Why do good if there is no hell?

The creator of the very popular TV series "Breaking Bad" was on the radio today. The protagonist of this show is a good man who falls on hard times and is in desperate need of money. He is a high school chemistry teacher. It occured to him that he could use his skills to make methamphetamine, which he does.

As the series progresses, this very good man becomes a very evil man.

On the radio, the creator of the show askes the question, "without a final judgement in the hereafter, why would anyone choose to do good?" This question assumes that people, by nature are evil.

The church has an answer to this question. Jesus would never choose evil over good, why then would we make such a choice.

The Buddhists also have an answer to this question in the four nobel truths.

1. Adversity is authentic. All humans suffer adversity. There is no attempt by the Buddhists to explain why this is - it just is.
2. These adversities arouse passions within the the one who suffers. Another statement of fact.
3. Each person is free to choose how to react to suffering. They can choose an outward focus and serve others  - think of Ghandi, Mandela, MLK. Or they can choose an inward focus toward self and revenge - think of our response to 911.
4. Those who choose the former are enlightened.

The Lutheran doctrine of free will is close to the four nobel truths of Buddhism. Article 18 of our Augsburg Confession says that we have free will regarding all things earthly - like how will we love and serve the poor. We have no free will regarding things heavenly - like salvation, or who gets to go to heaven.

Lutherans embrace the concept of moral ambiguity but that does not mean that we should never take a stand. It means only that in the final analysis, our conscience is our guide and we should sin boldly.

Luther's answer to those who demand a rule book for what is good and what is evil ....

No one needs to tell lovers how to love one another

Ten years after 911

On September 16th I wrote an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle and I said that the thirst for vengance is the not the way of brother Jesus. Returning evil with evil always leads to yet more evil.

Our country has spent two trillion dollars in the ten years since 911 mostly to satisfy our thirst for blood and to calm our fears. For our blood thirst, we invaded two countries and killed thousands of our own soldiers and our "enemies". To "calm" our fears, we spent nearly a trillion dollars on homeland security.

The church was largely silent during this obscene waste of human and economic resources.

It is our responsibility to show that the way of love and compassion is the way of Jesus. The people who sit in our pews have to use our combined power and influence to change the way our country spends human and economic capital.

The politicians lie to us and we let them get away with it. When I speak to church groups I always ask if the people think that our country spends too much to help the poor. The response is a universal "yes".

Then I ask how much do they think we spend. The answers are that we spend somewhere around 20% of our budget on foreign aid.

The next question is, "what do you think we should spend?" Here, most people will say, "no more than 10%."

The entire foreign aid of the United States of America amounts to less than one tenth of one percent of our total budget. 

Americans are good decent people. We want to help but we have been lied to. Imagine what our world would look like if the two trillion dollars we wasted on death and destruction for the last ten years had been spent on projects like those we funded after World War II under the Marshall Plan.

I believe the church has a role to play in these decisions.