Lenten Question of the Week: What distractions or addictions are keeping you apart from God, love, and abundant life? It’s an interesting question. Richard Rohr teaches that 95%+ of human thought is repetitive and useless. If he’s right then the answer to that question is: me. I am the distraction, the addiction that keeps me from the presence of God. When I was in elementary school I lived just down the block from a girl who was in my class. My... Read more
I am an unabashed logophile (n. – lover of words), and am always on the lookout for ways to improve my vocabulary. As I’ve begun writing more and more, I’ve noticed that I track in the same semantic (adj. – pertaining to meaning of words), pathways – a kind of syntactical (adj. – pertaining to the study of rules for the formation of sentences), regression toward the mean. A good word can transform your palaver (n. – profuse and idle talk), into poetry.... Read more
*This article is from The Huffington Post 02.25.20213 Rob Bell has another book coming out, the first since his bestseller “Love Wins” caused an evangelical uproar. Folks who haven’t even read the book yet are already critiquing it based on the marketing material alone. Denny Burk recently called Bell a “heterodox theological liberal,” and further claimed Bell is “no longer relevant to the larger evangelical theological conversation.” Burk predicted Bell’s book will be “greeted with a collective yawn,” a thought which is sure to be news to the... Read more
In 1982 Captain John Trimmer wrote a maritime operations guidebook called How to Avoid Huge Ships. The book was meant to guide captains of smaller sailing/pleasure vessels and yachts who will need to navigate busy shipping lanes of the ocean without bothering or getting into trouble with large shipping vessels. The book had a very small audience and was full of ostensibly useful information on the capabilities of large ships and best practices for how to guide your own smaller... Read more
At what point does technology so impact the human person that it fundamentally changes what it means to be a person? Has that point already come and gone? And when we look at what we can do, does can mean ought? Is there a point at which technology so infiltrates personhood that it actually begins to weaken the species? Has technology become fully woven into the story of how humans evolve? Is that good? Is that what we want? I... Read more
Parade Magazine did an interesting story on the secrets of a happy family last weekend. It’s worth reading. They featured a quiz that has a few interesting bits of trivia. I cherry-picked a few of the questions that I think play into some of what we’ve been talking about at Paperback Theology lately. See if you’d get these right: When a team of psychologists measured children’s resilience, they found that the kids who ________ were best able to handle... Read more
For Lent this year I’m fasting from all foods after 9pm. The reason I’m doing this is not very interesting. It’s just that I typically use up all of my will power about 8:30 and by the time I hit the sack two hours later, I’ve usually eaten around a thousand calories of junk. I’m a gluttony-machine after 9pm. It’s one of my many unhealthy emotional crutches, so I’m giving it up. What I’m giving up for Lent is boring.... Read more
I confess that I have a standard order at every restaurant I go to, an order from which I rarely deviate. I confess that if I go to a brand new place, I order something that is as similar as possible to my other standard orders. I’m trying to figure out what this says about me. Do I just have great taste – so why mess with greatness? Am I hopelessly unadventurous? Am I an old dog? I confess that... Read more
I think a lot of Christian College campuses must be going through issues like this right now. The fundamentalist message is so incompatible with a post-modern worldview, that the entire philosophy major has to be shut down. Shane Claiborne isn’t allowed on campus because his ideas might be challenging? Really? I remember Cedarville U. because my band Satellite Soul played there a few times. Is this yet another example of how evangelicals too often inhibit the diversity of thought necessary... Read more
So last week this video went viral. It’s a clip of a kid lying to his mom about eating sprinkles in the kitchen while she wasn’t looking. The kid stuck to his story even though the evidence was all over his face. Ellen DeGeneres found out about it and booked the kid on her show and he kept up the funny. So here’s a look at both for your Friday Funny. Watch the interview all the way through (it gets... Read more
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