Yes, I know this is a blog, and book, about keeping our kids Christian, but what we must warn them against is also important if we are to make that keeping more likely.
I recently learned about a Christian women. a famous “mommy blogger,” who was divorced, and recently announced she’s started dating a famous soccer star who happens to be a woman. Yes, this famous Christian author (New York Times Best Seller, no less), blogger, and speaker is now a confirmed lesbian. What makes this particularly especially problematic for conservative, orthodox Christians isn’t the so much the lesbian part of it, but the rationale she gives for engaging in a lesbian relationship. It makes her happy! Oh, so very, very happy! As she put it in her Facebook announcement about the relationship: (more…)
This is my first post for this re-purposed blog, and Thanksgiving Day is certainly an appropriate day on which to do it. I say re-purposed because I initially focused on the intersection of Christ and culture, something that is still near and dear to my heart. But about a year and a half ago I decided to write a book, and my orientation changed, which is reflected in the title of this blog and the name of my book.
The thing I am most grateful for in my life, second only to my salvation through Jesus Christ, is my wife and kids. They are the only dream in my life that has ever come true. I’ve always been a big thinker, but all those big thoughts over the last 30 plus years have crashed on the shoals of reality before could ever got to shore. Not so Sarah, Gabrielle, Adam, and Dominic. (more…)
Over the years I’ve read a variety of things about Charles Darwin’s faith and his so called struggle with it, as if he was truly ambivalent about it. The deeper he got into his theory of evolution, the story goes, the more his faith gave way to doubt and eventually to nothing. A short letter by Darwin was sold at auction affirming he in fact did not believe in the Bible or in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and I guess for some this was news.
[T]his is only news if we have accepted the usual stories—indeed, myths—about Darwin’s alleged struggle between faith and doubt. The usual story we’ve been fed is that he was a faithful Bible-believing Anglican until he discovered incontrovertible evidence for evolution on his 1831-1836 journey on the HMS Beagle (mythical option 1), or until spiritually broken by the death of his beloved daughter Anne (mythical option 2).
The truth is that Darwin’s unbelief was a family inheritance, as was his adherence to a godless account of evolution, reaching back through his father, Robert, to his grandfather, Erasmus. Charles could have written that letter long before he ever set foot on the Beagle.
With hit “faith-based” movies like War Roomand Captive, there was much discussion about Christians and film making. Interestingly enough, some of the harshest critics of these movies are from Christians themselves who seem embarrassed by what I call the cheese factor in many such movies.
A good example can be found at The Federalist by Christopher Hutton. The title of the piece: “‘War Room’ Is Just As Cheesy As All Kendrick Brothers Films.” There is no doubt that many of these movies, not just those by the Kendrick brothers, have a generous helping of cheese, but such criticisms are in many ways myopic. They are especially so in light of the history of evangelical Christianity in America. I’m actually encouraged, as a Christian, that these movies are being made at all, cheese notwithstanding.
Since Father Time took the great David Bowie, I have read numerous speculations about what might have been the state of his soul. Bowie, the consummate showman and actor, was a very private man, refreshing in the age of instant everything. So there isn’t a lot to go on, and I am never one to speculate on such things, leaving that to a power infinitely higher than I. But a friend sent me an encouraging piece that doesn’t bother with speculation: “Why David Bowie Knelt and Said the Lord’s Prayer at Wembley Stadium.” Yeah, I didn’t know that either. The title on the video of him kneeling in prayer: “The Bravest Moment in Rock & Roll History.” Given that sex and drugs are two words most often associated with rock ‘n roll, such a prayer before a hundred thousand rock fans could most definitely be called brave.
As I read this piece and then looked at the video of him kneeling before the crowd saying the Lord’s Prayer, I started to see another video for the song “Lazarus” from his final album, Blackstar, in a different light. (The name of the song kind of gives it away if you’re familiar with the biblical story of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead.) Bowie had to be a fan of C.S. Lewis to use a wardrobe so prominently. If you look carefully at the beginning of the song you’ll see a young man open the wardrobe and stare at Bowie laying on what looks like a hospital bed. He starts with the words, “Look up here, I’m in heaven.” The young man appears to become older as the video goes on; maybe an alter ego? Bowie writes in a journal as he struggles with what could be his last thoughts. You’ll notice a skull on the desk as he writes, a la MacBeth? To be or not to be? Ah mortality, the great equalizer, the great question mark over human existence. Leave it to Bowie to ask the most profound of questions as he exits this mortal coil. In the last scene we see Bowie backing into the wardrobe from which the young man came, and shutting the door. Godspeed in Narnia, David Bowie. Thank you for the joy you brought untold millions over so many years.
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