I recall vividly one afternoon last summer when I had some free time. As I walked home, I pulled my phone out of my pocket, opened up Snapchat, and slid over to tap through my friends’ stories. I noticed underneath them some of the suggested features. In one, “Love Triumphs!” accompanied a picture of a same-sex couple, with a subtitle suggesting that all the world … Continue reading Love in Context
(Spoiler warning follows for The Searchers, Sunset Boulevard, and Strangers on a Train) Because of Hollywood’s influence on America, to understand our current cultural context it is important to understand Hollywood’s Golden Age. Despite the significance of the topic, most people have a faulty view of this time. Classic Hollywood is often seen as an era that either moralized or simply refused to tackle mature … Continue reading Understanding the Golden Age of Hollywood
Prior to my arrival at Hillsdale College this fall, I had designed and offered several times a new course on a trendy topic: transhumanism. It was something of a devil’s bargain. While I had come to believe that all young men and women ought to know something about this movement, I was also looking to design a topical course that would be popular. For mainstream … Continue reading Made in Our Image?: Straight (Theological) Talk About Transhumanism
Guerilla Game’s 2017 action-adventure game Horizon Zero Dawn tells a dual narrative. Story A is set in the game’s past, the later half of the 21st century, while Story B shows the events that happen to the player character, Aloy, in 3040. The two stories parallel each other: in each, a remarkable woman rallies disparate people to defeat some great threat to humanity. HZD‘s gameplay … Continue reading Stoic Perseverance and Horizon Zero Dawn
On April 29, 1992, Los Angeles was on the brink of chaos: four Los Angeles Police Department officers who had been videotaped beating Rodney King, a black man, had been acquitted. Mayor Tom Bradley held a press conference, where he said in part “I am here to tell this jury, ‘No. No, our eyes did not deceive us…what we saw was a crime.’” Within an … Continue reading Not Your Parents’ Rule of Law: Marcusian Anarcho-tyranny and the Supplanting of Equal Application of the Law
It had been a month since the breakup. My heart was still aching; my mind still clouded with uncertainty. The agonized words of Psalm 143 had become the refrain of my soul: “My spirit is faint within me, my heart despairs…Hasten to answer me Lord, for my spirit fails me.” As I laid in bed, the pain seemed like it would overwhelm me for the … Continue reading Heartbreak and Christ
Our foundational beliefs, whether they come from tradition, meaningful experiences, or unquestioned theories, shape our perceptions of reality to the extent that we cannot easily conceive of them as separate from reality. This is exemplified by our deep convictions about the relative size, shape, and movement of the Earth and the other heavenly bodies; convictions we rarely feel the need to prove to ourselves or … Continue reading Know Thy Beliefs, Know Thyself
We are listening creatures; whence else our speaking? Scripture speaks speech as God’s first act. God said, “let there be light,” and there was light. The Father simultaneously names and creates in speaking. The first act of Man, then, created in the image of God, is to name the animals. We image Him. Yet we must know how to listen from somewhere, too. So God … Continue reading What is Poetry?
“‘Put your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth…’” (Genesis 24:2, NAB). This is one of those verses where even the Christians have to ask: “Did Abraham really say that?” In fact, he did, and he meant it. Modern Americans keep a bipolar relationship with physical touch. On the one … Continue reading To Feel and to Hold: Touch as a Love Language
At the mere mention of the autumn season, a plethora of images, memories, and sensations are invoked. These images of the season connect me with nostalgia and warmth as I imagine my Ohio childhood with memories of running around my molting backyard, feeling the crisp, sharp air fill my lungs while the rattling whirl of dried leaves plays in the background. I remember embarking on … Continue reading Autumn, Childhood, and the Art of Storytelling
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