IvanBenson

The Trouble with “and Justice for All”

Did you grow up saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school? You know, back when school was an in-person thing, not an online thing (we wouldn’t have even known what that expression meant, would we)?

I didn’t understand what a “republic” was; I thought we were a “democracy.” Nevertheless, we pledged the flag every day, and the pledge reminded us that the flag represented(“. . . for which it stands…

It’s Howdy Doody Time (Who’s Got the Strings?)

When I was a boy we were entertained by Howdy Doody on a small black & white television set. He was, of course, a marionette controlled from up above, outside the camera’s view, with eleven strings attached to various parts of his body. His voice was the voice of Buffalo Bob Smith; I’m not sure who was actually the marionettist for Howdy Doody.

We are all familiar with puppets and marionettes,…

If you’ve ever experienced an amazing musical or theater performance that brings the audience to a heretofore unparalleled pitch of emotion or exultation, then you have experienced the proverbial showstopper.

It’s an unforgettable moment, likely one that will be imprinted on your memory indelibly.

But that moment(s) would be a showstopper of the most positive kind. There is . . . another kind.

Ma…

Do Scientists do Science?

Man’s desire to “know” has driven him to reason about the existence and function of everything around him, and science (from Lat. “to know”) is an example of one of the avenues he has taken to further that knowledge. In fact, in our current society, it has become the foremost authority on what is truein this world; it is our default position, and more often than not we tend to pour our questions…

Is the Bible the Word of God?

When I was in college there was a question about which we debated: “Is the Bible the Word of God, or does it just contain the Word of God?” At the time the stakes seemed pretty high to many of us, and your response to that nuanced question put you in a very definite camp.

The ramifications of that debate were often linked to beliefs about inspiration, inerrancy, and scriptural authority. It was…

Bill Cosby and Your Worldview

All of us can immediately identify with the famous words of comedian Bill Cosby in 1964: “I started out as a child.” Few of us alive then would have ever dreamed that decades later his name would no longer bring a smile to the faces of his fans. But in a larger sense we should have not have been surprised.

There’s something wrong with this world, and the people living in it, isn’t there?

Each one…

A Baby in a Manger?

I was sitting this morning thinking. I was thinking about how other-worldly is the whole story of the birth of Jesus: shepherds witnessing a vision in the night sky, a woman giving birth in a stable and placing her newborn in a feed trough, and months later – men riding camels into a distant land in response to a bright star.

It all sounds a bit fantastical, doesn’t it?

And from our sophisticated…

Photo by Thomassin Mickael

“Size matters,” we often hear these days. Although it has mostly sexual connotations in current society, size has always carried significant meaning in societies of the past. From the presence of “the Nephilim” (Genesis 6:4) to the “Anakim” (Deuteronomy 1:28), and generations later to “Goliath” (1 Samuel 17:4), the fear and respect for SIZEis portrayed as a…

Words are Key: Part 2 (House of Cards)

Conversing over the past few days with two different friends has prompted me to put forward a second entry in the series Words are Key.

Faith and Doubt can, indeed, coexist!

The words often attributed to Socrates, i.e. “the unexamined life is not worth living,” mirrored in the statement made by many theologians, i.e. “the unexamined faith is no faith at all” make me want to say at the outset that…

I’ve been thinking for some time now about how to smelt and refine (in a metallurgical sense) important Biblical concepts so that the ancient culture from which they were originally mined does not obscure their meaning/relevance for today.

My experience is that many non-believers find faith in God hard to take seriously simply because the modern religious terminology used to talk about faith…

Early in my youth I was trained that some words are inappropriate to use. At first we called these “bad words,” but as I grew older the expression “four letter words” became popular. Of course, not all “bad words” had four letters, but it was a bit uncanny how many of them did have four letters. Thus, the expression.

In our modern, enlightened times, of course, very few (if any) words are…

The Invention of Nature

You may have never thought about it before, but . . . why do you see the world as you do? From whence came your notions about the universe and how it works? Aren’t there things that you assume EVERYONE knows about the cosmos and the interrelationship between its many parts?

My brother and sister-in-law were kind enough to share a book with me recently. The book’s preface is one of those that…

It’s hard to believe I haven’t blogged for three months, but . . . there you go! Clearly the new part time job I started in December, and other responsibilities have kept my ruminating at a minimum. (No jokes about the previous statement, please! Ha!) Sometimes writers just begin writing in order to exercise the writing muscle (so to speak); they don’t know where they’re headed, they’re just…

It’s 12°F. in Georgia this morning, and the Lazy Boy chair that has been my bed for the last few nights since a recent surgery puts me close to the back door, the unused fireplace, and the cold air that seeps in through both of them. I’m having trouble keeping warm. Cold is an extremely uncomfortable and vulnerable feeling. I’ve heard people remark through the years that they’d prefer being too…

We are in the season of wishes.

Christmas Day is tomorrow. And even adults have “visions of sugar plums” or other tantalizing visions dancing in their heads. We wish for many things: gifts, relationships, food, vacations, health, forgiveness, etc. Truth be told, each person’s list is infinite.

Wishing is sometimes very self-centered; when we are self-absorbedwe review our laundry list of wishes,…

For about 10 years I was privileged to tell the Christmas story at Stone Mountain Park. The train would stop on the back side of the mountain, and Grandpa Lacey (yours truly) would emerge to greet the passengers and tell (with somewhat of a country twang) a seven minute story about shepherds, sheep, angels, and a baby in a manger. I told the story many hundreds of times to countless thousands of…

A week ago I found myself googling to find the meaning behind the numerous memes on Facebook with the simple words, “Me too.” The answer appeared quickly, of course. The numbers of persons expressing identification with the experience of sexual abuse and molestation grew each day to a staggering number. I wasn’t surprised. If you’ve lived any length of time in this nation as an adult in recent…