1. Aquinas followed Aristotle in claiming the end (telos, purpose) of biology is medicine. Science has long been a technical discipline designed primarily to promote human flourishing / well-being. Of course, it was always contemplative to a degree, satisfying curiosity or even, as Aquinas also notes, teaching us about God. The study of creation reflects upon the Creator. One wonders what the role of science is today, what a panel of researchers would say if asked. My best guess would be something along the lines of increasing knowledge for knowledge’s sake; if pressed further, one might say that pure knowledge works to bolster happiness and/or…
A Few Thoughts on Righteous Minds and Religious Liberty
I believe it was Austin Powers’ father Nigel who once remarked, “There are only two things I can’t stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures… and the Dutch.”
That movie came out while I was in college, and the joke struck a chord. Having been educated in proudly ‘progressive’ institutions, I grew up hearing a lot about tolerance. My secondary school, for example, hosted a semi-annual ‘Diversity Day’, where the student body took part in workshops designed to expose us to different cultures and points of view. Of course, there’s nothing more cynical than a bunch…
When Less Is More: Reflections on Christian ADHD
The number of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnoses among our population continues to increase. There might be good, reliable scientific evidence to back it up, but I must admit I am a bit “old school.” There seems to be a tendency to affix labels and categorize every little thing resulting in the ‘baseline’ of ‘normalcy’ shrinking until nobody falls within its boundaries. But enough of that.
My contemplation of ADHD and where I find it under diagnosed is in our churches. A couple of months ago, I was at a conference aiming to ‘renew’ and ‘re-charge’ Christians. I know this sounds…
Thomas Cranmer’s Gospel of Divine Allurement – Ashley Null
The fun never ends! Here’s Dr. Null’s presentation from our NYC Conference, which was delivered immediately after Tim Kreider’s. It was quite dramatic:
Thomas Cranmer’s Gospel of Divine Allurement ~ Ashley Null from Mockingbird on Vimeo.
Hopelessly Devoted: Matthew Chapter Twenty Five Verses Fourteen through Thirty
July 7′s devotion comes, ironically enough, from our returning honeymooner himself, Ethan Richardson. To order The Mockingbird Devotional, look no further than here.
…He who had received the one talent came forward, saying, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.”But his master answered him, “You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed?…” (Matthew 25:14-30, ESV)
A common reading…
Sally Lloyd Jones and Being Afraid of the Dark
Last week as I was tucking our 3 year old son into bed he whispered to me, “Mama, I’m scared of the dark.” I tossed out the first thing in my brain that would make him feel better and make him stay in bed, “Don’t be scared. God is with you.” I really don’t like religious platitudes. For some reason I thought my toddler wouldn’t mind as much.
Immediately my child sat up in bed, looked around and said, “Where?”
After mentally going through the list of answers adults said to me when I was his age (your heart, right beside you,…
Jesus, Nietzsche & Me – Tim Kreider
You may be surprised to hear we’ve gotten more positive feedback on Tim’s talk than almost any other. We unfortunately weren’t able to include the slides from the powerpoint, so a few jokes may lack punchlines (apologies!). Needless to say, he took us out of our comfort zone in a very engaging way.
Jesus, Nietzsche & Me ~ Tim Kreider from Mockingbird on Vimeo.
To read what we’ve written about Tim Kreider over the years, click here.
New Music: Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence
Matthew Linder (who gave Mbird a delightful treatise on Willy Wonka) and I, for well over a week and counting, have been infatuated with the newest Lana Del Rey album, and conversations over Facebook and email ensued. Below are some of the highlights of our discussion of what we both consider a tremendously beautiful and heart-wrenching album.
Blake:
So from the first listen, I felt an aural tie to the gothic americana genre, but without the usual folk/bluegrass instrumentation. Gothic americana is notorious for using religious allusion and imagery for often non-religious reasons. It is all tied into this idea of Flannery…
Myths of Progress and Hopeful Defeatism
For those interested in human folly and hard truths, look no further than John Gray, a political philosopher whose work On Progress and Other Modern Myths (The Silence of the Animals) debunks many of our species’ self-flattering stories about where we came from and where we’re going. An agnostic himself, Gray realizes the decline of Christianity won’t issue in quite the same unproblematic post-religious paradise that some of his contemporaries might think:
For humanists, denying that humanity can live without myths can only be a type of pessimism. They take for granted that if human beings came to be more like the rational…
America / Children / Economics / Forgiveness / Grace in Practice / Law / Relationships / Religion / TV / Week In Review
Another Week Ends: Capitalist Christians, Parents Teaching Achievement (Not Empathy), Post-Penitent Pantene, Sedaris’s Journey to the Ends of the Law (and Back), Antinomian Aucklanders, and Crooked-Timber Anthropology
1. The New York Times hosted a debate asking the question of whether capitalism has become incompatible with Christianity. It’s a pretty interesting forum, and some highlights with commentary are below:
[Gary Dorrien, Union:] The field I teach, social ethics, was founded in the late 19th century as a protest against capitalist ideology. American social gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch put it poignantly: “Capitalism has overdeveloped the selfish instincts in all of us and left the capacity of devotion to larger ends shrunken and atrophied.” Pope Leo XIII described capitalism as a system defined by the callousness of employers and the greed of unrestrained competition, including its…
Mockingbird In Space: 10 Sci-Fi Flicks With Relevant(ish) Themes
The new summer issue of The Mockingbird contains a bunch of lists of recommendations and favorites (and heresies). This is one of them.
For those looking for some popcorn-worthy viewing (and re-viewing) this summer, a few interstellar picks with surprisingly relevant themes:
1. Serenity (2005). In which Joss Whedon poses big questions and proves once again that he understands original sin better than anyone in the business. Chiwetel Ejiofor makes a fabulous villain, and major kudos go to Whedon for including Shepherd Book in the action, a clergyperson with the kind of conviction, vitality, and heart that one seldom sees on screen…
The Logic of Grace and the Exclusivity of Meaning
I was a bit surprised, reading Bulfinch’s Mythology yesterday, to discover an interesting ‘allegorizing’ move in the Greek myth of a river-god, Achelous, losing his horn. Hercules and Achelous, the story goes, were wrestling for the right to wed Dejanira, a beautiful woman. Achelous transforms into various creatures, including a snake, in his attempt to best Hercules, and Hercules subdues them all. Finally, Achelous transforms into his last remaining form, a bull, and Hercules rips off one of his horns, which becomes ‘Cornucopia’, the horn of plenty. Then things get interesting – as Bulfinch notes,
The ancients were fond of finding a…
Yes, You Are Communicating Wrong (And No, You Will Not Like This Post)
Des: Aren’t you a bit of a cad for leaving town with your girlfriend in the hospital?
Jimmy: It might look that way. I’ve been through this before. After graduation Laurie and I were going to break up, but the same day she came down with terrible back spasms. I hung around the hospital all summer, almost bankrupted her parents, and as soon as I left town she recovered. By going away and putting an ocean between us, i.e. making a definitive break, Charlotte’s likely to recover much faster.
Des: What makes you think that putting…
Finding Myself at The Ontario Symposium; or Self-Forgetfulness
Back in 1988, a bunch of social psychologists met in a sunny Canadian province to run through new experiments, theories, and approaches in social psych research. The theme was self-inference processes, or the ways we make judgments – accurate or inaccurate, constructive or merely descriptive – about, you know, who we are. The result is a mostly mundane, dry, and technical body of psych literature, littered with revolutionary insights into who we are (which, nonetheless, Luther had arguably discovered or personally reified centuries before), leavened with some real, concrete, original insight.
We’ve covered less psychology of late on the site, partly because it feels the field…
Hopelessly Devoted: 1 Samuel 8:9-22
This morning’s reflection comes from Leonard Finn, by way of the Mockingbird Devotional:
But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; and they said, “No! but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.” And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the LORD. And the LORD said to Samuel, “Hearken to their voice, and make them a king.” Samuel then said…
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