A Sound of Sheer Silence

Doubt takes different forms.  When people think about doubt in terms of religion, people tend to think about big-picture structural doubts.  Does God exist?  Did Jesus rise from the dead?  Things like that.  But there are other, more subtle forms of doubt. Last night at Maundy Thursday service, I heard a stem-winder of a sermon.  The topic of the sermon was how Jesus's death and resurrection defeats the Empire of Death, which is powered by fear, scarcity, and division.  It was a fantastic sermon, and it presented the Christian message in its most vital and relevant possible form. And yet, as I was sitting there, the doubts came.  Did it really?  Did this story that we remember every year really defeat fear, scarcity, and division?  Or, even, did it provide the possibility of overcoming those forces?  Fear, scarcity, and division seem more powerful and more omnipresent then ever.  It doesn't feel like those forces are being ...

Twitter is mostly terrible, but there are a few bright spots, and one of them is Nicole Cliffe.  Moreso than anyone else I have found, she is able to tell consistently compelling stories in the weird and artificial format that Twitter provides.  She also has this incredibly ability to build community around her writing on Twitter, which sounds strange when you say it but is 100% true. Yesterday, Cliffe dropped a particularly amazing story, the beginning of which is: OKAY: I am going to tell the story of my bigamous grandmother at the current time. Please mute me if you heard it two years ago. Please do not steal it for an Elite Daily story (happened last time.) — Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) March 25, 2018 Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.  Beyond being a cracker of a tale, her story got me thinking about a question that I think is at the heart of so much what is going on in America right now.  Everyone, I think, recognizes that things have chan...

In case you think the Bible is irrelevant: The Book of Esther features a rich, bumbling, & misogynistic king with a fragile ego who relies his racist advisors to tell him what to do. He is ultimately bested by an orphan girl & some eunuchs. #HappyPurim ! — Rachel Held Evans (@rachelheldevans) March 1, 2018 Not sure what you mean by "literal," but I never said it was. It's a satirical diaspora story of resistance & Jewish survival, a sort of Persian "dark comedy," likely based on history but not a straightforward recitation of fact. LOTS more options than "literal" vs. "fairy tale." — Rachel Held Evans (@rachelheldevans) March 2, 2018 What struck me about this exchange is how it reveals a way of thinking about stories and how they work.  Rachel Held Evans asserts that the story of Esther is relevant and important to our current situation.  Based on that assertion, her conversation partner immediately jumped to the concl...