Unanswered prayer does not always lead to bitterness and cynicism, but once in a while it does. How will we respond when we pray for protection, and our mom dies instead? How will we respond when we cry out for years for the seemingly good gifts we believe the Father would give us — return of a wayward child, freedom from deeply rooted sin patterns, relief from chronic pain — and yet, with the Psalmist, we seemingly hear no answer (Ps. 22:2)? Some, after weeks or months or years of such disappoi...
Oct 07, 2021•51 min
Of the legion of ways that we, since the dawn of time, have devised to deceive ourselves and others, the insidious cruelty at the heart of the phenomenon called gaslighting is one of the most fascinating and destructive. Derived from the play Gas Light (1938), the expression is visceral, referring to the deliberate attempt by the villain to drive the heroine insane. Gaslighting is a useful umbrella trope for understanding many different kinds of damaging online behavior. Gatekeeping, tone polici...
Sep 30, 2021•52 min
Perhaps life’s greatest challenge is coping with suffering — or how to suffer well. All religions address this, but not in the same way. Christianity uniquely gives meaning to suffering because of the redemptive suffering of its founder, Jesus Christ. Grace and Grit is a film by Sebastian Siegel (who wrote the script) about the suffering of a real-life young couple, writer Ken Wilber (played by Stuart Townsend), and his wife, Treya Wilber (Mena Suvari), who is diagnosed with cancer shortly after...
Sep 23, 2021•40 min
In 2019, Hulu announced that it would be adapting Trenton Lee Stewart’s 2007 novel The Mysterious Benedict Society as a streaming series. In some ways, this makes perfect sense. The book has been extremely popular, spawning three sequels, a prequel, and a puzzle book. For many children, tweens, and teens, it strikes a chord with its portrayal of gifted children who become heroes after emerging from backgrounds where their gifts had earned them only rejection, scorn, or exploitation. But as with ...
Sep 16, 2021•59 min
Almost all the exotic pets of my childhood in Africa were rescues, caught out of the bags of hunters and the clutches of small children who just wanted a more interesting dinner than maize porridge. I was the only one who mourned them. And, in the case of Ash, though all my family loved him, I am the one who still can’t look at his grave in our back garden. And I am not alone. Join any peculiar dog breed group on Facebook and you will find countless prayer requests—long shot, hopeless pleas for ...
Sep 09, 2021•40 min
The film CODA (2021) is a coming-of-age story about a hearing girl and her deaf family. While the arc of the story has the stereotypical beats of a teenage coming-of-age drama, it also explores the dynamics of growing up and letting go. Many Christians might resonate with the main protagonist Ruby’s parents that she must do “her part,” as a loving daughter to forsake pursuing her college dreams and remain home to be the interpreter for deaf parents and brother who need to run their fishing busin...
Sep 02, 2021•49 min
Any amateur who has taken up a brush knows how hard it is to create a beautiful painting without training. Yet the natural world seems to produce beauty without any struggle at all. This common-sense observation provides a natural movement from wonder at the creation to awe of the creator. Making aesthetically good artwork requires skill and intention, so who should we credit with the ‘artistry’ of the natural world? The rosy wash of the setting sun on a cloud-filled sky with mountains beneath l...
Aug 26, 2021•41 min
In the New York Times (NYT) opinion piece, “Miscarriages Are Awful, and Abortion Politics Make Them Worse,” abortion rights advocates Amanda Allen and Cari Siestra make the case that politically motivated abortion laws deny women facing miscarriages the best possible care.1 Both authors share tragic personal experiences with miscarriage and how their dread of walking through abortion opponents protesting Planned Parenthood clinics led them to forgo surgical options. Both authors contend the idea...
Aug 19, 2021•48 min
In the human heart burns a yearning to be free — to live by our own discretion, to choose what we think good, and to stand responsible for the lives we have lived. This same yearning, though, goes easily awry: the legitimate human desire for agency swelling into a desire for absolute autonomy. But the desire for absolute autonomy, even from divine authority, leads to frustration with the limits of being, turning us against the moral (and even the physical) structures of the world; for structures...
Aug 12, 2021•52 min
Many Christians believe that there are good non-Christians. After all, if you actually know some good non-Christians, then there must be good non-Christians, right? Now, it is true there are many apparently good non-Christians, but we must not confuse outward goodness with inward goodness. For Jesus, evil is always, first and foremost, a matter of the heart. Still, Christians wonder: Is it possible for a person to be a good person outside of a relationship with Christ? This is not to say that Ch...
Aug 05, 2021•47 min
Harrison Dulin writes, “The second season of the anime television series Dr. Stone wrapped up in March, and as someone entrenched in the worlds of science and anime, I loved watching a show that brings the two together (especially after watching Cells at Work). Dr. Stone has all the traditional components of a good anime combined with insights into the natural world, which makes it a delight for both anime fans and science lovers. But as a scientist, I was presented with a question after watchin...
Jul 29, 2021•43 min
In The Book of Longings Sue Kidd Monk paints a monochromatic spiritual landscape, tediously rehearsing the contours of feminine longing. As the story unfolds, her characters near perfectly portray the values, the assumptions, the hopes, and the expectations of now. If a stranger to this place and time were to require a primer of the ideal person, I would hand her this book. Let’s look together at that cultural icon…. This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journal author Anne Ke...
Jul 22, 2021•41 min
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a new religious movement founded by Li Hongzhi in China in 1992. Based on a mix of Buddhist and New Age principles, it began as a form of qigong, a worldview that aims to strengthen a person’s vital energies through bodily movement. Adherents of Falun Gong believe their teachings and practices are the sole means of attaining Consummation — a state in which humans apprehend the real meaning of the universe and become Gods or Buddha. The primary moral tenet...
Jul 15, 2021•1 hr 2 min
There’s a shift in the characterization of modern adaptations of Sherlock Holmes that goes beyond the intensification and acceleration of contemporary storytelling. Conan Doyle’s Holmes is, despite his flaws, still admirable. Holmes is a flawed hero. Modern portrayals of Sherlock seem to lean into his flaws so strongly that there is almost nothing to admire except his brilliance. Why have our modern adaptations of Holmes become so critical? It may be, that as the most adapted literary hero in TV...
Jul 08, 2021•37 min
Luca is a fun, eccentric film that exudes personality and leaves room for some rumination regarding friendship and fatherhood. The notion of platonic friendships is one you don’t hear too much about. That is to say, a close, intimate relationship, much like a true friendship, but one that is not sexually charged or defined by physical intimacy. Current cultural trends seem diametrically opposed to these kinds of relationships, reading subtextual emotions and attractions into both same- and other...
Jul 01, 2021•59 min
The best sports stories are the ones that are not really about the sport itself at all. The sporting, or coaching, or athleticism should play a supporting role to whatever else is happening in the story — so much so that the particular sport could be swapped out for practically any other related discipline, and the heart of the story would remain the same. This is the case with the Apple TV+ sitcom series Ted Lasso. On one level, it is a heartwarming comedy about Premier League Football, but on ...
Jun 24, 2021•47 min
“Go, be free!” concludes Beth Allison Barr in her recently released, best-selling book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women became Gospel Truth. In the intersection of her life in the classroom and the strictures placed on her by her local church, her beliefs about women radically shifted. Eventually, after a difficult conversation with the theologically unbending complementarian elders at her Southern Baptist Church, Barr and her husband, the youth-pastor, were asked ...
Jun 17, 2021•1 hr 9 min
Zack Snyder’s approach to the DC material is to skin the heroes as modern mythological figures. And he does so by using blatantly obvious parallels. Superman? That’s Jesus. He literally dies sacrificially, he literally resurrects. Batman? That’s Hades. He’s grim and glum and sulks around in an underworld called Gotham. His is a Divisive approach but he has something to say. Because Zack Snyder’s Justice League pays off on all that deconstructionism. It actually takes all the little broken pieces...
Jun 10, 2021•45 min
Since Albert Einstein rose to international fame during the first half of the 20th century, the natural sciences have only risen in prestige and cultural influence and the scientific community is now widely regarded as the ultimate authority on truth about the world. Some of its members have produced bestsellers that popularize cutting-edge scientific thought. The issue, though, is that they often step well beyond the domain of their respective specialties to make pronouncements on questions tra...
Jun 03, 2021•41 min
Most of the time in conversations with skeptics, they want to pit faith against fact and throw it to the vicious onslaught of reason to be torn apart and devoured by the likes of science, truth, evidence, and reality. Faith against fact — these words not only find their way into book titles and chapter headings, but they also serve as common rebuttals to Christian beliefs in ordinary conversations with skeptics. No atheistic litany would be complete without some expression of woe over Christiani...
May 27, 2021•45 min
Debates with Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) often prove frustrating, an endless ping-pong of futile talk, especially when the topic is the Holy Trinity. While essential Christian doctrine asserts that God subsists in three eternally distinct persons — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — JWs craft their New World Translation (NWT) to mask the New Testament’s otherwise clear teaching that Christ is true deity equal to the Father. JWs deny the deity of the Christ and subordinate Him to the Father...
May 20, 2021•47 min
In Deuteronomy 22:5, perhaps the key text regarding clothing, God tells us that, “a woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.” Some Christians hold to the conviction that pants are garments for men. If a woman wears pants, therefore, she violates God’s law by wearing men’s clothing. She has sinned. It is important to note, however, that the text, though written in a specific time and from wi...
May 13, 2021•40 min
Perhaps the most interesting storytelling initiative undertaken by Disney since its acquisition of the Star Wars franchise comes in the form of The High Republic, a multi-platform publishing enterprise begun in January of 2021. Set 200 years before Lucas’s The Phantom Menace, this interconnected series of books, comic books, and future television series, looks to chart a course for the future of Star Wars by taking audiences into uncharted territory—the golden age of the Jedi. The Jedis’ connect...
May 04, 2021•55 min
Some people proclaim that they are Christians, that “my faith is very important to me,” and talk openly about Jesus, but they say these things while they are living in overt, unrepentant sexual sin. Hopefully, that’s not you. But if it is, then you probably aren’t saved, and, unless you repent, you will be lost forever. The idea that someone is probably not saved if they are living in overt, unrepentant sexual sin — is one that will baffle and/or upset many people. But the Bible is clear about t...
Apr 29, 2021•44 min
“Yeah, but who created God?” The question can feel like an attempted gotcha moment in apologetic encounters, even to seasoned apologists. In a culture increasingly conditioned to “win” arguments with soundbite retorts, Christian apologists must not react dismissively to this common question. This episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author R. Keith Loftin about how to seriously answer the question, “Who Made God?”, from his 41:5 article which was just released online. https://www.equip.org/art...
Apr 22, 2021•39 min
An irrepressible note of joy rings throughout the literary corpus of the magnificent English writer G. K. Chesterton. It is surprising, then, that Job, the book that plunges headlong into the problem of unjust suffering, was Chesterton’s favorite book of the Bible. He found “the riddles of God…more comforting than the solutions of man.” This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journal author Rebekah Valerius about her 44:1 article, “G. K. Chesterton on the Book of Job“, https://w...
Apr 15, 2021•43 min
To date, nearly 2.9 million people have died worldwide in the Covid-19 pandemic. The global economy struggled while nations enacted stay-at-home orders, and our politics fractured under the weight of heated disagreements. Illness, travel restrictions, and protective hospital protocols separated loved ones in the time we needed each other the most. Reports of depression and suicide dramatically increased among the younger members of the population, and no one’s life remained untouched. This colle...
Apr 08, 2021•1 hr 13 min
Midlife is a season of challenge and change―professionally, relationally, physically, and spiritually. On our better days, we experience a sense of growing clarity and satisfaction about who we are in midlife. We might even come to terms with our limitations and vulnerabilities, letting go of some dreams and creating new ones. But many days, we are overwhelmed and exhausted by the intense transitions of this season, leaving us feeling off-balance and insecure. And these challenges reverberate th...
Apr 01, 2021•52 min
Pixar’s twenty-third film, Soul (Disney+), offers glimpses into the afterlife and the nature of the soul, not as an academic presentation on metaphysics or theology, but to tell a story about life. Nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature Film, there’s no doubt that Soul is a fun, compelling film, beautifully scored and animated, and voiced by excellent talent (such as Jamie Foxx as Joe and Tina Fey as 22). Christian readers are sure to have had a few red flags raised,...
Mar 25, 2021•48 min
WandaVision is a weird television series (Disney Plus). Even by modern television standards, where hardly any project can get a greenlight from a studio unless it is “high concept” or experimental, WandaVision seems like the kind of series that would look mighty dubious even on paper. The story here could easily have been told in the usual straightforward manner—and, in some ways, this might have been the wiser decision to make—yet the show’s creators have chosen to spin their yarn in a unique w...
Mar 18, 2021•40 min
