Not Even Jack Bauer Can Get Us Out of This One

Powerful episode of 24 Sunday night. “Redemption” caught us up with illegal expatriate Jack Bauer (played by Keifer Sutherland) coming to the aid of African children kidnapped to be made into child soldiers under a would-be dictator.
As always, the show’s story was straight out of news headlines, even including a presidential transfer of power in Washington, [...]

Walking the Line Between Loss and Hope

You may not know it (I didn’t), but on July 27th of 2005, Congress proclaimed October 15th Stillbirth Remembrance Day, also sometimes called Stillbirth and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Though you might not know it, today is a hard day for many.
It may sound like a gigantic exaggeration, but almost every couple Megan and I know [...]

Bailing on the Bailout

I haven’t written too much about the current financial crisis/bailout/circus of late, partly because I’m still trying to figure it all out, and partly because I’ve written before about the problem of big government handling anything. While I love being right, I hate being redundant.
I was not in favor of a bailout, yet assumed it [...]

How We Know What We Know

I’ve been reading some really good stuff of late on epistemology (that is, “how we know what we know”). With regard to truth, most people feel the pull of the Enlightenment’s demand for proof, as well as postmodernism’s questioning that truth can even exist. Many people (kids especially) feel caught in the middle between what [...]

Review: The Dark Knight

As it’s rare for me to see a movie in the theater within a week of its opening, I thought I’d celebrate the occasion by posting some actual thoughts here on The Dark Knight. For the sake of not spoiling things, I’ll try to refrain from plot details and instead focus on some of the [...]

Summer Seminar

Beginning Monday, I’m out of town for the next two weeks as one of seven staff taking 28 soon-to-be-seniors on Westminster’s Summer Seminar to South Dakota. Though I hate being away from Megan and the girls that long, I’m looking forward to the trip. Here’s the official write-up:
“The Summer Seminar in Liberal Arts is an [...]

The Heart of the Matter

As the comments keep multiplying on my previous post on gay marriage, I thought it best to condense some of the discussion to get at what seems to be the heart of the matter. I’ve enjoyed hearing from each of you (many of you are apparently new readers – welcome), and I’ve entered into a [...]

On Gay Marriage

In light of the activist action of California’s Supreme Court late last week, here are some things to keep in mind with regard to the question of homosexuality and gay marriage:

According to a 2005 study by The Kinsey Institute, 90% of men aged 18-44 considered themselves to be heterosexual, 2.3% as homosexual, 1.8% as bisexual, [...]

National Day of Prayer

Today is the National Day of Prayer. What would you pray for our nation and world?

Totally Illogical

“Spock is a main character in the original Star Trek TV series, and one of the most enduring characters from American 1960s television. He is the only alien in the permanent cast: half-Vulcan, half-Human, and serves as the science officer and executive officer of the USS Enterprise, under Captain James T. Kirk. His personal struggle [...]

The Ideology of Rationality

Susan Jacoby’s name has been floating around several sites I frequent and enjoy, so I thought I’d read up a little on why. Jacoby is a former education reporter for The Washington Post, now an author whose new book, The Age of American Unreason, comes out in a couple of weeks (she wrote Freethinkers: A [...]

Shooting Sadness

Well, St. Louis (namely Kirkwood) made the national news again for all the wrong reasons.
Sigh.

Morally Dumbfounded

The New York Times published a story yesterday that I happened to catch right off the digital press. Since it pertained to what we’ve been studying in Biblical Ethics this week (ethical systems and how they affect our understanding of morality), I scrapped the first half of what I had planned for the day, made [...]

Saddest Word of the Week

“Ex-step-father”
Used as part of a tearful student’s after-class explanation of her pain in writing a two-page “defining moments” essay about her 15-year-old life.
Sigh.

Cheaters Never Prosper (But I So Wanted to Try)

Believe it or not, I can count on one hand the times I’ve cheated to get an advantage over someone else. I remember letting my eyes range free a couple times in elementary school to look at someone else’s paper on a test. I also recall feeling badly after one exam I took during my [...]

A Good Kind of Tired

There are few things in life more anti-climactic than finishing your last final exam of the semester. I don’t care if it’s high school, college, or seminary, when you’re done, you’re…done. That’s it. No brass band; no immediate feedback; no on-the-spot acknowledgment that, by golly (and by the grace of God), you actually completed the [...]

The Postmodern Wave

Going to a baseball game with seminarians is an interesting experience. While they appreciate the nuances and gentle rhythms of the sport, the real fun is the discussion between pitches. Personal, cultural, and theological conversation is what seminarians live for, and watching baseball live is especially good for this kind of interaction.
Take, for instance, my [...]

On Storytelling

“The greatest religions convert the world through stories.”
– Ben Okri
Dan Allender’s book, The Healing Path, is a good reminder of what we’re not called to do with our hurt and heartache – that is, to stuff, squelch, or suppress it. Avoiding the other extreme, Allender does a good job of going beyond any “express yourself” [...]

Therapy, Counseling, and Drugs (Oh, My!)

“Personality disorders are among the most problematic and vexing disorders
the pastor is likely to face in his or her day-to-day life in the church.”
The Pastor’s Guide to Psychological Disorders and Treatments, pg. 74
“I’m schizophrenic, but we’re better now.”
T-Shirt for sale at Union Station
Reading The Pastor’s Guide for my Intro to Counseling class, I began [...]

Bracketology: A Study in Postmodernism?

Like many this time of year, I just filled out my NCAA brackets with completely uneducated guesses as to who will make the Final Four. When I say “uneducated,” I’m not kidding: though well-versed in the fundamentals of basketball, I haven’t watched a game all season.
I do this every March – make decisions based on [...]