God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

  Image by author using ChatGPT Eve, Wisdom, and the Blessed Virgin of Fatima and Guadalupe―what do they have in common? Growing up as a Catholic, I resented the protocols suggesting that women were second-class citizens. We had to wear something on our heads; why? We couldn’t go past the altar rail, and we couldn’t be priests. We were never told to read the Bible, so I had no idea where those ideas came from other than blaming God for being biased. I converted to born-again in college. During my first two decades as a Pentecostal, I believed the Bible was infallible, so nothing changed. I still couldn’t understand how women could be saved, filled with the Spirit, and called into ministry, yet be the submissive, second-string gender. I couldn’t fully buy into the feminist academic apologetic like, “that isn’t what the Greek really says,” or “someone was writing in Paul’s name.” New Testament writings about women seemed clear to me. The answer to my frustration has been laid out...

  Image of Bible open to 1 Sam. 15:22 by author and ChatGPT Listen to the whispers in the Hebrew Bible, to the shouts in the New Testament The challenge Change is hard for individuals, especially baked-in beliefs and traditions we have followed our entire lives … beliefs our pastors, rabbis, politicians, neighbors, grandparents, and ancestors obeyed. Major societal changes require a war, a famine, a plague, or a metaphorical earthquake of some kind to make them happen. Moses certainly wasn’t the first lawgiver. The museums of Europe display stelae (standing stones with engraved writing) with law codes that predate Moses. The introduction to the law code of Hammurabi claims that the gods chose him as king to keep the strong from oppressing the weak. Moses drew from those early traditions when he wrote his own. The most famous example is the concept of an eye for an eye. The idea was to match the punishment to the crime to forestall the kind of escalation that leads to generational ...

Gaza, 2023, after an Israeli strike. Photo from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Middle East. Photo by Ashraf Amra. It looks hopeless, but God always has a long, huge plan. The “map of ruin” When I was a 30-something single adult working in Kentucky, I had a dispute with my roommate and wound up on a friend’s sofa for a few nights. In our discussion, I referenced the Bible narrative in 1 Samuel 6, where the Israelite men of Beth Shemesh looked into the ark of the covenant. The plague-weary Philistines had just expelled it from the land, filling it with an offering of golden rats and tumors. The same plague then spread throughout the Israelite region, killing thousands. I told my friends that night, it seems that a lot of suffering results from frail human flesh looking too deeply into the most profound, holy things of God. There may be a natural, medical explanation for the plague that hit the Israelites rather than a punishment from God, b...