Category: Justification

  • Fool Me Twice: Why We Believe the Liars That We Know Are Lying

    Fool Me Twice: Why We Believe the Liars That We Know Are Lying

    In my experience, it is the one who most vehemently accuses someone of something that’s actually the one doing it—like cheating in a relationship or voter fraud. And also in my experience, the person being lied to is usually the least willing to accept the weight of the revelation. They say that it is because…

  • State of Confusion 2020

    Sometimes I feel actual physical discomfort when I think about the decisions that are before our world over the next generation or so. I’m the type of person who will choose to try and see where other people are coming from almost to the degree of great emotional risk. I have listened to people of…

  • Will the Disrespecters of the Flag Please Stand Up?

    Will the Disrespecters of the Flag Please Stand Up?

    I have been doing my best to write a post about my perception of the current NFL  protests without sounding like I am too biased. But, after several attempts, I have given up. If I’ve learned anything in my forty plus years on this planet, it’s that a significant number of us think we are…

  • When One “ism” Ends, #Embracism Begins

    When One “ism” Ends, #Embracism Begins

    Racism doesn’t exist. There I said it. Now we can move on. Don’t you wish it was that easy? What if we could uncreate racism or all of the other divisive isms just as easily as they were created and create a new way of being together?  Let’s call that effort #embracism.  As I define…

  • If You Don’t Bear Your Cross, Someone Else Will Have To

    On July 17, 2016, I preached a sermon entitled “Broken For You”. The idea behind the sermon came down to the idea that if people took 100% responsibility for their lives the whole world would be transformed in an instant. The spark for the sermon came from Jesus’ teaching that those who desire to follow…

  • The Privilege of Fearing God

    Fear and God.  For a long time those two words seemed not to go together for me. After all, in the book of 1 John we are told “God is Love” and despite how we tend to think of hate as love’s opposite, anyone who has ever loved knows that is inaccurate.  Fear is actually…

  • The Burden of Innocence

    As I mentioned in the video, today I was thinking about the burden of innocence that we all share and how Mary, the mother of Jesus, symbolizes that burden. Sometimes I imagine if some of us hurt folk were able to just pour out our hearts and tell the burdensome story of how we lost…