Tag: Culture

Digging in Deeper: Ecclesiastes 1:9

102 Comments

“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I remember when the modern superhero movie genre first exploded into existence. Superhero movies had been around for a long time, of course. Most of them weren’t any good. The original set of Superman movies were okay, and Christopher Reeves was certainly iconic in the role, but to go back and watch them now, they were campy and had horrible special effects. Technology has improved since then and the writing mostly has too. The first Spider-Man movie with Tobey Maguire, though, was the start of the modern age of superhero films. I was a freshman in college, a first-rate nerd, absolutely loved it, and haven’t looked back. There may be a handful I haven’t seen since then, but not more than that. Still, it has been hard to keep up of late because there have been just so many. But as the total has continued to rise, the quality has tended to decline. As much as I hate to say it, one of the most recent superhero movies to release – and an MCU film no less – is a great example. I finally got to watch the Captain Marvel series, The Marvels, the other day. Let’s talk for a few minutes about it.

Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Exodus 21:7-11

4 Comments

“When a man sells his daughter as a concubine, she is not to leave as the male slaves do. If she is displeasing to her master, who chose her for himself, then he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners because he has acted treacherously toward her. Or if he chooses her for his son, he must deal with her according to the customary treatment of daughters. If he takes an additional wife, he must not reduce the food, clothing, or marital rights of the first wife. And if he does not do these three things for her, she may leave free of charge, without any payment.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There’s a memorable scene from the series, West Wing, when President Bartlett publicly embarrassed one of his critics. Bartlett is a Democrat (being the protagonist of a show developed by Aaron Sorkin, of course he is). The critic is a religious conservative who has a popular call in radio show where she has been critical of the President and his policies and has taken a conservative stance on a handful of social issues including homosexuality. In front of a roomful of reporters and supporters, Bartlett asks the critic what kind of price his daughter would fetch if he sold her into slavery. This is followed by a series of other questions whose purpose is to show that this critic’s traditional understanding of the Old Testament is silly, and thus so are conservatives. Well, this next law starts with the verse Bartlett cities about selling a daughter into slavery. Let’s talk about what this means, what it doesn’t, and why this doesn’t take away from our image of God’s character in the Old Testament.

Read the rest…

A Timely Invitation

Leave a comment

Happy New Year! As we get started on this brand-new adventure, we are going to spend a couple of weeks taking a look at what God has been doing in our midst and how we can experience more of that together. Part of experiencing more of that means honestly addressing the cultural situation we are facing. If we are going to grow God’s work in this culture, there is something specific we will need to commit ourselves to doing. Let’s talk about that today.

A Timely Invitation

The culture around us is changing. That’s a pretty bland start for a sermon, so let me explain what I mean. I mean, the culture around us is changing. Clearer now? In a sense, that’s always true no matter when or where we live. Culture is not a static thing. It is constantly moving and morphing and mutating from one thing to another. It ebbs and flows like the tides. Because of this, if you look at it in just the right light, it always appears we are on the precipice of a great shift even if in reality, we are sitting squarely in the middle of a movement. Of course, you can’t see that until long after the fact, so that’s not a terribly helpful observation in a given moment. 

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Exodus 12:35-36

Leave a comment

“The Israelites acted on Moses’s word and asked the Egyptians for silver and gold items and for clothing. And the Lord gave the people such favor with the Egyptians that they gave them what they requested. In this way they plundered the Egyptians.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the things we have to keep in mind when engaging with the Scriptures is that they were written a long time ago. A very long time ago. They feature stories and people and cultures which were vastly different from our own. The kinds of assumptions they made about what was okay to do and what wasn’t, about what kinds of behaviors were normal and which weren’t can occasionally seem utterly alien to us. This is one of those stories. Let’s talk briefly about what’s going on here, and why it nonetheless reveals something important about God’s character to us.

Read the rest…

A Firm Anchor

Leave a comment

If we are going to find peace in a world that has gone mad, we’re definitely going to need to reorient our thinking and turn to prayer, but while those two things are necessary, they aren’t sufficient on their own. We need something more. In this next part of our journey and through the lens of Paul’s second letter to Timothy, we are going to talk about what this something more is. Thanks for reading and sharing.

A Firm Anchor

One of the saddest moments in all of film history was when Chuck lost Wilson. If that’s not ringing any bells, a bit of a reminder may be due. The Chuck I’m talking about is Chuck Noland. If that’s still not ringing any bells, that doesn’t really surprise me. His name doesn’t matter very much and in fact I couldn’t have told you what it was until I looked it up. Wilson, though, just goes by Wilson. He’s white, male, a little round, and wears a handprint on his face. Actually, the handprint is his face. You see, Wilson is a volleyball. Actually, he’s a great deal more than that to Chuck whom you may recognize now as the character played by Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway. After surviving a plane crash and landing on a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific, Hanks manages to survive by cobbling together what he needs from the various packages his FedEx plane dropped in the crash and which washed up on shore. One of these packages held Wilson who offered Hanks what was perhaps his most important survival tool: a relationship. I mean, Wilson didn’t actually have any lines in the film, but by giving Hanks’ character the ability to have the illusion of a relationship, it enabled him not to completely lose his sanity during his terrible sojourn. 

Read the rest…