As we continue to move toward “normalcy” after close to a year-and-a-half of pandemic shut down of various forms, I hear more and more often in the news about the problem of people who prefer to remain on government help rather than return to work. I do not claim to be fully informed about this dynamic, but it is certainly telling that the states most often reporting these problems are also states in which the pre-pandemic minimum wage was at... Read more
My next book project is a memoir about the teaching life. I started gathering materials for it two summers ago–thanks to 18 months of pandemic, I’m just returning to it now. I’m going to be occasionally trying things out here on the blog over the summer as I sort through three decades worth of material–probably every Thursday. I begin with one of the most effective and thought-provoking hoaxes I ever pulled on my students . . . In 1729, Jonathan... Read more
I’ve always been afraid of people in possession of what they believe to be the truth. Donna Leon I love mysteries; a new-found favorite series is Donna Leon’s Guido Brunetti series set in Venice. There are close to thirty entries in the series to date–I’m currently finishing #12, but with some serious binge-reading this summer I will be caught up by the time school starts again at the end of August. Brunetti is not the brilliant mystery-solver that is standard fare... Read more
One of the most important things an author has to write when a book is in its late stages is the dedication. I have dedicated books to my mother, my sons, and to Jeanne, but my most recent book–Prayer for People Who Don’t Believe in God (Wood Lake, 2019)–is dedicated to my father. It makes sense, because in many ways this is my most controversial book so far, pushing the envelope of traditional thinking, belief, and practice concerning prayer as... Read more
In Lies We Believe Abut God, Wm. Paul Young (author of The Shack) tells the story of how one of his friends reacted to his speculation that we have the opportunity to choose God even after physical death (just one of many interesting non-orthodox ideas in this fascinating book). His friend’s viscerally negative response let Young know that he “had entered waters that were considered sacred. My intention made no difference. I had stepped on a land mine . . . [Later]... Read more
At the beginning of a seminar on the books of Exodus and Job from the Hebrew Scriptures with eleven honors freshmen not long ago, we had an interesting discussion about how to evaluate the stories we were (and would be) engaged with. I asked them how much difference the accuracy or inaccuracy the events portrayed made. Does the value of the stories rely on their being “true” in a factual sense? My students tentatively concluded that the value of the... Read more
One of the books I gave Jeanne for her birthday this past week is As a Woman: What I Learned about Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy after I Transitioned, by Paula Stone Williams. As a father of three, married to a wonderful woman, and holding several prominent jobs within the Christian community, Williams made the life-changing decision to physically transition from male to female at the age of sixty. Almost instantly, her power and influence in the evangelical world disappeared and her... Read more
Therefore with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. Isaiah 12 In his collection of essays Breakfast at the Victory, James Carse writes about the spiritual lessons he learned when the water at his family’s rural New England cabin started tasting funny one summer. It turned out that the wooden cover over the cabin’s well had collapsed under the weight of a deer or a bear, and was polluting the water that fed the well. Carse’s essay explores, with some... Read more
Over the past year, I have read and heard reports of marriages either on the rocks or completely falling apart. The reason? Covid-19 seclusion. A colleague told me that the legal system in China was overwhelmed with divorce petitions once things opened up over there–I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar is happening on this side of the world as well. Why? Because once they were forced to be in each other’s presence 24/7 for a year or more, many... Read more
The last text of the semester in my “Apocalypse” colloquium was Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven. The apocalypse in question is the “Georgia flu,” a fast-spreading virus that kills over 99% of the human population. The story skips nimbly back and forth between the pre-and post-pandemic world; one of the many fascinating features of the novel is tracking how a person’s seemingly benign attitudes and beliefs take on a life of their own under apocalyptic pressure.... Read more
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