Uwe E. Reinhardt: “America’s Mid-20th-Century Infrastructure”
Instead of setting about to bring our infrastructure up to 21st-century standards – which might, alas, involve more of the much detested public-sector investment — we angrily and yet meekly suffer for days or weeks without light, heat and transportation, verbally shaking our fists at the power companies but leaving it at that.
We are, at most, prepared to stock our households with flashlights and candles and, if we have the money, buy portable generators that can produce a modest amount of electricity, albeit at great expense. How can this be an efficient way of bringing electric power to households?
Alex Knapp: “Why Marco Rubio Needs to Know That the Earth Is Billions of Years Old”
The bottom line is that this economy, at its root, is built on a web of scientific knowledge from physics to chemistry to biology. It’s impossible to just cherry pick out parts we don’t like. If the Earth is 9,000 years old, then virtually the entire construct of modern science is simply wrong. Not only that, most of the technology that we rely on most likely wouldn’t work – as they’re dependent on science that operates on the same physical laws that demonstrate the age of the universe.
Rachel Held Evans: “The danger of calling behavior ‘biblical'”
The fact of the matter is, we all pick and choose. We’re all selective in our interpretation and application of the biblical text. The better question to ask one another is why we pick and choose the way that we do, why we emphasize some passages and not others. This, I believe, will elevate the conversation so that we’re using the Bible, not as a blunt weapon, but as a starting point for dialogue.
Richard Beck: “An Economy of Submission”
An economy of submission is the mutual, reciprocal, flowing exchange of submission. More, it’s an economy of gifts freely given and received. This is the notion of mutual submission, servant-heartedness, and koinonia. The vision here isn’t one group trying to get another group to submit. That’s an exercise of power. Rather, the vision is of participating in loving community with each responsive to the needs of the other.