Oak Ridge Today

Faith column: Imagine greater

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I have a heart for skeptics. I understand what that feels like. When I used to read the story of doubting Thomas, I could relate. Jesus tells him in John 20:29: “You believe because you have seen. Blessed are those who have yet to see and still believe.” My response to that was usually—”Well, how convenient Jesus!”

It wasn’t always this way for me. There was a time that I didn’t have any doubts at all. To be quite honest, that made me a downright scary person. I know it isn’t this way for everyone because I’ve met a great many people with a deep, deep faith who aren’t scary people. They love and serve, and their lives are completely admirable. Still, I have spent just enough of my life with a doubting Thomas inside to know skepticism and even to appreciate it.

I had an experience this summer, however, that touched me to the core. I saw God in such a way that I won’t ever need to see anything more. It sealed the deal. You may never understand how difficult it is for a naturally skeptical person to make a statement like that. [Read more…]

Guest column: Let’s face it, school safety is an emotional topic

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When it comes to keeping our children out of harm’s way, we parents get testy. I never realized how testy I could get until the day I drove my oldest home from the hospital. Not only did I check every buckle in his car seat fifteen times over, I don’t think I took my car over 25 miles per hour the whole way home. I threw a few sour looks toward drivers who passed me at a higher rate of speed.

It was illogical. It was emotional. But it was instinctual. I couldn’t stop what simply holding my baby boy was doing to me on the inside. I suspect I am not alone among first-time fathers and mothers. The feelings we have may wane over time or become more rational as we age, but they never fully go away.

Keeping composure in emotionally tense situations requires a degree of grace, and I find it doubly ironic that, as a former school-safety-coordinator-turned-minister,  grace would be the state of being I believe our community should adopt in this controversy. [Read more…]

Faith column: Letting pain be pain (Part Two)

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Last month, I wrote about the problem Western civilization seems to have with pain as evidenced by the plethora of outlets we’ve created to avoid it. Central to part one is understanding the paradox of pain: that while pain certainly is no one’s friend, the laws at work on our planet are such that pain is everyone’s friend: Life depends on pain and without it, we wouldn’t be here.

It would be hard to maintain our humanity if we didn’t ask spiritual questions about pain. The Bible is loaded with “heroes” who did this very thing, including Christ himself, who from the cross issued the famous phrase found in Psalms 22: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Questioning in this way is not only natural, but also appears in both the Jewish and Christian texts as an affirmation of our human need to wrestle with the “why” of pain.

I have only one real issue with the questioning of God and pain in our modern world. It comes when a person has rejected the faith life because of the problem of pain and yet, simultaneously, accepts the story of evolution as a beautiful thing, despite the clearly painful history it details. I don’t believe these two world views are mutually exclusive and personally hold to both as examples of beauty rising out of pain. [Read more…]

Faith column: Letting pain be pain (Part One)

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I read a story once about a girl who was born without the ability to feel pain. Normal things like cuts and scrapes would go totally unnoticed. She lacked the ability to tell the difference between cold and hot, or to retract her hand after touching something she shouldn’t have. Apparently, this is an extremely rare condition in humans.

This girl was apparently so immune to pain that her mother and father accidentally burned her in the bathtub when she was a baby and that’s how they discovered she had this condition. The hot water never caused her any discomfort; it never triggered any kind of response. Prior to being diagnosed, her parents had no idea they were hurting her.

As the girl grew older, she had to be constantly looked over. Some days she would show up from playing outside with her friends, bleeding all over her clothes but totally unaware that she had been injured. She spent weeks covered in terrible bruises that she never knew she’d received. [Read more…]

Faith column: Roger Ebert’s final critique

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The history books will record Roger Ebert as a great film critic. He was that and, I am certain, much more to those who loved and knew him best. His loss has been felt by many around the globe because of the millions he touched. Ebert took us to the movies for years; he guided our ticket purchases, awakened in us a poetic appreciation for films we might not otherwise have seen; and best of all, he called the public away from the mindless, lowest common denominator of entertainment. His ability to critique film and his way with words had the effect of “raising all our boats” in the areas of culture, intellect, emotion, and even an awareness of the sacred.

Ebert’s ability to awaken us is what makes his death feel so tragic; but it is also what makes his now popularized letter, “I Do Not Fear Death,” equally as tragic. Ebert’s final critique came to us not in the form of a film review, but in a staunch and unwavering gaze cast toward seeming permanence of death. It has taken the Internet somewhat by storm and praised by many.

I confess, I found little praiseworthy in it. In fact, it primarily aroused in me a deep sense of pity to see a man with such brilliance and appreciation for beauty in life take those gifts and place them in a room with such a low ontological ceiling. [Read more…]

Faith column: The things that stalk us

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With the advent of the Internet, you might have already noticed that intelligent, rational conversation about religion is increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Online identities have been constructed somewhat anonymously and disconnected from any real “community,” thereby allowing many to pass off opinion for fact, with an absence of accuracy, honesty, and personal integrity.

For example, I cannot begin to count the number of times I have read this on an Internet message board: “Religion kills more people worldwide than anything on the planet.”

Of course this is nonsense, but proof that if we repeat something loud enough and frequently enough, we can get a majority of people to believe it. Let’s leave the debating about what is “religiously-motivated” violence versus “ethnically-motivated” violence for the scholars to debate. The lines are always going to be blurry there, although I believe the evidence from these scholars would be more than enough to put this disinformation to rest. Still, we don’t even need to dig that deep—all we need to do is crack open a beer.

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Faith column: Christmas and ‘The Comfortable Inn’

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As the lines wrap around Best Buy and shoppers begin hurdling one another at Walmart on Black Friday this week, the usual complaints and pontifications will be offered up in defense of the “true meaning” of Christmas. Everyone knows Christmas isn’t supposed to be about the “stuff” money can buy, but about all those “happy things” that money can’t buy. Everyone knows this already. It’s old hat, but it is what we clergy are supposed to say this time of year.

I’m not sure what good another sermon, or another article, or another sour-faced television reporter can really do to change our holiday insanity. The truth is we all struggle with the merchandising of Christmas in one way or another. If we aren’t busy shopping for our own wants, then we tend to worry about under-giving to friends and family, or sometimes (when we feel especially moved) under-giving to our favorite charity. Christmas is too often driven by want and obligation: forces that keep our psychological inns overcrowded, but still pretty dang comfortable if we’re able to squeeze inside. We know who gets locked outside at Christmas and the story of how his mother stumbles “away to a manger” to give birth. I’m supposed to be writing about that.

One of the things that turns me off the most about Christianity this time of year is the way we pastors present ourselves as the hero of the story… as the ones who are able to “call America back” to the real meaning of Christmas. I’m not that guy. The truth is my kids are quite comfortable this year; the stuff beneath our tree will be taking up just as much space as yours. When it comes to merchandising the season, I am on the comfortable side of the door.

We’ve all heard the knocking. The poor are right outside, some of them even nine months pregnant and needing a warm place to stay. But the comfortable inn stays pretty full… Besides, it’s not as easy to help as it used to be. Behind door number one is a family too embarrassed to put their child’s name on the angel tree. Behind door number two is a family who has placed their child on 18 angel trees spread across four counties. Knowing which door to open requires a personal relationship and those are in short supply these days, even for pastors. No one knows what to do anymore or how to best help, so the easiest thing is to do nothing at all, to lose ourselves in the season—the television specials, the parades, the carols, maybe a little Kahlua on the rocks with a dash of half-and-half by an open fire.

Somewhere out there though, a miracle is taking place and deep down, we all know it. Somewhere, out where the animals make their beds and the stench of livestock fills the air, something precious is born. This Christmas, like so many others, we will turn our heads for just a moment to the frost on the window pane. We will see past the reflection of paper littering the floor. We will sigh once again, like we did last year, and offer up a whimper of prayer before being distracted by the sound of electronics and the smell of ham.

It won’t be too awfully different this year. I’m no better than anyone else. Still, deep down I know something is amiss, not just with the world, but with my own soul. Somewhere out there, I believe that mercy incarnate shivers in the blackest cold of dawn. He grows stronger with each passing second and with every undue hardship cast upon him. In due time, He will emerge and find His way to my “Comfortable Inn” to knock once more… if I choose to open the door. He will smile the sweetest smile for me, whisper a word of love, then offer the thing I need most: He will throw across His shoulders all the unwrapped packages of my shame.

Rev. David Allred is the lead pastor of High Places Community Church, 123 Randolph Road in Oak Ridge. He works alongside founding pastor Martin Fischer. High Places owns and operates the historic Grove Theater, which is also home to numerous arts organizations that share a vision for improving the quality of life in Oak Ridge. For more information, see http://highplaceschurch.com.