UBC Wed For Life

                                    It’s Christmas time again. Christmas is a holiday celebrated by both religious and nonreligious people. The Christmas season is supposed to be a time of joy, love, and generosity, all of which are undoubtedly good things. Still, as we Christians like to say: Jesus is the reason for the season. He’s what it’s all about. Sending Jesus to earth was God’s greatest display of love, generosity, and mercy, and our joy during this season should come from our reflection over what Jesus’ birth means for us. He wasn’t just a very special person. He was and is our savior. You’ll probably hear that sentiment a lot. “Christmas is when we celebrate the birth of our savior.” What does that really mean though? We say it. Many of us believe it, but do we really comprehend what it means? We live in a time where the movie theaters are ruled by superhero movies - stories...

                            The previous blog entry addressed the first three letters in LGBT. This entry will discuss the remaining letter, the T, which stands for transgender. Transgenederism and transgendered people are perhaps one of if not the most controversial topics in our world today. For many people, it is also probably one of the most confusing topics out there. Understanding what it means to be transgenedered is something with which most people have great difficulty. Sometimes, it even seems like many people who identify as transgendered cannot clearly explain exactly what it means. As a result, some people believe transgendered people are just confused or mentally ill. Others don’t believe transgendered people exist at all. To them transgendered people are just playing games in an effort to turn society on its head or hiding even more sinister intentions. It would be nice if we could point to som...

                         This blog has addressed some controversial topics in the past and also focused on how Christians address or fail to address those topics. The LGBT community is a topic that this blog hasn’t addressed much despite it having been a hotbed issue in the nation and world for quite a while. With yet another recent act of violence perpetrated against people from that community, it is a suitable time to address the topic. For this discussion, we will need to split the community up somewhat. This entry will focus on the L, G, and B, which refer to lesbian, gay, and bisexual respectively. All three of these concepts are problematic from a Christian standpoint because each involves same sex couplings. There’s really no ambiguity when it comes to how God feels about the subject. “‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be...

                                                 Almost everyone has heard the song or phrase “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” As much as it might sound like a mantra, it’s doubtful anyone really takes it to heart. In fact, many people probably think the phrase is a bit cheesy. In fact, in one of Public Enemy’s songs, regarding the phrase, Chuck D famously said “...if I say it, you can slap me right here.” I’m sure he’s not the only one that feels that way. It’s difficult to have such a seemingly flippant attitude in today’s world, such as it is. A recent blog entry ( The Violence of Man ) covered how violent the world is. It’s hard not to worry with that problem looming over your shoulder. The same goes for the threats that disease, economic instability, natural disasters, and a whole host of other concerns pose. The idea that one can just brush all those things ...

                                This year UBC will be celebrating Holyween. It’s probably obvious, but Holyween is supposed to be a more Christian friendly version of Halloween.  The name Halloween is a contracted version of the day’s original name All Hallow’s Eve . It started out simply as the day before a past Christian holiday named All Hallow’s Day (also known as Hallowmas). Interestingly enough, the word hallow means to honor as holy, so essentially, the titles Halloween and Holyween mean nearly the same thing.  So, what’s the purpose of even using the new name? Well, regardless of what the name Halloween actually means, the holiday's complicated history has taken it far from its holy beginnings. At best, it has become a commercially supported holiday meant to give kids a little fun but mostly sell a lot of candy and costumes. At worst, it’s become a day to celebrate darkness, evil, and...

                    Today’s world is a violent one. There’s no question about that. Everyone has heard about the war going on in the Ukraine right now. War in itself is bad enough, but the reports of the murder, torture, and rapes of civilian men, women, and even children make the events unfolding in the Ukraine right now seem even more horrific. Many in America might believe that with our recent departures from Iraq and Afghanistan that the U.S. has moved away from war. Those people might be surprised to know that the U.S. is still actively participating in several other wars in places like Yemen and Somalia. Whether the events are reported on the news every day or not, global scale violence has been a constant in the world for decades. One need not know anything about the various wars in the world to understand how violent the world is. Even on national and local levels, we see plenty of examples of the violence. You can’t tur...

God’s and Jesus’ names are invoked a lot in today’s world. Unfortunately, not always for the right reasons. Recently, Representative Lauren Boebert made the comment that “Jesus didn’t have enough AR-15s to keep his government from killing him” in an attempt to defend the second amendment. Someone should tell Rep. Boebert that the Son of God wouldn’t have needed guns to stop his crucifixion. While it may be easy to laugh off the absurdity of Boebert’s comment, her flub is merely a symptom of a larger disease. It’s commonplace for politicians to quote scripture out of context to serve their own purposes, but it’s not limited to politicians. We often see celebrities turn to the Bible in an effort to try and pull away a line that might help them absolve themselves of some wrongdoing. Even among everyday ordinary citizens, it is an all too normal occurrence to hear someone try to use the Bible to attack, discriminate against, or tear down others. The reality is that the world has created a ...

If you’ve gone to church long enough, you have undoubtedly heard someone say that we (Christians) are set apart. What does that actually mean? If you go by the context most often expressed in sermons and statements in church, you’d probably come away with the understanding that the speakers believe Christians are special. In their eyes, Jesus chose us and we agreed to follow him, so that raises us above the rest of the world. Though you might not hear it explicitly stated, it would not be unusual to hear that statement and come away from the encounter thinking that the speaker is saying that Christians are better people. Certainly, nonbelievers pick up on the sentiment and perceive it that way in many cases given that a common criticism of believers by nonbelievers is that “They think they’re better than everybody else.” Such an accusation is definitely not true for all Christians, but it's probably not unusual for believers to feel a sense of pride in the idea that God chose ...

                               There are some stories in the Bible that stand out beyond others and are known by virtually every believer and even many nonbelievers. The stories of Noah and the flood, Moses and the exodus, and David and Goliath are premiere examples. The story of Daniel in the lion’s den is probably one of those stories too. Because of that story, most Christians know about Daniel, but his story goes deeper than just that one event. Daniel’s experience was very similar to another well-known character, Joseph (See Bible Character Spotlight:  Joseph). Like Joseph, Daniel was blessed by God with the ability to interpret dreams, and also like Joseph, Daniel was able to use that gift to raise his status in the service of the head of a great nation. In Joseph’s case, his service was to the Pharaoh of Egypt. Daniel, on the other hand, started out under Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon...

                   This weekend we have an interesting confluence of events. On one hand, Sunday is Mother’s Day, the day set aside to celebrate and honor all the mothers in the nation. On the other hand, we’re right in the middle of the fallout coming from a controversial Supreme Court decision that puts women’s abortion rights in jeopardy in many places across the nation. As with most of the issues that have arisen in today’s world, this one is messy. So-called pro-choice advocates believe that a woman should have full control over her own body to include ending a developing life inside that body if that is her choice. So-called pro-life advocates believe that fetuses are human life and that we should err on the side of protecting that life over the convenience of the woman carrying it. Opinions on this issue aren’t completely binary. Many people’s stances on this issue don’t exactly fall completely on one side or the other. For...

                                    Today is Easter. Along with Christmas, it is one of the two holidays where Jesus has a central focus. The holiday focuses on Jesus’ death and resurrection, which are the steps he took to ensure salvation for every person that believes in him. It’s a very important day of commemoration for believers. One thing that makes Jesus so interesting is that despite being God, he’s not some abstract being that humans can’t perceive. He is a deity in human form, and as such, he had real human features. Features that have been the cause of some controversy over the centuries. We all have seen the most common depiction of Jesus (i.e., the left side of the image at the top of this entry). Images like that were accepted as being true and accurate representations of Jesus for hundreds of years. Many people now understand that “White Jesus” is not really what he looked lik...

                    Our world is currently in turmoil. With everything that has been going on the past few years, that statement almost goes without saying. In the past couple of months, more fuel has been thrown onto the fire with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Since the start of that war, we’ve been fed a steady diet of the horrors that accompany war. We’ve seen people displaced from their homes, families killed, and once peaceful towns and cities ravaged by destruction. After bearing witness to the travesties in Ukraine, many of us are left wondering “why?” Is the fighting and violence necessary? What purpose does any of the misery serve? It’s doubtful that any response we receive to those questions would be considered good because, to many of us, war and violence on this level serve no good purpose. It’s easy to be swept up by these most current events and feel like there is something new or unique about this latest confli...

                                               In a recent sermon, Pastor Pope revealed a saying that he uses somewhat like a daily mantra: heaven is better. On the surface, most of us probably believe that saying is a no brainer. Those of us who believe in heaven believe that it is paradise, so of course, it must be better than here on earth right? Pastor Pope noted that heaven is a place where we’ll find peace, love, and freedom from the strife that we find in this world. That’s undoubtedly true, but what’s often unspoken is the fact that there is a lot that we love about this world that won’t be in heaven. The world is full of things that tempt our flesh. Our society offers plenty that is either sinful or could lead us to sin, like drugs, gambling, and a variety of sexually immoral acts. These things can take us off the righteous path, yet we all still hav...

                             Prophets and prophecies are seen throughout the Bible. Prophets were typically tasked with bringing the Word of God to the people either by delivering what God spoke directly to them like in the case of Moses or through interpretation of dreams and prophecies similar to what Joseph did when he was in Egypt. Several books in the Old Testament are dedicated largely to prophecies and the prophets that delivered them. The Book of Isaiah is probably one of the more well-known examples, and Isaiah might be the best known of the prophets among Christians because of what his prophecies meant for Jesus’ coming. Isaiah lived during the reigns of the kings of Judah: Uziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. That time began with affluence and became tumultuous for God’s people because of their disobedience and rejection of God. Isaiah’s first mentioned vision addresses that state of affairs. Hear ...