Currents of Faith: Open and Unfolding Reflections

I have decided to take pity on my readers and use a different medium to discuss the important area of judgment: a power point presentation. But first, a personal introduction   Judgment is clearly a part of my religious tradition. I had to come to terms with it, even though the idea is not attractive to me. Believing in a fully gracious God meant that I had trouble with a judging God. In my professional life, my clients had serious troubles but for a different reason. They wondered whether those hurtful, abusive and violent people who deeply offended them would ever have any consequences. They could not accept that these persons who caused them serious injury and pain would simply get away with it and go “scot-free.” They wanted judgment! I agreed with their wanting consequences, but could not agree with God as judging. Both personally and professionally, I needed to find answers.

Death was very much with me as a boy and youth. Already overwhelmed by the shock of my father’s death, it felt as though dying was occurring all around me. My father died in 1942, my maternal grandfather and my great uncle Louis Robert, my name sake, died in 1943, the president of our high school fraternity drove off the edge of the Snake River Canyon in 1946 and my good friend Don fell to his death in that same canyon in 1949. Perhaps such deaths are not unusual for anyone growing up, especially knowing that my father was aged fifty when I was born, however, since they followed my own family crisis and were surrounded by the daily report of casualties in World War II and the utter tragedy of the holocaust, it seemed death was everywhere. I could not avoid it but neither could I explain it. No one talked about death.

I used to think that I was a miserable failure at praying. After many years I now believe that I pray in a way which fits my theology. When I entered the church at age sixteen, I learned first about corporate prayer, those words spoken by the minister and the total congregation. The two prayers I heard most frequently were the pastoral prayer and the Lord’s Prayer. It would be much later when I would learn more about and engage in personal prayer. I must say that I have had quite a journey with prayer.