Is Spirituality a Team Sport?

Zoraya ter Beek, R.I.P.

As I was getting this post ready for publication, I read on Twitter/X that Zoraya ter Beek, the young Dutch woman I’ve been discussing on the show, was euthanized a few days ago. A terrible and completely unnecessary tragedy. I will be talking about Zoraya on my next podcast.

PODCAST—SOUL#11 EXCERPT

Partial, Edited Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to SOUL SCIENCE, episode 11. I am, as you can tell, still getting over a cold. We’re just going to try to power through this. Today’s episode is called “News and Reviews.”

Mysticism and Sanity

I read this article by Mark Judge at The Stream.  I occasionally write articles for The Stream. I love this publication. And Mark Judge wrote this fantastic article. I just loved it. It’s called “Christian Mysticism Keeps Us Sane.” And I thought, “Wow! That’s very much like my kickoff episode to SOUL SCIENCE. “Should Doctors Prescribe Religion for Mental Health?” But I thought, you know, Mark Judge did it so much better. You know, he’s got like the sexier version of the message I was promoting in my in my episode. I kind of gave the Ross Perot version. And Mark Judge had the very cool leather jacket version. 

“Christian mysticism.” I think mysticism makes it so much cooler. But, anyway, there’s a lot of good in this article. And I think you guys . . . I’ve got the link up here. And I recommend going and reading this article. There’s a lot of good stuff. Mark Judge does such a an amazing job of weaving pop culture and intellectual culture. He does a very good job of balancing that. And you’ll find that in this article as well. 

Lauren Daigle

He’s got a nice section on Lauren Daigle’s new album. And you’ve got to go there for that alone. He’s got a clip of a recent concert with a couple of her songs on there. Wow! I mean what an amazing performance! She’s just got a unique voice. And her stage presence is just, you know, amazing! The whole band. The whole thing … the whole thing is just absolutely amazing. And Mark Judge sees something transcendent in the whole whole experience. But Lauren Daigle is definitely special.  He’s definitely got a religious take on that. Which makes perfectly good sense for a Christian singer and songwriter like Lauren Daigle. 

Not Atheists—Just Bad Mystics

Let me read to you some quotes from Mark’s fantastic article. Now “Root” here is the author

of a book, and I’m going to show you the book and a link to the Amazon page in just a second. But let me read this to you.

 “Root has read dozens of celebrity autobiographies as well as secular self-help books and concludes reasonably that America is not crowded with secular atheists but rather with would be mystics. There’s only one problem. Without God, these modern mystics are not only going to come up short, but may wind up in a bad place. Root preaches that the healthy kind of mysticism is that preached by Martin Luther. (As a Catholic, I would disagree.) … We need God to truly deliver us from ourselves and permanently heal our sins.” 

I have the link up there. You’ve got to read this article. Great article. [See show for more content.]