Christianity reserves all sexuality to the act of marriage, but not everyone can get married in the Faith. Millions of Christians will never get married, because nobody wishes to marry them or the people they love do not want to marry them.* As the number of people getting married in the West declines, and as we marry later, we oddly demand that this pleasure be available to us . . . even though we know it will not be available to all... Read more
Dear William, Every kid that experiences God discovers, with joy, that most other people have contact with the Divine. There comes the moment, however, when he discovers many different religions or denominations. My acquaintances who are atheists always make a big deal about this moment of discovery, so it may be at the heart of what produces irrational doubts. Why irrational? A few people think that different interpretations of experience of God means that God does not exist or that... Read more
Dear William, You have kindly let me share our correspondence with other people (at least my mother reads this blog). As a fairly new Christian (four years), you are beginning to think about your faith. This is good and a natural part of being a faithful Christian and I appreciate the chance to share my experience. To be real faith, of the Christian kind, there should naturally create a yearning for greater understanding of our mutual commitments. Faith is not... Read more
How do you honor your parents or childhood church if you fundamentally disagree with important aspects how you were raised? I am not talking about situations or structures where the law must intervene. The state exists in our broken world to bring justice and any healing, hope, or forgiveness can often happen only after justice is done. How such hope can happen in Christ in some situations is beyond any experience, wisdom, or grace I possess. This is a job for trained... Read more
It is the middle of March, so I am reading Middlemarch. This plan has been much more cheering than the year I studied Julius Caesar during the Ides of March. Middlemarch may be the best novel written in English, though perhaps not. Unlike Pride and Prejudice, the novel meanders and it does not sparkle with the wit of Great Expectations. The sermonizing is not as effective as Small House, but still Middlemarch does everything attempted about as well as it... Read more
Noah is in the news. He is famous for his ark and the grace he found in the eyes of the Lord, but his struggle with drunken behavior is less well known. A man who saw the world before the Flood destroyed it evidently could not face life in the wreckage and so he drank, as foolish men do, to dull the pain. Self-medication left him passed out naked in his tent and one of his sons decided to expose... Read more
Not all dreams are valid and some dreams must die for our good, but yet like Joseph, religious believers are called to be dreamers. Our dreams are to be the dreams God gives us, those that will make us our true self, not the self we imagine, but the self He created us to be. The common practical advice that “you should live your life and not some else’s life” is true, but not in the way most people mean... Read more
Ratatouille: a beautifully made movie based on a jaw-dropping premise: rats in the kitchen. It works, but do not ask me how. Visuals of rats running about the kitchen as workers with one as chef should make me gag, but they do not. Even better, the film has a fascinating moral: not everyone can be a great chef, but great chefs can be found anywhere. This slogan is such an improvement over “follow your heart” or “all dreams are valid” and... Read more
Lupita Nyong’o won an Oscar for an outstanding job as an actor in an important movie. Nothing bad about those facts and important to celebrate. Fortunately, Hollywood, which never loses a moment to celebrate itself, has done so. Lupita Nyong’o won an Oscar and since chances to do so (and actual wins) have been rare for non-white actors I am glad of it. Thank God for any sign of cracks in our ongoing institutional racism. Nobody should be sorry Lupita Nyong’o won... Read more
Pamela is an early English sort-of-novel showing the triumph of the virtue of Pamela: one of the more insufferable characters ever to appear in literature. For those tempted to believe that Elsie Dinsmore, her American soul sister, would be tolerable if English: wrong. Virtue is supposed to be triumphant in Pamela and a certain virtue is, but meanwhile virtue becomes unbearable. How could virtue be anything other than desirable? It is a ploy of the Evil One to twist an evil around a virtue so... Read more
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