Creatively Advancing into Novelty
Jesus was one of a long line of people who submitted to God. So did Adam, so did Abraham, so did Moses, so did David. They each demonstrated submission to God in their own context. What follows is an excerpt from an online correspondence I had with a friend–who is a member of the Eastern…
This was originally published on Matthew Barlow’s blog on December 27, 2012. … Since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary I’ve had a few back and forth duels on facebook about gun control, mostly sparked over a few things that I posted. I didn’t necessarily mean for these posts to be inflammatory or controversial, it…
“The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is…
Currently I believe in Christ because of the aesthetics of the Christ event. That is, the who Christ was and is — the life that Jesus led as recorded in the Gospels, the things he taught, and ultimately his death that brought and end to all primitive religious sacrifice — is so compellingly beautiful that…
Part of the problem with the current economic crisis is that economics is based on an odd sort of faith, expressed tongue in cheek by the term “money-theism,” which has been popularized by comedian Stephen Colbert. There are a few big faith claims, like the ideas that economic deregulation always promotes growth, that tax cuts for powerful corporations…
So what’s left to us is the task of interpretation. Or, to frame it as a question, Can I reject the Bible’s metaphysics without rejecting its message? That’s a bridge too far for many of your fellow atheists (although they have no problem accepting Plato’s wisdom while rejecting platonic metaphysics). But it’s not a bridge…
“[C]ontemplation represents a way to disengage from the toxicity of our current world order, not in terms of supporting violent revolution, but in an opposite move: by embracing a revolution of humility and love. We cannot beat the greedy, violent, unjust enemy-that-is-us with weapons or military might. Only by “dropping out” of the system can…
Domestication of animals radically changed our relationship to our environment, and the price we paid was high. Diseases from livestock killed many (and with the rise of BSE and avian and swine flus, still do) and only those who developed immunity survived. We can thus see these survivors developing a morbid attachment to these creatures…
Paul’s blinding conversion and Jesus’ time in the desert are both examples of graphical entries into Heidegger’s ‘clearing’, of coming up on the truer core of ourselves and the different light that eliminates us there. They are, in the fullest sense, moments of enlightenment. Yet, strangely, they are also within the corpus of what we…
……………… I was recently asked by one of my favorite educator/poet/theologians, Callid Keefe-Perry, to review his new 45-minute documentary film, Made As Makers. I felt honored. ……………… “Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot name them” ~Dana Gioia To paraphrase the illustrative Peter Rollins, many people of faith feel a desire to…