Faith in America: Austin Lee

I am a Christian and sometimes I am embarrassed to tell people. I feel like my faith has been hijacked by a group of people that practice a brand of Christianity that I do not support or agree with. They are about hating things: Homosexuality, Abortion, People, etc.

Christianity should be about love, loving even those that have done the very worst things. This is a post I wrote about a year ago that talks about the God I serve: A God of Love.

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My little brother is an amazing musician. He can sing just about any song, any style, and even a couple of languages.

However, my favorite song that he has ever performed has these lyrics: “My God is so high you can’t get over Him; He’s so wide you can’t get around Him, He’s so low you can’t get under Him. You must come in by and through the Lamb.”

You often hear about God being big and doing big things. He helped Noah build a huge boat. He helped Gideon destroy a huge army. He parted the waters to allow the Israelites to escape Egypt. He sent his Son to die on the Cross to save the entire world from its sin.

We have heard about God’s power, His strength, and His omniscience. I was reminded yesterday of the two best qualities of God. His gentleness and His love.

I need to back up a bit and tell you a couple of stories one about Elijah and the other about a horrific tragedy.

Elijah

If you want to read this whole story it can be found in 1 Kings, chapters 18 and 19. God had just performed a miracle through Elijah by ending the drought in Israel. Jezebel, the Queen, was not happy with Elijah and threatened to kill him. (The fact that Elijah didn’t trust God at this point is a great story for another time.) Elijah runs to a cave and hides out to save his own life. God instructs Elijah to go to the mouth of the cave and wait for the Lord to pass by. A powerful wind came, then an earthquake, and then a great fire came, however, God was not in any of those loud and obvious events. Soon after the great fire Elijah heard a gentle whisper.

God was in the whisper. Elijah experienced the presence of God in a whisper.

Ok. Hold on to that thought for a minute.

Tragedy

On July 25, 2006, Jennifer Ewing was riding her bike on the Silver Comet Trail near Atlanta, GA when she was attacked and murdered. On Monday, May 18, 2009, Michael Ledford was found guilty of her murder in Paulding County Superior Court.

I went to the first full day of the sentencing portion of the trial on Tuesday, May 19, 2009. As I walked into the courtroom and sat down the court was in the midst of deciding which of the audio tapes from prison would be admitted to support the prosecution in their bid to sentence Mrs. Ewing’s killer to death. The tapes that were played caused me to be even more angry with Mr. Ledford than I was when I got to court.

He complained about the cable television channels he was able to watch, he complained that his family wasn’t sending him money fast enough, he complained about being on suicide watch, and on the list goes of things he complained about. Just before the jury came back into the courtroom the prosecutor gave a brief description of another audio tape that he wanted to play. It was a phone call between Michael Ledford and his 14 year old niece. The description of the phone call was not pleasant. I assumed that a 20 second description of a 20-30 minute phone call would have only the out of context highlights and therefore the actual call wouldn’t be as bad as it sounded. I could not have been more wrong.

As the conversation was played tears came to my eyes as he described himself as famous. As his niece related to him as if he was on a reality television show and not in jail for murder. The news media was described as “paparazzi” there to take photos of Mr. Ledford's family for some gossip magazine and not because her uncle was accused of murdering a wife and mother of three. He asked his 14 year old niece to send him picture of her and her friend in bikinis. He agreed when she asked if it would make him feel “warm and fuzzy inside.” He told her to send him a letter addressed to “Handsome Mike”. He told her that if she came to visit him he wanted her to wear skimpy clothes and bring her friend. He told her that she didn’t need to worry about jogging on the Silver Comet Trail, that he would make sure all the bad guys knew to leave her alone. He talked about the injuries he sustained to his genitalia and that he was healing okay and was able to “carry his parts.”

Until May 19, 2009, I had never been in the same room with evil. It was sickening to hear him talk about his inconveniences in jail while I knew the pain and torment that he had caused the Ewings. While we were grieving with the Ewings, it seemed as if he was already moving on to his next victim, his own niece. A chill ran down my spine as I sat on the hard wooden bench in the courtroom. You could hear a pin drop.

There in the eerie, sickening silence, after hearing the worst thing I have ever heard in my life, I heard a gentle whisper that could only come from God: “I love him, just as much as I love you.”

Just like with Elijah, God showed up in a whisper. The still small voice from deep within my soul reminding me once again of a love that is so amazing, so complete, and so out of the ordinary that He loves us in spite of our brokenness.

With the personification of evil right in front of me in the courtroom I could hear my little brother’s voice in my head singing, “My God is so high you can’t get over Him; He’s so wide you can’t get around Him, He’s so low you can’t get under Him. You must come in by and through the Lamb.”

My God is so big.

Faith in America: Nikki Lorenzini

Faith is one of the trickiest things out there. You either have it or you don’t. Well, we all have some sort of faith. You have faith that the chair you are sitting in won’t collapse. You have faith that your computer won’t crash, that your bus will show up on time, and that your car will run. Every day, we put our faith in these silly man made things, which we all know will ultimately fail us. Cars will break down, chairs will break, and computers will crash. In my present and former church, when they talked about faith, they always used the example, “You have faith that your pew will hold you up.” Well, the pews in our church are 100 years old, and about a month ago, one broke during service.

Faith is so much more than just believing a chair will hold us up when we sit. When I became a Christian about four years ago, I remember reading in the Bible that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Growing up, I had no clue what this meant. I grew up a shy Catholic, believing everything that I was told. I never really read the Bible. I never got into Mass. Even though I am no longer a practicing Catholic, I still have respect for their reverence during Mass. I felt lost and alone, and I felt like I had no place. So one of my former coworkers invited me to her church, and for once I found what I was looking for. I found that there was a God out there that really did care and who - I finally figured out - I could and should put my trust in Him.

Yes, my faith does lie in Christianity. I do believe that there is a God, and that He did send His Son to die for me. I understand why there are people out there who find it extremely hard to place any faith in God. This world is crazy. People are getting killed, raped, robbed, and abused. On the surface, there seems to be absolutely no reason to believe, but God gave us free will to believe or not to believe. I am at the point where I believe that the people who are committing these horrible acts are so completely lost in their own way that they have no clue where to turn. As a culture, we tend to believe that we can do things on our own and that we do not need anyone’s help, and if we show people we do need help, it is a sign of weakness.

Now, please don’t get me wrong, many Christians do not make it any easier for non-Christians to love God. I remember hearing a quote from Gandhi saying that he would have believed in God if it wasn’t for Christians. Ouch. know that it says in the Bible that we are called first to love God, then our neighbors as we would love ourselves. It says NOT to judge, for however we judge others we will also be judged. So, I apologize if anyone was offended and felt judged by any Christian. I have been judged by people in my own church life and it was not fun. I pray every day that I do not act like that. It’s a struggle

All I know is my own journey with my faith.

Email Nikki

Faith In America Part Two: How and Why We Pray by Jeff Weiss

This is the second in a series of articles about faith in America.

A recent poll conducted by Parade magazine asked “how spiritual are we?” The results showed that many of the people polled considered themselves religious (45%), and also considered themselves better off with religion as opposed to without it (53%). The majority believe in God (69%) but more said they rarely attend services (30% compared with 27% who attend weekly). While most say they pray for the well-being of others (72%), 51% pray for money or a better job.

I pray every day. I usually don't ask for anything in particular; mostly my prayers are to worship God, not ask for favors. If someone is sick or going through a hard time I will pray for their intentions, but I try not to “bargain' with God through prayers. I think that defeats the purpose of “Thy will be done.”

My favorite prayer, and one that I pray daily, is actually a series of devotional prayers known as the Rosary. For those who don't know what the Rosary is, it is a set of prayer beads, with each bead representing a prayer. The prayers consist of five decades (or repeated sequences) of the “Our Father” (The Lord's Prayer), “Hail Mary”, and “Glory Be to the Father.” Praying the Rosary is dedicated to one of four sets of "Mysteries" said in sequence each day. The Mysteries consist of the Joyful Mysteries; the Sorrowful Mysteries; the Glorious Mysteries, and the Luminous Mysteries. Each set of Mysteries has within it five different themes to be meditated upon while saying each decade of Hail Marys. I know it sounds complicated, but it's not. I always know which day of the week corresponds with each Mystery, and the order of themes within each Mystery.

While I don't think it's my place to tell people what to believe in or how to worship, I know that personally I am very happy attending Catholic Mass every week (and I try to attend daily Mass as often as possible). I couldn't imagine a day without praying or reading from the Bible.

Faith in America: Atheism in Oregon by David Loftus

This is the first in a series of articles about faith in America.

Last week, an organization that calls itself the United Coalition of Reason placed ads on subway trains in New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston; on billboards in Chicago, Newark, San Diego, and three Ohio cities; and aboard buses here in Portland, Oregon.

The sign shows a blue sky with white wisps of clouds and the message “Are you good without God? Millions are.” In the corner it lists a URL for more information.

I was struck by the local response to the brief story about this ad. It went online at The Oregonian's web site just before noon Wednesday, Nov. 18. In less than 48 hours, there were more than 200 comments in response to the story and a graphic of the ad. The total has now topped 300. Before it goes offline in another week or so, you can read the thread here.

As will become obvious if you visit the thread, after the first day I contributed some comments of my own. Several things surprised me about the contributions, however. Although there was some outrage, and a few snarky insults from both sides, many more of the remarks expressed puzzlement and genuine confusion on the part of religious people. The secular humanist front was well represented, in number and quality. And the discussion didn’t deteriorate into a flamefest between a couple of repetitive and abusive die-hards. By my count, more than 110 different people commented, most of them only once or twice; less than a dozen posted five or more times.