If I see that photo of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s lifeless blue face one more time, I think I’m going to barf. It was on the home page of the Yahoo! news section. It was on the front page of the newspaper outside my hotel room. Sitting at the airport, I was treated to the big screen version.

Who decided that the world needs this graphic evidence? Pity the folks who were trying to digest food while watching the news.

Let’s be clear, I’m not a fan or mourner of Mr. al-Zarqawi. I do, however, understand why he was here–and why he’s not.

Big picture: When the casting call was announced, his soul eagerly chose the role of heartless killer in the world theater. Unfortunately, he didn’t slow down long enough to read the one and only stage direction: “Whatever you do will be done to you. Now, go act your heart out. See ya when you get back.”

Most of us think that Life on Earth is a lot more complicated than that. I don’t. We think there’s a long list of rules to follow and hoops we must jump through to please God.

Let me ask you: Is True Love hard to please? Would an unconditionally loving parent punish you eternally and sadistically for not following directions? Jesus certainly didn’t think so. But he was a bit radical. To him, the vindictive judgmental God portrayed in Hebrew Scripture bore no resemblance to the God he knew. Our vision of God reflects in the way we treat others.

The God that Mr. al-Zarqawi and legions of Christians and Jews profess to know frequently solves problems by vengefully killing and torturing those who do not agree or obey. That God, according to ancient scribes, favors some of his children over others, and is prone to genocidal rampages. It’s easy to see why al-Zarqawi and other followers of this God believe that brutality is the “right” way to handle large and small scale disputes. Like Roman pagans, these people gloat about their kill by putting it on public display. They judge their killings as justifiable and holy; the identical act by others is evil. Fascinating stuff.

My guess is that these folks have either acclimated themselves to the heat and head-bumping in the karmic clothes dryer, or they simply haven’t noticed that their behavior is not divine. A wise teacher once admonished, “Judge not, that ye be not judged. Condemn not, that ye be not condemned.” On another occasion, he rephrased it, “All those who take up the sword perish by the sword.”

In 21st century Loud Mouth-speak, all of it translates to, “Whatever you do will be done to you.” If Mr. al-Zarqawi knew that, I wonder how it would have affected his choices? More important, how will it affect yours, moving forward? I’m not talking about some of your choices, but all of them. I’m talking about making a conscious decision to be really selfish. Make life all about you.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re a really selfish person: You want to be treated well; you want others to respect your property, your person and your relationships, want folks to be generous, loving, patient, and forgive you when you’ve been an absolute creep. How can a selfish person achieve these results? Treat others well, respect their property, their person, and their relationships, be generous, loving, patient and forgiving. You can’t protect your best interest without protecting the best interest of others.
You don’t want anybody to steal from you? Don’t steal. You don’t want anyone to cheat you? Don’t cheat. You don’t want anyone to harm you? Don’t inflict any kind of pain upon others. Take selfishness to new heights.
Remember, whatever you do comes back to you. Don’t take my word for it. Ask Mr. al-Zarqawi.

At 3 o’clock on Memorial Day, in collective consciousness, we remembered, honored, thanked, and mourned those who are no longer physically here with us. Among those with the most heartbreaking memories were the 1,600 children who’ve lost a parent in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Nearly 150 of those children gathered this weekend at a grief camp to share their stories and to relieve some of their pain. They drew pictures, wrote stories, talked, and cried, letting go of their anxieties, their anger, their fears, but not their memories. Who can imagine a child’s struggle to understand death, when she barely understands life?

Children’s imaginations are so powerful, so vivid, and so transformative. I suspect that their imaginations, as well as our imaginations, also have the power to heal, which explains why therapists encourage us to be creative when we’re working through painful issues such as loss.

What if we could use our imaginations for a moment? Ever seen a photo of the solar system? Envision it now, and choose a planet to visit. Pretend that this planet has an observatory where we can watch all of the action on Earth.

Think of it. It would be as if we were sitting in the audience, watching a bazillion personal dramas performed 24-7.

Look! Some of the theaters over there are decadently opulent; and their players perform in elaborate costumes, surrounded by luxurious props. Others don’t even have rooftops. Players are dressed in rags and recite their lines on stages with dirt floors. Some are deliriously happy. Others are miserable. Some have magnificent physical bodies; others have been ill from the day they arrived on the planet.

Why? Why not, if it’s just theater, if it’s not real? And, just for a moment, let’s just suppose that’s exactly what the Earth experience is: Theater. It certainly has all of the necessary theatrical elements: There’s this constant stream of souls in human body costumes carried onto stages in little blankets. Some time later, each one is carried off in a rectangular box. Not one of the actors stays on the stage forever. Never have. Never will.

And what characters they play! Some of the roles last a short while; others stay onstage much longer. Have you noticed that most of the actors become so engrossed in their personal dramas that they actually think the theater is Life itself—the Alpha and Omega? It makes sense that whenever someone exits the stage, they think that character has ceased to exist.

But have they?

What if Earth is not Home, but simply a place to act out an infinite number of melodramas, murder mysteries, sci-fi adventures, tragedies and love stories—then move on?

What if the building you’re sitting in is merely an elaborate prop in a gigantic theater created by you and billions of other souls as a place to grow, learn, love, and play?

What if your body is merely a costume that you are wearing; and the real you is on the inside, looking out?

What if the people who play major roles in your life agreed, a very long time ago, to share the Earth stage with you at strategic times to add some tension, comic relief, love, even denouement to your drama?

What I’m suggesting is the possibility that your physical life is just a fraction of your total existence; and that your personality is just a role, a character you’re playing right now. I know these possibilities might be difficult to grasp. In fact, you might find them downright goofy. That’s OK. We’re simply using our imaginations to go somewhere we’ve never been, remember?

Think about the times you watched a stage play or a television show and became caught up in the drama as it unfolded. You probably screamed when you were frightened, cried when one of the characters died, and cheered when good won over evil or when the star-crossed lovers finally united. You had honest emotional reactions, even though you knew it was theater. You can only imagine how emotionally involved you’d become, if you weren’t aware it was theater.

Sitting on another planet, with a broader perspective of the Universe, could make you wonder if life on Earth is actually an opportunity to learn something—and every person in your life is there to teach you. Sometimes we’re too close to a situation, too caught up in the drama to see the lesson in it. From the audience, however, it’s clear as day.

Do we dare step outside of our personal dramas to view the stress in our lives, the pain we cause ourselves and others, the despair and feelings of victimization from a different perspective? Can we use our creative power, our imaginations, to open ourselves to receive answers to age-old questions: Why does life seem so unfair? Why am I here? Why did my loved one die? Is there a God? Why did this horrible thing happen?
Maybe you’ve asked these questions. I certainly have. What I’ve noticed is that the answers were revealed to me, in proportion to my willingness to receive and understand them. As they say, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

Who are the souls that have agreed to come onto your stage to teach you about love, about Life, about appreciation, about pain, about integrity, opportunity and failure? Who demonstrated powerful lessons that sent you scurrying to find the strength, the God within you? Who helped you to know yourself?

You asked them to teach you. Imagine that. Did you learn the lesson, or will you have to call in another teacher? While you’re at it, think about what your performance has taught others?

What if everything that happens in your experience here is part of a plan to move you closer to the Divine? Would you see everything and everyone differently? Would you judge experiences and people as good or bad—or merely part of the journey?

Eventually, children who have experienced the death of a loved one will learn that light and darkness cannot occupy the same space. Maybe they’ll even learn to ask: If Life is eternal, what is death, really?

Stepping out of the drama, sitting the audience, you might discover that Life is always fair; God is never far; Death is not The End; and absolutely nothing is unforgivable.

Perhaps that is why the Bible suggests that we “Remember to count it all joy!”

If you think that the uproar over The DaVinci Code has nothing to do with you, think again. Do you think that folks are jumping up and down, screaming and waving their arms wildly, simply to alert the rest of us that a novel shouldn’t be read as non-fiction?

Are there any literate adults out there who don’t know the distinction between fiction and non-fiction? If so, don’t worry about learning it now; it’s much too late. In the meantime, the rest of us Christians will forgive this brazen insult to our intelligence.

Let’s face it; each of us creates our own reality, anyway. And that’s really what’s at the heart of this backlash against Dan Brown’s murder mystery: man’s incessant proclivity toward controlling others’ thoughts and dictating their beliefs. Historically, we have marginalized or murdered those whose beliefs or behaviors have disagreed with ours.

In this case, we have a novel published in these United States, where the very first amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the press, and religion. Dan Brown exercised his First Amendment rights and created a novel in which the search for a murder motive led to the unmasking of an ancient secret. Sounds like the ingredients for great drama, huh? That’s just the half of it.

The ancient secret in this fictional tome, for both of you who haven’t read or heard about it, was that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children. That’s when the real drama began. The audacity of Brown to concoct a fictional story that not only depicts Jesus as human, but reveals how and when he transcended humanity and became a deity. Mesmerizing stuff.

I have hundreds of books in my personal library; very few of them are fictional. Not one of them was a murder mystery, until my daughter convinced me to buy The DaVinci Code. She insisted that as a journalist and a seeker of truth, I should make this exceptional murder mystery an…OK, exception.

She was right. I devoured this book—and more. As a journalist, I had to know: Did the novel accurately portray the Roman Emperor Constantine and the decisions of the Council of Nicea that have impacted—no, dictated for nearly 2,000 years—what we Christians believe to be the absolute truth?

Within a very short time, I located a wealth of reference material, dating back centuries and written by Bible scholars and theologians. They make some of the same claims as The DaVinci Code.

Have you heard about any protests against these non-fiction books? Don’t you find that fascinating? It would appear that calling attention to this scholarly research would put these issues in the public domain and raise some tough questions that many don’t want to answer. So it makes sense that they would freak out when Brown had the temerity to expose this obscure research and put it in the hands of millions who’ve read it on buses and in bedrooms.

Don’t get me wrong. I fervently believe that those who love God should be protesting just about now. If we could just find someone to lead us. No one has organized a boycott against the Bible writers or publishers, even though this book portrays God as exhibiting unholy vengeance and wrath. Am I the only one who is pained that God is depicted in the Bible as bi-polar, inhumane, indecisive, hypocritical, and possessing the conflict resolution skills of Atilla the Hun? Where’s the picket line?

How in the world can anyone one explain all of inconsistencies—including the Good God/Bad God character? The very first chapter has so many conflicting facts that Bible purists, literary buffs, and proofreaders should be gnashing their teeth.

Jewish and Christian Bible scholars have demanded a vetting of the Bible’s narrative for centuries. In our lifetimes, the reasoned cries of Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong, the Rev. Marcus Borg and others have been virtually drowned out by hysteria such as we’re witnessing now.

There’s no traffic jam on the path to Truth, by any stretch of the imagination. Most of us own Bibles; few of us have noticed any irregularities in the narrative. Even a casual perusal would reveal some trouble spots.

Quick—how many of each wild animal species was on the ark? One male, one female? The answer is yes…and no. The number changes several times. Why?

How many days did it rain—40? Yes…and no. It depends upon which verse you’re reading in the same chapter. How many days passed before they got off the boat? Pick a number. After saving animals’ lives, what’s the first thing Noah did when he got the all-clear? The answers to straightforward questions shouldn’t change, whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction, but they do in this book. The DaVinci Code revealed to many of us, for the first time, the reason why.

“How did I miss these contradictions?” I wondered. Others ask the same thing when I suggest that they read the Flood Story for themselves.

I’ll tell you how we missed it: We let preachers read selected portions of the Bible to us and we nod our heads and say, “Amen.” The other reason we missed these nuggets is what I call the Fear and Intimidation Factor. Many of us are afraid to question or even acknowledge these obvious factual inconsistencies because we’re afraid we’ll accused of having no faith—or worse, that we’ll be labeled an atheist. Name-calling isn’t exactly a Christian value and neither is judgment, which segues nicely into something else that demands protest: the Bible’s character assassination of God.

Anyone who has read or studied the Bible has noticed that the Old Testament God is diabolical; the New Testament God is divine. Card-carrying Christians have a simple explanation: God “changed” His mind and consequently, “changed” His behavior. Yeah, right.

If God is absolute, He doesn’t change. He’s either good all the time—or never. So what really has changed since the ancients’ perception of God was captured in writing? It is the culture, the era, the politics, the motivations, agendas, and the religions of the human hands that wrote, re-wrote, improvised, hyperbolized, added to and subtracted from, and inaccurately translated this anthology.

God changed His mind? The only mind that seems to change is ours—with the wind. Those of us who call ourselves Christians claim to see God in the same perspective that Jesus (not his real name, by the way) saw God. Then, we inexplicably reach back into the Old Testament and quote scriptures depicting a God that Jesus viewed as too unforgiving, too unloving, too violent, too vengeful, too homophobic, too sadistic, and too unfair to really be “Our Father”.

Anyone protesting that? Nope. Anybody figured out yet that we have to choose which God we believe in—the sadistic, genocidal one or the Prodigal Son’s Dad.

How ironic is it that protesters who demand factual integrity demand that we have blind faith in writings that clearly malign the integrity, the compassion and the unconditional love of the God that Jesus believed in?

They also insist that we have blind faith (emphasis on blind) in illogical stories that claim, on one hand, that a pregnant Mary knew that she was carrying God’s child, the Messiah. Despite that, she raised him to be a carpenter; and years later, she and her other kids were mortified when Jesus launched a ministry and preached that God was the polar opposite of the one in Jewish scripture? According to the Bible, Jesus’ mother and his sibs wanted him to come home and sit quietly somewhere.

How quickly did Mary forget the angel, the star in the East, the magi, and those wonderful gifts? She raised her son to work with wood, not wisdom; and then she and his sibs begged him to stop talking about God in public. It doesn’t add up. But who’s challenging these ancient details when Dan Brown is a much easier target?

I haven’t heard any of Brown’s critics vilify New Testament claims that Jesus was born twice, either. Now remember: to fulfill Jewish scripture, the Messiah had to be born in Bethlehem. Two strangers—Matthew, a Jewish scribe and Luke, a Gentile physician—neither of whom was a disciple or an eyewitness to anything Jesus did or said, crafted conflicting birth scenarios attempting to establish that Jesus was the Messiah.

One writer claimed that Jesus was born in a barn and placed in a manger after Joseph inexplicably made a very pregnant Mary travel by foot and ass from Nazareth. (You remember Joseph. He made that cameo appearance in the Christmas pageant, never to be seen or heard from again.) The other gospel clearly mentions no journey; Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem, and Jesus was born at home.

I know, “How’d I miss that?” You’re wondering.

Which story is the truth? Those who believe that the Bible is inerrant say that it’s different parts of the same story. And they’re protesting fiction. Let a novelist create a character that was born in two places, and these nit-pickers would flip out. But I digress.

You might also recall that Jewish scripture predicted something else about the Messiah: he would be a descendant of King David. The Jewish writer’s birth narrative certainly didn’t forget this. He painstakingly traced Joseph’s lineage back to David. Of course, this little detail implies that Joseph, rather than God, is Jesus’ biological father. Oops.

Has anyone protested against this non-fiction writer’s blasphemous egg-sperm genesis of the baby Jesus? Nah. Matthew can claim that Jesus was fully human; but they’ll pummel Dan Brown for daring to say it in a work of fiction. Curiously, not of these 21st century protesters is offended by Biblical quotes hinting that Jesus of Nazareth was actually illegitimate.

Won’t anyone decry this apparent lack of family values in the books that are called gospel? Nope, what riles these protesters most is the claim that Jesus might have been a family man with a wife and kids.

Strange, isn’t it? Maybe not. These same folks attend church on the pagan’s day of worship, rather than on the Bible’s Sabbath. Ditto for celebrating December 25. It, too, is rooted in paganism: the tree, the gifts, the date itself. None of it is related to Jesus’ birthday; yet none of these protesters has proposed that Christians separate themselves from pagan rituals. But let a novelist write a murder mystery and appropriately do his historical research so that the narrative framework is strong enough to hold his fictional storytelling, and these folks scream bloody murder.

Personally, I like the idea of a fully human Jew who received the divine revelation of what God really is, and who walked throughout the countryside teaching that we are One. It inspires me that someone with flesh and blood demonstrated that the Holy Spirit is within us, that we should love each other as we love ourselves; we should judge not, fear not. We should condemn not.

It’s a much more powerful story when a man reveals that through love, we can heal ourselves, heal each other, and heal our world. If only half-Spirit, half-egg beings can achieve inner peace, treat others with divine love, and enjoy a truly life-altering relationship with God, how can we egg-sperm created humans do it?

Is it more important to worship Jesus as half-egg, half Spirt—or to do what he urged us to do: follow him, i.e. do what he did. On no occasion did try to squelch others’ beliefs in favor of his. He made no attempt to start another religion. He was born and he died a Jew—a Jew with a grander vision of what God is and who we are, as Sons of the Father.

Saying you’re a Christian only reveals what you believe. By contrast, Christ-like reveals how you behave. Too often, they are mutually exclusive, used as a wedge to separate and denigrate others. Excuse me; is this what the Prince of Peace would do?

I sincerely believe that the Dear Ones who are protesting this novel and movie have a passion for Truth. I also believe that if they applied the same Truth barometer to non-fiction as they do to fiction, their passion for Truth would send them circling in front of religious bookstores, instead of movie theaters.

I can only imagine what would happen if the zeal that they’ve focused on The DaVinci Code were channeled into busting the real code—the code that has inflamed unloving, judgmental behavior for more than 2,000 years and continues to contradict the teachings of the Prince of Peace that these activists claim to follow.

Why is that whenever you buy a new car, suddenly you notice more cars on the road that are the same make and model? After writing about X and Y chromosomes, more news reports about them are catching my eye.

One of my favorites was truly a breaking news story: scientists have linked X and Y chromosomes to the REAL reason women and men think so differently. (Duh.) On the heels of that revelation, I spotted globetrotting journalist Kevin Sites’ insightful article on mud pie-eating Haitians—and the nutritional value (not) of Haitian dirt.

The combination of the two articles made the Loud Mouth ponder the dual mysteries of mud and men. You, too? Or am I the only one who’s ever wondered…

• Why original man was created twice: first out of dirt, then minutes later, out of clay?
• When you breathe into dirt (or clay, for that matter), what happens?
• Does dirt have ribs?
• Or lips and a larynx?
• So, can dirt ask for a companion or talk to snakes?
• Have you ever tried to tempt dirt?
• Do you expect to give dirt directions, and it will follow?
• Is dirt smart enough to know right from wrong?
• Which chromosomes can be found in dirt: XX, XY, or Uh Oh?

Is it just the Loud Mouth, or have you also wondered whether a certain bestseller is accurate history—or something much more significant? And what are we missing by interpreting it literally?

Moments ago, a friend sent an innocuous email entitled: “Fwd: Interesting History Info from Cecelia.” I’m still not sure why I opened it; but I’m glad I did.

The email contained a link to a story on the BBC’s website, Genetic ‘Adam Never Met Eve’. If this isn’t a drama, I can’t imagine what is.

As this story unfolds, a group of scientists from eight countries traced mankind’s genetic family tree. They did this by studying the variations in the Y chromosome of more than a thousand men from different communities around the world. (If you’ve been away from a biology class as long as I have, you’ll need to be reminded that men carry the Y chromosome and the X chromosome. Women carry two X chromosomes.)

In earlier studies, fossil evidence revealed that modern humans originated in Africa 150,000 years ago, then slowly spread across the world. These scientists’ research confirmed the decades-old “Out of Africa” hypothesis, which was based on studies of mitochondrial DNA, the segment of genetic material that is inherited exclusively from the mother. These studies determined that our most recent common ancestor was a woman who lived in Africa some 143,000 years ago, the so-called “Mitochondrial Eve”.

Not content that they found “Eve”, the latest group of scientists launched an exhaustive DNA search for “Adam”. Voila! They found him. He was a man who lived in Africa around 59,000 years ago.

Did you do the math? Uh huh: There’s an 84,000 year gap between Adam and Eve.

Pass the ribs, please. Reading this story on Earth Day made me see the entire planet in a new light. It was solely populated with women for 84,000 years? How on earth did they procreate?

Of course, the astute scientists have an explanation for this: They’ve concluded that the human genetic blueprint evolved as a mosaic, with different pieces of modern DNA emerging and spreading throughout the human population at different times. What does that mean: the first humans were male and female, not either/or?

Wait a minute! These scientists didn’t mention a word about mankind being created from dust. And their women-first theory takes a plug out of our all-time favorite story of Adam’s rib.

There’s only one thing to do: We’ll have to give these heretics a time-out; march them into their labs to stare into their Petri dishes until they can emerge with some more palatable answers.

What we really want to hear is that science is in synch with what we already believe: Man was here first. He was made from dust–and he was made from clay. Since the earth is nearly five billion years old and everything was created in a week, they will have to establish human life on the planet five billion years ago. And then we want them to explain how and why mankind regressed intellectually. After all, cavemen didn’t have language, but Adam was able to develop the sophisticated nomenclature for every plant and animal soon after birth.

I might be pushing my luck, and maybe this is outside of the realm of science. But I wonder if the researchers can tell us why we didn’t get a Savior for hundreds of thousands (maybe even billions) of years, since God seemed to be pretty fed up with us quite soon after our arrival on the planet.

One thing for sure, before these wise guys are allowed to release any more scientific evidence about the origin of man, they are absolutely positively going to have to stop locating the Garden of Eden so far south of Europe!

Where’s a ghostbuster when you really need one? Judas Iscariot has come back to haunt us—just in time for Passover. The man who added “the kiss of death” to our vernacular has returned…a hero.

That’s the story told in the recent release of the nearly 2,000-year-old Gospel of Judas—determined by every scientific method available today as an authentic document. By all accounts, this book had all the elements to be the third century’s DaVinci Code. It claims that Judas did not betray Jesus. In fact, it asserts that Jesus asked Judas to point him out to authorities—knowing that he was considered a heretic. In that day, anyone who held religious beliefs that did not conform to the mainstream was inhumanely persecuted.

Judas, according to this gospel, was Jesus’ closest friend; and he claimed that Jesus told him, “You will be cursed by the other generations…. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.”What does it mean, exactly, to “sacrifice the man that clothes me”? Rodolphe Kasser, one of the world’s preeminent scholars of Coptic Christianity and a translator the document, explains that Jesus wanted someone to free him from his human body, and he preferred that person to be a friend rather than an enemy.

“Heresy!” screamed religious leaders 2,000 years ago, when they read The Gospel of Judas. They found it abominable to regard Judas as anything other than a traitor. And they refused to include his gospel in the New Testament.

“Heresy!” screamed religious leaders 2,000 years later, when they read The DaVinci Code, a fictional book that unveiled so much factual data about Christian history that it spawned an ill-fated lawsuit from historians who accused him of plagiarism. How dare Dan Brown or any novelist write fiction based on theological research!

One of the nuggets we discovered in Brown’s epic was the contentious process that brought us today’s New Testament. In 300 AD, after Christianity was no longer a Jewish sect, a committee of religious leaders decided which, among the numerous accounts of Jesus’ life on earth, would be read by future generations. The committee favored the often conflicting accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Centuries-old research reveals that none of these writers had a relationship with or even knew Jesus.

The writer of Matthew was not the reviled tax collector who walked with Jesus. Bible scholars aren’t sure exactly who the writer is, but contextual clues date the book of Matthew two or three generations after Jesus’ death.

Mark, the oldest New Testament text, although it appears second, was not written by one of the 12 disciples, either. Biblical scholars date the writing of this book 60 to 70 years after Jesus’ death.

Experts say that the book of Luke, as well as Acts (still believed by many to have been written by the Apostle Paul), were written by a Gentile physician, rather than a Jewish disciple of Jesus. Scholars date Luke’s accounts between 60 and 100 years after Jesus’ death. Both Luke’s and Matthew’s accounts of Jesus’ life draw heavily on the Book of Mark, and dispute each other in varying details that do not appear in Mark at all.

The Gospel of John is dated between 90 and 120 years after Jesus’ death; and although scholars argue about the identity of the author, they agree that it was not the Apostle John, as many assume. So, despite no proven connection to Jesus of Nazareth, these men’s accounts of his life were declared the gospel truth. However, Judas’ account was tossed completely.

Fascinating stuff. I’m particularly intrigued by the fact that Judas’ gospel claims that Jesus wanted to leave his body. There’s evidence elsewhere in the New Testament, John 6:63 most directly, where Jesus very clearly expresses little regard for the physical body. “The Spirit gives life,” he says, “The body is of no account.”

Oddly enough, those who formed our beliefs about Jesus, his life, and his death, believed that the physical body is everything. To them, the body is who we are; when the body dies, we cease to exist—views that depart sharply from Jesus’.

This might be a heretical thought; but, as one who taught by example, would it have been out of character for Jesus to seize an opportunity to teach us a dramatic lesson about what Life really is and who we really are? What if he publicly left his body, then reappeared to demonstrate that “The Spirit gives life. The body is of no account?”Wow. That would be the kiss of death to many of the beliefs that we hold dear.

One of the ministers at my church is fond of saying, “Prayer doesn’t change things; it changes us.” Now, an exhaustive $2.4 million study on the healing power of prayer may have revealed just that.

The study, conducted at six venerable medical centers, including Harvard University and Mayo Clinic, divided 1,800 patients into three groups. All were recovering from coronary bypass surgery. Strangers—all Christians—prayed for patients in two of the groups. The prayer was simple: a speedy recovery with no complications. One group knew that prayers were being offered for them; one did not. None of the strangers prayed for the third group; and the group was none the wiser.

Did those who received prayer support fare better than their cohorts? Actually, no. In fact, what stunned the medical researchers was that patients who were aware that others were praying for them had more complications than the others—including those who received no prayer support.

For a great many of the faithful, particularly New Thought Christians, this comes as no surprise. It’s not that these Christians don’t believe in prayer. They simply have a different view of what prayer is.

This worldwide non-denominational group that adheres to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth identifies more with spirituality than religion. Consequently, they generally don’t read or teach any version of the Bible in isolation. They typically supplement holy scripture with ancient, theological, or scholarly texts that help them understand the languages and idioms of ancient people, as well as the historical, cultural and political climates in which Biblical scribes lived and wrote.

Like Jesus, New Thought Christians hold a non-theistic view of the Divine. In other words, they don’t view God as a supreme or supernatural Being that resides outside of us and manipulates events externally. To them, God is within us, constantly present through the Holy Spirit.

While that thought is not “new”, and neither is the movement, it’s certainly a more modern view of God than that of early man who struggled to define the Divine. As former Roman Catholic nun Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God, explains in her most recent book, A Short History of Myth, “Humans have always been mythmakers.”

Unable to explain certain natural phenomena, Armstrong says, early man created myths about gods and goddesses who looked and acted very much like humans. They had a gender, a physical body, personality traits, and they shared the same range of emotion as humans—from absolute calm to vengeful, sadistic rage.

Early man also believed that, like themselves, the unpredictable temperament of the gods and goddesses could be appeased. With the proper set of words, actions, or living sacrifices, man could calm their rage and consequently control or even halt the occurrence of natural disasters.

These beliefs were passed down as oral history for thousands of years. Today, many still believe that, through prayer, they can convince God to scrap His plans, and adopting theirs. Most are not aware that these petitions actually reveal a lack of trust in God to solve problems for the highest good of all concerned.

In this case, the researchers and petitioners assumed that what they desired for these patients was what the patients or the Holy Spirit within them desired. For some of these souls, complications from surgery may have been their “exit strategy” from the body, in perfect accord with their established timetable. Let’s face it; no soul has ever intended to stay here, evidenced by the fact that no soul ever has.

Prayer doesn’t change things. It changes us. Prayer time is an opportunity to consciously connect with the Divine within us, listen, and trust that It already knows our desires and will unfailingly resolve everything for our Highest Good.

If someone were to ask a crowd of people if God had ever granted their prayers, most, if not all of them would say, “Yes.” However, the same people could also cite many prayers that were not granted. This leads us to the ancient and, I believe, erroneous conclusion that God is unpredictable or capricious, rather than absolute and unchanging. Tomorrow they’ll talk to a friend or they’ll read a book that will advise them that they didn’t say or do the right thing to convince God that their desired outcome was the perfect outcome. After all, it’s all about what we want, isn’t it?

Perhaps this is what they spent $2.4 million to determine. Unfortunately, this costly study unwittingly rested on ancient myths that if we behave a certain way, God will say, “Eureka! I hadn’t thought of that solution. Let’s do it your way.”

Does this study prove that God is inconsistent or that prayer doesn’t always work? One could certainly conclude that. Alternatively, one also could conclude that what really doesn’t work is any attempt to control God.

There’s no dispute that prayer always works when it is in alignment with God’s will, rather than our own. A generic prayer such as, “I release this problem to God, knowing that it will be resolved for the Highest Good of all concerned” creates that alignment. It says, “God, I trust You to work this out perfectly. I detach myself from the outcome and allow Thy will to be done.” The outcome might not be what we hoped, but we can be assured that it is the perfect outcome.

Now there’s a new Christian thought: How about creating more productive ways to spend $2.4 million than testing the all-knowing, all-powerful, ever present Holy Spirit?

This is America: land of the free, home of the brave, the forceful, and the myopic. Where else can we speak our minds without fear of censorship, incarceration, or bodily harm? Where else can we send mixed messages and not be viewed as illogical, confused, or just plain duplicitous?

That’s why I love and appreciate this country. Periodically, I am reminded of how precious our liberties are—like today, when I stumbled upon a fascinating column on one of my favorite websites, Beliefnet, authored by the Reverend Richard Land. It was entitled “A Christian Defense of the War in Iraq.”

On the surface, there seems to be something blatantly oxymoronic about Christians defending war. Followers of Jesus’ teachings don’t engage in war, let alone defend it. So I figured there must be something more than the eye could see here. After all, Rev. Land is a highly respected theologian, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. (Southern Baptists are the nation’s largest non-Catholic Christian denomination.) He’s also a magna cum laude grad of Princeton who holds a doctorate from England’s venerable Oxford University. I was open to the possibility that I could learn a few things from him.

Is War Just—or Is It Just War?

Rev. Land’s first lesson was that judging, condemning, attacking, and imposing America’s will, beliefs, and form of government on others is not only right, noble, and just; it’s obligatory for a Christian nation.

“I believe [America’s] Declaration of Independence, which says that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Rev. Land asserted. “The Iraqis have the same right to freedom.” And war apparently was the only way to liberate them.

More than 15-hundred years ago, St. Augustine became the first in a series of religious scholars and teachers who have tried to justify war, and the bloodshed and destruction associated with it. First, they devised rules that would allow a war to be considered “moral”. Those rules have evolved into what’s now known as the “just-war theory”, which weighs factors such as proportionality (the gains outweigh the suffering and loss of life), self-defense, collateral damage, and other moral issues related to combat. It should be noted that the “just-war theory” trumps both God’s “thou shall not kill” commandment and Jesus’ edict to “love your enemies”.

According to Rev. Land, protecting or even introducing others to their unalienable rights is reason enough to invoke the so-called “just-war theory”. In fact, he says, America is obligated to uproot any dictator who is denying his people the rights endowed by their Creator—sometimes, anyway. There are a few exceptions.

“North Korea comes to mind,” he told Beliefnet’s Holly Lebowitz Rossi. “We certainly would like to help the North Koreans obtain their freedom, and there are certainly ways in which we can put pressure on the North Korean regime. But military action is not an option because it would not pass the test of proportionality.”

In other words, we could lose Big Time, because they have verifiable WMDs. Consequently, the North Korean people are not eligible for “just-war” liberation.

Last time I checked, machetes were not considered WMDs. And Rev. Land acknowledged that the gruesome murders of 750,000 Rwandans certainly passed the denial of inalienable rights and proportionality tests. Ditto for the ethnic cleansing rampages in Bosnia, Kosovo, and more recently, Darfur. He supported American intervention in each of those cases. But, he says, America needed the support of the international community. Without that support, our nation couldn’t act alone. Let me play that back for you: Without international support, America couldn’t justify war.

I have to admit, I am quite disturbed by Rev. Land’s rationale for the uneven application of the “just-war theory”. On the other hand, he has the right to defend any war—for any reason. And he can call it anything he likes.

But for Jesus’ sake, let’s not call it Christian, OK?

Headlines can’t possibly tell a whole story, but the one I spotted in an Associated Press report on this, the third anniversary of the U. S. invasion of Iraq, almost missed the mark completely. It read: Father Loses Taste for Revenge in Iraq.

This intriguing story unfolds in battle torn Iraq, where we meet Joe Johnson, a self-employed home builder who spent six years in the Army and Navy a couple of decades ago. In 2003, when war was declared, Johnson re-upped with the National Guard for the sole and express purpose of serving his country in Iraq. He told the AP reporter that he “was pissed off at the terrorists for 9/11 and other atrocities.”

Johnson hails from Rome, Georgia, a scenic town near Atlanta. But apparently, news that there were no Iraqis involved in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction apparently did not reach Rome or Johnson. That’s the best explanation I can offer.

In April 2003, a month after his 22-year-old son Justin had left for Iraq, Johnson traveled to Ft. Lewis, Washington on a mission. A guard unit there was slated to be deployed to Iraq; Johnson wanted to go with them. He reasoned that if he and Justin were in Iraq at the same time, his wife would only have to endure one year of anguish, not two.

It all seemed to make sense. But while Johnson was in Fort Lewis, trying to qualify for combat, that all changed. Justin was killed by a roadside bomb in an Iraqi slum. An already outraged Johnson returned to Rome, even more embittered.

A year later, after he and his family had partially healed from Justin’s death, Johnson set out for Iraq with his Georgia National Guard unit. He was on a crusade. Literally. You see, Johnson is a Christian missionary. He has traveled to the Arctic and Peru to spread Christ’s teachings.

As a veteran from the minefields of journalism, I can confidently say that this is breaking news; and the headline on this story should have read: Christian Missionary Loses Taste for Revenge.

I had no idea that revenge and violence were principles taught by the Jew that we Christians know and revere as Jesus of Nazareth. But, hey, I could be wrong. So, like any good journalist, I decided to do some fact checking.

I’ve discovered that the most efficient way to find the location of any word in the Bible is to search The New Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance, which claims to be “the most complete, accurate, and up-to-date” resource of its kind. The cover of this edition notes that the words of Christ are in red. That’s precisely what I’m looking for: bold evidence that Jesus instructed us to be vengeful and violent.

According to Strong’s, there are 18 scriptures that include the word revenge or any derivative. Sixteen were from the Old Testament; half of those scriptures included the word blood.

The two citations from the New Testament were found in Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians (7:11 and 10:6). In that same letter, he noted: “For though we live an earthly life, yet we do not serve worldly things. For the weapons which we use are not earthly weapons but of the might of God by which we conquer rebellious strongholds.” (2Corinthians 10:3, 4) In other words, “No swords and guns, guys. Fight with spiritual power, not earthly force.”

There was not one red-letter scripture listed in Strong’s in which Jesus of Nazareth was quoted directly or indirectly as promoting, teaching, or even mentioning the word revenge.

Since the word blood was most often used in connection with revenge, I also searched the number of times it was cited in the Bible. According to Strong’s, blood appears 447 times. Toss in the words bloodguiltiness (1), bloodthirsty (1), and bloody (16) for good measure.

There were 15 blood citations in red, which directly linked them to the world’s most famous Jew. None of these scriptures was within the context of violence, revenge, or any of their malevolent kin.

So how did a devout Christian—especially one who was spreading the teachings of the Prince of Peace to other parts of the world—conclude that revenge, bloody violence or pre-emptive attack were part of his worldly mission? I wouldn’t have been as stunned if he had asserted himself as a conscientious objector, citing chapter and verse proving that the Lord of his heart taught and practiced non-violence.

Jesus of Nazareth is widely known to have had some serious issues with many of the Hebrew Scriptures that modern Christians embrace, including those that endorse and encourage violence to resolve disputes. For example:

In his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught, “You have heard that it is said, ‘Be kind to your friend, and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies, bless anyone who curses you, do good to anyone who hates you, and pray for those who carry you away by force and persecute you…”

Jesus went on to say that God causes the sun to shine upon the good and the bad, and pours down rain upon the just and the unjust. In other words, God does not discriminate or judge; we’re all treated the same way. And Jesus told us to “judge not”, unless we wanted to be judged.

It’s fascinating that those who claim to be followers of Jesus have veered onto another path. In this case, we have a missionary who probably would be at a loss to explain, in purely Christian terms, how he could tell a reporter, “I don’t really have love for Muslim people…. It’s hard to love people who hate you.”

Here’s some breaking news, Missionary Johnson: That’s precisely what followers of Jesus do.

To his credit, according to the report, Johnson has had enough of war after six months. He says that he shouldn’t have even gone to Iraq, and he hopes to leave without any blood on his hands.

“I really don’t want to kill innocent people,” he reportedly said. “I don’t want to live with that the rest of my life.”

Now that sounds more like a Christian missionary. Peace, be still.

Here’s some news you can use: Former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, labeled the “butcher of the Balkans”, has finally left the stage. His body was found Saturday in his prison cell.

Milosevic is allegedly responsible for the deaths of at least 250,000 people—almost twice as many civilians as America’s political leaders killed in Hiroshima and more than six times as many as they’ve killed in Iraq (estimated between 33,489 and 37,589, according to a website that tracks these vital statistics).

Why should you care? Why shouldn’t you? Each of these humans had loved ones. They were mothers and fathers and children. Some were elderly. Many were babies. They baked the bread and repaired the cars, and washed the clothes. They mattered.

When did we stop caring?

I saw a powerful play last week: “I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda”. It was another personal story of triumph over the breathtakingly brutal genocide there, and another dramatic reminder that the rest of the world simply didn’t care.

Earlier today, about 100 citizens gathered in a university classroom to share their concern about the Americans and Iraqis who have died and many more who must try to survive in what’s left of the unstable country we’ve bombed and invaded for reasons that remain an elusive target. On the way to that meeting, I passed thousands of shamrock and green top hat-wearing folks packing the downtown Chicago sidewalks after the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Who would dare to parade through the streets of Baghdad these days?

When did we stop caring?

I’m sure that the answer is different for each of us, but according to a study in the March 9, 2006 issue of the journal Science, we might have begun caring for others long before we realized it. In a world where we’ve been told that we were born as sinners because two newborn creatures in adult bodies made a poor choice thousands of years ago, this was news I really could use.

The journal report documents a dramatic experiment at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The cast of characters included 24 toddlers and one Felix Warneken, a psychology researcher. Reportedly, Warneken performed a series of mundane tasks as the toddlers watched: hanging towels with clothespins and stacking books.

As his drooling, diapered audience watched, Warneken pretended to be challenged by these tasks. And this is where it got interesting: Almost every time Warneken dropped clothespins or knocked over the books, the 18-month old baby with whom he was experimenting quickly scrambled to help him. If the baby didn’t help, it was because Warneken didn’t appear to need it. This happened 100% of the time.

Not once did Warneken ask for help, but a video of his experiment revealed how the toddlers discerned that their help was warranted. But before making a move, the baby glanced at Warneken’s face, then at the dropped clothespin. Not once did a toddler bother to help when Warneken deliberately pulled a book off the stack or threw a pin to the floor. But if his facial expression broadcast that he was helpless, the baby immediately crawled to the pin, pushed himself onto his feet and eagerly returned the object to Warneken.

What was the payoff for the baby: A toy? A Zwieback teething biscuit? A piece of fruit? Nada. Zip. Zilch. These kids didn’t even get a thank you. Warneken didn’t want to manipulate the outcome or taint his research by training the babies to expect praise whenever they helped. Remember, this was a test of altruism. True altruism, true caring gives without expecting personal reward.

This was a small sample, only two dozen babies. But the fact that each of them behaved the same way, 100% of the time, is very significant. Whenever I encounter a new personal development or New Age technique for manifesting a “better life”, I look at it through this lens: “If it doesn’t happen 100% of the time for 100% of the people, it’s not a law. It’s a possibility, a potentiality, not a law.”

I’m impressed that Warneken got the same results 100% of the time. It leads me to believe that at a very early point in our lives, we cared. We not only cared, but we cared enough to extend ourselves to help others—even strangers. We saw someone in distress and we were motivated to bring them some relief. What does that say for the theory that we are inherently bad, natural born sinners.

According to this study, it is quite the contrary. We are inherently good, caring, and helpful. We naturally extend ourselves, even when there’s no personal reward; that’s who we really are. At some point, we made a conscious decision to be less than that.

When did we stop caring?

Every decision we make has a natural outcome. But every day offers new opportunities to make different choices and create different outcomes. We can choose to destroy others’ lives and others’ homelands or we can choose to care. We can choose to huddle in small groups to heal ourselves, our personal relationships and our own communities, or we can let them die.

But if we are naturally altruistic from the time we are 18-months old, it appears to me that the path of least resistance is to care for ourselves, care for others, and help those in need, without expecting reward or recognition.

I wonder what a difference that would make in our world–starting with that rising body count.