karl marx

Christian Piatt 11-12-2012
Photo: Karl Marx monument in Germany, e2dan / Shutterstock.com

Photo: Karl Marx monument in Germany, e2dan / Shutterstock.com

If we try to mold faith into something more certain than simply faith, it becomes something else. A crutch, perhaps, or a drug. So how or when does this happen?

It happens when someone is suffering and we tell them that everything happens for a reason. In the bigger picture, this is that opiate of certainty and assurance being cast over all the chaos, suffering, and doubt in an effort to keep it all tied up neatly in a religious package. But what it creates beneath the surface is a bastardized image of a God who sits in the Great Beyond, plotting out our fortunes and misfortunes, causing loss and heartbreak in our lives for some greater unknown plan. This makes us no more than so much collateral damage in some narcissistic divine game.

Is that really the God we believe in?

Debra Dean Murphy 1-24-2011
I used to live in a world where God was a given and unapologetic faith was the lens through which the world was seen and interpreted.

When President Obama took questions from Congressional Republicans recently, he spoke about Republican characterizations of his health-care reform plan as something akin to a "Bolshevik plot." Ther