initiated reforms, trying to discou...

Dr. Karla Turner died of cancer on January 9, 1996, at the age of 49. Her iconic and influential books were  Into the Fringe , 1992, her own story;  Masquerade of Angels , 1994, Ted Rice's encounters with aliens; and  Taken: Inside the Alien-Human Abduction Agenda , 1994. Masquerade of Angels , the story of Ted’s lifelong encounters with alien intruders, is out of print, but is available from amazon.com. You can buy an autographed copy from Ted himself for $75. You can email him at teddywayne789@yahoo.com or write him at 2513 Crossford Dr., Foley AL 36535. The Dark In the global quest to understand the occasional, mysterious lights or floating objects in the sky, we’ve come a long way. Public attention to the topic began in 1947 when pilot Kenneth Arnold spotted what the press later called “flying saucers” skipping across the sky. That was followed up in June by the infamous Roswell incident. Additional public pressure and reports engendered a series of Air Force investig...