A Sound of Sheer Silence

Some of you, I can confidently predict, don't like Bono or U2.  In this you are wrong, but I acknowledge that this is a reality of the world we live in.  Some people think that U2 and Bono are faux-deep and sappy, but that's because we live in a world where too many people are afraid of things that are actually deep and meaningful, and so armor themselves against the world by constantly taking an edgelord ironic stance.  I love U2, and I love the song "One,"  as I have discussed before. On last week's episode of the Inglorious Pasterds, the guys mentioned "One" in the context of the shootings in Las Vegas.  In particular, they quoted the final chorus: One love, o ne blood One life, you have to do what you should One life with each other Sisters, brothers One life, but we're not the same We get to carry each other, carry each other One One After hearing the Pasterds' podcast, I've been thinking about these lines for the last coupl...

I am going to vary up the order a little bit, since we find ourselves in Holy Week, making this topic especially relevant.  And, I am going to approach this topic from something of a round-about direction. In the March 30th episode of the Inglorious Pasterds  podcast, Michael, Brad, and Matt had a long and excellent conversation about "manliness" and the overwrought and toxic versions of manliness that is endemic in both our secular culture and in much of our Christian religious culture.  It is an outstanding conversation that covers a wide range of issues--parenting, Trump, psychology, gender roles--and I would highly encourage everyone to check it out. At one point in the conversation, the guys were talking about listening to another dude complain that his wife wasn't having sex with him as much as this guy would have liked.  "I don't get it," the no-sex dude recounted, "I do these things for her, and she still won't put out."  "Mayb...

In the last couple of weeks, I've been listening to a great podcast called Inglorious Pasterds .  The three guys who make up the show--Matt Polley, Brad Polley, and Michael Baysinger--are insightful as well as funny and irreverent in the best possible way.  It's great, and the community that has formed around it is pretty great as well.  Seriously, check them out. Anyway, this week they had Pastor Brian Zahnd on the podcast.  My twitter friend "Egregious Philbin" turned me on to Zahnd a few months back, and his discussion on the podcast was interesting and challenging.  One of the things he said that stuck with me was, when discussing the full-throated embrace by evangelicals of Trump and the trapping of power, he said (paraphrasing a bit) that "they (i.e. evangelicals) don't see the Kingdom of God working in the world, and so they turn to political action to fix things." I think that's right, and it is even broader than just talking about Trump ...