can liberal christianity be saved?

If you haven’t read this article yet and you’re at all interested in Christianity in culture, please read this great editorial by Ross Douthat. 

I fear that many liberal Christians have tucked tail at worst, and at best (and what I think it most correct) in the last generation miscommunicated the ultimate point of why they are bent on Social Justice – that this is God’s world, and that he desires shalom.  Yet we’ve been caught in political causes du jour without an ultimate point.  And as a result, I think it causes significant atrophy.

Why do we care about gay marriage?  Why do we care about environmentalism?  Why do we care about feeding the poor?  If we can’t answer those questions both personally and corporately, we have bought into a shallow and stagnant theology that will not satisfy our world nor us.  We’ve ultimately become a world of zombie Christians where we don’t think but just do.  That lack of intellectual insight (half because all of the sudden religion is “deeply-personal-and-emotional-and-I-don’t-need-to-read-just-feel-when-really-I-don’t-get-this-stuff-and-I’d-rather-be-lazy-than-understand” and half because there are very few modern Christian leaders who challenge people to the contrary) is what will make us irrelevant.

Frankly, I think Christians are just the canary in the coal mine, and that society at large doesn’t think anymore.  But it’s far easier to point out a group you don’t affiliate with than to point the finger square at your own folks.

Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved? – NYTimes.com.

The Opportunity Gap – Brooks

This is one of the biggest issues I see our society facing today – the growing disparity between rich and poor – and yet I hear very little being talked about it on the federal political stage.  In fact, I think I’ve heard more from our own GOP governor on the topic than either Mitt Romney or President Obama.

With the ever-increasing cost of higher education, which, if a poor child was able to attend (and, based on Brooks’ editorial,  increasingly unlikely) could give him or her a leg-up, is becoming evermore impossible to pay for it.

We are commodifying our children’s future for wealth today.  In the end, that will be the loose thread that will tear the fabric of our society apart.  There are many, many children who aren’t even poor but working class that are starting to lose opportunity.  I see it even families back home, and here in Columbus.  There must be something done.  And if the higher education industry (which I shutter at when I write it, the simple fact that education has become industry) won’t do it, we need some sort of regulation to do so.

How sad.  We cannot even love our children and work to develop a prosperous nation in the future without the government saying so.  It’s a damning indictment of our society.

The Opportunity Gap – NYTimes.com.

The ‘Busy’ Trap

This blog entry reminds me of a post I had a couple years ago – that we become so “busy” that we avoid knowing ourselves.  This happens all the time in the name of an enlightened human experience, but I think we ultimately do ourselves a disservice.

The ‘Busy’ Trap – NYTimes.com.

ps – if you’re too lazy to find the article from before, here you are: https://bestthingisay.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/philosophy-of-busyness/