Category: Modernity
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The Distraction Delusion – Get Your Hands Dirty
I recently bought a pickup truck, a twenty-five year-old clunker that runs ok. I paid $600 for it and have been slowly tending to the little fixes that it requires. It’s old enough to lack the computerization that puts vehicles beyond the reach of a shade-tree mechanic. My father and his father were both auto…
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The Collapse into Chaos – Where Only God Makes Sense
Nothing is more traumatic than the onset of chaos. Predictability breaks down, goodness seems to disappear, and the madness of sheer survival takes over. In chaos, everything seems plausible since reason itself has become unreachable. A recent spate of reading took me down the rabbit hole into the madness of the 14th century. For all…
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Music to Die For
Living in the South, I am confronted with the reality of American Country music whether I want it or not. Of course, I’m confronted with all of the other genres as well, though Classical and Jazz seem to be less ubiquitous than Rap and Country. However, I was making my way through a public venue…
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Living Large – And Long
Modernity is in love with time – or with a certain version of time. That version goes under the heading of the “future” and is married to notions of “progress,” “change,” “advancement,” and the like. It is inherently a version of time that appeals to those who are young, in that it privileges the future…
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Face-to-Face – Without Shame or Fear
We are apparently living in the age of the face, and I don’t think it’s necessarily bad. I know all the complaints about our culture of “selfies,” and there are certainly many things in that to make us wonder, but our fascination with our faces long predates the technology of our phones. In the usage…
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The Frontier of Personhood
The word “frontier” has long been associated with certain aspects of American mythology. “Frontier Days” is short-hand for log cabins, flintlocks, and the rugged life. Occasionally it takes on aspects of the “Wild West.” In recent generations it has been moved off-planet, such that we hear Captain Kirk intone, “Space…….the final frontier.” It is also…
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The Sacrifice of Worship
When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac (Genesis 22), there was no questioning on Abraham’s part about what was intended. He understood precisely what was involved in such a thing. There was wood to be gathered, an altar of stones to be constructed, the victim to be bound, and then the slitting of…
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Over Come Evil By Doing Good
Drawing on the Book of Proverbs, St. Paul offers a simple admonition to his readers: “…if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” (Romans 12:20) He then adds: Do not be overcome by evil, but…
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When America Got Sick
It was in the years following the Civil War, America was hard on the path to “becoming great.” The industrial revolution had moved into full swing, railroads criss-crossed the country, immigration was gaining speed, and wealth was accumulating at a rate never seen before. We were slowly moving from our original agrarian economy towards life…
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“Make It So!” vs. “Let It Be!”
Abba Poemen said, “Teach your mouth to say that which is in your heart. +++ Some years back, while driving through the mountains here in Tennessee, with an out-of-date GPS system in my car, I was instructed to take a particular turn and cross a bridge. Something inside me (guardian angel?) whispered a word of…
Okay thank you Father. this is very helpful. warmly; -mb