Author Archives: salooper57
Hard Hearts, Closed Minds, and Blind Eyes
If a pastor wants to start a row, he needn’t preach heresy. All he needs to do is change the color of the carpet in the church nursery or bring a drum set onto the platform. People might not notice … Continue reading
Better Choose Plan-A When There Is no Plan-B
Christian theology teaches that the church was founded by Jesus and is the world’s most important institution. Perhaps institution is not the best word, since the church is not exactly institutional; it is a movement. But it might be better … Continue reading
No Symptoms Doesn’t Equal No Disease
I recently visited the nice people at Borgess Hospital in Kalamazoo, Michigan for a coronary angiogram, with overnight accommodations, IVs, heart monitors, and blood draws as part of the all-inclusive package. How I got there is a long story, full … Continue reading
The Politicians Stopped Inviting Us to the Dance
For decades, when people spoke or wrote about the intersection of religious belief and political action, it was natural to refer to it in a kind of shorthand, “religion and politics,” with religion getting the more important seat at the … Continue reading
Heaven Does Not Have an EB-5 Visa Program
In recent weeks, many of us learned for the first time that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services offers an employment-based visa with permanent resident status to foreigners who are willing to invest large sums of money in commercial … Continue reading
The Spiritual Myopia Pandemic
There are about 97 million myopic people in the U.S., according to the American Optometric Association. I’m one of them. I was fitted for my first pair of corrective lenses in second grade. Because my vision continued to deteriorate (and … Continue reading
Better Off Dead: Life Beyond the Grave
Death has always been hard to understand – just try explaining it to a child. How strange it is to be speaking to a person you know one minute and find them absent the next. Their body is still present … Continue reading
