Christ, The Word, The Church, The Republic
Are we even allowed to love plant managers? I’ve written about this before, but during a conversation the other day about the role of sex in redemptive films, I thought of another way of illustrating it. Picture a father and his adult son pondering a serving of Atlantic lobster in a fine restaurant: Son: Drawn..
A kiss for luck.. So I tried to understand why old pop love songs made me a little blue—actually more than a little blue, why they put me in touch with my mortality as I was driving around town last week. It occurred to me that I wasn’t moved by the celebration of human love,..
What do Old Men Do with Love Songs? My older sister once observed that the Beach Boys made false promises about what growing up would look like, but I think you could say the same thing about symphonies and drunken hornpipes as well. Music serves up the sort of euphoria that can evaporate in the..
A multitude of counselors Unable to sleep, in the wee hours this morning, a Facebook red square blinked across the room at me: An old friend and former employee was concerned about a YouTube video he had been trying to process. Issues of history and family and salvation were at stake, so I hit the..
So there’s a film that can’t be finished, right now at least, because the director is alleged to be some sort of sexual predator and all the attention and speculation is giving the predator “health issues.” The details of this particular story, for the sake of my inquiry, don’t matter. This is just one of..
Okay, well, that’s not going to happen, but.. The good news is that it all gets better, kids. With time. With Age. The women I know, in my generation–those who are happily married and even just those who have come to terms with the wonder of working and living on this beautiful orb–don’t measure existence..
The Occupying Church and the Dying Church Life is too short for things that don’t work, and that includes your church fellowship and your theology. I tried to identify two broad divisions of the faith yesterday, and why we really shouldn’t have to choose between the two, even though, in practice, our choices are limited. ..
The church that dies and the church that occupies If you have ever wept singing Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, or tearfully marveled at the sweeping simplicity of a thief promised eternal paradise merely for recognizing the King, you know that Christianity doesn’t categorize very easily. It’s not spiritual botany, stuck in there between the..
A Million Truths, Randomly Held Aloft by Fools.. In this interval of time, where opposing political tribes shield their own gropers with one hand and spear enemy pervs with the other, my mind settled upon Kathy Griffin. She has morphed, physically, into a kind of evil Howdy Doody doll, looking as though she were taking..
Al Franken, Lust, and Public Scrutiny I was a guest at a “great man’s” home in Newport Beach years ago. The man, (we will call him “Charlie”), had just returned from a wedding, and he was amused by an awkward toast given by a friend. “So there he is,” Charlie observed, laughing at his memory,..
