Let's talk.
Pub Theology is an open and honest conversation about life, faith, ethics … and a beer or two. Seekers, skeptics, believers, whatever your faith background or tradition, all are welcome. No pressure, no preparation, no pat answers. Just good talk.
We meet Tuesday evenings from 7 - 8:30 p.m. at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion, during the program year.
Discussion topics are posted here typically on Monday afternoons.
Years ago, when we were newly married, my wife and I used to schedule annual "planning retreats," where we'd leave town for a long weekend to stay in some charming bed and breakfast somewhere (typically coastal New England), enjoy what the local area had to offer, and to make plans for the future. We'd usually dedicate half a day or so of our getaway to thinking about and writing down our goals for the near and longer-term. These were the days before house and kids, when it looked like the future was ours to determine. We both had demanding jobs at the time, and while we weren't rolling in dough, we had enough to give us the luxury of looking ahead rather than worrying about how we were going to manage day to day. So we talked over timelines, savings goals, family priorities, and so on, trying to figure out things like how much we had to put away, and for how long, before we could start looking for a house. When would we be able to afford to have children? What were our career goals? Where did we want to be five years from now, or ten years from now? And it wasn't just brainstorming. We. Made. Plans. We had targets. And objectives. And we tried to stick to those plans over the following year, reviewing and reevaluating at our next annual planning retreat. At some point, though, we stopped doing this. I can't remember the specifics about when or why we abandoned the exercise, but at some point we did. If I had to guess, I think I'd say we realized that life didn't conform to our nearly laid out agenda. Or, as Mike Tyson famously said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." Or, in military parlance, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy." You may be wondering at this point where we're going with this, and how it relates to our first discussion after our long summer hiatus. Well, it turns out that scripture has a few things to say on the topic of worrying about and planning for the future versus trusting in God's goodness and care. Probably the best known example comes from Matthew's gospel, specifically 6:25-34 where Jesus is telling his followers not to worry about the future: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?" He concludes with this: "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today." I hear the objection. You're right, this is Jesus telling us not to worry about the future; he's not telling us to not to plan for it. And, in Luke's gospel (14:28-30), Jesus addresses this directly. "For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him ..." For me, this poses a bit of a conundrum. Why plan for the future when everything is in God's hands anyway? But if we fail to plan ahead, things can go awry and we'll face the consequences of our own unpreparedness. So where is the balance here? Join us for the conversation this week as we take on the question of planning for the future. Are you a planner, or are you more a seat-of-the-pants kind of decision maker? Do you develop plans for the long-term, or is your focus more on the immediate? For example, if it's my turn to make dinner, I make a meal plan (usually). But I'm not in the five-year-plan business. At least not anymore. How about you. Come out to Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion tomorrow evening, Tuesday Sept. 22, and share your thoughts with us. Discussion begins at 7pm.
Some years ago I was having a conversation with a student when she noticed the Jesus action figure on the bookshelf behind my desk. What, doesn't everyone have a Jesus action figure in their office? Anyway, this led to a conversation about churches and church traditions. She had grown up in the Pentecostal church and asked me what I thought of the practice of speaking in tongues. I told her it wasn't part of my church tradition, but that I understood it as one of the gifts of the spirit that Paul identifies in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, though I admitted my own skepticism that the way speaking in tongues is typically practiced was actually divinely inspired. And I followed up with a question of my own. I asked whether in her church she had ever encountered someone with the gift of the interpretation of tongues, another on Paul's list. She said she hadn't, though she didn't attach any real significance to that. I was reminded of this conversation in church on Sunday when one of our readings was that very section of Paul's letter. In it he identifies the variety of gifts that the spirit may impart, emphasizing that for all of the differences in gifts, they all come from or flow through the same spirit. Here's Paul's list: utterance of wisdom through the spirit; utterance of knowledge according to the spirit; faith; gifts of healing; the working of powerful deeds; prophecy; discernment of spirits; various kinds of tongues; and the interpretation of tongues. I reading up for this topic, I came across a piece written by a Pentecostal writer who says that when he finds himself in periods of spiritual crisis he prays in tongues for wisdom from God. I honestly have no idea what that means in practice. Perhaps I've not sufficiently opened myself up to receive the Holy Spirit. Or maybe I just don't get it. I suspect I'm not the only one baffled here. So let's talk about it in our conversation this evening. What do you make of Paul's list of the gifts of the spirit? Do you take their meaning literally, or is this more metaphorical and rhetorical? Have you ever experienced any of these gifts firsthand, either in yourself or witnessed in others? If you were coming up with such a list today, what would be on it? Join us for the discussion this evening starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion. The weather is beautiful, so we may be out on the patio. Look for us there. And a reminder, this is our last meeting before we take our break for the summer. We'll swing back into action in September.
With mid-May upon us, and summer on the doorstep, we are well and truly into spring, typically seen as a season of renewal. A couple of things have brought this to my mind this week. And not just the flowers growing up and around and through the old animal skulls that we artistically left in the chaos garden behind the house when we moved in two springs ago. For context, these used to hang on the wall in the garage at our old house. First, in typical New York Times fashion, their podcast The Daily last week ran a piece on what was claimed to be Americans' "revisiting of religion," and "putting secularism on hold." I listened to the thing, and what it seems to be based on is anecdotal evidence drawn from conversations that the writer of their Belongings newsletter has had with friends, acquaintances, and her family members over the last year or two of her writing the newsletter. Classic New York Times! But still something to contemplate, especially her argument that this turn back to religion is being driven by people's desire for community, connection, and meaning in their lives. Second, and in an echo of our topic of discussion last week, The Washington Post last week ran a piece by a religion professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington proposing that the government's release of new previously classified material on UFOs was offering support and recognition of a new religion, belief in UFOs. The author writes: "UFO belief is not a religion in the traditional sense. There are no centralized leaders: no popes, no universally recognized doctrines, no sacred text and no institution capable of enforcing orthodoxy. Yet it increasingly performs many of the functions historically attributed to religion. It organizes communities of belief, creates narratives of revelation, offers cosmological meaning and establishes interpretive frameworks through which people understand mysterious experiences and humanity’s place in the universe." A key idea here is that UFO religion is profoundly anti-institutional, built on a foundation of distrust of government, mainstream media, academia, and organized religion. But again, driven by people seeking community, connection, and meaning. Finally, over the weekend there was a White House-sponsored all-day prayer event on the National Mall in Washington D.C. aimed at "rededicating" America as "One Nation under God." Of course it was a decidedly Christian and evangelical version of God that was the focus. Still, thousands showed up and participated. More people looking for and apparently finding some kind of connection, community, and meaning. And a form of renewal at least in the eyes of the organizers and participants in the event. We're going to talk about the idea of renewal in our conversation this week. Are we in a time of spiritual or religious renewal in this country, as the above examples suggest? What would such a thing look like? Would we know it if we saw it? And is it renewal at all, or something different? Join us for the discussion starting at 7pm Tuesday, May 19 at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.