It was early January when I decided to take a risk and register for my first marathon. It’s this weekend, April 27. It’s happening in the city that’s been my home for almost two years now, Louisville, Kentucky. It’s been a long and cold winter with hundreds of miles run. Training for this race has looked like a part-time job with five runs a week, averaging an hour each day; there’s been a mid-week long run plus a weekend run upwards... Read more
Every Thursday in Citizenship Confusion, Alan Noble discusses how we confuse our heavenly citizenship with citizenship to the state, culture, and the world. Among all the wonderful promises Jesus gave His church perhaps the most difficult to understand and accept is the promise of persecution. But there it is, in John 15:20. If they persecuted Christ, the world will certainly persecute His church. And Christ has been faithful to that promise, as church history shows. Despite the long and varied persecution... Read more
International adoption is something that must be pursued and practiced with great wisdom, lest our efforts to help the fatherless cause them more harm than good. Read more
The past couple weeks have seen a firestorm of controversy surrounding a 30-second television promo by MSNBC anchor host Melissa Harris-Perry. Conservative commentators reacted sharply against what they perceived as the insinuations of the video that children are owned in some collectivist way by the community or, worse, by the government at large: Such concerns cannot be dismissed out of hand. MSNBC, with its slogan of “Lean Forward,” has been consistently positioning itself in recent months and years as the... Read more
In the first of many great songs performed on the TV show Nashville, shy ingenue Scarlett (Clare Bowen) sings about her obviously unworthy on-again-off-again boyfriend Avery (Jonathan Jackson): Stop saying those sweet things You know I’d like to hear The horns are blowing louder And they’re destroying me Why do I keep drinking Wasting my time on you If I didn’t know better Well, dammit, I do … You might as well be the devil Oh keeping me out past... Read more
Here’s something fun: some Friday night, search Twitter for “Smoking hot wife.” You’ll likely find a multitude of tweets from pastors and church leaders who are going out on dates with their sexual attractive wives and announcing it to the world via twitter. Mary DeMuth’s powerful article at the Her.menutics blog at Christianity Today, “I’m Sick of Hearing About Your Smoking Hot Wife,” looks at the way this phrase has been harmfully used in evangelical circles. Her specific concern is that... Read more
Last week, I noted the irony in Don Draper’s compliant devotion to Raymond, the Heinz Beans Guy who didn’t want the younger, more suave and successful Heinz Ketchup Guy “screwing” his proverbial girlfriend. Heinz Ketchup would mean big business for Don and company; yet, there was Don: beckoning Pete Campbell to ensure fidelity to Heinz Beans, even as the two of them are cheating on their wives. From here on out, I suppose, just consider apparent ironies as kinds of... Read more
Metal bands understand the importance of the resurrection because if it is true it changes everything. Read more
Teaching children about Noah's Ark should neither gloss over the sin that caused the flood nor the rainbow of hope that appears at the end. Read more
Do these posts actually provide any legitimate value for the victims, or for those working to fix the situation? Read more
Christ and Pop Culture
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