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If  fear has mastered us we must have an enemy. Fear needs to focus our attention on anything but itself. FDR’s famous line, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” has a profound wisdom we need to recapture. When we stop looking at other people or problems as objects of fear, then we can…

Shame and guilt are closely associated for most of us. For me, shame is about who we are, guilt is about what we do. If shame is about being less than or other than we ought to be, I’m not sure who gets to decide the ought. Usually what happens is that communities decide how…

For some reason -or maybe no real reason- we think of some sins as worse than others. As an evolving species we have placed many meanings on sin that simply do not make sense. For now, I’m using sin to mean those things we do, feel or think that are hurtful. Twelve is a cool…

We miss some of the meaning of a text whenever we translate from another language. This Sunday, for instance, there were two different words involved in the ideas of death and life. In Romans 6:13 “we have been brought from death to life,” the word nekros is used for death. It means we have been empowered…

Languages develop from primitive concrete items and images.  The imagery behind “sin” is “missing the mark”.  The word “Torah”, often translated as Law, has the imagery of arrow or direction.  So the Law is an arrow aimed at a target, and sin is the missing of that target.  But what is the target?  It seems…

A question came up in a discussion:  when in our journey up from the primordial ooze did human beings begin to have an awareness of God?  That’s interesting, but impossible to discern as far as I am concerned.  What it implies, however, is that spiritual awareness is progressive.  I believe that is true, individually and…