“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like.
“Pastor, author and mental health advocate Jarrid Wilson dies by suicide” – This was probably one of the toughest news articles for me to read this past week. This was too reminiscent of Pastor Andrew Stoecklein‘s death about a year ago. As a pastor for nearly two decades, I find the uptick in pastors taking their life through suicide very difficult to handle. At the most basic level, this is just plain sad for the individual, their family, their church, and those influenced by their ministry. At a personal level, I know the strain and pressure that pastors deal with in ministry, and the very real times where the pressure feels like something you can no longer handle. Ed Stetzer does a good job of responding to this at The Exchange (“A Pastor Dies By Suicide: Three Things We All Need to Know”). You could support Wilson’s family in a tangible way here. I tweeted on Wednesday: “Life is fragile. People need God, but people also need other people. Love those around you. If you are struggling, reach out for help. Don’t go it alone. The journey of life is not easy.” If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please talk with someone you know about this or reach out for help to the suicide prevention lifeline (1-800-273-8255). As the people of God, we have to engage with even the darkest issues of mental health together. This is at least one aspect of what it means to ” Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).
“Celebrate Sexual Ethics. Don’t Apologize for Them.” – Andrea Palpant Dilley: “Over the last five years, an increasing number of believers have changed their stance on sexual ethics and slipped from the grounded banks of orthodoxy into the current of the times. Several public figures, in particular, have come out as ‘affirming’ and brought thousands with them. Those of us with a historic, biblical view feel at times defensive or discouraged, and our posture—quite understandably—is one of ‘holding our ground’ against theological erosion. In the midst of this tumult, we risk losing sight of what the church has to offer: not just a critique of false teaching (although that’s needed) but an alternative model, a bold vision of how orthodoxy enables deep, well-ordered love. As we encourage others to ‘stay on the bank,’ we have the privilege of pointing them toward a picture that reveals God’s purpose for human sexuality.”
“Rotten STEM: How Technology Corrupts Education” – Analyzing the role of technology is a hot topic, but here is a thoughtful, if not harsh, reading of technology and education in the US from Jared Woodard. “The U.S. education system spent more than $26 billion on technology in 2018. That’s larger than the entire Israeli military budget. By one estimate, annual global spending on technology in schools will soon total $252 billion. To hear presidents and prime ministers tell it, this spending is laudable and even necessary to reduce inequality and prepare a workforce ready to compete in the global economy. But the technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development and an unredeemable waste. In the first place, technology exacerbates the greatest problem of all in schools: confusion about their purpose. Education is the cultivation of a person, not the manufacture of a worker. But in many public school districts we have already traded our collective birthright, the promise of human flourishing, for a mess of utilitarian pottage called ‘job skills.’ The more recent, panicked, money-lobbing fetish for STEM is a late realization that even those dim promises will go unmet.”
“Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound” – On a related point, here is Maryanne Wolf reflecting on technology’s effect on reading and attention: “Look around on your next plane trip. The iPad is the new pacifier for babies and toddlers. Younger school-aged children read stories on smartphones; older boys don’t read at all, but hunch over video games. Parents and other passengers read on Kindles or skim a flotilla of email and news feeds. Unbeknownst to most of us, an invisible, game-changing transformation links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit that underlies the brain’s ability to read is subtly, rapidly changing – a change with implications for everyone from the pre-reading toddler to the expert adult.”
“What 1619 Means for Christian History” – A few weeks ago The New York Times released their monumental effort “The 1619 Project.” Regardless of whether one agrees with the goal of the project, this important cannot – and should not – be ignored. In Christianity Today‘s “Quick to Listen” podcast, Michael A. G. Haykin joins Morgan Lee and Mark Galli “to discuss the genesis of the church’s views on slavery, how the missions movement affected the slave trade, and the role of the Quakers in pricking the Protestant conscience on this atrocity.”
“‘Someone’s Gotta Tell the Freakin’ Truth’: Jerry Falwell’s Aides Break Their Silence” – There is probably no religious leader as tightly connected to Donald Trump as Jerry Falwell, Jr., who serves as the president and chancellor at Liberty University. This piece gets inside the feelings around Falwell in at least some areas of the school. “At Liberty University, all anyone can talk about is Jerry Falwell Jr. Just not in public. ‘When he does stupid stuff, people will mention it to others they consider confidants and not keep it totally secret,’ a trusted adviser to Falwell, the school’s president and chancellor, told me. ‘But they won’t rat him out.’ That’s beginning to change.”
“Going Home with Wendell Berry: The writer and farmer on local knowledge, embracing limits, and the exploitation of rural America” – Wendell Berry is one of the finest writers of our era, bringing a combination of artistry, love, and prophetic zeal to his poetry, fiction, and essays. If you’ve never read his work, let me commend Jayber Crow or What Are People For? as good starting points. In this article in The New Yorker, Amanda Petrusich interviews Berry about his writing, his decision to return to Kentucky, human freedom and limits, agriculture, and much more.
Music: Jóhann Jóhannsson, “A Sparrow Alighted Upon Our Shoulder,” from Orphée.
[I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within the articles linked from this page, but I have read them myself in order to make me think more deeply.]
I continued our series, “Love-Sex-Body: Toward a Biblical Theology of Embodied Sexuality,” this past weekend at at Eastbrook Church by turning to the second chapter of God’s Good Story: the Fall from grace.
