Category: Thinking Out Loud
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Complaints about “Wokeness” …
… need context. The event described in this article – and its cover-up – is part of the context. [Be forewarned – it’s gruesome. Think Psalm 137:9.] It seems to me that when we – whoever we are – complain about “wokeness,” we need to remember that it’s a response to a problem. Not a…
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De-constructing Gun Violence
Violence is deep in us – humans – and so is the fear of violence. This probably has something to do with the way we – Americans – are stockpiling the means of violence at an ever-accelerating rate. Keeping candy in the kitchen makes it more likely we’ll cheat on our diets. Having guns in…
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Ontology Schmontology
I get annoyed when people start talking about Ontology! How Things Are. In their Very Being. I got annoyed in school when Heidegger did it. I got annoyed in school when my office mate who was “a Phenomenologist” did it. And I get annoyed these days when people on the internet do it, like pastors…
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“When Stephen, Full of Power and Grace, …”
The story of Stephen (lectionary version) is coming up this year for the 5th Sunday of Easter. I have an indelible memory of the late great Bill Hennessy singing this hauntingly beautiful hymn as a solo in church – guessing, also on a 5th Sunday of Easter (A). Maybe a solo because this particular hymn…
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Robot rage, or Why???
Someone designed this monstrosity, or, another opportunity to practice at least trying to act like a Christian.
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Studying Matthew 18 1-9
The greatest in the kingdom of the heavens is like a little child, which means … ?
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Thoughts on “Being the Church” on a Bad Day
[Trigger warning: this post talks about sexual violence, Biblical violence, and church.] My denomination is in the national news these days, because Judges 19 was the text for the exegesis ordination exam given at the end of January. The miserable consequences were, it seems to me, foreseeable, and avoidable, and are still unfolding. For a…
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Don’t Cry About the Deficit before You Tax the Rich
That’s it. That’s the whole post. You must not distort justice; you must not show partiality; and you must not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live…
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Dismay
I listened to Beth Allison Barr’s conversation with Pete Enns and Jared Byas on The Bible for Normal People this morning, while I was making coffee and sorting out tax forms, because I read her book, and I was interested. Her ideas are not what produced the dismay. What caused me dismay was hearing, towards…
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On Sending the Rich Away Empty
it might not be as bad as it [might] sound to send the rich away empty
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To Die For
thoughts on study that finds evidence for a link between political party affiliation and excess death post COVID-19
Matters of Interpretation 