Author Archives: salooper57

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About salooper57

Husband, father, pastor, follower. I am a disciple of Jesus, learning how to do life from him. I read, write, walk, play a little guitar, enjoy my family.

Playing pinball with a new Lincoln

Posted on November 7, 2015 by salooper57

It is often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It seems to me that is not so much a definition of insanity as it is a description of … Continue reading →

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Without this, Christianity ceases to be Christian

Posted on November 1, 2015 by salooper57

Some religions are impossible to imagine apart from their founders. Can anyone picture Islam without Muhammed, or the Latter Day Saints without Joseph Smith, or Scientology without L. Ron Hubbard? In other religions the human founder is historically important but … Continue reading →

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How does a church measure success?

Posted on October 26, 2015 by salooper57

The other day my wife accused me of harboring a secret desire to be a race car driver. We were on vacation in Tennessee, hiking state parks and national recreation areas. Getting to those places sometimes meant driving serpentine roads, … Continue reading →

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Tear down this wall!

Posted on October 17, 2015 by salooper57

One of the chief difficulties people (skeptics, seekers, and believers) have with Christianity is the idea that it doesn’t belong to this world, that religion and reality don’t intersect. It’s assumed that religion is a kind of fantasy world that … Continue reading →

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What you need to know to avoid God

Posted on October 10, 2015 by salooper57

Avoiding God is no easy task. Many people who try it fail. It takes effort. It calls for constant vigilance. As C. S. Lewis, reminiscing about his days as an atheist, put it, “Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his … Continue reading →

Posted in Christianity, Faith | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The first thing out the door

Posted on October 3, 2015 by salooper57

Is there such a thing as human nature? It seems an abstract question, one that philosophers and theologians might want to pursue, but not the rest of us. Yet the answer to that question is surprisingly important to the ordering … Continue reading →

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What Should We Think of Planned Parenthood?

Posted on September 26, 2015 by salooper57

Once, after hearing a speaker at a large public meeting claim that Planned Parenthood offered women nothing but abortions, I wrote a column disputing that assertion. It was an obvious distortion, and needed to be challenged. Now it’s Planned Parenthood … Continue reading →

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Dignity is not the result of circumstances

Posted on September 19, 2015 by salooper57

Whenever I faced a challenge as a boy, my leatherneck dad would say to me: “You can do this standing on your head.” It didn’t matter what “this” happened to be – football tryouts, trigonometry, passing a driver’s test – … Continue reading →

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What Ashley Madison can teach us

Posted on September 12, 2015 by salooper57

The now-famous Ashley Madison website marketed itself with the slogan, “30 million members can’t be wrong.” Maybe they ought to rethink that. The site currently claims “Over 40,915,000 anonymous members!” One wonders how accurate that number is now, particularly the … Continue reading →

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Back to the present: how future Americans will see us

Posted on September 5, 2015 by salooper57

When reading European authors from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one frequently runs across descriptions of America and Americans. Americans are either burly, uncultured, do-it-yourselfers or rich, ambitious, self-made men. As a nation America is emotional and reckless, … Continue reading →

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