Category: Culture
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On Giving
Christmas has become a very complicated holiday. Due to the fact that a majority of Americans celebrate Christmas, either for religious or cultural reasons, we’ve become accustomed to seeing manifestations of the holiday everywhere we look. The lights and decorations are nearly ubiquitous, leaving no doubt as to what time of year it is. But…
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Sweetheart
As we continue to hear about prominent men in our society victimizing and demeaning women, I’m sure most men at the very least silently condemn such behavior. They would never touch a woman in a sexual manner or force them to do anything against their will. Such behavior is beneath them. As I’ve spoken about…
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Snowflakes
In recent years, the term “snowflake” has become very popular to describe liberals who are seen as overly sensitive and fragile, obsessed with political correctness, and convinced of their moral and cultural superiority. The popularity of this term might originate with Chuck Palahniuk’s book, Fight Club, in which we read: You are not a beautiful and unique…
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Masks
Across cultures and ages, masks have been used for a multitude of reasons, but their ubiquity seems to indicate that we create them because of something common to the human condition. It seems that all of us can identify with the desire to put someone else’s face over our own, for any number of reasons.…
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Of God and Caesar
“Teacher, we know that you speak and teach correctly, and show no partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right for us to pay the tribute tax to Caesar or not?” “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?” “Caesar’s.” “Then give to Caesar the things…
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Start on Empty
The more I study the Bible, the more convinced I am that the culture we live in today is completely antithetical to the gospel of Christ. I would think that most of us sharing this perspective consider this an active plot of the enemy to disrupt the plans of God. Perhaps. But I wonder sometimes…
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Intracultural Hermeneutics
Sometimes I wonder if people approach Jesus kind of like an alien. I don’t mean the crackpots who actually think he was an alien. Like an alien. Altogether foreign, fundamentally different. When my wife and I went to Indonesia, it was very much like stepping onto another world. There were some familiar items, but for…