(OPINION) Kathy and I are winging across the Atlantic, returning to the States after spending two weeks in Italy. For me, the trip been a kind of pilgrimage. Now there’s a word with which many of us are unfamiliar.
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(ANALYSIS) The church was once considered a resource for understanding how reality works. That’s less the case today. To return to being a resource for things like artificial intelligence, we’d have to learn what the Bible says about technology and sorcery.
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Something to ponder: One of the earliest known uses of the noun madness is in an early version of Wycliffe’s Bible in 1384. In the wider world, madness meant insanity, lunacy, irrationalism, folly, delusion. In scripture, individuals — as well as nations and faith traditions — with only a shallow sense of the past and genuine tradition are given to delusion, which happens to be how Iain McGilchrist describes our current state of affairs.
Read More(OPINION) If you’re still considering making a New Year’s resolution, try kicking the bucket list. I’d never heard of a “bucket list” until the 2007 movie “The Bucket List” was released.
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(OPINION) A few years ago, a friend shared a Bible verse with me that has become my annual new year’s resolution. But it comes with a caveat.
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(OPINION) Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI declared that “art and the saints are the greatest apologetic for our faith.” A movement was launched to transform painters into “tacit preachers,” wrote Gabriele Paleotti, archbishop of Bologna. The term tacit means wordless. Tacit preachers sought to move viewers in deeper ways than mere argument. Art provided a way to draw people together instead of tearing them apart.
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(OPINION) Advent began Sunday. Most Christians know what Advent signifies: a time of penitence and preparation. And they know how it signifies these two: four Advent wreath candles. But why do we observe Advent? Dallas Willard had a “why” you might find surprising.
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(OPINION) In the years following Martin Luther’s 95 theses, Luther was shocked by much of what he saw. What followed were uprisings so brutal and bloody that Luther himself condemned the rebels in terms so hysterical that even his admirers were taken back.
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(OPINION) What St. John Paul II taught was so wondrously beautiful that it took listeners some time to begin to grasp the significance of it. One of the first was his biographer, George Wiegel. He described the theology of the body as “a kind of theological time-bomb set to go off with dramatic consequences … perhaps in the 21st century.” I hope he’s right.
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(OPINION) If the sons of Judah were history’s first creative minority, and America’s renewal depends on the creative minority, and Catholic astronomers in China were the second creative minority, then I’m praying for a third creative minority. The books of Jeremiah and Daniel provide some of the details regarding becoming the creative minority.
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(ANALYSIS) I hope Christians noted a ruling last week in Massachusetts. A Christian couple, Michael and Kitty Burke, was deemed unfit for a foster care license. Michael served in Iraq as a Marine; Kathy is a former paraprofessional for kids with special needs. They sought to adopt through the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families’ foster care program.
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(OPINION) “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” cost $294 million to make. It is likely a financial loss, as only 9% of viewers recommend it to friends and family. Compare this lack of enthusiasm with “Sound of Freedom,” which used crowdfunding to raise its $14.5 million budget and grossed nearly $3 million more than “Dial of Destiny” its opening weekend.
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(OPINION) On this day in history, July 10, 1965, the Rolling Stones topped U.S. charts for the first time with the single “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” It signaled a shift. Beatlemania hit the U.S. in early 1964. The Beatles were playful, upbeat. The Stones were dark, restless. “Satisfaction” struck a chord. It resonated with what C.S. Lewis called “a new approach to life.” Discontentment.
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(OPINION) “Padre Pio” might not be for most folks. They don’t see the “hidden” knowledge of God in our being created as naked and unashamed. They instead associate all nudity with pornography. That’s because we’re a porn-saturated society. It’s estimated that 46%–74% of men and 16%–41% of women in the US are active pornography users.
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(OPINION) Joseph Henrich credits the Catholic Church for our WEIRD culture: Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. But he’s not Catholic. He’s an agnostic. He’s simply describing how we became WEIRD.
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(OPINION) Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are good things. But DEI is like trying to change the world through law. There’s a better way: love. I think love is UEE: unity, equality and exclusions.
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(OPINION) Tax returns sadly say most American Christians are ungenerous, typically giving only 1.5% to 2% of their income according to an Oxford University Press book. It’s not that Christians don’t have the money but that they spend it on luxuries — with little leftover to give — while failing to perceive needs outside their own circles.
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(OPINION) Quantum theory can widen how we imagine the cross of Christ. Jesus did redeem us on the cross. But wondrously beautiful things happened simultaneously to his blood being shed. For instance, Jesus married (betrothed) us. In Jewish tradition, a redeemer was a male relative responsible for caring for a deceased relative’s possessions, including the widow.
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(OPINION) It starts with the reenchantment of the body and sexuality, extending to the entire natural world. And here I offer a suggestion for parents, especially those drawn to “purity pledge” programs. The results remind me of Jesus’ warning that merely getting clean from something rather than for something often results in the second state being worse than the first.
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(OPINION) Artificial intelligence technologies are bad when they become an artifice, which means contrived or false. The artifice of intelligence makes people “see only what new technologies can do and are incapable of imagining what they will undo.”
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