Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Questioning Writings 013125

On my 21st birthday, during my cousin’s funeral, I learned it was good to disagree with those who seek to represent God. As we sang the comforting hymn “our God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come…” my aunt said, “I hate that idea; it’s not true for me or helpful at all.”

The battle-line was “time like an ever-rolling stream bears every child away; they fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day.” Before the closing “Amen” my aunt leaned over to say, “My daughter is not and never will be forgotten!!!!” Grieving mothers, like all God’s creatures, need to speak their truth in love.

Soon, in addition to evaluating poems, God gave me the freedom to evaluate human ideas expressed in Biblical passages. Among the many views over the millennia of expressions I would question what was true in my experience, what was helpful and life-giving, what inspired beauty, compassion, equality, love, and what best expressed God’s vision for an abundant life for this planet. Sometimes a Biblical writer’s expression of God was “not true for me or helpful at all” but most of their insights transformed my life.

As Rainer Rilke taught me: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a foreign tongue. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” Living the questions has been helpful and true for me.

What questions do you live into without simple answers? How have you found God encouraging you to seek what is true and helpful from the writings of others? How do tyrants who don’t allow questions without retribution seem anti-Christlike to you?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 6 Comments

Omnipotence 012525

I returned home from college for my 21st birthday. Our family spent the day burying my cousin who was senselessly killed at 24 when a speeding car ran a stop sign. That was the day I began to let go of God being omnipotent (omni=all, complete, total + potent=power, influence, effect).

How could an all-powerful and all-loving God allow my cousin to be killed? She was a devoted Christian on her way to teach aphasia stroke patients how to speak again; she had a lot to live for and a lot of empathy, compassion, joy, and love to share.

If God is an uncaring, greedy, manipulative, vindictive, authoritative tyrant then we need no further explanations. But if God is love, compassion, seeking beauty, joy and abundance for the whole creation, then something is wrong.  I knew in the depths of my being that God was loving; maybe I miscalculated the all-powerful part. It was what I’d been told, but was it true? Did it fit the God of the Bible and experience?

The funeral home death march was when I first heard the 20 horrible things people say about God — rehearsed lines in funeral lines (trying to protect God’s reputation or be helpful to you, but failing at both). “God wanted her with him” (so did we); “she’s in a better place” (being here with us was good enough); “God only takes the best” (wish she’d been a little worse); “God has a plan” (well this plan sucks); “God is teaching you a lesson” (the lesson will never be worth the cost because the teacher needs a better lesson plan)……. 

Nobody was being cruel — just thoughtless — mindlessly repeating what they’d heard even when it hadn’t helped them. Maybe there’s a better way; maybe we can find it together. One teaser from my friends I share with you — what if we replace omnipotence with amipotence — the power of love (Huey Lewis more than Celine Dion). Come and see.

What life experiences impacted your views about God? What answers do you seek for bad things happening to good people and good things happening to bad people? Where is one example of real love ever being controlling?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Wo Bist Du?  Dec. 14, 2024

Last Sunday we worshipped in the New Cathedral — new being 1860 — in Linz, Austria. It’s the largest cathedral in Austria but it’s spire was forced 6 meters below the spire of St. Stephen’s in Vienna. The Habsburg family had the empire’s home field advantage after all.

The church is named “Mariä-Empfängnis-Dom” which translates “the church of the Immaculate Conception of Mary”. The English translation didn’t help my incomprehension of immaculate conceptions. That Sunday in the Roman Catholic Church calendar just happened to be Immaculate Conception Day – Dec. 8. If I was supposed to be enlightened by this confluence, it was lost in translation; I could barely hear the German echoing off the high stone walls.

I was moved by the organ, the choir, the “smells and bells”. We were warmly welcomed in a cold room where we watched our breath. During the scripture I tried to sense what I was hearing. The first clue was garten (garden), then der mensch (the man), but I knew it was Genesis 3, when I heard “Wo bist du?” (God asking the man “Where are you?”). 

German has a proper form of you — sie — for strangers, formality, etc. The intimate, friendly, familial form of you is du — where are you my friend is what God asks. While I didn’t understand a lot that day, I heard the first question in the Bible — God asking human beings “Where are you?” 

The second most important question happens a few verses later. Cain has just murdered his brother Abel, and God asks him, “Where is your brother?” Where are you in relation to God and where are you in relation to all your brothers and sisters? Jesus completes these two initial questions by teaching the whole Bible is summed up with the command to love God with all that you are, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

What are some teachings of some churches you can’t translate or comprehend? When you are hiding, how do you sense God asking, “Where are you my beloved?” When you are estranged, what steps do you take to seek reconciliation with your brother/sister/neighbor/human?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

A Thankful Life  November 26, 2024

In 1955, he had a wife, son 6, daughter 5 and a blossoming business career in his insurance agency. He was on a second honeymoon at Sea Island, Georgia, enjoying the sun, sand, and sustenance. One morning in the shower his legs gave out from under him; he couldn’t stand up. A doctor told him he had polio and needed to get home right away. Commercial airlines were out of the question, but a private plane pilot was willing to take the risk of the infectious disease. During the flight, the man considered jumping out the door of the plane in order to skip all the pain and uncertainty that accompanied his dreaded disease.

Polio affects different people in very different ways. The man learned his polio was not fatal, but it was crippling; there was a good chance he would never walk again. The man didn’t give up. Day after day he went through the hard work of therapy as he tried to make his polio-ravaged muscles work. After almost a year, the man was able to walk home. Ten months after therapy, he and his wife had a third child who was 8 and 7 years younger than his siblings; I was that child.

I never knew my father before he had polio; I believe he lived a thankful life before polio, but I certainly know he did afterwards. My father taught me about being thankful and appreciative for all that God gives us in this world. He taught me that life itself is a gift, a gift to be treasured, appreciated, and shared with others — a gift to be responded to by serving the one who gave you your life, and who gives you your salvation from violence, fear, and death. My father’s motto was from Athens, Greece: “Leave your city better than you found it.” Through his civic leadership and charitable work, he did just that. I don’t know how much my father’s illness affected his outlook but I do know the joy he had in living his life fully until he was 92.

Who inspired you to live a thankful life? Where do you find the joy in loving, giving, and being thankful? How do you respond to the challenges and gifts you’ve been given by living your life fully?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 1 Comment

Georgia Baptist 11/13/24

In 1980 my 23rd summer was spent experiencing a semester of Clinical Pastoral Education as a student chaplain. In days of yore when hospitals were not-for-profit, many were founded by religious communities. You didn’t have to be some flavor of baptist to be a patient at Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta. I could stay Presbyterian and work there, too .

I encountered people of many faiths, personalities, and backgrounds when I entered a hospital room as their chaplain. My calling was to walk their path with them – not force them onto my path. It took weeks for me to grow from “I’m just one of the student chaplains here” to “I’m your chaplain.”

It was not easy for me to enter a stranger’s room uninvited. As someone else said, “I pray every time I visit a patient — sometimes out loud.” My worst fears were realized when I walked into one man’s room saying, “Good morning, my name is Wally and I’m your chaplain.” He bellowed from his bed, “Who let you in here? I don’t want a chaplain! I’m an atheist. Get lost.”  

I was so stunned I couldn’t move. Something happened that has only happened a few times in my life. My mouth started moving, but I wasn’t doing the talking. The words that came out of my mouth would never come from me alone. While my body was shaking my mouth asked, “What kind of God do you not believe in?”

The man began to tell me about the vindictive, judgmental, angry God he didn’t believe in. I said, “Wow…. I don’t believe in that God either.” After a few more exchanges, he invited me to sit down as he told me about his life and his father. We were united by a shared un-belief.

What kind of God do you not believe in?  What questions are you asking? How have you experienced a spirit speaking through you in ways you didn’t anticipate or control?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 1 Comment

Checkmate 110624 (100520)

{I wrote this on Oct. 5, 2020 for the church I served then. Recycling today…}

I’m not sure if it was 5th or 6th grade, but I remember the humiliation. I competed in my school’s chess tournament and I won each match until the finals!  The championship game was played in front of our entire class. My time in the spotlight ended in four moves.

Before it barely began, it was over; 4 moves — checkmate. While my classmates were spared the boredom of a long match, I was publicly defeated. Then it got worse. A friend said, “Don’t feel so bad, Wallis.  He beat everyone else like that. He learned those moves from the Encyclopedia Britannica. It’s called ‘Fool’s Mate’.”  After years of playing chess, I suffered the agony of defeat at the hands of a kid who looked up “chess” in an encyclopedia — making a fool out of me.

When I later learned the correct term is “Scholar’s Mate”, I still felt foolish. Furthermore, I felt frustration that no one had warned me. Why didn’t my friends inform me about how he’d beat them? Was anyone really my friend? Why hadn’t I looked up chess instead of playing it? Why couldn’t I have lost earlier before the finals? How would I live with my public and private humiliation?

Maybe that’s one of my early calls to ministry. In this version of “Scholar’s Mate”, I study the Bible, commentaries, and the teachings of spiritual leaders more than many. I spend a lot of my time warning my friends. I am sensitive to listening for the pride and humiliation in others because of my experience. I learned life lessons from the consequences of playing childhood chess; thankfully the cost of those lessons was low.

God offers us choices and consequences in our lives. We are given the choice to learn lessons from our experience, or to ignore them. I believe God allows us to suffer the consequences of our actions, because “we not punished for our sin as much as we are punished by our sin.”  Some lessons are learned when the cost of our choice is low. Some lessons are delayed until the cost is greater. Sometimes we suffer the consequences of the choices of others.

How have your past life lessons impacted your present?  What are the consequences of your choices and actions teaching you today?  How do you open your heart, mind, and body to what God is trying to teach you in your personal checkmate?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 2 Comments

Shibboleth  103124

As a break from watching candidates’ speeches and interviews, we’ve been watching “West Wing” on HBO. That sentence may raise anxiety about my mental meds still working — they are. The season 2, Nov 22, 2000 Thanksgiving episode called “Shibboleth” is my favorite. I laugh at CJ’s turkeys; I tear up when President Bartlet entrusts Charlie with his carving knives passed from father to son; I am inspired by an obscure Biblical story from a catholic president’s character — the character displayed by the character portrayed.

A boatload of Chinese evangelical Christians arrive in California seeking asylum for being persecuted for their faith. How does anyone determine if they are sincere in their life-threatened beliefs or just saying pre-scripted words to get into this country? Bartlet cites the metaphor of “shibboleth”. In Judges 12:6 it was not just knowing the word meant “corn” or “river”. It was how you pronounced the word tested trust. The dialect difference between saying Shibboleth instead of Sibboleth let you know whose side you were on. 

There’s a man who bragged on tape he grabbed women’s genitals whether they like it or not because he’s the star…. who owes five million dollars to E. Jean Carol because an impartial jury believed legal evidence he sexually assaulted and defamed her whether she liked it or not….  who tried to use lies, intimidation, and violence to steal an election whether the majority of  voters liked it or not. Last night I heard that man promise: “I’ll protect women whether they like it or not.” That was the wrong speech — autonomous women needing autocratic patriarchal protection to make decisions for their lives. Maybe Sibboleth is a bunch of corn that floats down a river of shi…..bboleth.

Nine days ago, as a pastor and hospice chaplain I was interested in hearing the Vice-President’s answer to the CNN town hall questions on grief and her faith. “I pray every day; sometimes twice a day. I was raised in church to believe in a loving God, to believe that your faith is a verb — how you live your life, how you can serve in a way that is uplifting other people, caring for other people — that guides a lot of how I think about my work and what is important.” 

How do I know if that’s genuine or a script used to get in? Soon she said she called her pastor Amos Brown, the Sunday the president announced he would no longer seek the nomination. She said, “I just called him. I needed that spiritual kind of connection. I needed advice. I needed a prayer. There’s a part of the scripture that talks about Esther, ‘such a time as this,’ and that’s what we talked about. And it was very comforting for me.” Citing the Bible’s book of Esther and knowing Mordecai said to her, “Who knows if you’ve been placed here for such a time as this?” — that was true shibboleth for me.

What is your shibboleth? How do you determine who is genuine and trustworthy in your life? How do you measure yours and other’s words and actions?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Tommy 102924

The first opera that spoke to me was “Tommy” by the Who. The wonderful words and moving music were in my native language of rock. In grade 7, after 6 nights of basement-blasting four sides of the LP, I’d spend 1 day in church and youth group. I noticed the same themes. Tommy, a “deaf, dumb, and blind boy”, seeking healing through the connection of “see me, hear me, touch me, feel me.” Jesus, healing the blind, deaf, and lame to open their eyes to see, unstop their ears to hear, get up and walk to follow and do something. Deaf/dumb/blind — blind/deaf/lame were drummed into my head by Keith Moon and the Rev. Dr. Bill Arnold.

Two sleeps ago, Michelle Obama helped me, a man, see, hear, touch, and feel the silent shamed struggles that all women go through. She opened her mouth to open eyes and ears to see and hear the cries of women who are suffering and dying today and whose healthcare is threatened by the future. She invited those with lame excuses to get up and do something. It’s not too late to spend the time of one quarter of a football game watching her full speech on YouTube.

If you have two football games of time, YouTube the same night’s radical rally at Madison Square Garden. To save time, the nine-minute 2017 documentary “A Night at the Garden” will be a revelation of the same words, themes, and location on Feb. 20, 1939. I learned from “Tommy” that power corrupts morality long before I learned it from Lord Acton.

A white christian nationalist called the Vice-President of the United States of America the anti-christ without any sense of earned respect or the two letters of John in the Bible. Another revealed how he sees all women: prostitutes supported by pimps. Tucker revealed radical racism without a border of decency. A deaf, dumb, and blind boy was too dumb to stay mute when he insulted 6 million American citizens from and in Puerto Rico days before an election that might be decided by a few thousand votes in a few states. A decade of indecency created this; when did this become ok?

The deception that he didn’t say it tries to blind us to the fact that the man who created, fomented, and sent this rhetoric into our land is same one who created, fomented, and sent an armed mob to violently overthrow our republic. The black maid Aibelene says to Miss Hilly in “The Help”: “Ain’t you tired, Miss Hilly? All you do is scare and lie to try and get what you want. You a Godless woman. Ain’t you tired, Miss Hilly?”

Two sleeps ago, when a squirrel was darting across the road back and forth as our car neared, my wife yelled, “Choose a side before you get run over!” Do you think it helped?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 2 Comments

Abortion Silence Oct 28, 2024

My public church sermons center on the Bible. Since the Bible is silent on abortion, so was I. My leading inquisitive youth groups included “God’s gift of sexuality” materials. Our safe sharing focused more on committed relationships (plus STD and pregnancy prevention) than abortion; however, any written submission to the “question box” was discussed. In private counseling I walked with christian women through problem pregnancies. My questions helped them make their best choices because I trust women to do what is right. These writings have been called “Reflections and Questions” because in my experience, good questions help people discover the best answers for their lives within them.

When I was an associate pastor, I befriended a female associate rabbi. We had most of the Bible (and issues playing second fiddle) in common. She asked me, “Do you know a reason rabbis don’t protest women’s health clinics?” I said, “I guess rabbis ask questions rather than scream shameful statements.” She said, “Nice try. It’s because we study Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures).” I asked, “What do you read there?” She taught me……

In the second story of creation, God forms the “earthling” out of the “earth” (Hebrew: Adam/man out of Adamah/ground). Genesis 2:7 — then “God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being.” Life begins with the breath of life and ends when God’s breath leaves. In fact the name for God, Yah-weh (I am who I am), sounds like breathing. Yahweh — we breathe God’s name as long as we live. The possibility for life may begin at conception through gestation, but God tells us when life itself begins — the first breath of life.  

She then filled my silent reflection with more mundane Torah… Exodus 21:22-24 “When men who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and the woman is not harmed, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If the woman dies, then you shall give life for life.” Back when patriarchy viewed wives and children as property, causing a miscarriage was a monetary fine for the loss of a future possible child (not murder); the death of a woman was punished as taking a life; other harm to the woman was punished by equivalent recompense. The difference makes all the difference.

If you live in Missouri how will you decide on Amendment 3 to our state constitution that restores the reproductive rights an old law removed? How much do you trust women and physicians to make good decisions? How much do you trust outsiders seeking the power to control you? When have you experienced good intentions result in bad consequences?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 2 Comments

Dietrich Bonhoeffer  Oct 21 2024

My study of German language & history in college and my study of christianity in seminary came together in one hero: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. At the age of 27, January 1933, two days after Hitler was installed as Chancellor, pastor and teacher Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he warned Germany against “slipping into an idolatrous cult of the Führer (leader), who could very well turn out to be Verführer (misleader, seducer)” before his broadcast was cut off. 

I was transformed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s 1937 seminal book “The Cost of Discipleship” (Nachfolge – following) which contains: “cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without taking the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” 

The “German Evangelical Church” (Deutsche Evangelische Kirche) revealed just how costly cheap grace can be. As they became the German Christian movement, the evangelical church followed Hitler’s demand (with the threat of violence) that Nazi doctrine be preached by all 18,000 pastors to unify the 45 million protestants in Germany — religion supporting fascism.

Bonhoeffer and others resisted Hitler’s control of the church with their “Confessing Church Movement.” In 1934 the Barmen Declaration (written by theologian Karl Barth) said that Christ is the Head of the Church, not the Führer (leader). The Barmen Declaration remains in our presbyterian church’s “Book of Confessions” in case that question ever came up again. 20% of church leaders took the risk of following Jesus. God only knows why 80% chose Hitler as their Führer (leader) instead of Yahweh. Popular rarely equals righteous.

After leading underground seminaries (forbidden to speak in public), on the 10th anniversary of his radio address about a dictator on day one, he was imprisoned as an enemy from within. Four weeks before Germany’s surrender, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed in Flossenbürg Concentration Camp on April 9, 1945. His last book, “Letters and Papers from Prison” was published seven years later to inspire future generations.

If you’d like to learn more, Home Brewed Christianity is in the midst of an excellent online course and podcast called “The Rise of Bonhoeffer”. There’s a new movie about him coming soon. What bells of the past do you hear ringing today? What risks are you taking with your secret ballot?