Sociological Insight into Broken Working-Class Families
I minister in a low-income community; I wish I could say I do more for my parishioners than I do. I preach, I love, I pray. And I think about them all the time. A while back I read Coming Apart: The State of White America , 1960–2010 in an effort to understand their culture. Murray notes via the tools of sociology what I already know via the tool of personal experience: the institution of marriage is simply dying out among my little crowd of people (who are, as of September, also my...
Hypocrisy: Word and Concept
These are helpful clarifications on the concept of hypocrisy. Here's the meat, from Peter Kreeft: The common, modern misunderstanding of hypocrisy [is] not practicing what you preach. . . . Actually, we have misdefined “hypocrisy.” Hypocrisy is not the failure to practice what you preach but the failure to believe it. Hypocrisy is propaganda. If Kreeft is right, then hypocrisy doesn't mean actions that don't line up with your ideals. What person—what Christian—could possibly be anything other...
Flip Your Monitor Vertically
Remember that time when someone showed you how to hit Alt+Tab on your keyboard to switch programs? You were either like, "I can do that with a mouse, so why do I need to learn a keyboard shortcut," or you were like, "WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW!" I was WOW WOW. Where had this tip been all my digital life? It's so obvious to me now that keyboard shortcuts are the most efficient way to tell a computer what to do. But it never occurred to me before I was shown. So let me try you on another digital...
Review: The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected
The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected by Nik Ripken My rating: 4 of 5 stars A truly remarkable book. Very stirring and edifying. If I say, "a little light on the scriptural exegesis," don't think that in saying this I believe myself to be worthy to shine the author's shoes (or his wife's). And I can say that precisely because he himself is a humble man. And a godly one. His insights into the persecuted church around the world would be difficult to improve upon. Who else has...
Pop Music and Twinkies
May conservative Christians pause long enough in our denunciations of pop music to wonder out loud what our biggest problem with it is? Is pop music wrong with a capital WRONG, or is it just, well, dumb? And is it possible to be something other than a cultural elitist—can you be, say, a folk artist—and call pop music dumb, the musical equivalent of Twinkies? I've never heard a pastor denounce Twinkies. In multiple years of weekly preaching I, too, have failed to mention that particular spongy,...