I’ve honestly been trying not to weigh in on the Kim Davis situation, because the whole situation smells rotten to me. But there’s a blatant hypocrisy to her position that I haven’t seen anybody mention… so here goes. First off, let me say that I think both sides are wrong in this issue, and both sides are right (at least in a way). Judges like Justice David Bunning are required to compel people to follow the laws, which he did. Kim Davis... Read more
Organized labor has seen better days. Plagued by political corruption, changing economic realities, and poor leadership, labor has been weakening for decades. American Christians seem no different from the rest of Americans who are either ambivalent or even happy about this reality, but healthy labor organizations are essential to our society. Their failure–no matter who is to blame for that–is not a good sign. In the 1950s, the ratio between CEO salary of S&P 500 type companies and their workers was 20-to-1. According... Read more
I keep seeing media sites taking Kanye’s VMA speech seriously. The worst offender is Slate, and the article that calls it the Greatest Awards Show Acceptance Speech of All Time.” Seriously? The VMA awards have become ever more ridiculous each year. The unofficial theme in 2015 was clearly Idiocracy Live, complete with a Camacho-like presidential address by Kanye (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch the clip at the end of this post). The line I keep seeing in the media... Read more
I confess that football season is here, so it’s time for my yearly confession that I love to watch the game of football. However, it is becoming more and more obvious that traumatic brain injury is a consistent side effect of the sport. It’s also becoming obvious that there is no way to make it safe. My confession is that I have always enjoyed this game–I’m the son of a high school football coach–but I’m feeling more and more conflicted... Read more
When Vester Lee Flanagan left behind his attempts to explain the unexplainable—the reason he shot two former colleagues in cold blood during a live broadcast—the rationale he gave was simple revenge; revenge for the mass shooting at a church in Charleston; revenge for mistreatment by his formal employer. After reading the accounts of his work history and personal issues it seems obvious that Flanagan had some sort of serious personality disorder. So revenge is too simple to be a satisfactory explanation, if... Read more
I am excited to see that J.R. Woodward at V3 Church Planting Movement is engaging with Shrink on his blog today. You can read the full article at his site. J.R. is crashing together themes from Shrink, Slow Church, and the recent attention given to Amazon.com’s work/leadership culture. It’s a pretty interesting read. Here’s a quick excerpt: Too often the church has uncritically adopted the practices of the business world, baptizing them with Christian language, then wondering why we are becoming less like Christ... Read more
I confess that once I get The Mowgli’s song San Francisco stuck in my head, it has a tendency to stay there absolutely all day long. I make no apologies for this, you see, because I’ve been in love with love, and the idea of something binding us together for a long, long time. Anytime I can get someone to transform that idea into a hook that will lodge inside my consciousness in a cheerfully seductive way, I’m all ears… plus songwriter Colin... Read more
Yesterday I wrote a post about what makes for human freedom. Most of us uncritically believe that freedom is about a lack of constraint. Limits are something to be thrown off and left behind. Freedom, we’ve been taught, is about self-determination; no limits. We should be free to do whatever we want, so long as we don’t impede other people’s ability to do whatever they want. The fewer the limits, the greater the freedom, right? I tried to argue for a different perspective. Healthy limits are absolutely... Read more
Freedom is a big deal in our culture—the founding virtue of American society—despite the fact that most of us have a naïve understanding of what we mean when we claim to be free. Freedom is typically defined as self-determination; no limits. We are free to do whatever we want to do, so long as we don’t impede other people’s ability to do whatever they want. The fewer the limits, the greater the freedom, right? Wrong. The problem with “freedom as... Read more
I’m finding it harder and harder to read the news these days. Mostly I cycle through the sites I used to care about, glancing at headlines and thinking to myself how inane and ridiculous it has become. There’s an interesting article in The New York Times on the topic. It’s written by Ravi Somaiya, and it manages to be self-critical, even as the NYT is one of the few national publications left that actually tries to hold to some semblance of dignity. The article... Read more
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