• Leviticus
    Leviticus

    The Profound Message of Leviticus: Dimming the Light

    Leviticus seemed to me to be an obscure book, meant only for the Jewish audience for whom the rules were a way of life. Then I met Jacob Milgrom, a professor at Hebrew University. He lectured in the downstairs bunker that belonged to Albert Einstein on the Mount Scopus campus to a group of college students from California. Worn out from our explorations of the rabbinical tunnels, I expected the weariness to increase because the topic of the day was Leviticus. Instead, Professor Milgrom lectured long past his ninety minutes, and still, the students did not want him to leave. The first big truth to hit me about the complicated…

  • superstitious
    Superstitious

    The Superstitious Christian: Manipulating God

    When I hear the word, superstitious, I see Michael Scott from The Office, saying to the camera, “I’m not really superstitious; I’m just a little stitious.”  The other image that comes to mind is a young person in 18thcentury garb anxiously bathing a toad by the light of the moon in order to rid themselves of warts.  Nothing but anguish and futility in that, I imagine. Superstition takes so many forms, and not surprisingly given human nature, is still present in the current age where science is supposedly doing away with old wives’ tales and replacing them with the light of cold hard reason. But the superstition I am more…

  • Heart
    Heart,  Holy of Holies,  Holy Place

    The Road to Jerusalem is in Your Heart

    Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.  Psalm 84:5 The heart is often under attack in the church.  It seems that one verse in Jeremiah stands for the whole of scripture’s stand on the heart.  “Your heart is deceptive and desperately wicked,” preachers tell me, but then I am told to guard my heart, for out of it comes the wellsprings of life, according to Proverbs.  Seems contradictory. The New Testament is kinder to the heart, telling me to love others from the heart, to love God with a pure heart, and not to lose heart.  And if my heart condemns…