Pastor Foltz is Pastor Emeritus of Saint James Lutheran Church in Gettysburg, PA and author of the the Frontline Study content.
I’ve been implying that we must build new or rebuild old cultural values lost by relying on technological systems. This assumes a very loose definition of culture as shared meanings and purposes that bind us together and guide our social relationships. The loss occurs when technological systems provide what we need or think we need […]
I’ve been arguing that modern technology brings us many marvelous comforts and capabilities but also erodes traditional culture’s benefits. When people use technology to solve all their problems, culture becomes irrelevant. Let me go over some of the things lost. Culture provides guidance in social relationships. Technology focuses on overcoming our natural human limitations. It […]
Traditional culture provided all sorts of guidelines for relating to our neighbors. Some of you have questioned if there was ever such a thing. You argue I should recognize the US has never had a common story. In the past, our democratic government has simply been able to prevent our present cultural wars. Perhaps then […]
I think I got ahead of myself. Responses to the first lesson indicate I should define what I mean by culture and technology. In the past, a community was associated with a culture. That culture was not something consciously built but an understanding that developed naturally from living together. That is not to say everyone […]
A member of our Science, Technology, and Society group from South Korea mused that he belonged to three different cultures during his lifetime. The first was the traditional Korean in which he grew up, the second was American after the war in 1953, and the third was the technological in recent decades. He argued technology […]
Many work for peace, justice, and love. Karen asked if Christian faith offered optimism that is worth the time and effort. I think she was expressing the frustration a lot of us are experiencing. We felt we were overcoming our past shortcomings. We had elected a Black American president. We had a viable woman candidate […]
The third major biblical vision of the future is the promise of love. Let’s use Martin Luther King’s teachings to examine it. He specifically relates hope to the modern situation in the USA. In his “I Have a Dream” speech, the vision is the Beloved Community. He begins by describing it as “I have a […]
A second vision of the future prevalent throughout the Bible is God’s promise of justice. It’s important to understand we are talking about justice not law. Ours is a society of law that tries to provide fairness and equality in resolving conflicts between individual people and groups. The justice vision promises a caring community that […]
Most of the Bible was written to people who did not seem to have a future. Faith in God offered hope against hope (Romans 4:18). That faith was informed by stories that often included promises about the future in which peace, justice, and love prevailed. These promises offered encouragement for pursuing those visions in the […]
What seems to be the initial biblical scenario did not work out. Jesus did not raise the dead and then return with them to establish an eternal kingdom on earth. At first, believers were told to wait patiently. Some still do. However, most modified this vision of the future. Believers supposedly enter some kind of […]
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