The (Lieben)GOOD LIFE

  My reflections on the way our technological age is shaping us at Intersections . Enjoy!

 Our system of education has one major: Upward Mobility.  This is the bold claim that Wendell Berry makes in a commencement address he gave in 2009 (in the midst of the Great Recession) to Northern Kentucky University graduates. His address, entitled "Major in  Homecoming", underscores the devastating effects that this form of education has had on people and the land they live on: for upward mobility also implies downward mobility; and it has proven to generate social instability, ecological oblivion, and economic insecurity.  Education, Berry laments,  has been reduced to job training and preparation for serving corporations whose only concerns are efficiency and the maximizing of profit. Pointing to the crushing reality that most of the graduates attending the commencement were coming to terms with in the midst of the Great Recession, Berry charges that the failure of the economy and its subservient institutions has become so obvious that it cannot now be deni...

I've been reading through Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith in preparation for some lectures that I will give this semester in a course I teach on Christian vocation. It has been disheartening, illuminating, and motivating all at once. It has been particularly helpful to read this book, written twenty years ago, in our present context of heightened racial tension since the George Floyd, Breona Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery killings, and as evangelical churches are having more discussion about racism in America than in recent history.  It is important to note that this book is a sociological analysis of the way in which white (and in some cases black) evangelicals think about the race problem in America. That is to say that they are not offering a theological prescription for how to deal with our racialized society, nor are they trying to offer a robust way forward.  Rather, they are using the tools of s...

A Homily on Romans 7.15-25 Read along with Zechariah 9.9-12 ; Psalm 145.8-14 ; Matthew 11.16-19, 25-30   Prayer of Invocation   Father, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another in pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.   Prayer of Illumination   Father, there are so many voices right now clamoring for our attention; there is our own voice that either tells us we are not worthy and that we do not belong, or it tells us we have rights that should be demanded; there are the voices that scream to us about what the good life is, what justice is, who’s right, who’s wrong; voices that seek to shame us; voices that seek to give us false assurance; voices that encourage us to doubt or to be cynical. In this hour...

"...we know creation properly by means of wisdom, not techne ...wisdom knows the world belongs to God, that it can be understood properly only in light of that relationship, that life is found only this way, and that a love for God and for creation rightly aligned with God's purposes in the only way to life... Techne seduces us into thinking that it is something that we can control and by which we can also control our world... techne is a false god that drains life from us by weaving a lie about the world and life...[it] requires that humans master their world. There is no God to trust that with that which we cannot understand or, understanding that which we cannot control or predict. And so we are driven to eradicate mystery, and by doing so we embrace a withered portrayal of life." Jonathan Wilson, God's Good World: Reclaiming the Doctrine of Creation , pgs. 20-21