Kids, if you want to know what Christianity really is and who Jesus of Nazareth is, read a Bible. Pick one in modern English and just read it.

Even just the first four books of part two will do fine.

You won’t understand it all. That’s okay. Nobody does.

There is some good news there, if you’re willing to look for it.

And if you read it for yourself, you’ll understand who Jesus of Nazareth is, and how to live, how to give, how to respect and love others and how to turn the tables on people who say they’re religious and want your money. Even how to die with dignity when it seems your friends have abandoned you and everyone else has stripped away your dignity.

I didn’t say it was a pretty story.

Just a good story.

The story of God and us and how much He loves us ALL and wants us to live wisely and well together.

But for the love of God and mankind, don’t try to learn it from some youth organization or video series or red-faced angry preacher who wants to tell you his version of the gospel; about how you should give your life over to God because God wants you to fight in his American army so He can be triggered to start the end times so He can send Jesus back to destroy all the evil nonwhite people He hates and send them to burn in hell forever.

Because that’s not good news.

That’s bullshit.

Ah, yes.

The Rapture.

Since the U.S. Armed Forces has brought up the subject, I thought I’d finally go ahead and share what this crazy old man believes about it.

It’s over. It happened a long time ago. People who followed Jesus of Nazareth were caught up (the literal meaning of “rapture”) to Him, translated from corruptible flesh into incorruptible. Just like the apostle Paul describes. Not all of them; some of them “slept,” or died — but they got to go first.

Why do I say this? Because Paul describes it as imminent, immediate, soon — over and over. “Don’t quit your jobs thinking it’s too imminent,” he advises. But his description is urgent.

When did it happen? I don’t know. Maybe at the destruction of the temple and the siege of Jerusalem by Rome. Maybe later. Possibly at a time that was so chaotic that no one saw them go, however it happened. People running; people perhaps trying to leave Jerusalem as they had been warned. It fits with the Matthew 25 picture, and other hints like it.

I think that moment is a good candidate, because it was the moment that the Almighty forever changed the way He does business with mortal men. No more sacrifice for evil. That price has been paid. No further blood can enrich it.

Only life itself … lived in grace toward self, toward others, for Him. Only that is acceptable; the image of His own grace daily shown.

So did we miss it? The Rapture? Having not been born at that time?

Well, if we did, then a lot of believers did — including some who endured horrific torture and murder as martyrs. And others, like John of Patmos who recorded the Revelation, lived long lives.

Or we could think in terms of God’s unlimited capabilities, especially regarding life, death, creation, destruction, resurrection, and perhaps even the flow of time in direction and speed itself.

Is anything impossible for God, including whisking the essence of each one of us back to the moment when that gathering took place in our past — but doing so at the moment each of us breathes our last?

So that we could see and experience what those believers did at the moment they changed and went to be with the One they loved, and loved with their whole hearts and lives?

That’s what I think happens, anyway; and it’s a moment immutable in history because it already happened, it was always going to happen and it’s going to keep happening as long as there are mortals who die.

That way, nobody misses out.

The ones who had already passed on when it came — well, it would only seem like an instant for them since they had died, as it would for those to whom it happened after they died much later on.

I think all the apocalyptic language that is attached to the prophecy of it happening is the attempt to hint at the indescribable; to share a glimpse of the unseeable; to capture a moment of timelessness.

What happens after that, I don’t know. Some kind of judgment or decision about whether the lives we’ve lived and the potential that we showed in that life can find fulfillment in eternity. Or maybe just needs to end, to close out in the same grace that must be shown to those who can never have or control enough … or who cannot live forever as equals with others they judged and hated and cheated and killed. That would be torture for them. Maybe in the blinding light of truth, we judge ourselves.

“Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,” as the poem says.

Or perhaps the blinding light of truth brings its own grace, and instead of an eternity of nothingness, instead an awareness of what was not — maybe could not — be learned in the mortal realm: joy, love, patience, acceptance, respect and peace in the soul. A late epiphany. A flash of penitence. A grasp of the unimaginable. A commitment to all that is good thereafter.

I like to hope it will not be too late. I like to hope that the Creator’s great cosmic experiment in the efficacy of faith in the absence of tangible evidence to inspire the positive attributes of existence won’t necessarily mean it’s denied to those who are at a disadvantage in the mortal universe. — Those who were surrounded only by the negative and could never know more.

A lot of damage, I believe, has been done in preaching a permanent, eternal binary of good and evil that must, no matter what, be accepted on faith right now, no matter what mortal life has been like to the one who must choose between them.

Of course I think it’s best to choose a life of grace now, and make the mortal part of our existence better and more positive for others as well as ourselves. Of course.

Still … I like to hope that grace can reach beyond here and now. Especially since it has cost so much.

But I don’t know. It’s not my creation, not my experiment, not my call. I’m not omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent or in any other way qualified to judge.

I just hope.

And that has to be enough.

I think we all need now to operate under the assumption that we no longer have any civil rights.

Those are gone.

No First Amendment. No Second Amendment. No rights at all. The government will enforce this cancellation with deadly force.

And I, for one, will not let that stop me from repeating the facts about it, and exercising my rights as a citizen even if they no longer exist.

The events of the past week reinforce the truth that — at home or abroad — our government is no longer the good guy.

Our president cannot wait to incite another revolution, foreign or domestic, and he does not really care which or how violent or who dies — as long as he is the hero who can declare peace by deadly force.

If you say you are a Christian — a follower of Christ — and yet you have no compassion for the stranger, the visitor, the immigrant … how can you possibly read of His life and words and not be moved by His grace toward those even His people would have called “the least of these?”

Have you forgotten?

Have you never read them?

Have you only listened to the words of a man in a pulpit that you pay to not offend you so that you won’t fire him?

Does he tell you only what you want to hear? What is easy to hear?

Does he even talk about Jesus of Nazareth at all?

Or does he only talk about why you should fear others not like you? About your country and your flag and your borders and your rights and your safety?

Does he speak gloriously of war and conquering and winning but say nothing of those who have lost it all, are homeless and poor and hungry, or that they alone are to blame?

Does he speak about life choices you make anywhere but the voting booth? Of acceptance, grace, compassion, generosity, charity, forgiveness, love? Toward others? As Christ has shown to you? Blessing as you have been blessed?

Can you even be sure you are attending a church, if that is the case?

Or is it just a weekly political rally with a little churchiness thrown in to make self appear sacred and America feel angelic and warfare seem worthy and greed glitter like golden goodness?

Go back to the source, I beg you.

Read for yourself who your Savior truly is and what He saves you from as well as what He saves you for; what He wants to do through you as well as for you.

Because He is trying to save you from yourself, for the benefit to you and your character in this life as well as the next, and for the blessing of others.

Others like you.

Others not quite like you.

Others, wholly and completely different from you.

The mission field He brought to your neighborhood.

The souls He created in His own image.

The ones He lived and died for, and would live for again, through you.

Don’t let them down.

Don’t let Him down.

And don’t pretend you’re following Him if He leads you to them … and you turn your back on them and walk away.

I don’t know what to say anymore about the United States government’s headlong rush into fascist racist imperialism … tempting war, internal tumult, isolation from allies, plus likely economic and societal collapse.

We are led by lawless, compassionless, brainless, murderous bigots and perverts who daily gnaw away at the Constitution and democracy in the vain attempt to satisfy their limitless lust for wealth and power over others.

And I’m choosing some of the nicer words at my disposal.

That’s all I can write for now, or I will be right on the edge of breaking down for the third or fourth time today.

Today would have been the thirty-fifth wedding anniversary for Angi and me.

There has only ever been one woman who loved me so much that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me.

And she did.

And she’s gone, these twelve-and-a-half years now.

Someone who still makes my life richer through treasured memories, two wonderful children and now three grandchildren, whom I love and embrace on her behalf as surely as for myself.

Over these dozen years without her, I’ve come to realize that the chances of lightning striking the same place in my heart now, with someone else, are vanishingly small … and that’s all right.

And that’s really all I’m able to say about that on December 27, 2025.

Does Christmas not feel quite right to you?

Then you have something in common — in varying degrees — with self-absorbed Ebenezer Scrooge, bankrupted George Bailey, worried Charlie Brown, skeptical little Susan Walker, the jealous Grinch, questioning Cindy Lou Who, the doubtful nameless hero boy of “Polar Express,” disillusioned Betty Haynes, divorced Scott Calvin and any number of other major characters in classic holiday films.

And that commonality leads me to believe that “not quite right Christmas” is an experience shared by more people than might be willing to admit it.

After all, Christmas is supposed to be the season of hope; the hope of the world, right?

Yet the world just goes on being the world, and people go right on being people.

Things change; not always for the better.

Losses happen.

Jesus comes, but then He goes again.

The light of hope can become clouded and even obscured by the darkness of disappointment and even despair.

I think I get that. I’ve been there plenty of times in my life, and not always at Christmas.

But I’m learning to look for the light; in others, in giving, in kindness, in faith. I’m figuring out how to turn outward from inside myself, where it can get pretty dark. To reflect the light. Even to be the fuel that the light burns.

I’m trying to see opportunity in life; even if it’s the shadowy opportunity to learn empathy from sharing in the suffering of others, and seeing their strength, and attempting to lend some of my own.

If there’s anything in common with all the holidays of the season, I think it’s that we need light; there must be light in these days of longer darkness for us northern hemisphere dwellers:

• Gratitude, for plentiful harvest and having enough.
• Generosity in sharing the excess.
• Grace toward others, because we all begin again — not just as each year ends — but as each outgrown season of life comes to a close.

Those things are what I see helping make the world a little more right when it doesn’t feel quite right.

At Christmas, or any other time.

I have not been to church for several years.

I went to church almost every time the doors were open from infancy on up. Until a few years ago.

I kinda stopped going during the pandemic and never really went back. Oh, I kept preaching online for my little home church here in Eureka Springs. And for a while after we decided to meet again.

Then I retired and stopped going.

I had no problems with anyone there. Sweet people, and I miss them.

But at some point, my longstanding questions about why we “do” church the way we “do” church had no satisfying answers.

I had been asking myself for years why we were there; why weren’t we out doing things together to help other people?

Feeding the hungry? Visiting the ill and injured? Housing the homeless? Helping the unemployed get jobs? Getting things fixed and painted for older people? Giving lost folks directions to the places they want to go? All kinds of things that just HELP?

Instead we sit for a lecture about what we should already have read and know. We sing and pray things that praise God who wants actions more than words, and supposedly encourage each other instead of asking what’s wrong or how-can-we-help or listening. We give to pay a staff to do some of these things for us instead of experiencing the joy of caring, and a building to do them in (and the utilities/maintenance for it). We have elders, deacons and boards to look after all that, often instead of each other, and then to deal with excluding people who weren’t included enough not to do something wrong that would embarrass the church. Does helping people go out really help them out?

Not once in scripture do I find a menu or even an example of the acts of worship we’ve all generally agreed upon in connection with a gathered church. Sometimes a visiting missionary would share a long mission report and some poor weary chap would fall asleep and out of a window, but I’m not sure that was supposed to be exemplary.

There were no examples of purchased buildings, on-site staff, performing choirs or bands or special effects or testimonies or much of anything else that was for us but not for Him.

I find in the teachings and life of Jesus of Nazareth many examples of people being fed, cared for, healed and taught by parable and thought-questions whether there was a crowd around or not.

Thing is, I think over the centuries, people came up with a formula for doing church themselves that often conveniently required the minimum development of character and involvement in the lives of others with the maximum expenditure of donated funds.

And while some may have greatly simplified and reduced the expenditure of that formula, it’s often the same old things being done in the same old ways. I’m not sure that’s for everyone. I’m not sure that it really helps anyone in their spiritual development to be more loving and caring outside that circle of fellowship — perhaps to the folks who feel the need for grace and inclusion the most.

In the end, it was not encouraging me. And I didn’t feel like I could go on trying to encourage people within it.

So I’ve outed myself as a believer in God now, but not particularly a believer in church as we “do” it. (That will save everyone else the trouble of outing me. 🙂)

I’m not exactly a cloistered monk though. Church is still all around me, because church is the kingdom of God in this world. I’m surrounded by His kids, whether they’ve known or accepted His paternity or not. I’m serving in my own way with my meager set of skills and resources; loving others no matter what, calling out dumb stuff that should be obvious, giving directions to sidewalkers who are befuddled by Eureka Springs maps, holding doors open, donating food cans when I can, smiling, giving out free compliments, always being available for hugs and a cup of coffee. There are civic groups willing to accept my help with bigger needs, so I try to support them. My cottage is a place of welcome.

I’m the church, 24/7, just like everyone else who wants to love and care and help when they can, whether individually or in a group. It’s just that our costs of doing business are lower.

And, perhaps, the reward of the joy of being part of it firsthand seems greater.

Walking by Eureka Springs’ Crescent Spring at noon on Wednesday is a contemplative experience for me.

On one side, you hear the gentle carillon up the hill at St. Elizabeth’s; her chimes singing to you some hymn of goodness and light and all that heaven enfolds and humanity should aspire to.

On the other side, you hear the tornado/air raid sirens on East Mountain, warning and testifying to you of all the worst, most destructive capabilities that the heavens and mankind can mete out.

They swell against each other, and of course the sirens have the advantage in volume in spite of their distance from you, and for three to five minutes they overcome — drowning out the chimes.

The sirens win.

But the carillon continues gently singing its angelus prayer-songs for another ten minutes, reassuring you that there is still divine love and mercy and grace, and your world goes on turning while you continue your walk.

The carillon endures.

I’m retired from preaching, but every once in a while I just feel a need to say something that I feel should be obvious … just in case it’s not.

Tomorrow is Easter, and Christendom will observe the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

Sermons will recount how it brings hope and verifies the promise of life after death and testifies to divine power and love.

I don’t mean to diminish any of that, nor any of the other encouraging insights those messages may bring.

But I feel that if we fail to grasp that the promise of abundant life is just as much for the here and now as it is for the hereafter, we’ve still missed the point — even if we gladly accept all the other points made.

We fit this planet and it fits us. We fit with each other. We have a place in life, and a purpose, and a way to enrich life’s meaning.

The Man who left the tomb taught and lived and fulfilled a life of perfect love and harmony with all around himself who were willing to share in that vision.

He created; told simple stories to reveal how to love.

He walked and met people where they lived and worked, and told them how much they are worth.

He fed them when they were starving for hope and sometimes even for food or health or life itself.

He felt we deserved a perfect example, even if we could never perfectly imitate it.

He proved it could be done.

And even the way His life was ended — willingly, obediently, self-sacrificially — was a way to make and keep peace in such a troubled time.

So of course His life couldn’t be ended by hatred, jealousy, fear, anger, paranoia and all the other evil factors that conspired to end it.

Love never ends.

That’s the Story.

That’s the essence of the Story
I would want to preach if I still preached; that I would want to quietly post on a noisy social media tool; that I would want to live until I die, when only the loving parts of me are remembered here and become part of the hereafter.

Love never ends.

The Story of Easter.