One thing we can be sure of: we are in for another round of talk about how religion has become a “commodity” that people shop around for in our “consumerist” culture. This is too bad, because that kind of rhetoric misses some important realities. People often shop around for a religious affiliation out of a sincere and heartfelt desire to satisfy deep spiritual longings. Many parents, for example, may be content with their own traditional patterns of worship, but they know that their children are turned off by those patterns. So they look for something that the whole family can commit to. Is that treating religion as a mere “commodity”? Hardly. It is struggling to find resources that will help them deal with some of the most profound and intimate issues of their lives. And even those who have gone from a religious affiliation to no affiliation at all—even these folks are still inclined to say, “But I still consider myself a very spiritual person.” There is nothing brand new in all of this. St. Augustine said it well in the prayer at the beginning of his Confessions: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” The Pew survey has given us yet another confirmation of the spiritual restlessness that all of us know in our deep places.

“Synagogue 3000” is movement that has emerged within Judaism that is exploring new forms of worship and new ways to connect with Jewish spiritual traditions. As self-described “Generation Xers,” these younger Jews have begun to engage in dialogue with their evangelical counterparts in the so-called “Emergent/Emerging Church” movement. In a recent essay co-authored by Rabbi Shawn Landres and evangelical scholar Ryan Bolger, they reported that their dialogue is “organized around faith practices (Torah/Jesus), worship, and social justice, rather than traditional Christian-Jewish interreligious dialogue themes of memory (Holocaust), politics (Israel), and reconciliation (anti-Semitism).” In pursuing this agenda, they are eager to explore what they can learn from each other about creating “an authentic connection to their traditions and to God.”

This agenda may very well signal an important shift in a sense of Jewish identity, at least for a portion of the younger Jewish generation in America. For better or for worse, the horrible experiences of the twentieth century are becoming the data of history rather than matters of direct memory. While this may lead to increased assimilation for many Jews, it will motivate others to retrieve those spiritual practices and modes of worship that will allow new generations to seek out the ancient “paths of righteousness.”

Jesus’ statement that “the poor you will always have with you” has often been misused—as if he were telling us to make sure that we always have some poor people around! But his admonition is in fact a basis for Christian realism.

If our motivation is to “cure” poverty—and all disease and homelessness—we are bound to become disillusioned. But knowing that in our sinful world we will always have these horrible problems should not discourage us from working at addressing the issues—both by meeting immediate needs, and by seeking to correct the systemic factors that make them such enduring curses on the human condition. Indeed, to know that our efforts as believers will not be assessed in terms of immediate results is a powerful basis for keeping at the task. For followers of Jesus, “success” in serving the needy will happen when we hear our Savior say, on the Last Day, “Well done! In serving them you served me!”

I've often wondered whether, in addition to the obvious factors--the ghosts of holidays past, a heightened awareness of family dysfunctions--there might not be deeper spiritual dynamics at work. We struggle to fill our celebrations with food and toys, only to discover that such things do not satisfy the deeper hungers. And for those who have convinced themselves that they long ago abandoned the faith of their forebears, there may be--as carols about "the hopes and fears of the all the years" follow us wherever we go--inklings that something profoundly important to life has been lost.

If, as Augustine insisted, human "hearts are restless until they rest in Thee," then we should not be surprised that in days when the signals of the sacred surround us in special ways, we will all sense--in our secret places--unexpected yearnings that long to be fulfilled.

I was once on a panel with—this sounds like a bad joke, but it really happened—a rabbi, an imam, a Buddhist, and a Hindu. We were asked to talk about peacemaking, and I was the first to speak. I talked about the call to peacemaking in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. But I also talked about what those same scriptures say about our fallen nature. Sinful people often do things, I said, that can only be remedied by the threat or actual use of violence by the police or the military. But this use of violence must itself be monitored in accordance with standards of justice.

The rabbi was next, and before introducing some distinctive Jewish nuances, he began by expressing fundamental agreement with what I had said. Then the imam also added his word of approval. “I agree with the Christian and the Jew on the basic issues here.”

The Buddhist was next, and she immediately expressed her dissent. “The previous three speakers,” she said, “all hold that the basic problem for human beings is sin, with the solution being salvation by obeying God’s commands. My religion says something very different. The fundamental problem is ignorance, and the remedy is to walk the path to enlightenment.” The Hindu was last, and he sided with the Buddhist.

This illustrates a very signficant divide among the major religions. Those of us in the Abrahamic family have serious disagreements among ourselves. But we also have a kind of consensus on some of our assumptions about the human condition. Apart from a revelation from the divine, we human beings are in big trouble. We need help from God that we could never manufacture on our own. For me, as a follower of Jesus, I believe that as a participant in our shared human rebellion, my only hope is in the atoning work of the Savior who died at Calvary. As one who believes this, I depart from my Jewish and Muslim friends on key issues having to do with the way of salvation. But the gap that separates me from those who do not acknowledge the reality of sin, and of the need for salvation that only God can initiate—the awareness of that gap means that the Dalai Lama’s talk about “love, compassion and forgiveness” strikes me as a superficial avoidance of questions that we avoid at our eternal peril.

For a movement to be considered a religion in its own right it surely must have a relatively coherent worldview, a system of thought, that is different on some very basic matters from other movements that want to inform us about our relationship to the divine. From that perspective Mormonism is a religion; it has a fairly robust worldview that distinguishes itself from, say, traditional Christian and Jewish understandings of reality. The Jehovah's Witnesses, on the other hand, do not constitute a religion as such; they are defined by things that they reject in Christianity, such as the full divinity of Christ in particular and in their idiosyncratic interpretations of various biblical passages.

Our attempt to get clear about these definitions is muddied by the prominence of "counter-cult" evangelical groups, who use the term "cult" as a disparaging label. Any group that we especially want to condemn that has any link to Christianity we call a cult. Given that reality, the label has come to carry a lot of baggage. I prefer to think of major and minor religious movements.

You certainly don’t have to be religious to acknowledge that there are moral boundaries that a physician should not cross in responding to a patient’s needs and wishes. And for the believer--Christian, Jewish, Muslim, for example--those boundaries will be reinforced by strong religious convictions. There are some things that God forbids us to do.

But this is not simply a case of religious obligations versus the obligation to serve patients. For the believer, serving a patient is itself a matter of religious conviction. In Christianity, for example, physical healing is one of the things we are called by God to promote. Jesus devoted a lot of attention in his earthly ministry to responding to genuine physical needs.

It is not enough, then, for a physician simply to say “No” to a certain expressed need or wish--or more generally, to refuse to engage in a certain kind of practice or procedure. Even in saying “No,” the obligation to be a healer does not disappear. If, for example, certain Christian communities insist that physicians should not perform abortions, they--along with the physicians in their midst--have a religious obligation to provide alternative ministries of healing, compassion and support for people who in their own lives see abortion as the only solution.

For those of us who claim to be servants of the One whom we refer to as “the Great Physician,” saying “No” to a specific practice or procedure does not cancel our obligation to work for the well-being of people who need healing and comfort.

I am less surprised by the Pope's declaration than I am by the shocked responses of many Protestant leaders. The Pope has not said anything that was not there all along. What is good about his recent statement is that it keeps with the changes formulated by Vatican II. While we Protestants are not examples of Christ's "fullest" desires for his church, at least the Catholics let us into the ballpark these days, if only as somewhat defective participants.

Ecumenical relations will not flourish apart from an honest statement of what each church body believes. Pope Benedict has now reminded us that there is no easy path to unity. The most helpful response that we non-Catholics can offer is to make it clear where we in turn disagree with his declaration. So let me state my basic contention. While I love my Catholic friends and have learned much from them, I firmly believe that Catholicism holds to specific teachings--about churchly authority, about Mary, about the sacraments--that are seriously mistaken. From my Protestant evangelical perspective, the Pope has his work cut out for him if he is to bring his church up to speed as a full--to say nothing of "the fullest"--expression of what Christ desires for his church. But my saying that would not surprise Pope Benedict. This means that we are still at the point where we have been for a long time: much in common, but also much to argue about.

The simple answer to the heaven-and-hell question is “Yes.” Either we are directing our lives toward what the Westminster Catechism calls our “chief end,” namely, “to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever,” or we have turned away from a pattern of obedience to our Creator. In the former case, we are on our way to heaven; in the latter we face an eternal separation from the divine presence. To disagree with any of this is to dispute what the Bible clearly teaches and what the mainstream of the Christian tradition has always affirmed.

I not only fully endorse this perspective, I believe it is important to talk about it and preach it. This is a time when many believers want to emphasize the “this-worldly” aspects of the life of faith. And that does need to be emphasized. But so does the fact that each of us has an eternal destiny, and what we are committed to here and now has immensely serious implications for what we can expect beyond death.

I have to add, though, that while I am definitely not an “all will be saved in the end” universalist, I do place a strong emphasis on divine generosity and mystery. I believe that trusting in Jesus is the only way to heaven, but I also believe that Jesus has his own way of getting through to people. The heaven that I look forward to will be a place of many wonderful surprises!

I suppose one has to consider this kind of discussion by Democratic candidates to be refreshing, when compared to the cluelessness of Howard Dean and John Kerry on the subject of faith and politics the last time around.

John Edwards certainly came across as extremely articulate--and authentically so--but if he hit a home run, the others hardly got beyond first base. One longs for the kind of brilliant employment of theological categories that Abraham Lincoln consistently displayed. But, alas, that seems to be the kind of vision we can no longer expect in our national leaders, even from those whose church attendance far exceeded Lincoln's patterns!

And even when we get a candidate like Edwards who obviously knows what he is talking about, he is forced to respond to silly questions like the one posed by a prominent journalist about Edwards' patterns of sinning. I am not one to trash "the liberal media." I have spoken to too many well-informed folks who cover the religion beat to engage in that kind of stereotyping.

But it would be a wonderful change if one of these days we could see a match-up between theologically articulate candidates with equally articulate questioners!

The question is an ancient one: Did God create us in God's own image? Or did we create God in our own image? Today the question is being raised again by persons who have taken it upon themselves to launch new attacks on religious belief.

I like the answer that Arnold Lunn came to. An outspoken British agnostic, in 1924 he had written a book, Roman Converts, in which he viciously attacked some of his intellectual peers who had recently converted to Catholicism. But several years later, he himself embraced Christianity and was received into the Roman Catholic Church. Thereafter he set out to respond to the very criticisms that he had himself lodged against Christian belief.

One of those charges was the contention that belief in God is an exercise in wish-fulfillment, the Freudian notion that we fashion a God who can satisfy needs and desires that would otherwise go unfulfilled. His rejection of this contention was a blunt one: "To argue that the hunger for God disproves the existence of God," he wrote, “is as irrational as to maintain that the belief in the existence of cows is an example of 'wish-fulfillment' because the thought of beef makes a hungry man's mouth water."

This gets at the real issue. Either we hunger for God because God created us with that hunger, or we hunger for God because we refuse to accept the possibility that our deepest spiritual hungers—what the Christmas carol describes as “the hopes and fears of all the years”—are ultimately incapable of being fulfilled.

Those of us who believe have come to experience the biblical invitation as grounded in reality: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Let’s start here with this neglected fact: the resurrection of Jesus was an illegal act. Pilate had put his seal on the tomb, and it was against the law to break the seal. Pilate had also set up a squadron of soldiers to keep anyone from going into or out of the tomb. When Jesus burst forth from the tomb on the first Easter, the soldiers were struck down and the seal was broken. It’s pretty difficult to top that when it comes to social revolutionary activity! The great miracle of Easter was the first act of Christian civil disobedience!

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The history of relations between evangelicals and Mormons is largely characterized by hostile charges and counter-charges. This has begun to change, as our two communities have begun to see each other as potential partners in addressing some of the key moral issues in our society. But dialogue about the very real issues that divide us in understanding our eternal destiny is still a difficult matter.

A few years ago, in remarks that I made in a brief address at the Mormon Tabernacle, I called for a more honest exchange of ideas between evangelicals and Mormons. I apologized to Mormons, as an evangelical, for the ways in which we have often presented a distorted view of Mormon teachings--our differences are real enough, I said, without our making things worse by bearing false witness against our Mormon neighbors. The fact that my remarks elicited many angry responses on the evangelical side is evidence that Mormons have some significant obstacles they must face if they want to be accepted into the mainstream. At the same time, though, friendly dialogue is quietly taking place on a few fronts.

Martin Marty once wrote that people who have strong convictions are often not very civil, and people who are civil often do not have strong convictions. What we need, he said, is convicted civility. This is certainly true for relations between evangelicals and Mormons. Our belief systems are very different on some matters that are of fundamental significance. We need to talk together--yes, and argue passionately with each other. But it is important to find ways of doing so that will also allow us to work together for the common good.

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On one level, dealing with a public offense--at least one that falls short of a criminal act--can be a fairly straightforward matter. Someone like Imus issues a formal apology, and those whom he offended then say that they "accept" this apology. That happens a lot, and it is a perfectly reasonable public transaction.

But has Imus genuinely repented? And have the Rutgers team members really forgiven him? In each case I have my doubts.

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I was once on a panel with an imam, a rabbi, a Buddhist monk and a Hindu teacher. (No, this is not the start of a joke!)

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I have often been critical of specific policies of the Israeli government, but I am not an anti-Semite. So yes, there is no necessary connection between the two.

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I am encouraged that many evangelical leaders have been stepping forward in recent months to express a concern about global warming in particular and environmental stewardship in general. But this is long overdue. It is a sad thing that for us "creationism" has come to mean an obsession with how long ago God created the earth and whether that happened in six literal days

We have been willing to go to court over what schools teach about the age of the earth, but we have taken almost no interest in the well being of that earth. There can be some good arguments about how much of the first few chapters of Genesis we should interpret literally. But there is at least one thing in that account that cannot be given anything other than a literal interpretation: that God took delight in the world--plants, animals, rivers and hills--that he had made. When we fail to take good care of that creation we sin against our Maker.

The best counsel on prayer I ever received was from a pastor who spoke about prayer at a spiritual retreat. It is wrong to think that we have to get in a "holy" mood before we can pray to God, he said. God wants honest conversation from us.

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Traditional "just war" teaching had its origins when the early church rejected the pagan notion that the gods of war require us to go all out in defeating our enemies.

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When Billy Graham conducted his 1957 "Crusade" in New York City's Madison Square Garden, I was in my final year of high school; the next fall I would leave home to attend college. Our New Jersey congregation rented a bus on many occasions to transport people to the Graham meetings, and I was a frequent attender.

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