When I was a boy, so long ago that you could play outside all day without adult supervision, there was an odd custom. At Clendenin Elementary School, we would hand out cards to everyone in the class. These cards were sometimes homemade, but most often purchased in boxes from Kroger’s. There were Peanuts gang cards, but I preferred the more serious cards that had a lingering Victorian flavor. There was always one teacher card and that was easy to give... Read more
The greatest danger is not that we will lose, but that we will win having become what we fight in winning. What will it profit us if we win the whole world and lose our souls? Yet I am told, very often told, that this is merely weakness and defeatism. “We must fight as we must fight, sometimes nasty and when we have won and are done, we will drop those tools and live like gentlemen.” This is more or less... Read more
There is hope if we feel lost. Oddly, the first thing that happens when I say this is for someone to shoot out a message saying they do not feel lost. My response is to be very happy for them. If you are happy with how things are, then my job is not to make you sad. Maybe somebody is called to wake people up to their actual misery, but I think only very great people should do this very often.... Read more
Around 1986, I discovered that my Commodore 64 could link to other computers in a service named Q-Link. The speed of conversation was so slow I could see the letters of each word forming as the other person wrote his question. I would try to guess the question and start sending the answer at the same time. This sometimes failed. Once I argued for the existence of God when the person was asking me about the problem of evil .... Read more
Memo to Administration of Jesus University From: Al C. Biades Ed.D., Consultant for WIN.EDU! T0 Leadership: We are worried about the future viability of your educational project. First, you are heavily invested in disciples and apostles with hardly any support services. One has to question the viability of such a model. You have too many teachers and not nearly enough people to support those teachers by telling those teachers what to do and teach. Second, the organization frequently doubles down... Read more
The road to hell is a broad, paved, smooth gradual slope. By the time a man must abandon hope of redemption, his little graft, his passive aggressive anger, or his little bigotries have become monstrous. Does it really matter if I tell that racist joke? Is it so important that I gossip a bit or imply something that is not quite right about my competitor? Decent people go wrong, but often in small steps over little disappointments. A businessperson might... Read more
The speeder driving, womp rat killing Luke Skywalker had not done anything to be ready to learn. He was undisciplined and unfocussed. He wasn’t brave enough to defy his Uncle and go to the Academy or loving enough to be patient knowing he would get there eventually. Why would he be ready for the chance of a lifetime from an old man stuck in the desert? Even if old Ben Kenobi was his ticket off that planet, a lifetime of... Read more
Female and male . . . God created both. And oddly that is now one of the most controversial things Christians believe on the very white, very wealthy fringes of global culture. Sadly, those fringes are dominate in some places in the United States. Most of the world supports marriage between a man and a woman, because people believe both the woman’s and the man’s voice is necessary to raising a child. All loves are not equal because some loves cannot... Read more
Is the story of America one of manifest destiny? God forbid. Is the story of America so great that a global church should cry: “America first!” Never. Yet the story of the United States of America is also not the story of oppression that my college students bring to me. Every nation needs a myth to unify and give meaning to our actions. A myth in this sense of the word is what Plato created: a likely story. It is not just... Read more
This is not a gentle time. People of the Word turn to words to step back from the events in the hopes of making sense of them. What to read in such a time as this? 1984 is too late, Brave New World still a bit early. Ugly times demand a good work and It Can’t Happen Here really isn’t very good. Let me suggest Watership Down, the most gentle of books on courage, culture building, and conflict. Richard Adams proves that... Read more
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