Unemployed Theologian

My laptop used to freeze up when I played videos on it, and has overheated and shut down sporadically throughout its too-short two-year lifespan. It doesn't do either of those things much anymore, and realizing this has from time to time elicited in me a pang of hope that perhaps it has resolved these difficulties on its own without needing me to spend money I don't have to fix it. Similarly, when my car leaks oil less rapidly, squeaks less obnoxiously one week than the week before I have to talk myself out of believing it has recovered from its injuries of its own accord. Machines simply don't, can't heal, in spite of how convenient it would be for us if they could. Healing requires life, organic cells, breath, a revelation which has got me thinking more deeply than I'm used to. What is this peculiar business of healing? I am daily marveled by how much of the human experience we take for granted, as if we're numb to the magic of it all. We are indeed fearfull...

It's the most wonderful time of the year, or so they tell me. I've said it too, sang it, and I believe it mostly. To be perfectly frank, though, I'm not sure what it means anymore. Why is it the most wonderful time of the year? Peace on earth, good will toward men and all that? But I'm afraid those things don't seem terribly true right now. No, the Christmas spirit has been kept at bay by the cold specter of tragedy as the television screen paints a picture of hell on earth and ill will toward all. Americans taste and see that all is not right with the world as each image from the Newtown massacre flits before our eyes: lives taken at the hands of a deranged killer. The most innocent among us (young children), as well as some of the noblest (teachers), gone too soon. It is maddening, sickening, and unbelievable yet tragically true. Newtown is only the epicenter of these tremors, however, as unfathomable loss and unshakable terror ripple across our country. Bomb th...

Let's play a word association game. I say Katy Perry, you say... Awful? Inspiring? Putrescent? God's gift to the preteen fangirl? Emotions run high when we talk about musical taste. In our culture, if you don't agree with me and my tastes, you must be either an elitist hipster who only likes music that has yet to be written, or else a mob-following lemming who doesn't deserve to keep their own ears. Tempers flare all the more blisteringly when pop radio is introduced into the conversation. Take, for example, Ms. Perry, (nearly) as controversial a figure as I can think of as far as this discussion goes. On the one hand, many adore her, even to bizarre and probably unhealthy degrees. One only need watch her concert film/documentary Part of Me  to see her fans all but anoint her as the Second Coming. While these disciplets look up to her as a goddess, though, many in the larger Christian community condemn the young woman and her music for its occasionally tawdry the...