Posts tagged "Theology of the Cross"
Even Jim Valvano Died
Death / Film / Sports / TV

Even Jim Valvano Died

by Nick Lannon on Mar 20, 2013 • 1 Comment

Jim Valvano (most likely known to non-sports fans as the namesake of the Jimmy V Foundation, a cancer research supporter which has given away hundreds of millions of dollars to fight the disease) was the subject of the latest ESPN 30-for-30 documentary, “Survive and Advance,” which premiered on Sunday night. The doc is about the unlikely path-to-a-championship of the 1983 North Carolina State Wolfpack, coached by Valvano, which included nine consecutive must-win games, many of which came down to the final seconds. The team’s run (the final basket in the championship game was recognized by Sports…

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Intellectual Honesty, A Theology of the Cross, and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition
Fashion / Psychology / Sports / Theology

Intellectual Honesty, A Theology of the Cross, and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition

by Nick Lannon on Feb 20, 2013 • 8 Comments

My four-year-old daughter Hazel is a Sports Illustrated subscriber. It’s a complicated issue of expiring airline miles; don’t ask. This week, the annual swimsuit edition was delivered. I remember, as a younger man, subscribing to SPORT Magazine (it was a cheaper monthly option than the weekly Sports Illustrated) and eagerly awaiting the swimsuit issue. SPORT, it should be noted, performed a service to its libido-crazed readership: it actually produced a normal sports-themed magazine to put around the models in bikinis.  In other words, when your mom looked askance at the cover, you could always complain that “it just took pages…

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Lady Edith Put to the Test: “I Don’t Think It’s Working”
Relationships / Suffering / TV

Lady Edith Put to the Test: “I Don’t Think It’s Working”

by Matt Schneider on Jan 15, 2013 • 3 Comments

Spoiler alert! This concerns the latest episode of Downton Abbey, Season 3: Episode 2.

As those who have been watching this season of Downton know, this past week, Edith’s big day finally came to be wed to the affable, albeit much older, Sir Anthony Strallan. (“Finally something is going on in this house that’s about me,” Edith says.) The scene I most want to highlight is the emotionally charged one that takes place between Lady Edith and her mother Cora (Lady Grantham). Lady Grantham is trying to comfort her distraught daughter after Edith is left at the altar by Sir Anthony…

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The Top Theology Books of 2012
Books / Religion / Theology / Year In Review

The Top Theology Books of 2012

by Todd Brewer on Dec 31, 2012 • 1 Comment

The following is a list of my top Mockingbird theology books of 2012 (in no particular order).

- Glorious Ruin by Tullian Tchividjian

Tchividjian does it again. Thoughtful, provocative, and deeply encouraging, “Glorious Ruin” places suffering at the heart of the Christian life and what we understand about God, but probably the biggest virtue of this book is its personal and accessible tone. Suffering is never spoken of in cold abstraction from its down-to-earth reality. It’s no wonder this book has gotten so much attention on this site.

- Justification Is for Preaching edited by Virgil Thompson

A much needed book for preachers and…

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Eating Poorly, Sleeping Well: Mockingjay and the End of Progress
Books / Film / Identity / Psychology

Eating Poorly, Sleeping Well: Mockingjay and the End of Progress

by WB on Nov 15, 2012 • 1 Comment

You can either eat well, or sleep peacefully

-German proverb

There are dystopian novel plots that resolve, and there are those that do not. Commercial success demands resolution, which is a great reason why Collins will have to overcome a credibility barrier with adolescents and young adults if she ever wants to match The Hunger Games trilogy’s sales with future works. Peeta?? Come on – all pulp bestselling authors know that the dark, masculine hunter is supposed to win out in adolescent-lit love triangle. Anyone writing a conventional dystopian epic knows that readers like resolution, and let’s face it, Panem’s new government doesn’t…

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Catching Fire: Cruciform Heroes, Unconventional Villains and Breaking the Closed Circle of the Modern Bestseller
Books / Film / Reviews

Catching Fire: Cruciform Heroes, Unconventional Villains and Breaking the Closed Circle of the Modern Bestseller

by WB on Nov 7, 2012 • 4 Comments

A brief recap: in The Hunger Games piece, we examined a two-level voyeuristic scaffolding built by Suzanne Collins as the book meditates on our attraction to violence and suffering. The Gamemakers create a brutal world into which teenagers are plunged to fight to the death for the amusement of thousands in the fictional dystopia of Panem and, simultaneously, Collins herself is constructing that world as the author for the amusement of, by now, over a million contemporary readers. In our indignation against the Gamemakers for the horrors they perpetrate, we are ultimately drawn into a split between our own enjoyment…

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Tullian Tchividjian’s Glorious Ruin: Suffering, Freedom and Rocketship Underpants
Books / Religion / Reviews / Suffering / Theology

Tullian Tchividjian’s Glorious Ruin: Suffering, Freedom and Rocketship Underpants

by WB on Oct 9, 2012 • 5 Comments

“I was becoming totally preoccupied with how I was doing, if I was learning everything I was supposed to be learning during this difficult season, whether I was doing it right or not, and constantly taking my own spiritual pulse. You might say that my ‘inner lawyer’ was working overtime.”

Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free, the new book by Tullian Tchividjian, is remarkable. It’s remarkable first because it radically departs from any notion of trying to learn from suffering or approach it in the ‘right’ way. This paradigm may sound innovative, but it’s actually rooted in the book of…

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The Dark Knight Dies and Rises: Sacrifice and Freedom in Gotham
Film / Reviews

The Dark Knight Dies and Rises: Sacrifice and Freedom in Gotham

by WB on Jul 23, 2012 • 21 Comments

[Spoiler Alert - those who haven't seen it, run don't walk...it's fantastic!]

“All their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest.”   -Ecclesiastes 2:23

“Put your sword back in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”   -Matthew 26.52

Nolan has now traced the Dark Knight’s journey from streetfighter to hero, from hero to villain, and from villain to…recluse. Wayne has died to the world and only holds on to the shadow-life of mourning for Rachel, and Alfred drops more than a few hints that…

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The Least Shall Be the Greatest: Crippling Accomplishments and Restitutive Suffering, pt. 1
Bible / Theology/Religion

The Least Shall Be the Greatest: Crippling Accomplishments and Restitutive Suffering, pt. 1

by WB on Jul 12, 2012 • 1 Comment

Earlier, we looked at the narrative of David from 1 Samuel in relation to the theme of God’s preference for the least. In short, it is only by gratuitously choosing a young, poor, largely underqualified king that God reconstituted the people of Israel. This occurred because God’s choice of the least removes any meritocracy from the kingship, allowing the poorest shepherd to participate in God’s gracious choice of king just as much as the richest merchant or the most devout religious leader. The same dynamic plays out in all great literature: the unexpected, ordinary hero (e.g. Tolkien’s hobbit, Aeneas’s defeated…

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von Balthasar on Buddhism; or, Zen and Jesus
Theology/Religion

von Balthasar on Buddhism; or, Zen and Jesus

by WB on Jul 10, 2012 • 2 Comments

A well-known 20th-century Catholic theologian on non-Christian religions:

Because through his faith and love Socrates – perfectly and to the point of folly – subordinated his existence to the daimon within him, he can be an intimation of Christ: he points to the divine by himself being a highway for the divine. The same could be said of Buddha or Lao Tzu. It is from their lived doctrine that Zen developed, the essence of which is to give practical training in how to transcend one’s own consciousness, how to make the finite spirit a vessel of the infinite Spirit – a flute…

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Nobody Knows Yourself When You’re Down and Out: Kierkegaard on the Mirage of Health
Books / Psychology / Religion / Suffering / Theology / Theology/Religion

Nobody Knows Yourself When You’re Down and Out: Kierkegaard on the Mirage of Health

by WB on Jun 4, 2012 • 2 Comments

From his Sickness unto Death, a passage where Kierkegaard compares spiritual sickness – i.e. despair – to physical unhealth, and then diagnoses seemingly everyone with a degree of this condition, even those who believe themselves healthy:

This observation will no doubt strike many as paradoxical, an exaggeration, and a gloomy and discouraging view besides. Yet it is none of these things. It is not gloomy; on the contrary it tries to shed light on what one generally banishes to a certain obscurity…Commonly a person is assumed to be healthy if he himself doesn’t say that he is ill; even more so…

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Pulling John and Losing to Win
Film / Sports / Theology

Pulling John and Losing to Win

by Nick Lannon on May 2, 2012 • 3 Comments

 

I’m addicted to documentaries; tiny ones that no one has ever heard of. Netflix Instant has been a godsend for finding my fringe documentary fix.  The last two I watched were Running the Sahara, the story of three men who, you guessed it, ran across the Sahara Desert, and Pulling John, the story of three of the premier arm wrestlers in the world.

John Brzenk (the “John” of the title) became the world arm wrestling champion in 1983 and didn’t lose an arm wrestling match (a “pull”) for the next 25 years.  You might recognize him from the 1987 Sylvester Stallone arm…

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Hopelessly Devoted: Numbers Chapter Twenty Two Verses Nine Through Thirty Five
Bible / Forgiveness / Theology

Hopelessly Devoted: Numbers Chapter Twenty Two Verses Nine Through Thirty Five

by Mockingbird on Apr 30, 2012 • No Comments

Who knew? For what can be seen as a dark and and foreboding picture of the all-too-fearsome power of the magnifying glass-wrath-and-anthill God, the God of the Old Testament kings and prophets, instead becomes a powerful indication of God’s favor for working things out in the upside-down world of the cross. Old Testament mysteries, talking asses and the grace of God! This morning’s devotion comes from Ben Phillips.

Behold I have come out to oppose you because your way is perverse before me (v. 32b).

In college I played on an intramural co-ed flag football team. One of the suggestions floated for…

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Pete Droge is Theology of the Cross
Music / Suffering / Theology

Pete Droge is Theology of the Cross

by R-J Heijmen on Apr 18, 2012 • 2 Comments

Heard this song over breakfast today and it was like the voice of God speaking directly into my pain. Found the artist, Pete Droge, on iTunes and read the most Theology-of-the-Cross review I could possibly imagine – suffering-for-sufferers if I’ve ever heard it. Holy moly…

Under the Waves is Pete Droge’s fifth album and his second for his own Puzzle Tree Records label following three poor-selling major-label efforts. Droge is the sort of folkish singer/songwriter who tends to get called “promising” long after such a description applies; after all, one can only show promise for so long before that promise is…

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Forde Friday: Glory vs. Cross Part I
Religion / Suffering / Theology

Forde Friday: Glory vs. Cross Part I

by Matt Johnson on Mar 9, 2012 • 3 Comments

Superhuman theologies of human achievement and graceless religion are a drag. Then along comes Gerhard Forde and puts a finger on what we already know, but couldn’t quite articulate. Happy Forde Friday!

Glory vs. Cross Part I

Does anyone remember those awful (or at least incredibly cheesy) Christian T-shirts of the 80s and 90s? Budweiser logos re-appropriated to say “This Blood’s For You”? Or how about Jesus, face down in a push-up pose with the cross on his back: “Bench Press This!” Don’t tell anybody, but I may have been guilty of wearing those types of T-shirts in my high school days.…

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