Aging & resentment: Pitfalls of the Pious by Dan Bouchelle
“… as you get older you learn the besetting sin of the mature is resentment.”
Bible interpretation & diversity: Musings on the Bible (1) The First of Three Questions by Patrick Mitchel
“A pressing question for thinking Christians is what to make of the ‘brute fact’ of radically divergent readings of the Bible by other Christians who share a belief in its divinely inspired origin.”
Captialism & church: Values of Capitalism & the Church by Tim Gombis
“One of the ways that capitalism has succeeded in capturing our culture’s imagination, however, is that efficiency has achieved preeminent status, overpowering all other values.”
Congress, faith & politics: The Religious Composition of the 113th Congress
“The new, 113th Congress includes the first Buddhist to serve in the Senate, the first Hindu to serve in either chamber and the first member of Congress to describe her religion as “none,” continuing a gradual increase in religious diversity that mirrors trends in the country as a whole. While Congress remains majority Protestant, the institution is far less so today than it was 50 years ago, when nearly three-quarters of the members belonged to Protestant denominations. … Catholics have seen the biggest gains among the 533 members … Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Mormons each make up a greater percentage of the members of Congress than of all U.S. adults. The same is true for some subgroups of Protestants, such as Episcopalians and Presbyterians. By contrast, Pentecostals are a much smaller percentage of Congress than of the general public.”
Change, humanity, identity & personality: You Can’t See It, But You’ll Be A Different Person In 10 Years by Nell Greenfieldboyce
“No matter how old people are, they seem to believe that who they are today is essentially who they’ll be tomorrow. That’s according to fresh research that suggests that people generally fail to appreciate how much their personality and values will change in the years ahead — even though they recognize that they have changed in the past.”
Christian faith, guns & non-violence: Violence: The Christian Response by K. Rex Butts
“… when it comes to a response to the problem of violence, the loudest voice is that which calls for more arms. In fact, from where I sit this voice has great support from many Christians, something I regard as gospel failure. The American society already has enough voices advocating for more arms, so the last thing society needs is the voice of the church lending support to this cause. Though likely not so welcomed, what America needs from the church is for the church to be what the church alone is called to be and that is to be the voice of the gospel that exemplifies forgiveness, love, peace-making, and reconciliation. This is for the church to do what it is admonished to do in scripture and put off the old, putting on the new self instead, including a new mindset, and speak truthfully as one body (cf. Eph 4:22-25).”
Humility, patience & tolerance: Suffering Fools Gladly [required reading]
“… understand that the habits we put in practice end up shaping the people we are within. ‘Manners are of more importance than laws,’ Edmund Burke wrote. ‘Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.’”
Statistics & the United States: Capturing America, Fact by Fact by Sam Roberts
“College graduates have less leisure time than high school dropouts. More people are injured on toilets than by skiing or snowboarding. More households have dogs as pets than cats, but cat lovers are more likely to have multiple pets. And more foreigners visited New York (9.3 million) than any other American city (Los Angeles was a distant second with 3.7 million). Those facts are among the thousands gleaned from the 2013 edition of the Statistical Abstract of the United States. …
“More than 41 percent of births were to unwed mothers, for instance, compared with 33 percent a decade earlier. Student loan debt in households headed by a college graduate soared to $36,809 from $12,373 three decades earlier. Since 1982, the number of federal civilian employees rose by 160,000 while the number of state and local government workers swelled by 6.6 million.”
