Unless we begin our understanding of cultural history with certain key biblical doctrines well in hand, we are going to get hopelessly gummed up. One of the stickiest ways to get gummed up is in the matter of glibly assigning responsibility for the causes of this or that. But before turning to that, let me …
A Black Swan Revival
Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularized the phrase black swan in the title of his fine book The Black Swan. A black swan event is a surprise, it has a major impact, and there will be those (after the fact) who claimed they saw it coming. But in actuality, virtually no one saw it coming because these …
Getting Our Sensate Groove Back
I recently caused a small stir on Facebook by saying this: “One of the greatest aesthetic and arististic gifts the world ever received was the casting down of images in the Protestant Reformation.” I thought it might be good for me to explain what was behind that comment, at least a little bit. Yesterday, our …
What’s the Story?
Nate has a guest post over at Desiring God, which can be found here. The takeaway quote is here — “Kids (and adults) don’t just need the truth in their heads — they need it in their bones.” And the delivery platform for getting the truth into the bones is story. Fussers want all the …
Little Lord Byron in Skinny Jeans
Trevin Wax has a good interview with Nate here. In the course of that interview Nate says something about a recent “prediction” I made about a potential explosion in the world of Reformed aesthetics. “Think of it more as a gameplan. He’s checking off his fight-these-strategic-battles list. He’s not a guy in the stands making …
Bad Stories and Good Cameras
A few weeks ago I wrote about A Jungle Full of Monkeys. In that post, I talked about the incipient reformation of aesthetics that may be taking shape among the young, restless, and Reformed. The interest in that post, and response to it, tells me that I am not just firing random neurons on this …
A Jungle Full of Monkeys
There are two basic ways for evangelical Christians to care about the arts. One is the Kuyperian Reformed route, and the other is the way of bohemian pose-striking. One of the most heartening aspects of the “young, restless, and Reformed” development is the possibility of a real aesthetic reformation. Perhaps I should explain myself. Scripture …