A Sound of Sheer Silence

We are coming to the point where no one really doubts that there is a serious divide in the Christian world, a divide that appears to be getting wider as time goes on.  But I feel like people are struggling to give a name to this divide, and I would like to take a crack at providing some framework for talking about this divide. On one side, you have a group of people who understand Christianity fundamentally and primarily as a way of life .  Under this view, we have been given by God a model of how to live our lives, a model that reflects the "best life" we and those around us can have, and our job is to go out and try as best we can to do that.  This model, above anything else, is to be found in the life and actions of Jesus of Nazareth as set forth in the canonical Gospels, and then secondarily in other parts of the Bible, and tertiarily in the lives of other Christian witnesses.   Under this view, the ultimate measure of whether and to what extent one...

Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. A scribe then approached and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Another of his disciples said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”   (Matthew 8:18-22). A couple of weeks ago, I talked about ghosts .  In the event that you were skeptical of the power of the ghosts of the pasts, you should no longer be after watching what unfolded in Charlottesville, Virginia on Friday and Saturday.  Ghosts of the past, ghosts that many (wrongly, naively) thought were dead and buried came to life.   Ghosts took the life Heather Heyer , a martyr for justice.  Ghosts were everywhere, and their power was unmistakable. In the face of this horror, there were rays of li...

1. One of my favorite movies, and a movie I will defend to the death, is The Fountain.   The conventional wisdom is that The Fountain  (2006) was a weird misstep in director Darren Aronofsky's career between the critically acclaimed, commercially successful hits Requiem for a Dream  (2000) and The Wrestler  (2008) (and, later Black Swan (2010)).  That conventional wisdom is wrong-- The Fountain is every bit as good as those films (and I think better than Requiem and Black Swan , though I really like those films).  It is, I will admit, less accessible than some of his other films--it doesn't have a conventional narrative structure, but instead intertwines three related stories.  But if you take the time to work through what is going on, it will reward you. [Also, a quick aside--the soundtrack to The Fountain  by Clint Mansell and Kronos Quartet, is absolutely fantastic.  Even if you don't see the movie, listen to the soundtrack--it i...

Rev. Jordan Haynie Ware's twitter feed directed my attention to  this excellent article , written by Jem Bloomfield.  Mr. Bloomfield is a British academic, and he makes three points that I think are critical in thinking and talking about the interaction between Christianity, the broader "secular" culture, and in particular the younger slice of that culture.  But it also interacts in a way with people who are searching for some sort of "third way" on the contested issues of sexuality, most recently in the form of Fr. Jim Martin's book Building a Bridge , which was based on a talk he gave last fall and which I talked about here . Before turning to the article, it's worthwhile to get the "whatabout"-ist objections out the way (some of which can be seen in the comments section of the post).  Yes, "secular culture" is not a monolithic entity, and neither are Millennials/young people.  There are quite a number of young people who are very...

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel. (Exodus 32:1-6). I have a theory...

As many, perhaps most, of you know, the UK had a rather consequential election last Thursday.  Theresa May and her Conservative Party got a pretty good kicking, as the Brits would say, especially in light of the fact that when she called the election on April 18th the consensus opinion was she was going to win in a landslide.  [As an aside, I cannot possibly express how jealous I am of my UK and Canadian friends that a "long election season" is something like 10 weeks, as compared to the 18 month Bataan Death March that is US elections].  Anyway, May and the Conservatives fell short of a majority in Parliament, and so in order to form a government, she had to look around for coalition partners.  And it appears she found them, in the form of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. Now, it is very likely that forming a coalition with the DUP will have severe negative consequences for peace in Northern Ireland , and at the end of the day that is the most i...

Something of a recurring theme on this blog is my war stories from Catholic middle school and high school, as seen here and here and here and also here .  In doing so, I know I am presenting that experience in the worst possible light.  I got a very solid education during those six years, and I know I would not be where I am, and who I am, without the middle school and especially high school experience I had.  So, when I tell negative stories about that experience, there should be an unspoken caveat that, on balance, my experience was very positive. With that necessary caveat out of the way, I have another high school story, one that relates to a story in the news.   Maddi Runkles is an 18 year old senior at Heritage Academy in Hagerstown, Maryland.  Runkles is also pregnant, and as a result of her pregnancy, she was not allowed (or will not be allowed--it's not clear from the story when graduation will be) to participate in graduation ceremonies.  I ...

I have a friend who is going through a tough time.  Her sister is an alcoholic, and she and the rest of the family are trying to get the sister into treatment.  I am very fortunate that I have never experienced alcoholism or addiction in my family or friends, so I have no direct experience of what my friend is going through.  But in listening to my friend talk about the difficulties she and her family were having, I was struck by the parallels with something that I have experience with--mental illness. The biggest difficulty in talking with people who are in the grip of mental illness is that you can't rationally convince them that what they are doing is illogical or self-destructive.  That's because, as I have said before , the nature of mental illness is that it creates a filter through which everything is seen and experienced.  You can't convince people that what they are doing is illogical, because as seen through their distorted lens, everything they are ...