Tag: christianity
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The Spirituality of Softening
The only religions I find worth anything are those that soften people. This is a thing I’d felt for a while, and something I’m sure someone else has put into words before, but when it finally occurred to me it was something of a revelation. The Christianities I’ve seen in America that turn me off…
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The Action Gap and WWJD
There are things that we say that we want to do and things that we do. There are things we say we believe, and then there are the beliefs that the actions we actually do can clearly be read as meaning. I was talking with a friend recently when I–as far as either of us…
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OPW: “Far Out on the Uncharted Arm”
And now, the immortal words that began two of the five books in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quintilogy. In case you were wondering they’re The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western…
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Review: For the Bible Tells Me So
For the Bible Tells Me So, a recent documentary by Daniel Karslake is an interesting beast. Through at least the last twenty minutes, my eyes were wet and my nose was running. And though that’s surely a sign of something that’s emotionally resonant, I’m not without reservation in recommending it. After the obligatory footage of…
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OPW: ‘Radical Love Gets A Holiday’
This last Monday, this country celebrated–to the extent that it celebrates any federal holiday–Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. In honor of the occasion, the New York Times ran an interesting essay by Sarah Vowell that I couldn’t help but agree with. Here’s what Dr. King got out of the Sermon on the Mount. On Nov.…
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The Serenity Prayer
When you look around at the world, it’s easy to be angry. There are socio-political problems all over: Darfur, Myanmar, Iraq, China, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Somalia… the list could go on and on. There are also the scourges of poverty and hunger that never seem to leave us. And the more mundane but pervasive problems…
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OPW: The Dilemma of Belief
Today’s “Other People’s Worlds” is about the age-old question of belief versus atheism. It’s also a rather oddly cited quote, for which I apologize. It comes from the philosopher William James’s “The Will to Believe,” one of the most famous Christian apologetics. In it, James argues that belief (in God) is a choice that one…
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The Two Greatest Commandments
While trolling the internet, I came upon a rather pedestrian claim that in the coming election the liberals will try to “get God” as a way to convince Americans that there are issues more important than ending abortion and stopping gay marriage. The claim is profoundly absurd, not least of all because by now most…
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The Problem of Heaven and Earth
This idea arose from something E. O. Wilson, the famous biologist, recently told Bill Moyers. He was essentially giving reasons that people, in this case Christians, use for not concerning themselves with the impact of human activity on the planet and other species. I hope I can lay out the argument with some clarity, separate…
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Review: Jesus Camp
Jesus Camp is a documentary that examines the Evangelical movement in the United States. It does this by following a few Evangelicals (I believe they’re mostly Pentecostal) for a time. And on the whole, it does a fairly even-handed job of this, not seeming to judge its subjects, merely to present them. This may be…