What’s the connection between a suburban schoolyard brawl in which an eleven year old boy gets two teeth knocked out and the Darfur genocide? That’s the question raised by the play, God of Carnage, by Yasmina Reza. In its current excellent staging at AstonRep in Chicago, the intimate theater with a thirty seat capacity brings the audience right into the living room of the play where two polite, middle-class ...

Is God a Cosmic Jerk? That’s how I ask the question, but professional theologians use the term theodicy. It comes from two Greek words: theo, which means “God,” and dike, which means “justice.” Theodicy asks, “If God is good and just, then why is there so much evil in the world?” There are many answers to this question. Some claim that God causes evil. In which case, my question becomes relevant – Is God a ...

We say we want to know the truth, but in reality we are hiding from the truth. We don’t want the truth; we want to live in a myth. Unfortunately, the myth looks deceptively like truth. The myth doesn’t set us free; it enslaves us. I’ll risk the cliché about truth because, ironically, it is true. Jack Nicholson was right, we can’t handle the truth, because the truth about ourselves makes us uncomfortable. ...

Is God in or out? That’s the question I’ve been thinking about since the political national conventions ended last week. It stems from the fiasco the Democrats went through after Antonio Villaraiosa, the mayor of Los Angeles and the Democratic National Convention Chairman, called to vote an amendment to the party’s platform. When the platform was revealed on the Monday of the convention, there was no mentio ...

For Marvin Gaye's song "Let's Get It On" here. Adam discusses Song of Songs and argues that the book seeks to repair the brokenness that happens in the Garden of Eden and the the book compares the love of God to the love of a teenage girl. ...

Below is a sermon I delivered on June 24, 2012 at the (First Congregational Church of Wilmette, UCC.) I’ve discovered that the best way to learn that you are not in control is to have children. In the 5 minutes that it takes for you to wash the dishes, your basement can go from clean and orderly to messy and chaotic. As you walk downstairs, because things are suspiciously quiet, you discover mayhem. You fin ...

“I happen to know there were sealed settlements reached in the plural.  I think that anybody who thinks this was a one time, one person transgression would be mistaken.” – A source for Politico “When you’re in a leadership position, sometimes people just try to take a shot at you.” – J.D. Gordon, Herman Cain Spokesperson Herman Cain.  Welcome to politics. Cain’s rapid ascendancy as the GOP frontrunner has b ...