Richard Rohr is a prolific author and popular speaker. His biography states that he “is a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition.” In 1987, Rohr founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and has been a strong force in the contemplative prayer movement. Oprah has interviewed him twice. Richard Rohr is a heretic in the robes of a Franciscan priest. To be more specific...
Mar 11, 2021•51 min
Many Christians may not admit it but they probably have entertained the dark fantasy of avenging a loved one in a roaring rampage of revenge. Did the hit movie Taken, with its perfectly delivered and iconic dialogue, create this fantasy? Or did it merely tap into an unspoken desire? Does Liam Neeson’s deep-voiced threat sound cool because we all have a deep-down desire for vigilante justice? Rarely do these movies wrestle with questions of ethics. Francis Bacon calls revenge “wild justice.” Thes...
Mar 04, 2021•39 min
The term YOLO was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 20162 but appears as early as 2011 when Drake, the Canadian singer and hip-hop artist, used it in a famous, excessively profane song.4 A fresh iteration of the ironically timeless “Carpe Diem,” YOLO is as plastic as that term, molding itself to any single person’s perception of the good life. How I employ it reveals my heart priorities, the things I most value, and the dimly apprehended reality that what I believe about tomorrow will ne...
Feb 25, 2021•37 min
C. S. Lewis once wrote in this book Miracles that “the Central Miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation….Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.” Important as the mysteries of the death and resurrection of Christ are, without the supreme mystery of the Incarnation, the crucifixion and resurrection would not have their saving power. The very Person of Christ is the gospel. Such is the core message of one of the greatest Fathers in all of church hist...
Feb 17, 2021•53 min
Few actors have become so intrinsically tied to a character they’ve played like Hugh Jackman and his portrayal of James Howlett, better known as Logan, the Wolverine. A central figure in 20th Century Fox’s long-running X-Men film series, Logan is a mutant with an accelerated healing ability and a bad temper who sprouts bony, claw-like protrusions from his hands when it comes time for some down and dirty knuckle-dusting. His mutant abilities ensure that he’s been around for a lot longer than most...
Feb 11, 2021•47 min
When struggling with the loss of a loved one, it is sometimes more helpful to turn to poetry than to philosophy for answers and for consolation. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the greatest and most representative poet of the British Victorian Age, struggled mightily with the problem of pain in an epic poem that he wrote as a way of dealing with his grief over the sudden death of his closest friend, Arthur Hallam. But his poem, In Memoriam, does more than wrestle with the loss of a friend; it wrestles wi...
Feb 04, 2021•53 min
Contrary to popular thinking, Christianity is a “knowledge tradition” and calls people to knowledge of God, themselves, and the gospel. This also means, paradoxically, that we ought to know what it is that we cannot possibly know and how we should orient ourselves to our not-knowing under God. This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journal author Douglas Groothuis about his article in the 43:3 Issue of the Journal entitled “God and Our Ignorance”. https://www.equip.org/christia...
Jan 28, 2021•43 min
New Age spiritual leader, New York Times bestselling author, and ancient alien expert on the History channel, David Wilcock subscribes to many conspiracies, from time travel to benevolent extraterrestrials on earth. Wilcock also believes he’s the reincarnation of Edgar Cayce and that he’s serving humankind by preparing us for a mass evolutionary event. How should Christians respond to his teaching? This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journal author Lindsey Medenwaldt about h...
Jan 21, 2021•55 min
Wonder Woman 1984 is a film about longing. A major temptation when adapting comic book material is to sacrifice characters and emotionally resonant narratives for action sequences driven primarily by special effects and computer-generated images. While WW84 is not short on action, and the special effects are top-notch, the movie does not turn upon these sequences. Instead, the narrative is carried primarily by four very capable actors who turn in strong performances in a film that is fundamental...
Jan 14, 2021•46 min
Woven through the political struggles of Star Wars are religious and personal conflicts. It’s possible that Star Wars is the most religiously interested of all major Hollywood franchises. While religion is almost completely absent in mainstream Hollywood cinema–except as an occasional bogeyman or mythological background–Star Wars is centered on the abstract and impersonal “Force” as a source of supernatural power and as a moral axis. The heroes’ journeys develop as they embrace and expand their ...
Jan 07, 2021•39 min
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked. “No one is good except God alone. Social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion works through the secular psychological research that propels each person towards the defense of personal goodness. In a series of interviews with people from differently stratified class, gender, and ethnic categories, Haidt and his assistants discovered that the internalized moral compass th...
Dec 30, 2020•50 min
Generation Z,” or Gen Z, the generation born after 1995 has grown up as digital natives. What can we do to reach this younger generation, which is more likely to be spiritually and biblically illiterate than any previous, and to shepherd the faith of Gen Z within the church? While it is tempting to use generational research to develop highly contextual approaches to evangelism that meet young people exactly where they are, such attempts often function as poor imitations of the very fads our cult...
Dec 23, 2020•56 min
Christopher Pike is the original captain of the famed starship Enterprise, played first by Jeffrey Hunter in an unaired 1965 pilot (“The Cage”) and now by Anson Mount in the forthcoming CBS All Access series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Mount’s portrayal first won over audiences and critics alike in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery (2017), which reimagined Pike as a grounded and unflappable leader, a singular and remarkably old-fashioned hero for our cynical and suspicious times. Pike...
Dec 17, 2020•46 min
The recent Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” brings together a handful of past Silicon Valley executives to begin to question and consider how our social media practices — and even the algorithms and business models — actually detract from human freedom, connection, health, and social stability. The question for Christians is not only how has social media changed the landscape of civility and discussion, but also how it is forming us either Godward or selfward. Deeper than that, is how ...
Dec 10, 2020•37 min
Matthew Kennedy writes in his article, “It is difficult to find a professing Christian leader who has relinquished the classical Christian position on sexuality on purely exegetical grounds. The most popular voices in the less academic evangelical realm who claim to have changed their minds–Matthew Vines, Justin Lee, and Jen Hatmaker–are either gay or are very close to someone who is. The readiness with which these high-profile Christians abandon their former convictions in light of personal exp...
Dec 03, 2020•45 min
The burnout rates of medical professionals in 2020 have turned our attention to the fact that those who care for others must also care for themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally if they wish to continue being effective. Although it is agreed that self-care is important, our cultural understanding of how we view and care for “self” has changed over time. Contemporary American culture assumes that self-care isn’t just a good thing but a human right that is worth pursuing no matter the ti...
Nov 23, 2020•57 min
Today, almost twenty-five percent of American adults self-identify as religiously unaffiliated, roughly the same numbers of Evangelicals and Catholics, respectively, making them one of the fastest-growing demographics, especially amongst the young. If asked why, bestselling author and Atheist Sam Harris might respond, “Because science!” However, there is always a story behind the statistics, a narrative buried in the numbers. Sociologists have long sought the face of this group of people who che...
Nov 19, 2020•41 min
During the Spring of 2020, right as the global pandemic hit, author, speaker, and women’s lifestyle guru Rachel Hollis launched a 90-day challenge to become an overall better and more functional person. Through March, April, and May, Hollis posted peppy, adorable photos of her and her husband Dave, chatted about writing a book in the middle of the chaos of COVID, and pivoted her brand at lightning speed. However, it was also during this time that Hollis told her husband she was leaving him only ...
Nov 12, 2020•42 min
The word evangelism can cause many images to form in the Christian mind. Some people may think of committed missionaries who travel to the ends of the earth. Others may think of Paul, Peter, Stephen, and other martyrs of the early church who lost their lives for the sake of the gospel. Still, others might imagine a man in a suit on a street corner with a bullhorn and a gospel tract. Probably few of us think of ourselves. However, all of us who bear the name of Christ are called to evangelize and...
Nov 05, 2020•43 min
The six-season animated Netflix show BoJack Horseman has been nominated for three Emmy awards, including twice for Outstanding Animated Program. The show is largely about the titular antihero, BoJack Horseman (voiced by Will Arnett) who is an anthropomorphic horse and has-been television sitcom star from the 1980s and ‘90s who now lives a directionless life, wallowing in biting sarcasm and ongoing substance abuse problems. Although BoJack Horseman is intended for mature audiences and does includ...
Oct 29, 2020•41 min
Suburban life–including tract homes, strip malls, commuter culture–shapes our desires. More than half of Americans live in the suburbs. But for many Christians, however: “The suburbs are ignored (‘Your place doesn’t matter, we’re all going to heaven anyway’), denigrated and demeaned (‘You’re selfish if you live in a suburb; you only care about your own safety and advancement’), or seen as a cop-out from a faithful Christian life (‘If you really loved God, you’d move to Africa or work in an impov...
Oct 22, 2020•37 min
Film director Christopher Nolan’s unwritten thoughts are like sculptures and aim less at recreating life as much as creating Escher-like puzzle boxes that are utterly unlike almost anything we experience in reality. Nolan is the consummate trickster, aiming to use the full power of cinema to beguile audiences with the cleverness of his construction projects. His newest film Tenet, now in some theaters nationwide, is perhaps the knottiest of his puzzle boxes. This Postmodern Realities episode is ...
Oct 15, 2020•48 min
The Enneagram, a personality system configured around a circle of nine types, promises to help the spiritual seeker break free from sin, peel back layers of dysfunctional ways of thinking, and find inside him or herself the essential, God-given gem. The nine numbers are grouped by three—those of the head, those of the heart, and those of the gut. Each number is associated with a particular sin and takes on the characteristics of the numbers on either side, the wings. New Age spiritualist Claudio...
Oct 08, 2020•42 min
While thoughtful Christians should have many places where they disagree with the Black Lives Matter organization; the simple statement “black lives matter” should be non-controversial for Christians for it is theologically certain. God’s Word tells us that “black lives matter” when it reveals to us that all human beings are made in the image/likeness of God (see Gen 1:26-27, 9:6, Jas 3:9). While it is good for our culture to wrestle with the question “are black lives really being valued when it ...
Oct 01, 2020•47 min
Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker writes that “the idea of death, the fear of it haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is the mainspring of human activity — activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man” Becker also says, “All culture, all man’s creative life-ways are in some basic part of them a fabricated protest against natural reality, a denial of the truth of the human condition, and an attemp...
Sep 24, 2020•47 min
“Why,” Camus asks, “should a human go on living if life has no meaning?” He concludes that life can be lived—even loved—despite the emptiness from which it arises and to which it returns. Such meaninglessness as Camus describes arises from his lack of religious faith. What he does accept are those things of which he feels sure: “This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is co...
Sep 17, 2020•52 min
Maturity in human beings is a kind of flourishing, becoming what you were made to be: socially, spiritually, and intellectually. The late theologian J. I. Packer wrote in his book A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life, “Maturity is a compound of wisdom, goodwill, resilience, and creativity.” What does that mean for Christian college students in 2020 as they face online studies and other challenges during the COVID-19 global pandemic? This Postmodern Realities episode is...
Sep 10, 2020•28 min
What is the meaning of the term pro-life? How should Christians define this term? This is a point/counterpoint discussion. Michael W. Austin defends his viewpoint from his article “The Meaning of the Term Pro-Life. A Point/Counterpoint Conversation: Pro-Life for All Human Life” (available by clicking here https://www.equip.org/article/the-meaning-of-the-term-pro-life-a-point-counterpoint-conversation-pro-life-for-all-human-life/) and Seth Gruber defends his viewpoint from his article “The Meanin...
Sep 03, 2020•1 hr 2 min
It is almost impossible to spend any time on social media, to read any legacy media source, or opinion piece, or have a conversation with someone in real life and not come around to the question of cancelling. To be successfully cancelled, then, is to lose not only the right to participate in public discourse using social media, but to lose income, reputation, and in some cases real life friendships and community. Cancelling is an ancient and very human activity—the act of publicly shaming and t...
Aug 27, 2020•43 min
To give a Christian apologetic response to school shootings, it is important to address the problem of evil. How is it possible that a perfectly good God who is in control over all things would allow such heinous acts of violence carried out against innocent children? Of first importance is the philosophical answer to this question. However, ministering to those affected by gun violence, we are also called to a ministry of patient listening and faithful presence. We simply should not try to pres...
Aug 20, 2020•52 min
