1. Forgiveness and apology seems to be a theme in the news as of late, or at least it was prior to Monday’s heartbreaking news from Boston. CNN’s belief blog highlighted the story of one man’s quest to forgive and restore the man who killed his brother when they were teens. I found the story enlightening as it ping-ponged between the two poles of forgiveness by grace (the victim’s brother) and forgiveness by works righteousness (the recently released killer). Quote: “I think for me, forgiveness will come in doing good works, trying to help others. But as far as forgiving…
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Another Week Ends: Assurance Anxiety, Genesis Lessons, Tumblr Love, Lost in the Cosmos, Iron Man Prep, and Hatsune Miku’s Pizza Stage
1. First off, a little pop theology. Phillip Cary contributed an encouraging review of J.D. Greear’s sensationally titled Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart to the recent issue of Christianity Today, under the header “Anxious About Assurance”. As he does in his book Good News for Anxious Christians, Cary gets straight to the heart of the matter:
Greear is not saying it’s wrong to ask Jesus into your heart. He’s saying it’s not the same thing as believing the gospel. And if we want to be assured of salvation, it’s believing the gospel that actually counts. We are saved by faith…
“And Death’s Dark Shadow Put to Flight…” A Post for Newtown, Connecticut
It goes without saying that our prayers and hearts have been with Sandy Hook Elementary and the Newtown community since last week. On this side of our Sunday services, “Lord have mercy” is pretty much all I have left to say in my spiritually and emotionally exhausted state, and I don’t think I’m alone when I say that.
For those of us who are still struggling to maintain composure in light of tragedy, or for those exhausted from the 24 hour media coverage, or for those wrestling with the relationship between a good God and an evil…
Celebrity / Christmas / Film / Grace in Practice / Identity / Music / Religion / TV / Week In Review
Another Week Ends: Advent Mudballs, Freaks and Geeks, Christian Pariahs, Yiddish Petraeus, Hitchcock Communion, Scott Walker and Super Wolf
1. Not sure exactly what The American Interest is, but Walter Russell Mead’s reflection on the meaning of Advent is the most moving and poetic thing I’ve read on the subject this season, ht TH:
As a kid I could never understand why Advent was a season of fasting and solemnity in the church rather than a time of feasting and dancing. What better way to prepare for a really big celebration than to have a lot of little celebrations as you approach it? What better way to get into the mood?…
But as I’ve reflected on the holiday over the years,…
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Another Week Ends: Exceptional Children, Holiness Holes, AA Slogans, Reformation Sincerity, Online Niceness, Grateful Dead, Aimee Mann and Seinfeld-ized Game of Thrones
1. An encouraging number of signs of life in the bibliosphere this week. First, over at The New Statesman, much to my surprise (and much to his credit), renowned atheist Alain de Botton selected Francis Spufford’s Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense as his favorite book of the year. For a profound little excerpt from the book, go here. Can’t wait for it to come out in the States. Second, there’s the arresting depth of understanding and engagement in From Exile, Grow Man’s review of PZ’s Grace in Practice. Probably the most honest review I’ve…
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Another Week Ends: Our Dreams, Pixar and Brave Honesty, Lebron Bravery, Why Americans Apologize, Why Ryan Leaf Wants Prison, Why Women Pray More
1) The Harvard Business Review released a behavioral study on the divergent ways apologies happen in American and Japanese sociality. It turns out not everyone apologizes in a way that implicates the apologizer as guilty (who knew?)…What’s more interesting, though, is the connection made between implied guilt and trust, that the Japanese way of apologizing without direct condemnation of personal responsibility actually allows for trust to be repaired more quickly, while the American (Western) way of the “apologizing culprit” tends to falsely distinguish sheeps from goats, making lines between those who have flaws and make mistakes from those who do…
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Another Week Ends: Dumb Smart People, VeggieRemorse, Pixar Tips, Transfigured Authority, Profanity Laws, Fiona Apple and Mad Men
1. You’ve probably heard the classic arithmetic question, “A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” If your kneejerk response is in the double digits, well, think again. Jonah Lehrer kicked off his new post at The New Yorker with a couple of terrific new pieces. “Why We Don’t Believe in Science” was the first and “Why Smart People Are Stupid” is the latest, and it in particular warrants some excerpting here. Another cogent reminder that self-knowledge (or knowledge in general) is not…
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Another Week Ends: Jewish Anxiety, Christian Juvenilia, Male Demise, Cheap Law, Underachievement and Imperfection, Bearded Brooklyn, Ram and Beach Boys
1. “Do The Jews Own Anxiety?” asked Daniel Smith in The NY Times last week, and his answer may surprise you. A member of the tribe himself, Smith traces the public (gentile) perception of Jewish neurosis, as well as how its poster-boys (Woody Allen, Philip Roth’s Alexander Portnoy, etc) have almost gleefully perpetuated the stereotype, and managed to eclipse such once well-known non-Jewish neurotics such as Soren Kierkegaard, Emily Dickinson, Ingmar Bergman and William James in anxious notoriety — to say nothing of our favorite “patient of great significance,” Dr. Luther! My own experience would be that those whose neuroses…
Why We Need Community
The latest issue of Christianity Today includes a short review by Todd Hertz on one of Mockingbird’s favorite sitcoms, Community. The article, “Why We Need Community,” discusses what Christians in particular, and the world in general, will be missing if Community is indeed canceled and not renewed by NBC for a fourth season. Hertz argues that despite its wacky hijinks and endless parodies, Community is honest about, well, community—or as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, life together.
In Mockingbird-like fashion, Hertz also insightfully touches on the abreactive nature of the show. (Cool. Cool, cool, cool.) Here are some highlights excerpted from the…
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Another Week Ends: DFW50, Simpsons 500, Ira Talks Radiolab, Rowling Talks New Novel, Helpless Women, Helpless Kids, Lenten Identity, Cormac McCarthy Pictionary
All the best wishes for those mockingbirds at the Liberate Conference in Fort Lauderdale this weekend, including our very own David Zahl.
1. Along with the rest of the blogosphere this week, we wish David Foster Wallace a happy 50th birthday. There’s too many blessings to recount, but the web has exploded with numerous avenues for you to get your feet wet or soul soaked. Take a look at The Awl’s “46 Things to Read and See for David Foster Wallace’s 50th Birthday,” a piece of which includes an 86-minute interview with German TV ZDF, the first of which you’ll find…
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Another Week Ends: Hitch, Facebook Blues, Baby Morality, Auden’s Conversion, M:I4, The Replacements, Gorey Animation, and Knowing Yule
1. By now you’ve no doubt heard that legendary journalist/polemicist/personality/Atheist Christopher Hitchens died yesterday. Hitchens was always my favorite of the New Atheists, and not just because he was the funniest. Alone of his colleagues (and I’m sure he hated being lumped in with anyone!), he seemed to object to the Gospel itself, rather than the normal hangups about the Bible or the Church. He found the idea of Grace to be repulsive and morally reprehensible. “Vicarious redemption” is what he called it, insisting that the notion that a person could be forgiven by someone other than the one they…
A Frog, a Bear, and a Pig Walk into a Bar: The Gracious Absurdism of Jim Henson and The Muppets
Pixar, Peanuts and now The Muppets – I guess it must be inner child week on Mockingbird! Christianity Today put up the full-length version yours truly’s “The Gospel According to Jim Henson” today, a truncated form of which appeared in the November 2011 issue of the print magazine. I’ve reproduced a few excerpts below. Wakka Wakka Wakka:
Why the Muppets and why now? Aren’t they irrelevant cultural relics? Never mind the fact that they represent the vanguard of “family entertainment”—child-friendly entertainment that neither excludes nor talks down to adults, nor resorts to lewd cynicism. In other words, intelligently wholesome media. Never…
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Another Week Ends: Terry Eagleton, Nar-Anon, Crazy Stupid Love, Pottermore, Depression No-No’s, Drones, Speidi & Achtung Baby
1. Over at PatrolMag, David Sessions posted a terrific interview with British literary critic Terry Eagleton concerning, among other things, “Capitalism and the West’s Existential Crisis.” The occasion for the interview is the release of Eagleton’s new book on Marxism. Of course, Eagleton is not your garden variety Marxist (thank God), and regardless of your political convictions, his reflections are a good companion to the “relentlessly depressing debt ceiling news,” as Sessions memorably puts it. For example:
Sessions: While we’re talking about belief, in your Terry Lectures at Yale in 2008, you described Christianity as both more gloomy than any other…
Destined for God-Knows-Where: A Review of Mark Galli’s God Wins
God is all-powerful, and God desires the salvation of every person. Does God get what God wants?
This arresting sentiment from Rob Bell’s controversial Love Wins forms a basis for Bell’s implicit – albeit unstated – universalism. Of course God gets what God wants, but even Bell recognizes that God’s desires and inner motives are too complex for him to conclude that all go to heaven just from this reasoning. Which is why he turns to something more easily understood: human nature. Bell’s argument is as follows:
“There’s a better question, one we can answer, one that takes all of this speculation…
Another Week Ends: Death Row Forgiveness, Sheen on Addiction, Hemingway’s Paranoia, Risky Professions, Nick Lowe, Tami Taylor & Werner’s Where’s Waldo
1. A supremely powerful story about the forgiveness of one’s enemies over on CNN. It concerns Mark Anthony Stroman, a white supremacist on death row in Texas for a slew of hate crimes, including murder, that he committed just after 9/11. One of the men that he shot during his spree, a Muslim named Rais Bhuiyan, is publicly pleading for Stroman’s life, going so far as to travel Paris to ask the European Parliament to file a formal request that Texas commute Stroman’s sentence to life in prison, ht JD:
Bhuiyan believes that his attacker does not deserve to die…
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