This is a re-post of an article that I wrote this morning. This is embarrassing, but the published article was a very rough draft that was supposed to be deleted. It was full of typos. This is the proper one. I apologize.

This may sound strange, on the heels of my writing about peace, and I believe every word that I wrote, that I would post something that sounds like the opposite, confrontational. But in the world, there is a place for honey, and a place for vinegar.

In the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, the third chapter, it says the following:

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens …

a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

Because some people got the notion that I was simply a disgruntled critic, I tried to move away from such posts. I did that for selfish reasons; I have thin skin.

When I write things that sound like they are critical of traditional Christian religion, I generate some hateful e-mails in response. I then lose some much-needed sleep… and stress is not suitable for my battle with cancer.

Because I have been critical of Donald Trump, I have alienated my boyhood family, who adore the man and believe everything he says. I have almost lost almost my entire world of evangelical friends from college and graduate school because they love this sick man.

But I also lose sleep over what’s happening in our world. The cruelty of our present administration. The church going off the rails. The tens of thousands who die in wars, in Gaza, and the hundreds of thousands who have died in proverty at the hands of the world’s richest man, who ended USAID. And the cruel way we are treating immigrants and the lies that we now believe. These things are polar opposites of the Jesus I follow.

Francis Schaeffer is my favorite theologian of the twentieth century. He was not a perfect man, and I don’t agree with all he wrote. He did not like Thomas Aquinas, thinking he had gone too far in his use of reason, and I disagree with that. But still, I admire Francis and got to know his wife and children, barely, when I moved to Rochester, Minnesota. Francis’ writings kept me from leaving Christianity completely in 1990.

Francis’s son, Frank, may be the single voice that put the abortion issue on the map for American evangelicals. He did this through a movie he produced, starring his father and C. Everett Koop, the U.S. Surgeon General. But also through Frank’s speaking across the country at large rallies and on TV. Frank has thick skin and a gift for harsh rhetoric. I will mention that Frank eventually recanted from his position on abortion as he watched the Catholic and evangelical churches turn the issue into an idol.

But Frank became disillusioned with the American church, as I have at times. He now calls himself “An Atheist Who Prays,” but I see him differently, and if you listen to him, you will too. I see him as an honest man, maybe an agnostic (not certain of anything), but who still has the perspective of the truthful teachings of Jesus, as instilled in him by his father and mother.

There is a place for a harsh voice in the wilderness, a time for vinegar, a time for honey. I encourage you to listen to his entire short posting today, as we are becoming numb to what’s happening before our own eyes.

With Respect, Mike