Looking back on 100 columns

When a TV show gets enough episodes under its belt, there is sure to be a clip show, with flashbacks that look over the history of the show. It’s a cheesy way to give those who watch a reminder of why it was worth hanging in there on the weeks that were duds.

            This is my 101^st religion column for the Tribune & Georgian. I began writing for the paper on June 22, 2001, nervous about following in the footsteps of Bob Moon, who had done such a great job in this same spot in the paper. That day I asked “How much is too much too forgive?” as I considered the news that Timothy McVeigh had come to faith in the final minutes of his life. Rather than struggling with the narrow question “Did God forgive McVeigh?” I struggled with the larger question “Could McVeigh have been forgiven?” I wanted to answer no, for the crime was too big. McVeigh detonated a massive fertilizer-powered bomb intending to take down the entire Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and all its occupants. Yet after struggling my way through Jonah and other texts I concluded, “So I am left thinking the unthinkable. God indeed could have forgiven a truly repentant Timothy McVeigh. In fact, forgiving McVeigh would be so very like God.”

            On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I was sitting down to write my column for the week. I had only written the headline. I will never forget it as I had written, “Be afraid, Be very afraid.” That’s when the phone rang at the church. Someone called to say an airliner had just crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. As I was talking to the second person who called that morning, they shrieked as the second plane hit the other tower.

Later I would see the images we all saw that day and wonder about the column I intended to write about “the fear of the Lord” in the Old Testament. I decided that the topic needed to stand. I wrote in part, “In choosing to fear God, we give our reverence and awe of God priority in our life. By giving priority to the fear of God, we push aside all lesser fears including even fear of death and fear of tragedy affecting those closest to us.”

And I concluded with, “What is a godly response to the terrorism this week? We should be afraid. Be very afraid. But we should not fear those who want to terrorize us into giving in to their demands. We should fear the God who made us, the God who loves us, the God who sent his own son to set us free from slavery to fear.”

One month later I wrote, “Thanks to TV shows, movies, and CNN, the world also sees us as a largely violent nation, where heroes win by gunning down their enemies. Corporate America’s aggressive pursuit of foreign markets also influences how the world sees us. Coca-Cola signs and the Marlboro Man are ubiquitous. The sure sign that America won the Cold War was not that churches reopened, but that there is now a McDonalds on Red Square in Moscow.”

I concluded, “If Bin Laden and other marketers of hatred find it easy to convince masses of Islamic Fundamentalist that we are an immoral nation infecting the world with our godless ideals, can we hold ourselves completely blameless?... To see America the way the world sees us will mean admitting that it might be us, and not just other nations, that need to change.”

            I considered what a Christian Extremist would look like in February 2002 writing, “Jesus himself summed up all the teachings of scripture with love, saying you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself. For Teresa of Calcutta, as for Francis of Assisi, to be a Christian is to love. To be a Christian Extremist is to love the unlovable even more.”

            On the separation off church and state, I wrote, “The constitution does not necessitate or validate relegating religion to the private sector alone. There is no basis for believing our Founding Fathers intended to create the current situation in which mention of God in a publicly sponsored forum is endangered.

“Further challenges are sure to come, including an attack on the constitutionality of ‘In God We Trust’ on United States currency. In each case, I hope that the courts will find a middle path between having the state endorse any one narrow religious view and striking all religious references from public life.”

            One of my favorite quotes I have used came in a 2002 column on the Theology of the Hammer, which drives Habitat for Humanity, “Habitat Founder Millard Fuller was greatly influenced himself by farmer-theologian Clarence Jordan. Fuller likes to quote the often quite blunt Jordan as saying some people would ‘worship the hind legs off Jesus but they wouldn’t obey him.’”

            I have returned several times to church unity and that what unites us more than what divides us. In July of 2003, I wrote, “Even though I love my denomination, I wouldn’t waste ten minutes of my time on growing the Episcopal Church. But I will give my life to advance the Kingdom of God and that means giving my life for Christ’s church.”

The Friday in 2004 that “The Passion of the Christ” hit theaters, I wrote a column on “Who Killed Jesus?” in which I wrote, “The deeper truth of Good Friday is that I killed Jesus. For I have betrayed him as much as Peter or Judas. Every time I fail to follow where he led and chase after my other gods of status or power or money then I am no different from Pilate, or Herod, or Caiaphas…I betray him now, I certainly could have done it then, and you might have helped me.”

And for my last clip, it was in July of 2004 that I reflected on a boy in a slum in Brazil giving me a cup of cold water on a hot day. I wrote, “This is the world as God sees it. To God, the person who others look over is the one with the gift, if we can stop and pay attention long enough to receive it. The person who seems to have it all together may be the one with the greatest need.

“The boy is the hero of the story. For even a small thing done out of love is a big thing in God’s eyes….None of us can change the world. However, each of us can reach out to others with small acts of love. It is in these small acts of love that we glimpse the Kingdom of God.”

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland, Georgia.)           

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