The Slippery Nature of Suffering: How Do We Decide What Makes Suffering Unbearable?

Last updated on: October 24, 2012 at 2:16 pm By Ellen Painter Dollar

In Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver, young Jonas knows nothing—absolutely nothing—about pain and suffering until after his twelfth birthday. Jonas’s community (which exists in a post-apocalyptic future) is safe and efficient. Not only do the community’s residents not experience pain and suffering due to warfare, illness or disability, unemployment, family discord, or any other cause, they also don’t experience the things that give our days joy and meaning, including music, color, art, and both familial and romantic love. Families are... Read more

On Going Viral

Last updated on: October 20, 2012 at 11:28 am By Ellen Painter Dollar

Well, this has been interesting. As of right now, my post on “Why I am a Christian Democrat” has nearly 30,000 Facebook “likes” and almost 350 comments. This has never happened to me before. It’s exciting, gratifying, and a little exhausting. The gratifying part: I’ve heard (on the blog and privately) from many people who are grateful that I put their own thoughts into words. (I think this is actually the reason God called me to write. I hear this... Read more

Remembering Louis: On the Limits of Charity and the Need for a Government Safety Net

Last updated on: October 17, 2012 at 12:19 pm By Ellen Painter Dollar

It took me a while to figure Louis out. Like all of the people, mostly single men, who came to the social service agency where I worked as an employment counselor, he was struggling and looking for help. He was homeless and unemployed. Unlike many of our agency’s program participants, he had no history of substance abuse. He was friendly and cheerful. While his clothes were frayed and in need of a wash, he was well-groomed otherwise. He came in... Read more

Why I am a Christian Democrat

Last updated on: November 19, 2012 at 11:50 am By Ellen Painter Dollar

A friend recently watched, helpless and aggrieved, as her husband—a philosophy professor at a conservative Christian university—was pummeled online for co-writing an essay with a fellow professor on why they will not vote for Mitt Romney. Many readers claimed to be disgraced, disgusted, and just plain flummoxed as to how professing Christians could argue against voting for Romney on the basis of economic policies that, in the professors’ opinion, are detrimental to our nation’s poor. These dissenting commenters argued for... Read more

On Writing, Reading, and Seeking Direction

Last updated on: October 12, 2012 at 8:51 pm By Ellen Painter Dollar

I feel I owe regular readers of this blog an apology…or at minimum, an explanation. Save for a passionate and far-too-long-to-be-seemly post about homework in my children’s elementary school, I haven’t written much in about 10 days. Some fine questions in the comments section about my post on gender selection remain unanswered. I have always compared blogging to inviting people, including random strangers, into my living room for conversation, and have always promised that, as a good hostess, I would... Read more

Homework: A Parent’s Plea for Quality over Quantity

Last updated on: October 12, 2012 at 10:06 am By Ellen Painter Dollar

Note to my regular audience: This blog post is meant to jump start a conversation about homework at my children’s elementary school, so it may or may not be of interest to you. That said, if you have experience as a parent and/or a teacher and can chime in with some homework wisdom, I hope you will. Note to Wolcott School community members: Whether you agree or disagree with what I’ve written here, please chime in with your own family’s homework... Read more

Christian Ethics 101: Ethical Decisions about Money, How We Live, and Our “Stuff”

Last updated on: October 1, 2012 at 9:02 am By Ellen Painter Dollar

This week, in the class I’m teaching at my Episcopal Church on Christian Ethics, we focused on questions around money, and specifically around how we spend our money to support a particular way of life. So often, when we think of ethical questions, we think of hot-button issues—abortion, assisted suicide, gay marriage. So why am I starting off this class talking about money? Two reasons: 1) Most of us are rarely, if ever, called upon to make wrenching ethical decisions... Read more

Christian Ethics 101: What Makes Ethics “Christian”?

Last updated on: September 25, 2012 at 2:56 pm By Ellen Painter Dollar

I am teaching a five-week course at my Episcopal church on Christian ethics. In tandem with the class, I’m going to post a “Christian Ethics 101” column on the blog once a week, reflecting on what my class participants and I discussed the previous Sunday. What do we mean by “Christian ethics”? Ethics in general is a discipline that people of all religious backgrounds, and none, can participate in. In our diverse and pluralistic culture, we frequently call upon very... Read more

Why Allowing Parents to Choose Their Baby’s Gender is Wrong

Last updated on: September 24, 2012 at 3:12 pm By Ellen Painter Dollar

When I write and speak about the ethical questions raised by reproductive technologies, I do not argue that reproductive technologies are all good or all bad, or that using these technologies is clearly right or clearly wrong. My agenda, rather, is to encourage more robust and informed conversations around these technologies, because the science has developed faster than our cultural conversations around their promise and pitfalls. But as I’ve researched and discussed the fraught questions around reproductive technologies, I have,... Read more

Patheos (& Other) Peeps: LaVonne Neff on Healthcare Rationing

Last updated on: September 20, 2012 at 2:00 pm By Ellen Painter Dollar

On Fridays, I publicize work by other writers. I focus often but not exclusively on writers affiliated with Patheos, the religion and spirituality web portal that hosts my blog. Please share the love by reading these writers’ blog posts and books, sharing them via Facebook, Twitter, etc., and/or participating in online conversations with them. Although we have yet to meet in person, I consider LaVonne Neff to be one of my mentors, in both writing and trying to figure out... Read more