Would You Take the Red Pill or the Blue Pill? Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” and the Triumph of Postmodernity
Over the recent holiday break I found myself in the movie theater to watch The Last Jedi. Given how profoundly disappointing and unimaginative the movie was (something I may explore in another post), I left the theater thinking about an entirely different movie.
In fact, I began to think of this other movie before The Last Jedi even started. One of the movie trailers at the beginning was from Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming Ready Player One. And it looked genuinely innovative and culturally fascinating.
During the many moments of boredom during the main attraction, I began to reflect upon what this new movie says about the world we live … Continue reading...
Can a Person Choose Their Own Race? The Inevitable Hypocrisy of Relativism
Well, Rachel Dolezal is in the news again.
You might recall her story from a couple of years ago. Dolezal was the civil rights activist and the former head of the NAACP in Spokane, WA. But, there was one little problem.
She wasn’t black.
Although she presented herself as African American–a bit of a prerequisite for heading up a chapter of the NAACP–it turns out that she was not black after all. Indeed she was a blonde, freckle-faced white girl born to two white parents. She had merely changed her outward appearance.
Not surprisingly, objective facts regarding biology, genetics, and ethnicity were not a deterrent to Dolezal’s insistence that she … Continue reading...
Can the Ethiopian Change His Skin or a Leopard His Spots? How Postmodernity Has Led to a Culture of Hypocrisy
There has been a lot of chatter the last few weeks about Rachel Dolezal, civil rights activist and the former head of the NAACP in Spokane, WA. Although she presented herself as African American–a bit of a prerequisite for heading up a chapter of the NAACP–it turns out that she is not black after all. Indeed she was a blonde, freckle-faced white girl born to two white parents. She has merely changed her outward appearance.
Of course, objective facts regarding biology, genetics, and ethnicity have not proven to be a deterrent to Dolezal’s insistence that she is black. “I identify as black,” she told Matt Lauer. In other words, I … Continue reading...
Are Christians Really the Arrogant Ones?
When religious matters are debated in our culture–e.g., the existence of God, what God is like, morals and ethics–there is an implicit set of rules that everyone is obligated to follow. Number one on this list of unspoken rules it that you can never claim to know anything about God with any level of certainty.
To do so quickly leads to charges of being arrogant, dogmatic, or intolerant. Christians know this all too well because we are often on the receiving end of these charges. Our claim to actually know things about God is a violation of the rules of polite society.
Of course, this sort of “polite society” is … Continue reading...
How the Scandal of Preaching Will Reach Our Postmodern World
By now it is old news that we live in a world marked by postmodernity. In such a world, truth is not something that is outside ourselves, but something that is self-determined. Each of us constructs our own private, personal realities. What’s ‘true’ for you is not ‘true’ for me.
So, how do we break into the lives of people who are immersed in this postmodern reality? How do we reach them for the gospel? Do we find ways to show them how the gospel is existentially satisfying? Do we offer therapeutic entertainment to draw them in?
Nope. Instead, we do the unthinkable in our modern age. We preach.… Continue reading...