The modern view of the self, the view that dominates within the psychotherapeutic community, is characterized by what Charles Taylor has called the “buffered self.” For a variety of reasons, which Taylor describes in his book A Secular Age, the modern notion of self-hood became introverted and individualistic, the self as isolated and distinct (“buffered”)…
Category
Christianity
This is the meal pleasantly set…
Back After Lent
I’m taking a Lenten break from blogging. This will be the first blog break I’ve ever taken. I think it will be good. See you April 8th, 2012.
How To Destroy Love: Eros The Misunderstood Love | Art by Amanda Rae Long
“Now EROS makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.” … “Without Eros, sexual desire like every other desire is a fact about ourselves. Within Eros it is rather about the Beloved.”…
When Poetry Is At Its Best | Art by John McCormick
Many people of faith feel a desire to speak about that which is most precious to them, about that which has transformed their lives, that which they feel has liberated them. Yet that needs to be contrasted with the concern that every time we speak of that source, that place of liberation, we somehow do…
There is no Room in the Bible for Piper’s “Masculine Christianity”
“God is spirit,” announces Jesus by the well (John 4:24). This is one of only two definitional propositions about God in scripture. The other is “God is love.” … This is a blog post in accordance and solidarity with Rachel Held Evens and her challenge for men to push back against John Pipers “masculine Christianity.”…
The Will To Embrace: Sin and Family | Photography by Eric Cahan
“…the will to give ourselves to others and “welcome” them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity. The will to embrace precedes any “truth” about others and any construction of their “justice.” This will is absolutely indiscriminate and…
Prolepsis: This Is What The Future Will Look Like | Art by Nuam Gabo
“Prolepsis is a Greek theater word. It is when the crowd–which is usually all the normal people in the play–come out and tell you at the beginning what’s about to happen at the end of the story and the meaning it has. So that you, the audience–when you’re watching the play–can come to see the…
God Has Breasts and Is Not Omnipotent
The bible never says that God is omnipotent or that he created out of nothing… We get our modern ideas of Gods omnipotence from the Hebrew name El-Shaddai wich is most often translated as “the almighty” but many scholars today suggest that God of the two mountains or the large breasted one would be a…
Tim Tebow, Religious Hypocrisy, Social Media and Our Need For Attention
I think a case could be made that the emergence of digital communication and online social media has made religious hypocrisy a more dangerous temptation today than we often recognize. Lee Siegel in his book Against the Machine, discusses how we hide behind false, “phantom” identities on the internet. It’s a medium we think fosters…