BLOG RPS

This one goes out to my friend Serena who celebrates her first anniversary as a resident of the Emerald City today!

Happy Anniversary SS!

How is this for a week? A system crash, bsod, scrambling to retrieve data, complete format and re-installation of the “older upgrade” this past week… and I’m convinced: Windows Vista is about the worst thing I’ve seen since the abortion labeled Windows 98 (with the “unofficial” motto: What computer do you want to sink today?) (Did I mention the 24 hour day to fix everything to get back to work this past Tuesday - Wednesday?)

I’ve got a pretty new PC, with faster than hell Intel Core Duo processors, 2 gigs of RAM, and before all this kept wondering “Why is this computer running so much slower than my old machine?”

Now I’m one of the converted: I’ve made the upgrade back to the past — and XP pro is running faster than a scalded goat. Trust me: You do NOT want anything to do with Vista right now. There may come a day when it’s unavoidable for those of us not willing to throw so much money at Steve Jobs to buy a Mac, but that day is a LONG way away!

(I guess there is a reason that Dell is now offering its customers a free “upgrade” BACK to XP pro for their dimensions originally marketed only with Vista!)

New Jersey Abolishes
the Death Penalty

On December 17, 2007, Governor Jon Corzine signed a bill that abolishes the death penalty in New Jersey and replaces it with a sentence of life without parole. On Sunday, December 16th, Corzine commuted the sentences of the eight men on death row to life without the parole sentences. (”NJ Bans Death Penalty” Associated Press, December 17, 2007). The New Jersey Assembly approved this bill to replace the state’s death penalty with a sentence of life without parole by a vote of 44-36 on December 13. The Senate approved the same legislation by a vote 21-16 on December 10. This is the first legislative abolition of the death penalty since it was reinstated in 1976. Iowa and West Virginia in 1965 were the last states to vote out capital punishment.

I may be a native North Carolinian, but the twelve years I spent in New Jersey were formative enough that I consider myself as much a Jersey Son as I do a Carolina Boy.

And I’ve never been prouder of my adopted home state as today. Take notice folks:  New Jersey - the source of too many jokes for most of you - was the FIRST state to wake up from this collective nightmare we’ve all been living since 1976.

Worth Watching…

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At the bottom is a prayer that follows somewhat our discussion during worship at The Portico on Sunday, Oct. 14th on the “dark night of the soul.” Like the example of Mother Teresa, St. John of the Cross, and others, (And our reading from Job ch. 38), it seems we often feel like we are alone during these times. That is anything but the case. Since Sunday, I’ve spoken to no less than 7 different people who have said something just like that. Something to the effect:

“I’ve been in such a spiritually dry place for so long I don’t have any clue where God is anymore.”

“I’ve lost myself in TV lately.”

“I keep praying and it seems they all just hit the ceiling and bounce back.”

Which is to say, some of us… ARE NOT ALONE. And perhaps need to think about the question we asked last Sunday night: “How long is 38 chapters?” (That’s how long it takes God to “show up” in the book of Job.) And going further (here’s the challenge for this week)… What does it “sound like” when God DOES show up? (Take the time to read God’s “speech” to Job in chapters 38 – 42:6 – it’s that long and Job only gets a couple of sentences in edgewise. At first it should strike you as very “strange” that God breaks silence with such a tone of voice (Something I’m going to attempt to get at this coming Sunday in worship); but is there a reason for this “less than pastoral” edge to God’s voice? Worth pondering. And also worth pondering how God speaks of Job when the three “comforters” get dragged into the conversation in Job 42:7. Is there a glimpse here of what God’s silence can do or be in a positive light? Also worth pondering.

The below is a prayer for you and / or the whole family to share this week.

A prayer for times of Silence.

(Italics denote additions to the words of the Psalms quoted in this prayer.

Help us, O God, when we are disturbed and lonely, and wonder where you are – help us not to sin but instead to ponder the silence on our beds, and be silent and listen. (Psalm 4:4)

To you, O LORD, we call; you are our rock, do not refuse to hear us, for if you are silent to us, we shall be like those who go down to the Pit. (Psalm 28:1)

So that our souls may praise you and not be silent. O LORD our God, we will give thanks to you forever – even in those times when we cannot hear nor perceive your presence. (Psalm 30:12)

You have seen, O LORD; do not be silent! O Lord, do not be far from us! Sometimes in our frailty we need a present reminder of your grace and mercy; forgive us the need but do not withhold your presence. (Psalm 35:22)

We were silent and still; we held our peace to no avail; our distress grew worse, Without your help, peace is impossible, distress is only to be expected. (Psalm 39:2)

We are silent; we do not open our mouths, for it is you who have done it. If your silence is to discipline, or merely to get our attention, help us to know how to remain expectant for the moment you choose to break your silence. (Psalm 39:9)

When the wicked turn away from you, OLord, your silence is the pause before your charge. Let your presence to us be anything but the precursor to your rebuke. (Note: God is speaking here to the “wicked.” {These things you have done and I have been silent; you thought that I was one just like yourself. But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.} (Psalm 50:21)

Do not be silent, O God of my praise. You have told us to ask, and in a time of darkness, we do as you command; ask for a reminder of your presence and love. As you speak (and as we expect in faith for your speaking), give us ears to hear, hearts to understand, and the will to respond. Amen. (Psalm 109:1)

I expect there are a lot of pastors that are going to mention this past week’s tragedy at Virginia Tech somewhere in their sermons. I’m no different in that regard.

Here’s what I’m preaching at a church on Sunday Morning:

Why? Why Not?

Meditation after the Virginia Tech Shootings

April 22, 2007

Rev. Rodger P. Sellers

(Thanks to Timothy Merrill of Homiletics Journal for several of the ideas and thoughts contained here. I’ve used several things (marked *) he mentioned in an email to subscribers this past week to draw my own conclusions and points.)

No one hasn’t heard about it – perhaps we’ve all heard about it TOO much since last Monday. The TV news hasn’t exactly been the epitome of “discretion” as they’ve reported from the Virginia Tech Campus all week. I’m one of those who agree that NBC perhaps let ratings get in the way of propriety when they showed the pictures and video that Seung-Hui Cho mailed to their offices in New York.

But there are still questions, and still will be after we leave this morning. Yet I think – no I feel – that asking some, or at least one, of those questions in the context of worship is appropriate.

Last Monday 33 people died violently. (It’s interesting that most of the news reports speak of 32 people being killed – the gunman who took his own life either not being mentioned, or mentioned separately.) And we were shocked. And we asked questions like… “How could this happen?” Why would someone do this?” “What could something like this possibly mean? Beyond confirming a view that we live in a world that is going mad?” Has God finally had enough and left us to our own devices?

T. S. Eliot said in his work, “The Wasteland” that “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land.” *

If you think about it, Eliot may be right. The shootings at Virginia Tech occurred within days of the 8th anniversary of Columbine. And just this week folks gathered in Oklahoma City to remember the bombing that killed 168 people. Who would have thought that we’d watch people pulling dead bodies out of Norris Hall in Blacksburg like we’ve seen so many times before and in such numbers? *

The questions we’ve asked ourselves are honest ones. Including the one many have thought but perhaps not spoken: Where is God in all this? How can we possibly make some kind of sense of God’s call on our lives when this is the world we live in?

And please understand at the start: I’m not about to patronize you with easy answers that are so shallow and superficial as to insult everyone’s intelligence. Whatever you might think of Franklin Graham, I think that’s exactly what he did when he showed up on Virginia Tech’s Campus this past Wednesday. Simply saying that the gunman was “demon possessed” does nothing to allow people to heal from such a tragedy. It’s not that simple. Other “Preacher types” have spouted off in newspapers this week and they also… haven’t done much to let us begin dealing with the real, honest, hard, perhaps unanswerable questions.

So… let’s ask a couple of them.

Why are we surprised? One web page had various pictures of the horror with the word “WHY” super-imposed over them. But a bigger question is “why not?” Why wouldn’t this sort of thing happen from time to time in our culture? It’s happened before – enough that it really ought not to surprise us. *

It happened at Columbine. It’s happened at other school shootings. It almost happened at North Meck High School this past Wednesday when the young man pointed a gun at two others before driving to Huntersville where he took his own life. We all remember the killings at the Amish School last fall. Most of us remember the postal shootings. How many workplace shootings have there been, the MacDonald’s massacre a number of years ago. I’ll bet some of us remember the Texas Clock Tower murders of 16 passers-by by Charles Whitman in 1966. This list could go on and on folks. *

Judy Muller, a correspondent for National Public Radio, covered the Columbine shootings 8 years ago and she had a short piece on this past Tuesday. She recalled a woman who spoke to her at the makeshift memorial outside of Columbine High School – much like the one on the drill field at Virginia Tech. The woman remarked, “The really sad thing is that we already know what to do.” Muller went on to talk about all the public rituals that we now know must follow such events. We’ve done it before. We’ve buried children before. We’ll probably do it again. *

If our history is any guide at all, we certainly shouldn’t be surprised. But I’m not sure that’s really the question.

I think the bigger question of “Why” is something Like “Why would God let this happen?” And that – to me – is more than just asking something like “Why would God let this disturbed young man – mad man some have said – pull the trigger and kill 32 other people?” It’s deeper than that.

It’s also asking things like “Why wouldn’t God have made those teachers like Nikki Giovanni push harder to get this young man help two or three years ago? Or was there anything more they could have done? Why wouldn’t God have tipped off the mental health officials who examined him in 2005 that he needed help more than anyone seemed to think?

Or how about this? Why on Earth would God allow stupid, insensitive students at Westfield High School in Centreville, Virginia to laugh at a student having trouble reading in English? Why would God not shut the mouth of some idiot who’s comment, “Go Back to China” probably played a part in the deteriorating mental health of this young man? (An aside: Somewhere in this country, there is a person who remembers that he… or she… was the one who couldn’t keep their mouth shut and got a laugh from other students at Cho Sung Liu’s expense… I hope that person has lost some sleep this past week.)

Understand… I’m not condoning what the shooter did this past Monday. Not at all. Violence never solves anything – force and might never accomplish peace – 168 people dying in the market in Baghdad the same day those students died at Virginia Tech should tell us that.

What I am trying to do… perhaps not as well as I hope… is to make the point that at the root of it all… the question we’re asking in the aftermath of something like Virginia Tech is a deeper question than most people are willing to face. It’s the question of where is God at times like this? Where is God when people die young, or violently, or in senseless ways?

Some of the answers… It’s just God’s will… God wanted them in Heaven now instead of later… Don’t ask; we can’t question God… Those aren’t answers at all.

And in fact, at one level… there IS NO answer to the deepest question here. We can ask, ponder, wonder, and still end up facing the decision either to believe or not without full answers. It’s called faith.

But on another level, our Scripture passages this morning at least point us toward what might be a partial answer: Choice. God always gives us… gives everyone… a choice.

Augustine called it free will. John Calvin struggled with the concept (and I think never fully understood it but that’s my personal beef with Calvinism). In our passages I read, each person or people had a choice:

Eve could have decided NOT to eat the fruit – have you ever noticed by the way, that it’s never called an apple in the Bible? – She could have obeyed God and not been swayed by the serpent. And things ever since would have been quite different than they have been.

And I need to stop for a moment here: In case anyone’s wondering about the age old question, “Well if the WOMAN hadn’t been so gullible it would have been different” Something that many churches actually teach even today… Let me remind you of verse 6 again: “…She took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, WHO WAS WITH HER, and he ate.” The man, Adam, was right there all the time… If Eve made a bad choice, which it was, then why was Adam standing there the whole time like a knot on a log until the fruit was handed to him?” Gentlemen, let’s not let our egos go too far afield here. Not only can we not answer “Would we have done any better – we have to admit, “we DIDN’T do any better – since he was right there the whole time!”

Joshua addresses the Israelites right on the border of the promised land, where people are afraid and lacking trust. And his word is “Choose.” “Choose this day whom you will serve.”

Elijah offers the same thing atop Mt. Carmel “If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” Everyone is always offered a choice.

Like the man who comes up to Jesus. He’s kept the commandments, he’s a good man, he’s almost there in terms of eternal life. Only one more thing for him. Earlier I read this: “Jesus, looking at him, LOVED HIM, and said, You lack one thing, go sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, then come, follow me.” We know the end of the story. The man goes away grieving, because he’s rich. But have you ever read between the lines for what’s there but not printed?

Jesus LET HIM GO. He didn’t call the man back like some used car salesman. He didn’t try to sweeten the deal. “Here’s the price of discipleship. Take it or leave it. It’s your… CHOICE.”

And friends, in a world where God has given us free will, the answer is that some people will choose violence. Some will choose not to love others as Jesus calls us to. Some people will choose to bully and badger their classmates in middle school and high school. And some of those bullied people will become mentally ill and choose to kill.

I call it “the price of doing business in a fallen world.” This is not the world God intended. It is not the creation God designed. It is a world where, for reasons we may never know, people choose to hurt one another. And that’s because God chooses never to impose Divine will upon us by force. Redemption is always offered, it is NEVER compelled. Without that… sure, there would never be any Virginia Tech’s… but there would also never be the choice of Joshua, or Elijah, or the disciples who followed Jesus, or those of us who also call on the name of the Lord. Because faith would not be our choice.

We live in a world where wisdom has been corrupted, where knowledge is incomplete, where love is often absent, where without God’s redemptive power, nothing like the events of this past week should surprise us.

I know this is not the nicest picture to paint. But I think truth needs to be told; even when that truth points out the frailty we human beings so often like to hide from. Life IS fragile. We make bad choices. People die in senseless violence.

But instead of trying to find easy, pat answers to perhaps the hardest questions in life, we have a God who has reached into the mess we have made of the original design – and offered us redemption – offered us the choice.

Isaiah wrote of Jesus, “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of sorrows and acquainted with suffering. Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases… He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his stripes we have been healed.

I’ve always been a bit dismayed that so many churches and ministers and Christians try so hard to promote Jesus as a kind of savior that will make everything perfect, who will transform life into a never-ending parade of blessings and successes. You see, a Jesus like that has no power to speak into a tragedy such as happened at Virginia Tech this past week.

But a Jesus who knows our sufferings, who hurts with us, who is present with us when there are no answers to the questions in our heart, a Jesus who was willing to come into this fallen world to give us the choice to follow him or not, that’s a Jesus I’m willing to trust and follow, even when I don’t understand. That’s a Jesus I’m willing to turn to in grief and disbelief and sadness, trusting that whether answers come or not, He is still present, in the midst of it all.

Amen.

There’s a great video on the Allelon Website HERE (or click the image) of Alan Roxburgh interviewing Ryan Bolger on the differences between the “Missional” and “Emerging” church. Thirty minutes long and worth every second of it.

(Thanks to Mike Kruze for the H.T.)

…is impossible so far. Regardless of all the reporting going on all day yesterday and today on TV, it’s far too early to even begin processing what / how the tragedy at Virginia Tech is going to affect all of us. (That it will affect ALL of us is perhaps the only certain thing at this point.)

Timothy Merrill of Homiletics Magazine sent an email this afternoon that does a pretty good job of beginning the process:

GOD LEFT THIS PLACE A LONG TIME AGO

What happened at Virginia Tech was very technical, methodical, very precise.

But the aftermath was anything but. It was very human, very non-technical, very passionate.

Henry Brinton, Senior Minister at Fairfax Presbyterian Church in Fairfax, Virginia, and past Senior Writer for Homiletics and still a regular contributor, says that his congregation has seven VT students-all unharmed-and a number of VT grads among their members. They are shocked.

And so are we.

T.S. Eliot said in The Wasteland that “April is the cruelest month, breeding/ lilacs out of the dead land.”

It would appear he’s right. This incident occurs within days of the 8th anniversary of Columbine. We couldn’t have imagined that after Columbine we’d be pulling dead bodies out of the dead Blacksburg ground yet again and in such awful numbers.

There’s a scene from the Oscar-nominated film of last year, Blood Diamond that’s provocative. The movie is set in 1999 Sierra Leone while a civil war rages fueled by conflict diamonds which are sold to pay for weapons. Leonardo DeCaprio plays Danny Archer, the anti-hero, a mercenary with something of a conscience, who-along with good guys and bad guys-is hunting for this huge pink diamond. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) meanwhile, is leveling entire villages, chopping of the hands of some so they can’t vote in elections, and snatching young boys to become soldiers in the rebel army.

In a quiet moment of reflection while mayhem explodes around them, Danny Archer chats with a journalist, Maddy Bowen, and reveals that his “Mum was raped and shot and . Dad was decapitated and hung from a hook in the barn. Sometimes I wonder . will God ever forgive us for what we’ve done to each other? Then I look around and I realize. God left this place a long time ago.”

When events like the carnage at VT happen, it shatters our peace, it intrudes upon our consciousness, it interrupts and irritates and saddens and shocks, and we wonder if indeed God hasn’t left this place a long time ago.

To get at this question, let’s go over a few things:

1. WHY ARE WE SURPRISED?

One online media resource splashed the word WHY? over the web page pictures of the horror. The bigger question is “Why not?” Why wouldn’t this sort of thing happen from time to time in our culture?

It’s happened before: Columbine, which was followed by other schoolyard shootings in subsequent years around the country. Amish country last fall, postal shootings, workplace violence, the McDonalds massacre a number of years ago, the Texas clock tower murders of 16 passersby by Charles Whitman, the Manson murders, and more.

Judy Muller on NPR’s “Morning Edition” recalled a remark made to her following the Columbine shootings. A woman at the ‘makeshift memorial’ of flowers and teddy bears that appeared almost immediately said, “The really sad thing is that we already know what to do.” Muller went on to talk about all the public rituals and so forth that we now know must follow such events. We’ve done it before. We’ve buried our children.

On the Homiletics blog I ranted and raved yesterday about our culture of violence and a number of other factors that create the dead ground out of which we pull dead lilacs. You may agree or disagree, and that’s why you can review with your congregation your own perspective on why we shouldn’t be surprised-shocked, yes-but not surprised when events like this occur.

2. IN THE AFTERMATH OF THIS VIOLENCE, WE CAN EMPATHIZE WITH OTHERS WHO LIVE WITH VIOLENCE EVERY DAY.

Not to minimize, but to place in perspective, consider those who live with violence that even exceeds what happened in Blacksburg, Virginia, on Monday. In Baghdad, the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, the West Bank, Darfur, the Sudan, and elsewhere, children of God suffer and die on a daily basis in human-generated violence.

3. WE CAN’T SHIELD OURSELVES IN ANY ABSOLUTE SENSE FROM RISK.

Americans, perhaps more than any other people in the world, are a risk-adverse people. We try to protect ourselves from EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING. You can review the examples-some ridiculous-here. This impulse tends to overlook the luxury of being able to protect ourselves from what are sometimes innocuous dangers-compared to the real horrors we too frequently ignore or to which we turn a blind eye-that our fellow human beings endure incessantly.

4. PARENTS ARE THE POWER.

We must remind our parents that they HAVE THE POWER. We must ask fathers to be men and develop a spine and backbone. We ask parents to love each other and to love their children, even if that means saying NO to them-and believe me, it does.

Granted, some psychos and cold-blooded killers come from good homes and loving parents. Some people are born without a conscience, and others, for reasons we don’t really understand, manage to bury it, despite loving homes.

Yet nurture IS an important component. This is an opportunity, not to blame parents, but to empower parents to be: PARENTS. The Virginia Tech shooter was a student from Centreville, Virginia, just a few miles from Brinton’s church. “It appears that he was the classic loner-a mystery to everyone,” says Brinton. “Parents are not doing their jobs when they allow their children to withdraw from a community of support and accountability.”

5. WHAT WOULD JESUS HAVE US DO NOW?

The answer to this question is in the Gospel text for this Sunday.

It’s Eastertide. If you’re feeling like “God left this place a long time ago,” you’re right. It’s Eastertide. The tomb is empty. He left THAT place, only to visit us in a NEW PLACE.

The opening verse of the Gospel reading says that “Jesus showed himself again to his disciples.”

THAT’S what Jesus wants to do this Sunday morning with your congregation: To show himself again to his disciples. The text goes on to say, “And he showed himself in this way.”

So WHAT WAY is Jesus going to show himself to us?

Peter’s response in verse three is to say, “I’m going fishing.”

That’s often what we do in situations like this. We simply want to get back to what we were doing before: fishing or shopping.

Jesus says, “Feed my sheep.”

That’s all we can do right now. But is there anything else?

But we’re called to be feeders. Henry Brinton is working with his staff to gather Virginia Tech students, along with their families and friends, for an evening of conversation and prayer. It’s so important to respond to these events as a community and to look for where God is at work and to look for where God is at work in the aftermath of violence and death. “We need to affirm that God always gives the gift of new life,” he says, “and that God can reclaim Virginia Tech as a place for kids to grow in knowledge and faith.”

God has left the tomb already, and God is with us now. Amen.

It’s Holy Saturday. That inbetween day where the horror of Good Friday is still sinking in and we’ve not yet reached Easter and the resurrection. A good time to think about the Atonement, regardless of which particular view we might have of it. Maggi Dawn has some pretty good words posted to think about between now and tomorrow. Check them out HERE.

So… why does the main page on my denomination’s website have the following up to greet surfers since Good Friday yesterday? (I cut and pasted it with my own time clock. I’m not making this up.)

(I’ve also already emailed the “submit” form and asked the question of the webmaster.) Maybe everyone needed to get it all done before the weekend? Maybe no one knows how to have something timed to post automatically? (How difficult can that be if Wordpress will do it for us hack bloggers?) Maybe… Oh, I don’t know, I’m so appalled I’m out of ideas to explain it.

*SIGH* I guess liturgically correct is right out the window here.

Let’s start right here. I really don’t like basketball. I don’t hate it, just don’t particularly care about it. Don’t follow it very much. Don’t really care who wins the national championship. I’m not really all that excited that my alma mater, The University of Tennessee, matched a NCAA record for scoring 121 points in a first round game earlier today.

I just don’t care about it all that much.

So… why have I had my TV on every chance possible the past two days watching all the coverage of a sport I could care less about? Sometimes I amaze even myself.

Unless… It’s something like the story of a team no one would have believed could beat a team everyone thought a sure winner in the first round? Virginia Commonwealth University wasn’t supposed to beat Duke. Shouldn’t have happened. Improbable at best. For God’s sake, Duke is one of the standard bearers of the almighty ACC and V.C.U. is from the what?… the Colonial Athletic Association? What’s that? a group of folks that get together annually in Williamsburg to do “sporting events?”

But the score doesn’t lie: VCU 79; Duke 77. Every now and then the little guy WINS. Sometimes David actually beats Goliath in real life. Instead of so many things that people of faith remember being just assigned to “religious myth” it actually happens to remind us there is more than… might, speed, ability, tradition. Sometimes the unknown actually triumphs in a world that tends to believe it never happens — nor never should happen.

I know… Most of the higher seeds won yesterday and today. And Little Wintrop University of Rock Hill, South Carolina (home of both Carowinds and the defunct PTL debacle… The place that people in South Bend, Indiana are asking right now, where the hell is Rock Hill, SC?) can slay the Notre Dame giant and it’s just an aberation for the bookies to deal with.

Still… Sometimes the little guy wins. Maybe I won’t turn the TV off just yet.
RPS

(PS: I remember 1977 when the University of North Carolina AT CHARLOTTE appeared against all odds in the final four. All due respects to those better known Tar Heels of Chapel Hill, things like that should happen more often!)

And who knows?  Maybe the Vols will win it all and I can jump back on the bandwagon I left years ago!

Well… what a big bru ha ha is still going on right now (eastern time zone) as Ted Koppel tries to keep order with the “discussion” following the Discovery Channel’s documentary on “The Jesus Tomb.”

I’ve got to admit, the convoluted logic in the film itself left me scratching my head. (Yea, I watched and even recorded it - never know when there might be a clip worth using at some point.) Before any of the experts even mentioned it, and in the middle of the film itself, I was jumping out of my chair asking my wife, “Why on earth are they JUST comparing DNA from the ossiary they think is Jesus’ and the one they think is Mary Magdalene’s to “prove” that they are NOT related, therefore, ergo sum… must be husband and wife? Why not compare the others to that one to see if there WAS any kind of DNA match?” (She didn’t much care and really didn’t look up from her laptop at my razor sharp use of Occam’s Razor on that point!) The use of “negative inferrence” to supposedly make points in the film really left me unconvinced — and wondering if this perhaps was indeed more about Lenten ratings than anything else. (Let’s face it — Both film and TV folks have learned that controversy in religion really “sells” at this time of year — did anyone else watching notice the incredible number of commercials in this two-hour film?)

Simcha Jacobovici seems to come across in the discussion as way too reactionary and defensive. James Tabor (our resident controversial expert here at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte) seems just to come across as a bit sloppy as an academic.

So… I’m left thinking… there’s not a major “faith crisis” here. It seems almost like a docu-drama that follows the plot of Paul Maier’s book “A Skeleton in God’s Closet” more than much of anything else. And that really does leave me wondering about the timing. Aired in July, this wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar screen.

At the end of it all… Seems like James Cameron (who is noticeably absent from all this discussion) knew exactly what he was doing - he’s produced this year’s “money maker.”