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“Second Half Living”
At the beginning of the year I heart a presentation by Arthur Brooks on professional decline that was given at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Just a few days ago I ran across an article by Brooks laying out the same principles, but adding some different “takeaways”.
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We can’t settle for simple sets of rules
One takeaway from the excellent conversation I listened to on the podcasts I referred to in my last post was this insight: when we are tired of making too many decisions in our lives we fall to fundamentalism. There is a hard right and a hard left fundamentalism, but those are the areas we go to when we’re done trying…
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The future of the American Church
You might remember “Veggie Tales.” Phil Vischer (creator of Veggie Tales) has a podcast he’s been doing for several years with Skye Jethani and Christian Taylor. It’s now called the Holy Post Podcast and I look forward to it every week. Phil is the funny man and for the first half of the show he cuts it up with Skye…
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The cultural status of our Christianity
I am taking a bit of a break from my normal daily lectionary reading and going back to something I have enjoyed my adult life walking with Christ. It is to walk slowly through a book of the Bible and pray. I like walking through a book of the Bible and study, pray, think devotionally, theologically, etc. This is something…
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The way of community
“I still think that the only solution is the land, and community, a community which is unjudging and which forgives ‘seventy times seven,’ as Jesus Christ said. We who think in terms of community at least have the assurance, the conviction, that we are on the right path, going in the right direction, taking the right means to achieve the…
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Public grief and social media
The tragic loss of Rachel Held Evans last week demonstrates how messy grief can be in our lives. Add to that the unforgiving terrain of social media, and it’s a huge mess.
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The transformational possibility of education
“I think back to my college years and am so grateful for a university — the University of Chicago — that gave me the open stacks where I could find The New Masses, and had the gall to force me to read a book that at the time I truly hated. A school can transform a life.” — David Brooks,…
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The plantation visit
Traveling with visiting family the past few days we had an opportunity to learn a lot of history in and around New Orleans. Our last stop was a former sugar plantation called “Laura Plantation.”
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Echo Chambers and the American Church
My daily reading takes me through four major portions of Scripture each day. One of my Old Testament readings this month has been a journey through Jeremiah. This has ignited my thinking once again into a long process the Lord has taken me through over the past 3 or so years I’ve called “Living in Babylon.” This is something that…
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Reading (and listening) Round Up
From time to time I like to look back and see what I’ve been reading and what has been challenging my thinking and my prayer life.
Category: Culture
