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
Or Three Good Cameras
“It will never be possible to fix a bad story with good cameras” (Rules, p. 255).
Al Jolson in Blackface
So Google is apparently having trouble keeping up with our exact location as they keep barreling past various jerkwater junctions. Didn’t anybody tell them what the deal was supposed to be? This crazy train we are on stops for no man, and yet today Google tried to honor — I can barely type for wheezing …
A Fluffy Ursine Head
When I say that I would like to offer a new argument against Darwinism, I do not mean to indicate that no one has ever thought of it before. That’s as may be. I simply mean that I have not encountered it yet. So here goes: The argument arises from a question. On the assumption …
That Kind of Calvinist
“And by Calvinist, I do not mean someone who grew up in the environs of Grand Rapids, and whose thought processes are tinctured with some elements of a by-gone Reformed tradition. I mean somebody who actually thinks that God is God, all the way up, all the way down, and all the way across” (Rules, …
Coming Out
“The goal was not to destroy holiness, but to get it out of the monasteries. The goal was not to destroy beauty, but to get it out of places where it was being falsely worshiped, and move it to places where it could be innocently enjoyed” (Rules, p. 251).
If At First You Don’t Secede . . .
Introduction: I know that it is the fifth of July, but the principles we were talking about yesterday have not gone away. Some discussion online yesterday made me realize that a brief history lesson was in order, followed by just a few contemporary applications. For Christians particularly, how does the American War for Independence comport …