“The world is not something that produces information. Information is something that produces the world (Rules, pp. 263-264).
What Is the Matter With Black Lives Matter?
Introduction: Taken at face value, the phrase black lives matter is a phrase that no sensible person could differ with. Of course they do. Also taken at face value, the rejoinder all lives matter is equally true. Of course they do. The reason for the back and forth, then, has nothing to do with the …
Sour Grapes
“True patronage will often be dismissed as philistinism by those who didn’t make the cut” (Rules, p. 258).
Funding the Wrong Thing
“I would argue that more patrons are willing to be patrons than artists are willing to be artists. Responsible patrons are put off by the bohemian posturing. If they are not put off by it, then they are funding the decadence of intellectual rot. If they run across a little lord byron in skinny jeans, …
Dumb in the Grand Style
“How many of us have had the experience of staring at a movie screen, thinking that thing up there the ‘dumbest thing I ever saw,’ while at the same time reeling under the weight of the knowledge that the dumbest thing you ever saw cost 75 million to make? And somebody — let us call …
Through Thick or Thin?
Introduction: One of the complicating factors in the recent dust-up over Trinitarian theology and complementarianism has been the fact that more is going on than trying to justify complementarianism in two different ways. Rather, there is the additional issue of people seeking to justify two different kinds of complementarianism — thick or thin. Thin and …
All Lies Matter
Introduction: Someone once observed, sagely, that it is not necessary to choose up sides in an ethnic war. The other side does that for you. Put another way, there are some things you can’t opt out of. But considered from another angle, in the meantime there are certain things that Christians should strive to understand …
America, Black and Blue
In the aftermath of this most recent series of tragic shootings — Minneapolis, Baton Rouge, and Dallas — the spiritual disarray of our nation is manifest in how we tend immediately to cluster into two groups. One identifies with anger at injustice and the other identifies with the need for order and calls urgently for …
Review: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande My rating: 4 of 5 stars Clear, informative, and important. My generation is in the thick of helping elderly parents, and we are not all that far away from being elderly parents. Gawande is a nominal Hindu, and so is not helpful with …
Another Pass or Two
