This is my homily for this past weekend, the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C. The readings for that Sunday are here.
My wife Therese and I are in the midst of a bit of a life change. All our kids but one have finished college now. Two of them have moved out and are living on their own. The one still in college is away at school during the academic year. That leaves one still at home for now, but she has a new job and will be moving out soon. For the last quarter century or longer, Therese and I have been up to our chins in the bustle of parenthood: our kids’ lives, their schooling, their activities. But now our babies have grown up, and the Pauwels nest is emptying quickly.
As I say, this emptying-the-nest business has been an adjustment for Therese and me. Some of it is good: we have much more time for one another than we’ve had since, well, before we were parents. But other aspects, I’m not so sure are good. Now that most of the kids are gone, we miss them terribly. We want to see them. We want to talk with them. We want to know what’s going on in their lives. We want to know about their jobs. We want to know about their social lives and activities. Most of all, we want to know: are you dating anyone? Will you be getting married soon, and by the way, what about grandchildren? In this, as in so many other ways, we’ve become who we once vowed we’d never, ever be: our own parents.
You might think our parenting work is almost done: our kids are going out on their own. But Therese and I are experiencing the reality that, once you’re a parent, you never stop being a parent, whether your kids are eight months old, or eight years old, or 28 years old. I don’t doubt we’ll still be trying to be parents to them when they turn 58. I'm 61 years old, and I spoke with my mom this weekend, and she's still trying to mother me, too. And rightly so: she has a fund of wisdom and perspective she wants to share. And I'm the same way now with my adult children. If we're overbearing, it's because our hearts are overflowing with love for our children, and we want to help them.
I’m offering these reflections on parenthood because parenthood, and our relationship with our children, looms behind our Gospel story, this parable of the widow and the unjust judge. The heart of this passage is not the vivid image Jesus presents of the feisty widow possibly hauling off and socking the judge in the eye, but rather the lessons Jesus draws from the parable.
First, he draws a contrast between this unjust judge and our loving and just God. If even the unjust judge can be prevailed upon to bring about justice, just imagine how much more God our Father, who always has remained faithful to his covenant with his people, will see to it that justice is brought about for his little ones.
And there’s more: Jesus holds up this widow to us as a model for our own lives. The key point about her isn’t that she is willing to punch important public officials; rather, it’s her persistence.
Jesus wants us to be as persistent in our prayer life as the widow was in nagging the unjust judge. But why should we persist in prayer? I'd suggest: because God wants to have a real relationship with us.
What kind of relationship should we have with God? Well, that might depend on how we understand God – how we think of him – how we picture him. The bible offers us various images of God: he is the creator; he is a warrior; he is a king; he is a shepherd; and, pertinently to today’s Gospel parable, he is a judge. Of course, he is not an unjust judge; he is a judge of justice and righteousness.
But here’s something worth thinking about: earlier this year, we heard a Gospel reading in which Jesus’s disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. He didn’t teach us to pray, “Our shepherd who art in heaven”, nor “Our judge who art in heaven”. No, he taught us to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven”. Jesus has taught us that the primary way we should understand God is, he’s a parent.
We are free to think of God as a king or a judge. There is nothing wrong with those images - they're in the bible, too. But if we limit our imaginations to those images, then then our relationship with God is likely to conform to those images. For most of us, kings and judges are rather remote. Most of us lead our lives without needing to interact very much with kings or judges, and it’s entirely possible for us to live our lives without interacting with God very much. There are folks who lead their lives that way.
But if we perceive God to be a remote entity with whom we speak only infrequently, it’s our loss, because we’re missing out on the spiritual riches that come from having a close relationship with God. And it’s not just our loss. Interacting with us only infrequently is not the kind of relationship God wants with us. Because, more than anything, God is a parent. He’s our father. And what God really wants is to have the sort of close and loving relationship that parents want to have with their children – even their grown children.
Jesus urges us to be persistent in our prayer because it is through prayer that our relationship with God is cultivated and sustained.
If you want to get some insight about how God feels about us, you should see Therese and me on a Sunday evening. One of our kids, who has moved far away, calls us every Sunday evening. Those phone calls are wonderful - they mean a lot to us. So every Sunday evening, Therese and I stay close to our cell phones, praying and hoping that they will ring, because then we get to speak with our son.
That’s how God is with us: he’s sitting by the phone, hoping with his whole heart that the phone will ring, and that it's you or me reaching out to him.
I fear it’s very easy for us to be like ungrateful children – those adult children who leave home, and then ignore their parents until or unless they need a parent to send them a check, or cosign their lease, or babysit their puppy while they’re on vacation. If we’re as transactional with God as some kids are with their parents, then we’re missing out. Because God isn’t looking for transactional. He wants a close, loving, connected relationship with us. All parents want that with their children.
God wants to hear from us frequently. Every day! Even several times a day. He wants to hear from us when times are good, and when times are not so good.
So reach out to God. Tell him what’s on your mind. Tell him what’s bothering you. Tell him what you fear. Ask him for his help – God loves it when you ask for his help. Thank him for the good things in your life. Pour out your heart to him, every day. Let God be the father to you he’s longing to be.
Jim, when I read something like this in often wonder how it’s received by the congregation. Many might relate. Some won’t. Two points that might be hard for people to swallow - first, that everyone had a loving father. Many do not, so assuming that this is an image that all identify with in a positive way is a mistake. Second God our Father….will see to it that justice is brought about for his little ones..
ReplyDeleteWell, maybe in whatever afterlife there might be, but tens of millions of good people never experience “ justice” in this life. Millions born into poverty, millions of refugees, millions fleeing violence, war, and injustice, whether because they are minorities, or they are abused women, or they are refugees from violence in Latin America at our border. And millions of these people have persisted in prayer.
God let’s this all happen. He doesn’t guarantee justice on earth.
Anne, yes, fair point that not everyone has had a positive experience with their own parents.
DeleteRegarding justice for his little ones: that is a reference to a line in the Gospel reading: "The Lord said, “Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says. Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily." How to reconcile that statement with, say, the martyrs of Nazi concentration camps or the Soviet gulags is difficult, to say the least. FWIW, I took the more general point of Jesus's statement to be along the lines of, "If you are in distress and ask for God's help, but nothing happens, don't conclude that God isn't there and/or isn't listening and turn away from him. Keep asking. Don't give up.
Have faith."
Even people who are dissatisfied with their fathers are dissatisfied because they have an image to which they compare them. I think we know what parents are supposed to be. That image is a representation of God.
DeleteStanley, many, like Katherine, put an emphasis on having a relationship with Jesus. Not with God. I try to have a connection with God. But if I were to single out one concept of God from the Trinity for a “ relationship” ( Trinity is a doctrine that bothers me a lot - I don’t think of persons, but of images and concepts of the divine) it would be the Father, because of what you observed. I did not have a father who loved me. He wasn’t abusive, just disinterested and distant. It’s often painful on Father’s Day to read all the heartfelt tributes to fathers. Many experience pain on Mother’s Day for the same reasons. Not everyone grew up with warm, loving parents. Many had toxic parents. I didn’t, but there was no paternal love, and little affection, from my mother. She loved us, but didn’t know how to show warmth or affection. She did have a toxic, emotionally abusive father, and I assume that affected her whole life.
DeleteReligious people need to be aware and sensitive to these things when giving homilies.
I strongly connect with Jesus, but God the Father and the Holy Spirit are a bit more mysterious. Sometimes I have felt badly because maybe I was slighting them in my relationship with Jesus, but then I thought, no that's silly, because they are One.
DeleteI had a good father. But I thought of him being more like St. Joseph than God the Father, who is still a bit abstract to me. The Holy Spirit is even more abstract. But we are taught that he is the Sanctifier, that every impulse to prayer or thoughts of God originates with the Spirit, who indwells with us. But that's hard to wrap one's head around! I can think of the Trinity as Godhead, creator, who willed us into existence.
Yes, my parents were separated and my father had severe OCD. Because of my mother, I was no stranger to affection. Overall, I had no problems with my family situation growing up even though the 1950's ideal was always there on TV and divorce was far from ubiquitous. I was definitely in a strong extended family and that may have been a real positive.
DeleteYes, Stanley . A strong extended family is a good support I’m sure. I didn’t have that experience nor do many others.I imagine that in recent decades there are fewer and fewer people with strong extended families close by. .
DeleteKatherine, how exactly do you “connect” with Jesus? How do you feel this relationship?
I am always fascinated by those who insist that we all must have a personal relationship with Jesus( why only Jesus?) but I have no idea what they experience when claiming that they have a personal relationship with Jesus. Mostly I hear this from evangelicals and conservative Catholics. But nobody seems able to describe it in concrete terms. It’s not like being connected through daily phone calls! And the conversation seems to be pretty much all one way. But at the moment an evangelical woman I’ve known for 40 years claims that she’s in a relationship with the Holy Spirit who literally speaks to her so that she can make proclamations.
Anne, I don't connect very much with the Evangelical "" accept Jesus as your Saviour " thing, though I do accept him as my Saviour. It just wasn't a moment in time, once and done. I guess I feel it's more of a devotion to the Sacred Heart. The Incarnation is more of a mind blowing mystery than the Resurrection. He loved us enough to become one of us.
DeleteKatherine, How do you “ connect” with Jesus exactly? What does that mean in concrete terms?
DeleteThe main way I connect with Jesus is through the Mass and Communion. I know we are supposed to see God in other people, but sometimes that's really hard and the only way I can do it is through the Eucharist, if that makes any sense, which it probably doesn't. My personal prayer flows from that encounter and I try to practice the presence of God in all my activities, as Brother Lawrence did. Don't know if that's concrete, but it is what it is.
DeleteSo, now I have violated my own principle to refrain from giving advice. But since hundreds of people hear church homilies, I broke my self- imposed rule and gave advice about homilies, which also applies to anyone seeking to “evangelize” others as well. Mea culpa!
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your advice, Anne. Don't sell your score short on the wisdom-meter.
DeleteFWIW - there is a bit of dialogue in the first book of Lord of the Rings in which the hobbits, trying to avoid a Black Rider on the road in the Shire, cross paths with a company of wandering Elves. Frodo asks the leader of the company, Gildor, for advice: should he stay in the Shire and wait for Gandalf, who is unaccountably late? Here is their dialogue:
“But it is said: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. The choice is yours: to go or wait.'
'And it is also said,' answered Frodo: 'Go not to the Elves for counsel for they will answer both no and yes.'
'Is it indeed?' laughed Gildor. 'Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.”
So Anne, you take the same approach to advice-giving as the Elves, the wisest of the Speaking Peoples of Middle-Earth. I can't offer higher praise than that!
Thanks, Jim. I read the books about 45 years ago, but remember little about them. Happy to know that elves are wise. In my rather eclectic work history, I can list being an elf on my resume. I worked as an elf in high school. There was a popular, small, theme park in our mountains with a Christmas theme. Santa was there in his house where the children could visit him, and a perpetually frozen column of ice outside the door of the house was the North Pole. Mrs. Claus ran the kitchen where people could buy delectable baked goods. Santa had a real, very long, white beard. The man who played Santa was married in real life to the woman who played Mrs. Claus.There were gift shops and some low key rides, The shops were staffed by elves, and we also operated the rides. One was a revolving Christmas tree. The branches had large ornaments that people sat in. They rose up and down as the tree revolved. There were real, live reindeer. It was a charming, old fashioned place, very popular in the 1960s. Would be considered boring by kids today I fear. As an elf, I wore a green cap on my head, with a feather, green blouse, green shorts or shorts or pants, and green tights if we wore shorts ( it was open in the summer too’) We wore leather jerkins over the blouse, belted. Our shoes were low boots that curved up at the toes and the heel, and had bells that jangled when we walked. Thanks for the memories!
DeleteThanks for your memories! Very charming if also out of date.
DeleteJack, it was a very charming place. The buildings looked like fairy tale illustrations. It was closed at some point - couldn't compete with Disney, Universal and other theme parks in southern California. It sat abandoned for years, but they kept the buildings. It reopened a few years ago - it looks the same (the buildings) but is nothing like it was. I was so disappointed - we went there with our then 5 year old grandson. They've turned it into an "adventure" park - zip lines, mountain bike trails, etc along with a vestige of the Santa Claus days. It was so disappointing, not to mention unsettling to have a parade of Santa and elves and story book characters in the middle of the zip lines!
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ReplyDeleteThis is just my own thought: I've heard or read that one of the symptoms of folks who experience anxiety and/or depression (which are endemic in our family) tend to have very negative running dialogues with themselves, in their heads.
ReplyDeleteMy thought is: if, instead of sharing those frustrations and fears and self-doubts with ourselves, we shared them with God and asked him to help us, it might elevate our relationship with God to a different level. I don't claim it will "cure" depression and anxiety; I don't know. I just know that I actually "talk" with myself throughout the day much more than I talk with God.
A really good prayer in times of anxiety, which I have sometimes, are breath prayers, in which you pray a word or phrase, with your breathing, in and out. That's the only way I can keep from climbing the walls for something like a root canal. You'd think after all the dental work I've had over a lifetime that it would be routine by now, but it isn't.
DeleteJim, I agree with you that prayer is about relationship. God wants a conversation with us. It's hard to have a relationship with someone you don't talk to. The conversation is more important than the outcome.
ReplyDeleteKatherine, it’s hard to hold a two way conversation with someone whom you can neither see nor hear! I talk to God all the time. He doesn’t talk back though. I think a lot of people imagine they “ hear” a response in their mind because they so desperately want to hear one.
ReplyDeleteJim, I am among those who experiences anxiety - a lot. I’ve shared my fears and anxieties with God a lot also, running comments to God throughout the day and night. I ask for help. But God is silent.
I've never heard an actual voice in response to a prayer. I do think God has ways of responding, though. One of them is via gifts of the Holy Spirit (e.g. courage, peace, wisdom, moderation). Another avenue is via my conscience.
DeleteIf the human race is still around in any form in 150 years, even as hunter-gatherers, I'll consider my prayers answered. The fact that we high tech barbarians hadn't rendered ourselves extinct during the Cold War is a miracle and answer to any praying I ever did. Close calls plus maniac warmongers like "Bombs Away" LeMay poking the Soviet Bear with forays into their airspace shows we tried hard enough. Now we have Climate Catastrophe with obvious scientific backing and we still can't suffer some inconveniences to try to fix this thing. God must love people, stupid people, a lot more than I do. So I'll give them a chance, too.
DeleteStanley, we have a friend who is an engineer, a one time, SES level program manager at DARPA, and an extremely conservative evangelical christian. He’s married to the woman who now claims to literally hear the Holy Spirit speak to her. In retirement he is devoting himself to research to prove that climate change has nothing to do with human activity, and that humans can’t do anything to change the climate. Ok - there is a debate on this. It doesn’t mean he’s crazy. But he also refused to be vaccinated and claimed that ivermectin saved him and his wife when they got Covid. Oh, and by the way, they also received infusions of monoclonal antibodies, but it was the ivermectin that was the key. Before he was pushing ivermectin he was on the hydroxychloroquine bandwagon and sent all his friends a 20 page research paper that he wrote to prove that hydroxychloroquine was the answer.
DeleteNow his cause is fighting policies to act against climate change. He wasn’t appearing crazy in this debate until now. . Just right wing beliefs. But maybe they’ve progressed into the world of crazy. A few days ago I learned that he thinks the debate isn’t about science or policy, but is one element in the « spiritual warfare » that is ongoing right now. Those who advocate action to halt climate change are apparently in league with the devil - literally. He and his wife devote themselves to religion, the study of the Bible, evangelizing those who haven’t accepted Jesus as their personal savior and don’t have a relationship with Jesus, etc. They see themselves as faithful christians, doing God’s will. They scare me.
He gives talks and informal classes on all of this. Unfortunately his academic and professional credentials make some people think he must be really smart so they pay attention to him.
Yes, Anne. I knew guys whose Republicanism overcame their science in this matter. I guess this guy isn't a fan of Katherine Hayhoe, climate scientist AND evangelical Christian. She's received horrid hate mail from other evangelicals. I've dealt with DARPA folk in my career. They could be, how can I say it, different.
DeleteOn the other end, we now have climate protesters throwing slop onto Van Gogh masterpieces. Well they got a lot more press than the guy who immolated himself.
I agree with the protesters that radical changes have to be made and not nearly enough is being done. And I think a rather nice way of life might lie in the other side, more human-centered.
I'll have to look her up (Kayhoe). Francis Collins at NIH is also an evangelical christian who did everything he could to convince other evangelicals to get vaccinated, but mostly fell on deaf ears. My husband worked on a number of DARPA projects - as a contractor, not a government employee. That's where we first got to know this couple decades ago. We had been pretty close friends until they went full bore trump
DeleteI got 2.3M from DARPA once for my optics manufacturing program. It was a hard sell because it wasn't out there risky enough for DARPA. But I was happy with anything I could get and God bless the Hindi-American Ph.D. who gave it to me. Never met a DARPA program manager who wasn't a character. BTW, some of the first precision lenses manufactured by techniques developed under my program are on Mars.
DeleteSorry your friends went over the edge. It IS scary. Like one of those scifi movies where the aliens start taking over minds.
Lol! Yes, DARPA likes risky. Only the preferred term is “cutting edge”. DARPA’s innovations have produced a lot of worthwhile stuff though.
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ReplyDeleteAt the time of Jesus, people generally saw rulers as having their authority from God, and that many of the circumstances of their lives were willed by God.
ReplyDeleteSo, Jesus in the form of the uncooperative (and perhaps even corrupt) judge was surfacing the fact that we often fail to find the justice from others in this world (especially those that should be doing God’s will) that we expect from God.
So, what are we to do?
Well Jesus sets up the powerless woman in this parable as model that we should not cease to confront the injustices that we find around us. She obviously did not simply stay at home and pray that God would work a miracle or decide that it was the will of God that things should be this way, or simply complain to her neighbors. No, she confronted the authorities who should be working for justice.
Yes, Jesus recommends that we continually pray to God to keep alive our sense of injustice, but he also seems to be recommending that we articulate the need for justice to those who bear responsibility for correcting those injustices.
Jesus has an almost humorous ending of the story. The judge who fears neither God nor men finally gets tired of her coming. He fears that might lead to disrespect for his office. The high and mighty sometimes have clay feet.
This parable seems to accord with that saying: “Pray as if everything depended upon God but act as if everything depended upon yourself.”
Jack - a fine (and brief!) homily!
DeleteI had thought about focusing on the widow as a powerless person relying on a judge because she had no husband to look out for her rights and interests, but I wasn't "feeling it" this time, for whatever reason.
Thanks Jim maybe my parishioners years ago were right when they wanted me to become a deacon in order for me to preach. Since I have no desire to preach, I told them as a former college professor I was accustomed to treating every topic in fifty minutes. That seemed to discourage things.
DeleteI am also sure that I would never survive the training on how to give homilies, and that if I did, I would still get into trouble for being a very unconventional homilist.
For example, if I could reduce everything to something like the above, I would want it printed in the bulletin, and have some soft music played in the background what I sat down in a chair near the pews and slowly ad-libbed the story as I see it.
Third world audiences hearing the gospel story would likely say that the judge wanted a bribe, and the poor woman was unwilling to give it.
Our Orthodox friends who raise money for school children in Uganda (and live there for half the year) encounter the bribery system regularly in the bureaucracy. They walk miles to the bureaucratic offices only to be told again and again the paper work process is incomplete. Eventually they understand that these wealthy Americans are not going to bribe them and produce the paperwork.
I guess I might also tell the Uganda story as I was sitting in the chair as an example of the persistence that we are called to as Christians.
Jack - yes, that bribery expectation (apparently) comes into play when multinational corporations do business in the developing world. I say "apparently" because I've never been asked to pay a bribe; but in the compliance training that all us employees are required to take every year, one of the points they stress is, No bribery, no matter how customary and inculturated it is in the country in which you do business.
DeleteOf course, winning business via bribery is wrong; but winning a lawsuit via bribery may be even worse.
Jean, i hope you stop removing your comments. I learn so much from you!
ReplyDeleteJim,
ReplyDeleteHow can anybody know what "God wants"?
If the God I was taught to believe in exists, he knows everything that I could possibly say to him. In fact, he allegedly knows what I am going to say before I say it!
The more certain some people (e.g., the religious right) claim they know what God wants them to do, the more they scare me!
I am more and more an agnostic. I don't really understand how people can claim to have a "relationship" with God. I trust that if the God I was taught to believe in really does exist, he knows what he is doing and doesn't need need my input.
I guess we can know what God wants because God reveals some things about himself to us: through scripture, nature, reason, the church, consciences, etc.
DeleteYes, David. There are a lot of contradictions. It’s similar to my problem with intercessory prayer. First, if God is God and is omniscient, then God already knows who needs what. When I talk to God about my anxieties I’m really performing a mental exercise of sorting - what am I worrying about, why - what underlies the worry, what can I do about it, if anything. This applies to my own concerns and my concerns for others whom I might want to pray for. God never answers - never tells me what to do! Never comes through with a miraculous cure or a detailed action plan.
DeleteIf God loves all human beings, then why would God heed intercessory prayers for people who have (christian) friends to pray for them and just ignore the needs of the 5+ billion people in the world who don’t have christian friends to pray for divine intercession. Somehow that doesn’t go along with the notion that God is love and loves all equally. It implies that God plays favorites if someone asks for a favor on behalf of themselves family or friends. It implies that people will be favored if they stroke the ego of the omnipotent, omniscient God! All of the passages about prayer in the Bible are confusing to me. But it is likely that they simply reflect the beliefs and hopes of the human beings who wrote the scriptures rather than the anything Jesus actually said.
Anne and David, you are both logical and rational people. I sometimes think my exposure to modern physics, especially quantum mechanics, makes me more open to the arational. I found out I made more progress in physics less by trying to logically comprehend it than accepting it and going with it. Same with mathematics. At bottom, unprovable and open ended. Gödel's theorem. Then there's imaginary numbers. A whole powerful realm of mathematics based on a single absurdity, the square root of minus one.
DeleteI think it's more true to say I have a relationship with physics and mathematics than that I logically comprehend it. Relationship.
I always had trouble with math, Stanley, even though I was an A student, lost out as valedictorian in high school by .01 point in my average. Probably the A- in trig….. ;). I never took physics, but took astronomy instead to satisfy a science requirement. I do not have a scientific mind.
DeleteI replied to you above about a friend, an engineer and scientist, who has gone off the deep end in his opposition to climate action efforts.
I don't entirely understand intercessory prayer either. But one thing about it is that it takes us out of ourselves. If we're praying for someone else, we're not focused on ourselves during that time. I think it is pleasing to God when we are concerned about a brother or sister, and once in a while I get an insight in prayer of something I could do to help. But sometimes praying is all we can do, and we just have to put them in God's hands.
DeleteRight - these are real difficulties being called out about intercessory prayer. But then, Jesus couldn't be clearer: not only does he want us to pray, but he wants us to be persistent in prayer. Maybe that is one of the reasons that passage in Luke ends with that cryptic question, "But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
DeleteAnne, I read your comment above about your friend who went off the deep end with anti anti climate change stuff. Unfortunately I know people who are about that bad. But they don't have scientific credentials. There are also people who go off the deep end on the other end of the spectrum, that we're all doomed. I don't think that is healthy either, especially when it gets young people in a state of despair about their future.
DeleteKatherine, I agree that intercessory prayer can take us out of ourselves. I have a long list of people I pray for every day. I don't think God will intercede to change whatever their current challenges are, but it does reminds me that occasionally I might do something - send a card or whatever. And it reminds me that I am not the only person with problems!
DeleteOur now retired EC priest once told me that he believes that when people pray for others, there may be an emotional/telepathic/spiritual energy that is transmitted somehow to the person we are praying for, something that they receive as a feeling, or a positive thought. Since I have had a couple of telepathic experiences in my life, I do think there is a lot we don't know about the mind, how it works, and how its energy might be transmitted to others.
As far as our friend's anti-anti-climate change beliefs go, his claim that is an element in spiritual warfare makes me think that his analytical abilities may have deserted him. When I read his hydroxychloroquine paper in 2020, I started to think that something is off. I'm a very experienced researcher and analyst - not a scientist or medical person, but I could see so many flaws in his paper by the second page that I was shocked. When I checked his sources, I was even more shocked. When we first knew them 40 years ago they were members of a charismatic Episcopal church. (They are still charismatic). They left the EC parish when the gay bishop scandal hit. Since then I've lost track of how many times they've changed churches, with each new one a bit more fundamentalist and extreme than the previous one. I think their 40 year journey to evangelical christian extremism has impacted their critical thinking abilities.
Since then I've lost track of how many times they've changed churches, with each new one a bit more fundamentalist and extreme than the previous one
DeleteMy mentally ill aunt was that way. While each new church was initially impressed by her "enthusiasm" eventually they figured out she was mentally ill, and that more than enthusiasm is needed to deal with mental illness.
Anne, I have heard that too, about a kind of spiritual/emotional energy in prayer, I have heard it called "synergy ". I agree there is a lot we don't know about the mind.
DeleteI didn't know there were charismatic EC congregations. Just doesn't seem like the type of thing that would appeal to them.
Though any more some RC believers seem more like evangelicals. That didn't used to be their thing at all.
Found a couple of things on climate change and evangelicals
Deletehttps://www.christianpost.com/news/on-religion-and-climate-change.html
And this - it mentions Katherine Kayhoe
"EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTS: Much of the non-Catholic Christian focus on climate change has centered on denial—global warming, they say, is a natural process brought about by God, not humans. Indeed, when public figures make spectacles of those beliefs (looking at you, Senator Inhofe), they’re hard to ignore.
One group of evangelicals known as the Cornwall Alliance is responsible for fueling much of such misinformation. “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming,” it stated in an official declaration in 2009. In April, the alliance responded directly to news of the upcoming encyclical with an open letter to Pope Francis outlining why “it is both unwise and unjust to adopt policies requiring reduced use of fossil fuels for energy” and encouraging the pope to “advise the world’s leaders to reject them.”
About 35 to 45 percent of all evangelicals, however, are not members of the denial choir. Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, for example, doesn’t find that her faith conflicts with the facts about human-induced global warming. “The Bible is actually very clear that there are consequences for making bad choices. Sow the seeds, bear the fruit. Climate change is the consequence of making some bad choices,” she says in a 2012 onEarth article about her efforts to reach out to her religious community. Associations like the Evangelical Climate Initiative and the National Association of Evangelicals have also accepted that climate change is anthropogenic, and in 2013 more than 200 evangelical scientists released a letter calling on Congress to address climate change. "Our nation has entrusted you with political power; we plead with you to lead on this issue and enact policies this year that will protect our climate and help us all to be better stewards of Creation,” they wrote."
https://psmag.com/environment/in-the-spiritual-fight-against-climate-change-the-pope-is-not-alone