All Posts

Get it in your inbox.

Exploring culture, faith, technology, Kierkegaard, Ellul, etc. Sometimes snarky, sometimes way too earnest.

All Posts

  • If Your Religion Teaches the Obvious, Then It's Not Much of a Religion
    2025-02-03
    The love to which we are called by Christ runs counter to any instincts we might have to love our family and friends.
  • What to Expect When You're Expecting Victory
    2025-01-02
    Thoughts on Kierkegaard's New Year's Day discourse and what it means to expect victory, not this year or next, but "at last."
  • How to Have a Real Conversation
    2024-12-26
    Social awkwardness abounds, but not everything can be blamed on phones.
  • How to Keep a Christian Christmas
    2024-12-25
    Rowan Williams: "We ought to be looking with speechless amazement at every human face: God thought this face was worth everything. God thought this person was worth everything. God thought, God thinks, that there is no gift or risk too great to bring full life and joy to this person."
  • Ellul on the Void and the Wasteland
    2024-11-18
    There is no more speaking to human beings, Ellul says, because the human being doesn't exist; there are only categories. But it is impossible to communicate with a category. You can only communicate with a human being. Technique makes this sort of communication impossible, because technique demands result.
  • Ellul on the Death of Contemplation and Intuition
    2024-11-06
    All modern intellectuals are materialists, basing their work on what can be "seen, weighed, counted, or measured." Like any other layperson, the intellectual might choose to hold some other philosophical or even religious position, but she would certainly never let it interfere with her actual work.
  • How to Make Things Harder (And Maybe Better)
    2024-11-02
    Our culture wants us to believe that "paying attention" to things that we can never control is important – like "being informed" is somehow "making a difference" when in fact it is nothing more than being entertained.
  • Judge William's Uncomfortable Truth (or, How to Read Kierkegaard)
    2024-10-25
    Can one get the "gist" of Kierkegaard by dissolving it into bullet points, or into a blog post like this one? Perhaps. But whether I am "right" or "wrong" in my interpretation, will you lie awake at night thinking about it, wondering what it means for the way you lead your life, the way I did last night about Judge William and his theorizing? I am guessing, definitely not.
  • Ellul on the Suicide of the Mind
    2024-10-23
    "Intellectuals" are just as affected by the flood of phenomena in the modern world as anyone else, and typically they respond by either pretending to accept the societal myths that claim to make sense of those phenomena, or else they decide it is impossible to know or make sense of anything.
  • Enchantment As a Framework for Culture War
    2024-09-11
    All this talk about enchantment is "just another way to avoid thinking about Jesus."
  • Ellul on the Renewed Mind and the Fog of Facts
    2024-08-09
    Your role, as a thinking Christian, no matter your particular area of interest or specialty, is to "undertake a kind of practical theology" to determine how your faith will influence the way you interact with our decadent civilization.
  • Frank O'Hara, "Nocturne"
    2024-04-30
    You have no telephone, and live so far away.
  • R. S. Thomas, "The Absence"
    2024-04-17
    God is never going to make himself known. He is never going to act in a manner that can't be potentially explained by something else, even if we don't know what that something else might be at the moment.
  • William Stafford, "Bess"
    2024-04-10
    What led me to dog ear this page? I can think of a few things.
  • Jorge Luis Borges, "Everness"
    2024-04-04
    Wish as we might, there is no forgetting, but there is mercy.
  • Donald Justice, "On the Night of the Departure by Bus"
    2024-04-02
    It is April, which has been designated (by somebody, somewhere) Poetry Month, and given the importance of such Official …
  • Ellul on the Unreal Life
    2024-03-22
    85 years ago, Ellul wrote that we are "drawn to facts that have no deep importance and constitute trivial news items" and so "people focus their passions" on "politics, the military, the economy, the democratic system" – all of these things which we become convinced matter, although they only exist as external appearances that we do not actually experience, over which we have no control, which we can only accept as true without any sort of personal verification.
  • What We Encounter When We Encounter the Bible
    2024-02-07
    Jessica Martin compares reading the Scriptures to a relationship with a spouse, where the inevitable disagreements, misunderstandings, and arguments begin from, and lead back toward, a place of trust, “because love underpins the conversation, love makes it possible.” That trust, she says, “goes both ways. I am not expected to be ‘mute and spiritless’ before its holy voice. But I must know how to listen.”
  • Ellul on Being Alive
    2024-02-06
    We are not supposed to do anything, we are supposed to be.
  • Ellul on the True Value of Means
    2024-01-29
    The world looks at its structures, techniques and ideals in terms of how it believes those activities will affect the future. Christians already know the future, and should judge the world's means not by their consequences (which never pan out as expected) but by their content, and whether that content can be integrated into the Christian's task of pointing toward the Kingdom.
  • Ellul on God's Unified Means and End
    2024-01-17
    Christians who believe that human institutions can change human behavior are either hypocrites or liars. It is Marxism, Ellul says, to believe in the existence of a human condition but not a human nature. And it is hypocritical for Christians to refuse to look at "the problem of the human in its fullness" and instead focus on its environment.
  • That Which We Measure May Be Forgotten
    2023-12-29
    Looking back at 2023.
  • Books In and Out of Season
    2023-12-11
    There are books I want to have read, and there are books I want to read. And there are books that are the right books to read now, and books that are right for later, and books that would have been right to read long ago; often it is very hard to know the difference.
  • Ellul on the Illusion of Inner Freedom
    2023-12-04
    Even in a world of limited social mobility and physical constraint, people were allowed the freedom to think for themselves. But in the modern world (and Ellul does not deny the benefits of modern medical and scientific advances), societies claim to be free from constraints, but actually they try to "seize human beings in their totality and confine them within a detailed framework, in which all their gestures and secret thoughts will be controlled by the social system."
  • Advent Begins. Or Continues.
    2023-12-02
    The interesting thing about Jesus's birth was his death.
  • Ellul on Self-Justifying Means
    2023-11-29
    We no longer care if means are appropriate to a desired end, we only ask: Does it work? (Technical objectives, Ellul carefully points out, are not ends.) Instead we change the ends we claim to desire in order to accommodate each new means.
  • Ellul on the Disappearing End
    2023-11-28
    Whether capitalist or socialist or somewhere in between, everyone accepts the same abstract "ends" (happiness, justice, "humanity") without question, so that they can focus on their own preferred concrete "means." "Human beings," Ellul writes, "have set off at astronomically high speeds toward nowhere."
  • Ellul on Christian Freedom
    2023-11-13
    Christians no longer understand "Christian freedom." They act like they are any other citizen of the world, accepting the same underlying structures as everyone else, believing all they have to do is choose the right ideas and implement them with political power.
  • Ellul on Christian Realism
    2023-11-10
    Given their unique orientation toward the future, Christians must approach political and social situations with realism – not one based on "efficiency or success," but on the perspective of God's Kingdom. In any given situation, Jacques Ellul wrote, "Christians can move right or left, can be liberal or socialist, according to the circumstances and the position that seems more conformed to God's will at this time."
  • Ellul on Living into the Future
    2023-11-02
    Christians know that history has a direction; we know, as the saying goes, how the story is going to end. Yet we are not here to merely watch things unfold, nor are we here to create the Kingdom of God (we could not do that anyway). We are called instead to live out the reality of the eschaton, the Kingdom, in our daily lives.
  • Ellul on Being Christian in a Disordered World
    2023-10-29
    Ellul says that Christians can be like ambassadors, defending the interests of their own city while living and working within a different city. Or it may be even better to think of them as spies, infiltrating the world and creating the conditions that will allow the Kingdom of God to burst forth.
  • Ellul on the State of Permanent Christian Revolution
    2023-10-27
    Christianity, Ellul says, is revolutionary, not in the sense of action but in situation. Christians exist in a revolutionary situation, a "state of permanent revolution." The Christian revolution is against the world, not against any existing governments. "The idea of revolution goes deeper here; it does not essentially have to do with changing a form of the state or an economic form but precisely with changing a civilization's structures, which must constantly be called into question."
  • Don't forget, you're alive.
    2023-10-27
    We do not need to be reminded of our mortality so much as we need to be reminded that we are alive.
  • Ellul on the Revolutionary Spirit Against the Facts
    2023-10-26
    The error underlying the current moment lies, according to Ellul, in our respect for, and worship of, "the fact." The fact, Ellul says, is considered to be the final arbiter. The fact cannot be questioned. "Everything that is a fact can be justified by that alone."
  • Determinism Means You Can Do Anything You Want
    2023-10-17
    Humans are not machines. That is a metaphor. And not a particularly good one.
  • Things Fall Apart, But the Center, It Holds
    2023-10-12
    No matter who is in "power" or what "revolutions" occur, our world is in stasis, Ellul wrote, because everyone accepts the same fundamental values of modern civilization. He listed these as "the primacy of production, the constant increase in the powers of the state and the formation of the nation state, the autonomous rise of technique, and so on."
  • The World Is Ending Today and Yesterday and Tomorrow
    2023-09-28
    If Christians take seriously the concept of the Fall, which led to the presence of death, and also the promise of a resurrected Christ that death has been overcome, then they must accept that, for them, history has already ended. As Ellul wrote, "The only vision that Christians can have of the world they live in is an apocalyptic one."
  • Ephemera, 9/18/23
    2023-09-18
    Snark on snark; the best things in life are pointless; telling over showing.
  • Living in Reality
    2023-08-31
    Technocracy won WWII, not democracy.
  • Ephemera, 8/31/23
    2023-08-31
    Problematic "problematic"; other people sure can be mean.
  • Ellul: The World's Will Is Always a Will to Suicide
    2023-08-30
    "The world's will is always a will to death, a will to suicide." If the world is not moving toward God – and it cannot be, it is burdened by sin, a fallen world – then it is moving toward death. Those are the only options. If we try to build a "City of God" here on Earth, and ignore the fact that the world is heading toward its demise, then we will fail.
  • Ellul: Walking the Talk, Redeeming the Time
    2023-08-26
    As humans we live in time; time is enslaved, and requires redemption to be free.
  • Ellul: Thoughts & Prayers
    2023-08-25
    By doing what the world thinks they should do, Christians fail to do the only thing that they alone can do.
  • Ephemera, 8/21/23
    2023-08-21
    The effect of seminary on Biblical (mis)interpretation; why we think humans have dignity.
  • Ellul: Stop Making Sense
    2023-08-21
    When we treat "Christian ethics" as specific moral instructions that must be followed in all circumstances, we are actually rejecting the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
  • Ephemera, 8/20/23
    2023-08-20
    Bikes and pastry; big books and big books; quirky musical interests.
  • Ellul: Do Not Confuse Christian Ethics with Morality
    2023-08-18
    At every moment, we are being judged, and we are being forgiven. It is the struggle between these two states that ensures our freedom because, at every moment, we are being "placed in a new situation." That new situation sets us free from both "satanic fetters" and any pre-determined, legalistic program of morality.
  • Ephemera, 8/15/23
    2023-08-15
    Marriage and openness; Greenwell on Passages; Paul Simon's new album.
  • Laypeople of the World, Unite (I Mean, Unite Two Opposing Concepts and Hold Them in Tension)
    2023-08-14
    We (laypeople) live and act in the midst of economic, political, and ideological realities, and our role is not to pick and choose amongst these forces to find the "best" ones, but to recognize that they are all sinful and "cannot be improved in some other way." Our role instead is to demonstrate "Jesus Christ's forgiveness" for all of these sinful realities.
  • Ephemera, 8/13/23
    2023-08-13
    Inappropriate reading; language is less; missing the point.
  • Passages: The Exit Door Leads In*
    2023-08-12
    A thought-provoking film that pretends to be about the disintegration of a marriage, but is really about two different people who happen to be married to each other.
  • Ephemera, 8/10/23
    2023-08-10
    Stupid AI tricks; the subversive Bible.
  • Ephemera, 08/07/23
    2023-08-07
    Is this satire?; we do not understand the Bible as well as we think; RIP Sinead O'Connor.
  • We Cannot Solve Sin's Consequences by Human Means
    2023-08-05
    Trying to change the world so that humankind might be "less wicked, if not less unhappy, living in it" is futile. At the same time, we cannot reconcile ourselves to the wickedness, either.
  • Kierkegaard as Poetry (Part 1)
    2023-08-04
    A bit of fun.
  • Ephemera, 08/04/23
    2023-08-04
    Left brain conquers all; we are all the baddies; writing is easier when you aren't trying to be deep.
  • Ephemera, 07/27/23
    2023-07-27
    You are not as orthodox as you think; the cathedral; mass entertainment has bulldozed the avant garde.
  • Ephemera, 07/26/23
    2023-07-26
    Misunderstanding reality; right but not interesting; Howards End.
  • Ephemera, 07/07/23
    2023-07-07
    Mid-century potboilers; certain sorts of books; silly social media.
  • Ephemera, 07/03/23
    2023-07-03
    Fear and trembling; Tim Robinson's unsettling brilliance; all morality, no meaning.
  • Ephemera, 07/01/23
    2023-07-01
    Movies are too damn long; Tour de France; Christendom is spent.
  • Sin & Scandal
    2023-06-30
    Continuing with Ellul's Presence – the scandal of living in a modern world where one cannot be separate from sinful structures.
  • Ephemera, 06/29/23
    2023-06-29
    Contempt doesn't make anything better; enough about Portis; Robertson Davies on West and East.
  • Salt, Light, Sheep
    2023-06-28
    Starting a read through of Ellul's Presence – Christians are called to serve a specific function in the world, and it is not to fix the world's problems.
  • Ephemera, 06/27/23
    2023-06-27
    There can be good and bad effects; no right side; what is our business and not our business.

Join the Conversation

💬 Comments are moderated and will appear after approval.