Letter to the Editor: I was wondering if you could share how your community/churches organize and execute your Psalm Sings and events in the community. Are they more or less your version ...
Letters for Fun and Profit
Keep It Tough
“Math will hurt their feelings, because math reminds everybody of the Last Judgment. The answer is right or wrong, and you can’t blow sunshine at it.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 51
Israel, Iran, and Good Old Vermont
Introduction: Whenever I write anything about Israel—anything whatever—I open up my Twitter feed a couple hours later only to discover a misty cloud-sourced analysis of my many and sundry ...
How Centuries Sanitize Things
“So in this powder key called Jerusalem, what did Jesus do? Did Jesus come in to pour soothing oil on troubled waters? No, He went into the Temple, for crying out loud, and started flipping over tables . . . We call it the cleansing of the Temple, of course, because it is thousands of years in the past, and we read a bronze plaque about it in the Museum of Heroic Bygone Deeds. What would we call it if it had happened last week? Vandalism? Performance art? Prophecy without a permit?”
With or Without the Pale Horse
Jesus Mobs
“Now can we all agree that these crowds, as warmly affectionate toward John the Baptist as they might have been, and as doggedly committed to the honor of the rabbi Jesus as they were, were people who had not taken on board the full import of what the Scriptures had required of them? I mean, had you gone to one of their rallies, who knows what kind of flags might have been there? And did their presence in the mix in any way discredit what Jesus was up to? Not even a little bit.”
Rocks on the Large Side
“Character is hard. Character is built through difficulty. Character grows when you are out in the rain, picking up rocks. But personality grows, or thinks it does, when it is being flattered, stroked, cajoled, and otherwise lied to.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 50
The Rubbery Bones of the Lazy
Introduction: In just a minute, I will have a thought experiment for you. Like all cultures our culture generalizes, but we have been trained to generalize about poverty in an exculpatory way. ...
Different Kinds of Hustle
“Character wants to deliver a product; personality wants to get a sale.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 49
Only Two Destinations
“Everyone is growing up into something. No matter what the world says, our life is not static. You are either growing up into Christ, or you are growing up into Gollum—diseased, malicious, and bent. Those are the only options. You can’t just freeze the frame and say, ‘I want to stop right here and be sorry for myself forever.’”
Keep Your Kids, p. 49