This one comes to us from Nathan Hoff. The god of my own imagining used to prefer edited prayers. Knee-deep in the psalter these days, I have greater appreciation for full-blown imprecation, even as a Christian. Imprecatory psalms—the ones that curse enemies—are that category that never gets read in public worship. They don’t fit with […]
Glad, Sad, Bad, and Mad: Anger at God in Christian Life
Here is Bonnie Zahl’s piece from the Faith & Doubt Issue. Pick one up here before they’re gone! There’s an episode in the second season of Ally McBeal where the main character Ally goes to the hospital to see her boyfriend, who is a doctor, and ends up meeting his eight-year-old patient, Eric. Life hasn’t […]
Coworkers and Anger, Delfina and Me
Huge thanks to this contributor for their anonymous post. Delfina is driving me crazy. Okay, the person who is driving me crazy isn’t actually named Delfina, but I’m leaving Guatemala as I write this, and the name Delfina is on my mind. So that’s what we’ll call her. Delfina is someone I work with occasionally […]
Reckoning with Female Rage
Thankful for this one from Sarah Gates. One of my favorite podcasts is “Call Your Girlfriend,” self-described as “a podcast for long-distance besties everywhere,” co-hosted by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman. I listen to it nearly every Friday for a number of reasons, including the no-holds-barred attitudes of the hosts, their passionate feminism, and their […]
The Absorption of All Our Rage
In an age defined by emotional rage, political divisiveness and correctness, the recurring themes of the victim-culprit blaming, I have been comforted by God’s message to us in the cross. This passage comes from Frank Lake’s short book on pastoral counseling, in which he deals with both the problem of rage in social justice/injustice, but also the […]
Fluorescent Lighting and Vampire Haberdashery: Some Thoughts on Scapegoating and Parables
For me, writing about grace is like undressing in a cold changing room, with floor-to-ceiling mirrors and flickering fluorescent lighting: self-flattery is an impossibility. Don’t worry, there is more nudity on the way. When you can no longer unsee your own low anthropology, writing about internal work feels exposing. Feelings aren’t always reality, though, and the […]
Another Week Ends: Dylan, Cash and O’Connor, Gospel Guitar, Cathartic Indignation, Black Mirrors, and Impossible Fun Runs
1. Awesome, awesome story about a funky gospel music guitarist in the Atlanta area named Don Schanche, who also happens to be white. The Bitter Southerner published Don’s story, which gives a beautiful picture of racial reconciliation happening not on some abstract or systemic level, but interpersonally, on-the-ground, as a fruit of the gospel. The […]
PZ’s Podcast: Cross Dressing and Left Hand Path
EPISODE 193: Cross Dressing “I’m absolutely captivated by a movie called The Gallant Hours (1959), starring James Cagney and directed by Robert Montgomery. For one thing, it presents an ideal picture of how a person should be thanked for faithful service. And what a piece of work the “Church” is, that it’s so rarely able […]
87 Percent of Our Mental Life
Another absolute gem from Tim Kreider, this time via his essay on the intoxicating nature of anger in We Learn Nothing. It’s just as much as riff on the pleasures–and costs–of self-justification, and while that may not exactly constitute breaking news, still, it takes guts to talk about this tendency so openly and specifically when […]
God Save Us From The Nasty Effect
Quite a close-to-home article appeared in The NY Times the other day, “This Story Stinks”, in which Dominique Brossard and Dietram Scheufele relay some findings from a report published last month in The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (!) about the so-called “nasty effect” that afflicts online culture. Specifically, the comments sections one finds on blogs […]
The Power of Listening in New Girl
This post comes from my wife, Hawley Schneider. She has been my muse on many occasions, providing pieces of culture she thinks I should consider writing about or incorporating into my preaching and teaching. I keep saying, why don’t you write something about it? She finally has: I have a few shows that I like to […]
The Most Important Word in Any Language (and the Least Socially Acceptable Emotion)
A frankly amazing interview took place last month on The Diane Rehm Show (NPR), one that was too rich not to share here. Diane sat down with Dr. Henry Kellerman, a renowned psychoanalyst, to talk about his new book, Personality: How it Forms. A broad subject for a discussion, but one which quickly took an […]
