God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

When we modern day Christians read about the rebellion and lack of faith of the Hebrews in the Wilderness of Sinai, we often shake our heads in judgment. Yahweh changed Jacob's name to Israel, meaning "Prince of God." He made promises of inheritance to their forefathers. He sent Moses who turned his own staff into a serpent and who opened the waters of the sea as a way of escape. Pharaoh's horses and chariots drowned before their eyes. At their complaint, water came gushing from a rock, and pigeons flew in by the millions and landed in the desert, too exhausted to escape the hungry mob. How then could they be so adversarial with the deity?  There are several reasons that we could call forth to explain their ingratitude and unbelief.  One: they are making a huge paradigmatic leap from polytheism to monotheism, a stretch so challenging that they struggled for hundreds of years with the concept.  Two: day by day the whole community stood at risk of dying from hunger or t...

According to the dictionary, a sophistry is a kind of reasoning that is misleading or unsound, but it sounds clever and plausible. Paul talks about such reasoning in Colossians 2:23, "Such regulations (Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!) indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility, and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence." Note, 'appearance of wisdom' and 'false humility' do not a perfect Christian make. In 1 Cor. 11 we have two ways of looking at the woman question. One is born of the Spirit and the other is a sophistry. Verses 2-10 present the picture of the first century attitude toward women: a. It is positively disgraceful if she does not cover her head. As a Catholic in my youth we wore hats, scarves, or doilies to Mass on Sunday. It was sinful if you didn't do so. But that is NOT what Paul is requiring. Tertullian gives us the real ancien...

The glory of the firmament Genesis 1 and 2 are not the only creation passages in the Bible. Psalm 104 should stand on equal footing as a description of God's handiwork on Planet Earth. The astute reader will recognize a similarity between several verses in Psalm 104 and the first 4 days of Genesis (Ps. 104:2,3,6,19,20). In In the psalm, however, the creatures of the 5th and 6th days of Genesis 1 (marine life, birds, land animals, and humans) are sprinkled throughout without reference to a literal, linear timeline.  Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, You are very great: You are clothed with honor and majesty, Who cover Yourself with light as with a garment, Who stretch out the heavens like a curtain. He lays the beams of his upper chambers in the waters, Who makes the clouds His chariot, Who walks on the wings of the wind, Who makes his angels spirits, His ministers a flame of fire. (vv. 1-4, from biblegateway.com, NKJV) God is seen, in beautiful poetic language, as intimat...