God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

In my first post about John Lerma, a review of his book Into the Light , I expressed my discomfort about the long, guru-like monologues that all of his stories relayed. All of the dying patients, no matter who they were or how old they were, sounded like a Lerma lecture. They all called him Dr. Lerma, using his name frequently. Never Doc, or Doctor, or John. They never have meltdowns. In this second book, published in 2009, I got the same squeamish feeling, even when he described the death of his own father. When Lerma writes, “Dad said the angels told him…” or some other patient says the same thing, it almost becomes “ex-cathedra” dogma, as if Moses or the Pope said it. Who can argue with the angels? It certainly puts Dr. Lerma into the position of an authoritative, sacred scribe transmitting End Times truth. That is if you believe it all. Dr. Lerma, who was raised Catholic, has worked many years in hospice care in Houston and San Antonio, TX, so I have to assume that at least h...

Sources: Wayne Weible,  Medjugorje the Message , Paraclete Press, 1989   and  Medjugorje the Mission , Paraclete Press, 1994,  www.medjugorje.com .   Why investigate Mary? I want to look at the phenomenon from all sides, pro and con, but first I want to emphasize that these events, which have taken place since the sixteenth century, are Earth shaking, global, and, for better or worse, paranormal/spiritual in nature. I do not believe for a second that they are hoaxes. The apparitions are possibly cunning deceptions with victims maybe, but not hoaxes. I do not intend to attack or deprecate the Catholic Church in these posts. The Church has done its best to examine these wonders and substantiate or dismiss them. Furthermore, it’s very easy for everyone on Earth who is not a Catholic to compartmentalize away these apparitions and just pretend they never happened. Don’t read about them. Don’t think about them. We do that with things that are...

I am not a nutrition expert, so I do not guarantee the accuracy of what is written below. For the past several years I have been trying to deal with the weight I’ ve gained since the mid-90’s when I was an aging seminary student. As a result, I’ ve read bits and pieces here and there about the science of eating, weight gain, and dieting. It’s a grim pursuit. There is nothing but bad news to report, with the exception that early in the morning there are lots of slender elderly ladies exercise-walking at the local mall. Of course, it’s the light weight ones with white hair who are still walking in their seventies and eighties. The heavy ones are using walkers. So, what do I think I have learned? Well, people who carry their weight lower down need a low-fat diet and people with all that dangerous toxic fat around the middle need a low- carb diet. So sez Dr. Oz. The expert lady on the car radio said that when you lose a lot of weight, your metabolism slows down. We all knew tha...

When did Adam and Eve live? A friend of mine who was concerned about my soul and my call to teach sparked this post by sending me a flyer which advertises educational material published by a conservative organization called Answers in Genesis. They offer seminars, DVDs, and books, and have built a Creation Museum. My evangelical friends and I will never agree on the amount of time God spent in creating our beautiful and breathtaking earth, but one thing we have in common is that God’s hand was in all of it. For many reasons, including the fact that I've taken geology classes and I'm married to a geologist, I cannot accept a literal six-day creation. Here is just a few of them.  When Genesis 1 and 2 were written down, probably in the seventh century B.C.E. (although we really don’t know when), Hebrew was a well-established language, emerging from Canaanite, Eblaite, and Sumerian. The Israelites were already a coherent people and state unto themselves. In fact, given space and ...

In the last blog post, I wrote about Vance Davis’s dream of confronting Satan in a webby, spooky cave. The dialogue between the two was like something out of a George Lucas film: I felt a strength and resolve come over me that I had never felt in real life. I created a glowing ball of white energy in my right hand and threw it at this being. It hit him squarely in the chest and tossed him across the room. He ricocheted off the wall and hit the floor. The energy had clearly stunned and hurt him, but he rose to his feet. “They have allowed your training and powers to come to earth with you, Old One,” he growled, “But it is not enough. Now it is time to die!” Red balls and white flew back and forth until Satan was about to deliver the fatal coup de gras . Suddenly the Jesus entity appears and Vance is delivered by wielding his name. There are various possibilities as to the source of this dialogue. Vance may have written it himself, or it may have come from God to arm him with his...