Plane rides always let me listen to fascinating conversations: when you have no choice it isn’t evesdropping. Sitting behind an English graduate student and listening to her explain university life to a business guy my age was enjoyable. Each discipline has thinking, jargon, and assumptions that make it hard for outsiders to understand. I do it all the time with mixed success, so I listened for pointers. She did a fine job explaining the importance of English to civilization. The... Read more
I have seen the future and it is good. I can be jolly even though this is not Christmas. In fact, it is about as not Christmas as it can be. The Holiday is far enough in the past that we have ceased to think about it, but not close at all. In fact, thinking about Christmas is necessary. The end of Christmas and Epiphany start the journey to Lent and the Passion of the Christ. There are hard days... Read more
Every so often I get the following type of email in my box: Hello Dear, My name is miss Ann Daniel I saw your Email profile today I will like to know more about you. Please if you would not mind kindly get back to me so that we can know each other better, I shall send my picture to you when i receive your good response in my email box, Note: distance, age, race or religion is no hindrance... Read more
Nationwiding: The act of depressing a joyous event with anxious moralism. The entire nation experienced “nationwiding” during the 2015 Super Bowl when Nationwide Insurance spent a great deal of money running an advertisement to make sure nobody anywhere was simply having a good time. Leave aside the worry that an insurance company is the wrong company to talk about the accidental death of children. Disregard the tastelessness of showing this disturbing advert at a moment when very young children were... Read more
A worry is abroad that we will Americanize our Christianity, but people should stop worrying. If you are an American, you’d better Americanize your Christianity or you will find it impossible to live your Christianity. Work hard to live out your Christianity in your culture: change what must be changed, adapt what can be adapted, and rejoice in what God showed our forefathers and mothers that was good, true, and beautiful. In doing so, Christianity will not change, an American... Read more
I can hear it coming. There is a branch of religion and irreligion that worries that somewhere, someplace, somebody is having a good time. This good time must be suspect as good times always are and so jeremiads follow. Super Bowl parties, the Super Bowl, football, and Doritos will all be condemned by the same sort of puritanical souls that banned Christmas: a trick done by religious fundamentalists a long time ago and atheists in my lifetime. Perhaps the most... Read more
The Super Bowl is the least serious event Americans take seriously. And, yet, why should we waste the day without learning? I have thought about each Super Bowl over the course of a life spent loving the Packers and taking the Super Bowl more seriously than it deserves. I rooted for the Bills four times. I know the meaning of “wide right.” I can still see Favre with arms up lifted and then failing on fourth down against Denver. So... Read more
I have been lucky to know and work for great leaders, one of them being my Dad. He is good, humble, loyal, and manages from love. Not everyone is so blessed. The worst case of a leader in the twentieth century may be Stalin. Stalin was the Apostle of Fear and, sadly, many in authority are his disciples. Read Stalin, the first volume of the best autobiography of the Russian tyrant, because too few people know Stalin was one of the worst... Read more
The man who cannot learn from fiction because it is not literally true is like the man who cannot watch an event on television because it is not “literally” before his eyes. He is missing the truth in the representation of reality. Fiction has taught me as much as n0n-fiction. That Hideous Strength, Jane Eyre, the myths of Republic, and any film by Tarkovsky have given me truths and those truths have helped me. There exists, however, a certain weirdling that hears “fiction” and thinks:... Read more
There are many decent responses to the old “problem:” how could a good God command the genocide of all the people of Canaan?” Let us leave aside the over literalism that ignores the spiritual point of the passage and assumes that we are reading God’s battle plan of the people of Israel. One thing that is often overlooked in the discussion of the issue is that the people of Israel did not obey the command. Genocide did not happen. At first, this... Read more
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