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Discipleship: There’s an App for That?

While the world went gaga for Pokemon Go this week (and by “world”, I mainly mean “my wife and her best friend”), I was trying out some other apps: MyFitnessPal, Goodbudget, and GiantSlayers. Health, money, and discipleship—these were the ostensible aims of these respective apps. (I know, GiantSlayers sounds like a video game app, but it’s actually a Bible-verse/devotional service. Bear with me). Continue reading “Discipleship: There’s an App for That?”

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Rejoice and Weep

15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. – Romans 12:15

12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.   – I Corinthians 12:12-14

Last week in Sunday School, our class talked about the violent deaths of black civilians and police officers over the past couple of weeks and what, if anything, our response as Christians should be.

Almost immediately, we ran into a very specific impasse: we have had and will have a very difficult time relating to something that is so outside our socio-economic bubble. Our class is made up of mid-30s, fairly affluent, educated, white couples. While we have our political or even theological disagreements, we are much more like each other than we are not. The deaths in Baton Rouge, St. Anthony, and Dallas are beyond our ken. While we know that the best thing for us to do would be to listen to someone whose experience is not ours–to hear a cop or a minority speak about their experiences and vulnerabilities–we didn’t have that option in our class on this particular Sunday. Continue reading “Rejoice and Weep”

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Faith and Rationality in Macbeth

This has been bugging me since my ENGL 112 class ended.

We talked about RATIONALITY and IRRATIONALITY in Macbeth and in our lives as a way to start thinking about why the play still matters.

As my students completed their daily writing, I listed a bunch of topics where you could experience the pull between the rational and irrational in your life. They included:

  1. Love
  2. Family
  3. Career
  4. Friends
  5. Money
  6. Health

Here’s what’s been bugging me. The most obvious category of my life where I experience the tugs of Rationality and Irrationality is my FAITH, and I left that category out! Continue reading “Faith and Rationality in Macbeth”

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Politics and Performance in Henry IV Part 1

I took my own undergrad survey of Shakespeare in the spring of 2001. George Bush Jr. had just won a highly contested presidential election, and even pre-9/11, my professors were skeptical. During the campaign, Bush had adopted the narrative of a redeemed man. His past was pretty sordid: alcoholism, shirked duties, the stereotypical foibles of a rich kid with tons of privilege and little common sense. But now? He was a highly successful Texas governor, a born again Christian, a compassionate conservative who was tough on crime but merciful to his political opponents.

George Bush, my professor Ted Brown told us, was Prince Hal: not the historical Prince Hal, but Shakespeare’s representation of him. Someone near the Shrub, as Dr. Brown was wont to call the president, had been reading his Shakespeare (Doc Brown couldn’t imagine that Bush himself had read the play). They knew that the redemptive, comedic narrative succeeded in the 1590s just as well as the 1990s. Continue reading “Politics and Performance in Henry IV Part 1”

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Wrestling with Othello

We happened to read and talk about Othello the same week we celebrated the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. While the play’s early (white) audiences may not have reacted to the play’s racial dynamics, I cannot, in 21st Century America, read Roderigo, Iago, and Brabanzio’s descriptions of Othello and not think of our nation’s own conflicted relationship to black men and women (#blacklivesmatter). This is a play that asks us to balance the duties of individual and social responsibility. We can lay blame for what happens to Desdemona on Othello alone or even extend the blame to Iago (whatever his real motivation is). But what responsibility does the larger society have for enabling a world where Othello associates the color of his skin with sin? Continue reading “Wrestling with Othello”

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Mr. Church

This past Sunday morning, I was Mr. Church. I attend a pretty big Methodist church in Summerville, and I was the lay liturgist for the 8:45am service. That meant I explained and read the Old Testament lesson for the day, offered the corporate prayer, gathered and prayed over the tithes and offerings, and even gave the closing benediction. Then I walked over to the Sunday School wing of the church facility and taught Sunday School to a class of 30+ people.

And I did a good job. The pastor complemented my prayer from the pulpit. A couple of class members pulled me aside to thank me for the Sunday School lesson.

Boom.

Spiritual mission accomplished. Continue reading “Mr. Church”

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Learning to Smile

Confession: my default facial expression is not a smile. Typically my screen-saver face vacillates between “I’m thinking deep thoughts” or “I’m vaguely upset about something.” I have to think about smiling, be intentional about it, because I have been practicing for years not doing it without even knowing it. And the thing is that there’s so much to smile about (e.g. chocolate chips)! Continue reading “Learning to Smile”