Into Lions' Den Again: I Will Appreciate Your Thoughts and Prayer As I Testify Again in Trial

Dear Readers,

I appreciate your comments here very much. The primary reason I haven't been able to reply to or acknowledge them in the past several days is that I have been called to give testimony in a trial. I wrote about this trial several years ago when I previously gave testimony in it — here and here.

The verdict in the first iteration of the case was appealed and the case is now being relitigated in court. I will appreciate your sending me positive thoughts and/or praying as I give testimony again today. When religious institutions collude with big business (e.g., insurance companies covering church-affiliated universities) to crush and smear employees and whistle-blowers, and when courts permit this kind of thing to happen, anyone simply seeking to tell the simple truth can and will be cruelly savaged.

All the more so, in my experience, when the institution spearheading the savage cruelty imagines it has some version of "God" on its side, while its behavior belies in the grossest way possible the call of the prophets and of Jesus to embody love, justice, and mercy in its dealings with others.

Thanks for thinking of me today, and I apologize that I haven't been able to reply to or thank you for your postings in the past few days.

The graphic is Wincent Leopold Slendzinski's "Daniel in the Lions' Den" (1859), which is in  the Slendzinski Gallery in Bialystok. Wikimedia user Tatiana Matlina has uploaded a photo of the painting to Wikimedia Commons with permission for it to be shared freely online.