LRC, Houston - the weekends-free church in Houston, Texas

What do you do with PhD in engineering, working as a sociologist?

It’s not joke! And I have not a clue as to what the answer is. My question is really WHY are you a sociologist if you spent all that time and money to get a post-graduate degree in engineering? Okay, let’s get a little more realistic then. Why are you working in the job that you are now in when you know it’s not what you really WANT to do? Now, I’m getting personal t’aint I! So, why do 67% of those in the American work force feel they should be doing something else?

Ready for the segue?

Why would anyone want to be a Christian after picking up the Bible, starting in Genesis, seeing how mnay unethical people there are: starting with the founder of our faith- Abraham. And then reading on to the seventh chapter, they see a God so mad at the world that He floods the damn place- killing everyone! And why is there so much confusion? I mean in the first two chapters there’s two differing accounts of how the world was formed! Which is it? And while I can’t imagine a boat (was it an ark?) that holds all of those animals, my bigger dilemma is which story of how many animals is right: Gen. 6:19 or is it Gen. 7:2? I mean there are only a couple of verses between them.

So, few people get past the first seven chapters until they are not only confused, but turned off. And we seldom help them find clarity because quite often we don’t have it. We’ve somehow shoved some of those difficult questions off into the, “It’s a mystery bin”. Or worse yet, we try to piece together some religious, pseudo-intellectual answer we were told years ago. And the so-called “harmonization” falls flat! Even we don’t believe it. But, in light of NO answer, any answer has to work.

Listen, life is PROGRESSIVE and so is the Bible, which is not one book, but a library of 66 books, or 73 books if you’re Catholic. If you want the heart of it, just read the first four books of the NT! Let me recommend a book that will, or should CHANGE your life- in this area. You can read it on line, but I’d suggest you download and copy the book, that was UNPUBLISHED by S.L. Morgan. He says it better than I ever could! God was simply meeting the people (Hebrews of thousands of years ago) where they WERE! He meets you and I where we ARE!

The BIG problem is US meeting others (those we don’t like) where they ARE! We want gays to repent immediately. We want smokers to quit cold turkey. We want liars to just be truthful- NOW! We want our spouses to do what we say- everyday! We want our kids to GROW UP and quit acting like a seven year old- even if they are seven years old. If we just could have the patience of God, the love and mercy of God. If we could, then we’d be able to love people from where they ARE and therein take people away from the mysteries of the Bible that some of us will never know, and into the experiential real world of humanity.

My effort in these commentaries is STIR up the gift of God in you, which is LOVE! If I can do that, then maybe some of the other things I’m saying, that don’t seem to fit in your theology tool box, might be viewed with more tolerance and patience. I still don’t have an answer on that engineering degree question!