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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.
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.
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.
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.
Having a rather perverse sense of humor myself, I struggle with this in very personal ways. Theologically, I am convinced that much of what is dismissed as disrespectful about religion is in fact a healthy critique of idolatrous conceptions of eternal things. We true-believer types need to lighten up a bit, and take religious humor as a gift that enables us to take a critical look at our own formulations. At the same time, there is such a thing as stuff that is simply bad taste, and yes, even sacrilege. If we want religious people to take a healthy look at themselves we should not shock them so much that they can’t get the point of a well-intended joke.
Many religious scholars, especially in the Christian world, want to maintain
a clear distance between our theology of the supernatural and the popular
religious interests in the paranormal. And there clearly is a huge gap
between the Jewish and Christian belief in a sovereign God whose ways are
above our ways and a dabbling in magical means of making things happen.
But this kind of theological critique often ignores the real-life worries
that sometimes draw people into astrology, seances and the like. Our "high"
theologies often are rather inadequate for helping ordinary folks deal with
very basic issues that preoccupy them (and us!): problems in our intimate
relations, financial woes, complex health concerns. When the scholarly
community fails to find ways to provide practical guidance for those sorts
of issues, we should not complain if people turn in desperation to charts,
incantations and fortune telling.
What Islam Really Says About Violence, Rights and Other Religions
Gomaa, Fadlallah, Mubarak, Khan, Siddiqi, Ellison, others | On Faith
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