God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

Did you know that although most angel images are female, angels seem to manifest as genderless or male? This is my own story, or at least the beginning of it.  Janet K. Smith, Ph.D. It was the end of spring semester at the U. of Washington. I was a flaky, insecure 20-year-old art student with an unimpressive GPA who had acquired a summer job in the cafeteria of the Safeco Insurance building. In spite of my Catholic upbringing, I was an agnostic who was actively searching for God. During the previous semester I had taken World History, and one of the requirements was to read "The Sermon on the Mount," three chapters in the book of Matthew. It rocked my world. If there is anything to Christianity, I thought, this is how it should be.  From my Catholic education, I knew the story of St. Augustine, how he heard a child's voice one day saying, "Take up and read. Take up and read." A book was sitting next to him, so he picked it up and read Romans 13:13, admonishing h...

Psalm 14:1 is famous for the line, "Fools say in their hearts, 'There is no God.'" This is the psalm often cited where the Lord looks down on mankind and sees that "there is no one who does good." We evangelicals use the passage to point out that no one can be good enough to earn their way into heaven. However, there is another theme in the psalm. In spite of the apparent negative judgment on all of mankind, God still has His people, and those who call on His name are often persecuted, sometimes for long periods of time, by the fools who deny God's existence. The question arises, "How can a mighty God allow His own people to suffer at the hands of evil-doers? "They eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon the LORD" (v. 4). Picture an Israelite woman in Egypt. She has just had a gorgeous baby boy who is perfectly healthy and shows signs of precociousness. The Egyptians burst into the house, rip the babe from her arms, and th...