My least favorite picture from the First World War era shows the start of the Russian Revolution in Petrograd. My eyes are never drawn to the protestors in the street, but to the office workers looking up from tasks to see what was happening outside. They seem unconcerned or at the least not nearly as horrified as they would have been if they had seen just a few years into the future. They did not know it, but doom had... Read more
I am reading books on leadership with a group of friends at HBU and we began with Steve Jobs. Walter Isaacson is a better writer than Jobs’ a topic and at times the gap between talent and the subject’s pretensions shows in the book: Jobs was less consequential than he believed and Isaacson struggles to do more than show that Jobs was not the guru and revolutionary he pretended. Don’t get me wrong: Jobs, like Walt Disney, was an important figure in... Read more
Christians should never be motivated by hate and ideally do nothing we do not wish to do. If God’s will is our will, then evil is no temptation. It is the rubble of our lives that gets in the way of this happy reality. Some destruction comes from without from other hurting people who lash out and cause us pain. Most failure to live in reality comes from our own unwillingness to leave our decaying ghettos of vice and move... Read more
Christians are a minority in the United States when it comes to sexual ethics in (at least) five critical areas. Traditional Christians view divorce as bad, something God hates, even if allowed in some circumstances in a fallen world. A majority of Americans have a more casual attitude toward this evil. Christians viewed the life of celibacy and chastity as a great good, but most Americans view it as a curse. Christians think sex before marriage is wrong, but most... Read more
A prediction: If the Hobby Lobby case decided by the Supreme Court stands, then long-term traditional religious ideas about human sexuality will prevail in America. Why be so optimistic with such a limited case? After all, not much has changed. Nobody lost the freedom to buy contraception or have an abortion due to Hobby Lobby Supreme Court ruling. Some employees, at some companies, will not have some contraceptives paid out of their employer insurance. Those employees can still buy contraception... Read more
You work in a place, but you might not know the mission of the place where you work. Most have mission statements, but those generally are trumpeted on placards and websites, but languish unheeded in decision making meetings. Good mission statements in theory do not matter if ignored in practice. But if you work in a place and know the mission, see it guiding decision making and funding, and believe in that mission, then dedication will cover a multitude of mistakes the... Read more
James Geraghty has written a book, The Weed Agency, that is not a novel, but it is novel for our time. Like Pilgrims Progress, it is a message bulking up a short story, unlike because it is not an allegory. Like Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, pointed political satire appears, but it is not purely fictional. Real people show up in the book. Bunyanish and Swiftian writing are still done stylistic, but not this sort of comic truth telling. The book reminds me most of... Read more
If high school or college is the best time in your life, then either your life is oddly terrible or the problem of evil is insurmountable. Over a normal lifespan the time spent in high school and college is preparation for most of life. Life can be hard, and if the school is sound it protects from some of those challenges, but life also can become increasingly joyful. How? If I become an adult, I give up trying to fulfill my desires... Read more
Jesus said: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” A cross is not a piece of jewelry or a slogan, but an invitation to death. Jesus knew that agony awaited the person who wanted to know God. Why would that be so? God is love, God is good, and God created us. Why would God make our change so painful? One reason, I think, is that our broken... Read more
“Out of many, one.” Our national motto should remind Americans that unity is hard, disunity easy. Tyrants can command submission, but this is not true unity. Communists have no true “comrades,” since some comradeship is more comradely for some in a Soviet Union. Unity for humans is also not becoming homogeneous, since absorption by a political Borg is death of the individual not unity with a whole. Political unity comes from commonality and this commonality can be based on any number of factors. The... Read more
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