The Narrowing Road

Retirement has offered time for reading and reflection that long weeks and days and middle-of-the-night phone calls do not afford. For some reason - and who knows what prompts a random thought or memory - but perhaps the recent Father's Day, I thought of my Grampa Earl. Even now, as I think about it, I don't think I ever called him Grampa, which would be a title of endearment he had not earned. Maybe just Earl. I'm not sure my Mom ever called him Dad, either for that matter, but I'm not sure. Again, unearned endearment.  My memories of him are from just a few visits and the few times my Mother spoke of him. She never had stories, just statements and not even full statements sometimes when she caught herself in memories she did not want to resurrect or share. I do know that he was an alcoholic. I have compassion for addicts, but sometimes their trail of destruction is simply too worn to find it. Mom just said he was an old drunk, the type that made them scramble to hide ...

Can We Re-Christianize America? God forbid. Recent presumably well-intentioned mandates proposed by government officials in Texas, Louisianna, and Oklahoma do not portend well for religious liberty or for the restoration of Biblical literacy in the U.S. A knowledge of the Bible was not lost due to the government, nor can it or should it be restored by government. It is the American church that has failed to maintain the eminence of the Bible. Since labels seem to be a prerequisite for getting an audience I guess I'll cave and say I am a boomer steeped in postwar patriotism and anti-communism, politically and religiously conservative, leaning Libertarian in thought but void of rightist extremism or Christian Nationalism. I hesitate to call myself an intellectual but I have spent half of my career in a college classroom and have earned a Doctorate in Education. My conservatism was forged in the "roots of my raisin'" in the Midwest (the Ozarks, more specifically) Bible B...

So Abraham gets a promise from God to be the father of a great nation. So he and his wife (who is also his half-sister) wait around to get pregnant and get this thing started. Years go by. Abraham isn’t so studly anymore and Sarah, although cute for her age, has no hope of childbearing.  So here they sit around the breakfast table wondering how to help God out. Sarah says Abraham should just go have a baby with Hagar, a servant woman. Abraham drums his fingers on the table, trying not to look too interested, but gets up shrugging his shoulders and says “If you say so, dear” and wastes no time getting Hagar pregnant. Which, to no one’s surprise, really bothers Sarah. She’s disgusted with herself, describing herself as “worn-out” (Gen 18:11) with a guffaw when angelic visitors tell her that when they visit her next year she’ll have son. “Yeah, right”.  But she does! Little Isaac. One boy to fulfill the promise of descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven.  Isaac and Re...

 The Cancer Starter Pack By Joel Shults F*#% Cancer T shirt. Check GoFundMe site. Check Light Blue prostate cancer support ribbon frame for Facebook profile. Check Start My Cancer Journey blog. Check Actually, I'm doing none of those (with the slight deviation on the blog thing, since this is one). But I don't intend to do a play by play as some do. And I'm not criticizing those who do that because I often read them and they have a lot of value. Mostly, I'm writing this for me to look back on in a year or two and to help myself navigate an uncomfortable new territory. The discomfort is not that I have cancer, but what kind of person I should be now that the Big C is trying to define who I am.  I resent the invasion. I have submitted myself to other forces before as a  soldier, police officer, and follower of Jesus but to be forced to submit to a cancer-fighting lifestyle is insulting to my existential integrity. The first issue, in my mind, is disclosure. Really, how ma...

I, and many like me, had the great Providential privilege of growing up with a wonderful church family. My parents began attending a small mission church in my hometown of Rolla, Missouri that has now grown to be a large congregation with a lot of square footage on its campus. I had wonderful teachers and leaders whom I knew cared about me and led me as I grew to become more involved in ministry and leadership. As a member of the baby-boom generation, I was part of the tide of growth in evangelical Christianity spurred by population growth, post WW2 patriotism linked with Protestantism, and media reach of Billy Graham and others. It's tempting to make this a rail against the shortsightedness and self-righteousness of contemporary church growth experts who scoff at that model (and who are now replicating the suburban storefront praise band cookie cutter non-denom monosyllabic named church plants that were once so revolutionary and counter-Baptist-cultural). But I won't. What...

One of my favorite gospel songs is Sweet Beulah Land in which we sing “ I'm kind of homesick for a country to which I've never been before” referring, of course, to our heavenly home.  Many Christians are longing now for the America that was founded by people longing for religious freedom and formed in a revolution promoted by people of faith. It is a country that no one has ever seen and has never existed.  The America of 1776 was a mess of slave holders, British loyalists, unskilled soldiers, and determined patriots longing for independence from England but necessarily encumbered by France to make independence happen. The names we rightly salute as founding fathers who pledged their lives and honor for the infant United States of America spent the productive years of their lives in debate, argument, intrigue, and scandal. Their product, the U.S.A. in 2018, is an amazing and certainly Providentially ordained land, still one of opportunity and liberty, both o...