| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Sean Dorrance Kelly | ||||
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Colbert (with Sean Kelly) takes on the superficiality of our culture. Actually a pretty fascinating little interview. Take aways: read John’s Gospel, watch the Super Bowl, and read Moby Dick.
1. Libby Copeland at Slate asks the question “Is Facebook Making Us Sad?”, unpacking some findings from a recent study at Stanford. Very relevant stuff:
“The researchers found that their subjects consistently underestimated how dejected others were–and likely wound up feeling more dejected as a result. Jordan got the idea for the inquiry after observing his friends’ reactions to Facebook: He noticed that they seemed to feel particularly crummy about themselves after logging onto the site and scrolling through others’ attractive photos, accomplished bios, and chipper status updates. ‘They were convinced that everyone else was…
I’m a huge Steelers fan. I come by it honestly, having lived in Pittsburgh for three years while I was in seminary. Yet I’ve recently noticed that rooting for the Steelers really throws my lack of sanctification into sharp relief.
Before last week’s AFC Championship game against the hometown Jets (my parish, though in New Jersey, is closer to New York than New Meadowlands Stadium, where both the “New York” Jets and Giants play), people started asking me if we were going to throw a Super Bowl party at our church. We did last year, watching the Colts fall short…
From Dad Rod and our friends over at New Reformation Press:
Dr. Rod Rosenbladt on “The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church” from Faith Lutheran Church on Vimeo.
A great little post by Anthony Sacramone over at First Things about “Law vs Gospel in Black Swan”, ht MS:
Nina [the ballerina, played by Natalie Portman] is simply too naive, too fragile, too “good,” even, to access the “dark side.” She is offering up only half a performance. She must “free” herself! Only then will she be capable of delivering the “whole,” even if it means a terrifying fragmentation of her personality.
But with a little help from her friends, and her own internal pressures, she gets better (or worse, depending on how you look at it).…
A fantastic song by an underrated artist, “Dear Lord” is a gutsy conversation between man and God, where suffering creates faith, which in turn births repentance. A very strong “presence of God’s absence”/ theology of the cross vibe. Just after it was released in 2002, I remember reading an interview with Arthur, who does not identify himself as a Christian or a particularly religious person, where the interviewer asked him what accounted for all the “religious” songs on the new record, and his wonderful reply was, “I don’t know. That’s just what comes out. I’m as surprised by it as…
If you can’t make out the writing, click on the image for a slightly larger version.
Fantastic article in today’s Wall Street Journal about the new “wave” of cognitive-behavioral therapy known as mindfulness. Its understanding of the counterproductive power of (internal) judgment is pretty darn eerie. Not only that, but as a school of thought, it appears to recognize the futility of information as a change agent, as well as the essentially passive nature of true self-improvement. In fact, if you can get beyond the slight New Age can-do bent in the language, mindfulness might well represent the next step in a Law/Gospel approach to psychotherapy. But don’t take my word for it (ht WDR):
Even people…
Another year-end list from PZ:
1) Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy. This is the grand-daddy of them all, in my opinion. Father Sergius begins his ministry, within the Russian Orthodox Church, with all the right ingredients: a broken disappointed heart, an excellent education, and an appealing personality. He then becomes a saint! (But for all the wrong pelagian reasons) Later, he trips himself up, very badly, and flees his calling. Even later, however, most unusually, he finds it again.
I taught this once and first-time readers fell tumbled over into the snow. We all exist in this book, which is actually a…
America’s resident cinematic genius is about to strike again, with what could be a very Law/Gospel-ripe piece of work:
(iv.1.58.4 cont.) In the doctrine of reconciliation humanity is not only confronted with the positive side of the truths in Jesus Christ, but also the negative side of the truth of sin in the world initiated by humanity and its victim. By Jesus’ atoning work, God reconciles covenant breaking humanity to Himself by Himself. Consequently, the doctrine of sin is dealt with simultaneously and in conjunction to the doctrine of reconciliation. It is not of its own ontological identity as something that “exist[s] in and for itself” as a part of God’s creation; rather it…
The 2011 Mere Anglicanism conference this year is held in thanksgiving for the faithful witness of Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison to the Word of God’s Grace. It will be held at St. Phillips Church in Charleston S.C. January 20-23. Some of Mockingbird’s favorite theologians will be speaking at the conference.
This is one of my favorite quotes from Bishop Allison:
“A sergeant told a grim joke to his trainees during the Second World War, which shows the real flaw in the Pharisaic understanding of Christianity. A man stopped on a dirt road to help get another man’s car our…
In case you haven’t noticed, we at Mockingbird happen to be big fans of Pixar. Since most of our posts on the studio have focused on its feature-length output, we figured it was time to highlight one of their brilliant vignettes, “One Man Band” (video below). For further reading, see our book The Gospel According to Pixar.
The plot of “One Man Band” is fairly straightforward. A street performer, “Bass,” tries to persuade a young girl to give him her only coin. His light-hearted tune is interrupted by a new performer named Treble. With his fancy strings Treble wins the young…
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