Slavery and You: Why You’re Not as Free as You Think

October 14, 2016 By C. R. Wiley

Laws often trail practices, not the other way around. In most slave-keeping societies the law didn’t mandate slavery, it just legitimated the practice. And while some people were in the market for slaves, no one wanted to be one. Even Aristotle said that some people in antiquity considered slavery unnatural. (See The Politics.) In my last post on New Testament slavery I pointed out that slavery solved certain problems. There was the cheep labor problem, of course–but that’s only half... Read more

Was Jesus a Self-Promoter?

October 11, 2016 By C. R. Wiley

I’ve been working to reconcile myself to a reality I’ve been denying for years. What’s that? People who get ahead are really good at tooting their own horns. And the very best of them trick us into doing it for them. This has been difficult for me at a number of levels. Mostly because I find it distasteful (see here), and because I’m not sure how to reconcile that with the virtue of humility (see here). I’m actually pretty good... Read more

New Testament Household Codes and the Problem of Slavery

October 6, 2016 By C. R. Wiley

Slavery is an ignominious fact of history. Historically it was also well-nigh universal. I know you’ve heard otherwise, but its universality is simply another fact. Western civilization didn’t invent slavery. In fact, civilization itself didn’t invent slavery. Some of the most degrading forms slavery has taken developed within hunter-gatherer communities. I learned these things years ago when I read the best treatment of the subject that I have come across, Orlando Patterson’s, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture. (It won... Read more

Christian Humility and the Self-Promotion Problem

October 4, 2016 By C. R. Wiley

A little over a decade ago, when I first began writing fiction, a few of the biggest literary agents in New York City took an interest in me. It was the first sentence of my query letter that caught their eyes. Here it is: If you gave a thousand immortal monkeys armed with kitchen blenders all the works of R. L. Stine and Plato, what would they produce? If I remember correctly, about 20% of the letters resulted in requests... Read more

New Testament Household Codes: Embarrassing or Enlightening?

September 29, 2016 By C. R. Wiley

In my old church we never read the household codes. (The church I’m referring to here is the denomination I served for nearly 20 years.) What codes am I referring to? These: Ephesians 5:22-6:9, Colossians 3:18-4:1, 1 Peter 2:13-3:7, 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. We never read them from the pulpit, and if we could manage to skip them in small group Bible studies or Sunday School, we did. And no one would object, on the contrary, audible sighs of relief might... Read more

Getting Published is Easy, Getting Read Is the Tough Thing

September 27, 2016 By C. R. Wiley

Karl Marx, among the absurd things he said (some things were pretty sound, but I’m digressing), as I was saying, Karl Marx once said (and this is a paraphrase), “Someday, when the proletariat run things, we’ll spend our days writing poetry and fishing.” I don’t know about fishing, maybe that’s growing in popularity, but it sure seems like everyone has a story he’s working on. But whereas fishing is intrinsically satisfying and you’ve got something to eat when you’re done,... Read more

Focus! (Some changes coming to this blog.)

September 22, 2016 By C. R. Wiley

Art makes its demands. Anyone who believes it is merely a matter of self-expression hasn’t produced much of it. One of the demands it makes is focus. By that I mean, if you want to get something done, you need to stop looking at everything interesting thing that passes by and you focus on your work. The world is a marvelous and interesting place and I find this discipline difficult. There is a reluctance to my release. But finishing is... Read more

What Inside Out Managed to Leave Out

September 19, 2016 By C. R. Wiley

Pixar seems to have found that little spot behind the collective ear that we like to have scratched. Its first 2015 release, Inside Out, follows the same inimitable story-telling recipe it served up to great applause with films such as Up, WALL-E, and Ratatouille. Pixar films are captivating—artfully done—without losing the story in the process. And let’s give the studio credit for taking the high road, leaving sexual innuendo and scatological humor to its competitors. But Inside Out is something more; it’s a bit of... Read more

I Like It When a Children’s Book Scares Me a Little

September 14, 2016 By C. R. Wiley

I’m nearly done writing the text for a children’s picture book. It’s called Daisy (at least for now) and here’s how it begins… There once was a flower and her name was Daisy. She lived in a fairy forest, beneath her neighbors, a Mr. Birch, and a Mr. Beech, and she had six lovely petals, so soft, and so bright, and she loved them more than anything. Now the Old North Wind would come through on occasion and he cared... Read more