Summer Worship is at 9:30 AM

Pilgrim Lutheran Church Summer schedule began last week, May 24.

All Sunday morning services are now at 9:30 AM.

Sunday May 31: The Festival of Pentecost, Holy Communion, Pastor Wayne Weissenbuehler preaching

A Pilgrim writes to the Metro Lutheran

In February, ELCA St. Paul Bishop Peter Rogness wrote about his recent visit to Israel and Palestine. The depth of the region’s conflict, Rogness wrote, comes from each groups’ religious and historic beliefs that they have a right to the land. He further states that God chose this area to be a holy place, where the Prince of Peace came.

The beliefs held by Palestinians, Jews and Christians have two things in common. First, they are certain their beliefs are true, Second, their beliefs are an “accident.” For the most part, everyone’s beliefs are an accident. We get them from the culture into which we are born (an accident of birth). Be born somewhere else and you’ll believe something else … and you’ll believe it with certainty. If we Metro Lutheran readers were born in Tibet we wouldn’t be Lutheran.

The accidental, yet strongly held, beliefs of human beings fuel world conflicts. The feeling of certainty, of being right, of having the truth, is a natural human emotion. But in a complex world, living and fighting based on accidental beliefs isn’t working. Somehow we have to transform the way we think and believe.

Bishop Rogness ended his article expressing uncertainty about how to deal with the Middle East conflict. I don’t know either. It seems, though, that showing up at the peace table with the attitude that our beliefs are accidents, and that the feeling of certainty about our beliefs may be an illusion, would be a new start.

Allen Zumach

St. Paul, Minnesota