David Brisbin's Blog, page 2

A Week in the Life

How could we have known about the first week of September? My wife’s back pain had grown into numbness down her legs and feet, prompting an MRI, but still waiting for those results Tuesday morning, a feeling in my chest grew to what I could only imagine was a heart attack. Finally told Marian I needed to go to ER, and in the midst of endless cycles of testing and waiting, a text comes in telling her to go immediately to ER for emergency surgery. She didn’t even tell me until after I was discharg...

Remembering Who We Are

I’ve always known I was adopted.

From earliest memory, my adoptive parents so normalized it, it was just what it was. Why think more? Or maybe it was a guy thing. In her twenties, my also-adopted sister searched for her bio parents and found them. Was a brief, unfulfilling encounter, yet when my life imploded in my thirties, I put a waiver in my file at the agency that would release my identity if my bio parents did the same. Was a passive nod to a deeper need I was finally beginning to feel.

Th...

Unashamed Heretic

Since I’ve been talking about the need to question everything, arrive at a personal theology that we’ve tested in the streets of our lives, become willing to be called heretic for our trouble, one of our members commented that I must have been called a heretic at some point and asked if I saw that as a badge of honor.

Called heretic at some point? I’ve lost count. Along with being told I was going to hell and taking anyone along who’d listen to me, I wouldn’t call it a badge of honor. Surprising...

Two Track Minds

Not long after we started our faith community based on understanding Jesus’ teaching from a first century, Eastern/Aramaic point of view, I received an email from a man on the east coast who told me about debates he was having with his 17-year-old son over Christian doctrine. The boy was increasingly challenging his beliefs, and at one point asked his father: is what you believe really true, or just what you believe? Exasperated, the man asked his son where he was getting all these ideas, and th...

Micro and Macro

Central jail is a different world. Humorless guards, colorless surfaces, bolted down tables, stools. Time is wherever you are told to wait for as long as it turns out to be. I have plenty of time to take it all in. Unexpected energy, more family reunion than jail visit. Young women dressed up, made up, parents, grandparents, two girls next to me over the low, privacyless divider speaking fast and high, Spanish and English in same sentences. I spin on my stool to face the opposite wall of windows...

Choosing Well

When we are presented with difficult ethical decisions, looking to the law, rules we are obligated to obey, can be comforting as we imagine that choice has been taken out of our hands. But as followers of Jesus, we also look to him as the ideal human who embodies good ethical choice. So knowing how Jesus looked to law is a primary guide in making our own choices.

Jesus says he didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfill, that until heaven and earth passes away, not the smallest letter or strok...

WWJD

Had a conversation with two devout Christians about Gaza. One believed Israel was committing genocide and saw no justification for their military action, nor for killing a human being under any circumstances. The other, heartbroken over civilian deaths, saw more nuance in Israel fighting for survival against an enemy hiding behind its civilians.

Two loving, sincere Christians using Jesus and scripture as guides came to very different conclusions.

Is there a “right” way to come to ethical decisio...

Mind in the Box

We’ve painfully learned that when something seems too good to be true…be very careful or run.

Grace falls into this category. What’s too good to be true more than unmerited favor, unconditional  acceptance? Not only too good, but not even fair or ethical. Our theology speaks of grace, but denies it in practice, lost in the glare of reward and punishment. That paradigm, created for us and reinforced by us, is like a box for our minds, describing life and our role so rigidly that even if we do som...

Belly of the Beast

How many times have you asked God for a sign? Desperately cried out for any toehold you could get on some certainty…imploring, making bargains. Great scene in the movie Bruce Almighty, begging for a sign but too focused on his pain to see all the signs along the road until he’s finally stopped in his tracks, forced to admit his loss of control. Art imitating life.

When religious authorities ask Jesus for a sign, he refuses, calling them an evil generation—bisha in Aramaic—literally unripe, unrea...

Into Grace

Leader of a retreat some thirty years ago, Catholic priest, asked the group—who attended same weekend every year—why Jesus came, why was he born. Hands went up to answer right out of the Baltimore Catechism—to die for our sins. Priest was so frustrated he said that after all their years of attending, if they weren’t willing to grow, learn anything new, next year just stay home. Wow.

I had also been drilled that Jesus came to save us from our sins, shocked by his intensity.

Christian writer and s...