The following analysis contains spoilers for the film Midsommar, though I suspect many readers will be welcome to them. Ari Aster’s latest summer horror is not a film I would readily recommend, especially to a Christian audience. Nonetheless, I do believe the film recommends something significant to us, especially living in the ashes of a post-Christian…
Passing Unscientific Reflections on Suffering and Love
We can say there are two issues at hand when we encounter deep suffering, the logical/probable and the existential. How can a good, loving God exist amidst suffering and death? A secondary but analogous case is can existence itself be good amidst them? Much debate exists over how best to answer, but Dostoevsky is convinced…
The Sexuality of God: The Church and the LGBT Community
My lofty hope in writing this essay is to shed light on the confrontation between traditional Christianity and progressive homosexuality in the American context. Ultimately, I wish to suggest that perhaps these two embattled communities need one another more than they need the cultural positions of power for which they vociferously vie, amidst gnashing of…
Amused to Death Part 2: Postman Post-Postman on Posting
Following my brief synopsis of Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, my intent with this post is to extrapolate some of his thinking into modern media practices, specifically social media within the internet age. These thoughts are reflective, not researched, so I certainly welcome any feedback. The nature of social media, though often utilizing the written…
Amused to Death Part 1: A Post-Postman Postman Post
I finally got around to reading Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, about three decades too late. It is easy to see why the premise of the book continues to raise contention today. To the modern reader, it may momentarily feel dated; in its conclusion, it focuses on the ravaging of the television on our…
A Struggle with Identity
To my mind, the key controversy of our time revolves around the notion of identity. Identity politics seems to be the rule of the day. But what is meant by identity? How does one define himself? In the existential sense, this is the familiar confrontation of the self with the self. This confrontation manifests itself…
Election 2016: Intuitions and Reflections
My heart weighs heavy as the soap opera of this election year draws nearer to its dramatic conclusion. I have decided perhaps against better judgment to add my own thoughts to the already vast cacophony of polemical voices and moralizing zealots. I have little to add in terms of particular analysis of the candidates and…
The Matter with Black Lives
“It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn A popular “hashtag” battle has achieved a symbolic primacy in the contemporary racial debate. Both the “Black Lives Matter” and “All Lives Matter” positions have…
To the Ignorant and the Open Minds
The other night, someone I had recently met confided in me her distaste for ignorant people. She continued with the usual diatribe that people who believe x, or people who perform y are ignorant, and thus follows the natural implication that such people are unworthy of the same amount of serious respect or attention as…
Some Thoughts on Thankfulness
As much as Americans thrive in reaffirming the moral goodness of gratitude whenever Thanksgiving rolls around, I find not much thought is put into the concept of thankfulness itself, much to our loss. The frequent question at the dinner table for the more observant Thanksgiving traditionalists is not to ask what thankfulness is, but to…
The Pursuit of Thought 