by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust Reads of the Week 1) The Cost of Repentance by Zack Hunt "Our actions have consequences. And while we may no longer face eternal consequences for our sin because of Jesus, the earthly consequences are very real and aren’t going anywhere. Which is why forgiveness divorced from accountability is so dangerous." 2) Cripple by Shannan Martin "We worry sometimes that we'll seem too churchy, too weird, and all Jesus ever did was be weird and ridiculous and shocking and bold. We tell ourselves the world wants us to be more like them, and caught in the exact-right light, it's true. But the harder truth is, the world wants us to love them with the heart-ruined love of the only thing that ever made us alive." 3)Letting Go of God by Heath Bradley "Throughout the Christian tradition there has always been a constructive tension between saying things about God, and at the same time acknowledging that all our words fall short of the divine reality. It is to our detriment when this paradoxical polarity gets out of balance." 4)Farewell, StrongBlackWoman by Christena Cleveland "Meanwhile, the StrongBlackWoman identity, which at first glance seems like a positive identity, has wreaked havoc on black women’s emotional, physical, spiritual and relational health. In an attempt to escape one set of racist/sexist stereotypes, black women have run smack dab into another stereotype, one that is also maintained by societal racism and sexism." 5)Sermon on Lembas Bread, the Feeding of the 5,000 and Why I Hated Pastoral Care Classes by Nadia Bolz-Weber "Perhaps Jesus’ injunction against sending the crowd away wasn’t because he was about to magically multiply a couple loaves into thousands, (although, again, that is a totally valid reading of the text). Maybe he didn’t want the disciples to send the people away because Jesus knew that those people had what the disciples lacked." Honorable Mention Search Term Friday: Judas Suicide by Richard Beck Holy Relics: A Focus on the Family Movie Review by Martyn Wendell Jones The Book That Changed Amy's Life by Amy Peterson
"Good thing most planes have TVs. Nothings worse than having to look out the window at Earths sacred majesty from the point of view of angels" - @pharmasean
"I raised my kid as a philistine. "How about less Schopenhauer & more QVC Shopping Hour?" I'd scold—but German idealism already corrupted him" - @BigRedDreck On Pop Theology Week in Review Harry, Severus, & David: The Danger of a Single Narrative by Laura Brekke "Recently, I had an epic weekend of re-watching all the Harry Potter films (okay, it was more than a weekend, because: sleep)." Song of the Week "Let Your Heart Hold Fast" by Fort Atlantic
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by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust Reads of the Week 1) Sermon on How Hard It Is Being Spiritual Without You by Nadia Bolz-Weber "Of course I wasn’t thinking about God’s love much when I was away from you guys. Because as inconvenient and at times, unreliable as it might be – other people are the most common way of knowing and experiencing the love of God in Christ. And you guys are my other people. As much as experiencing the love of God in Christ though meditating alone on a mountain might sound awesome, that’s not what Jesus sent his disciples to do after he left. He told them to love each other as he loved them." 2) If Evil Has a Best Friend, It's Apathy by Jamie Wright "I've spent the last 12 months trying to get my head around the language of modern day slavery and the fact that when we are using these words - word's like sold, smuggled, traded, transported, brokered, abused, starved, beaten, broken in – we're talking about human beings. Actual human beings. The kind with names and faces and families. The kind with dreams. The kind with hearts and souls. Real live people." 3) 'Send Them Away': A Homily for the Loaves and Fish (Proper 13A) by David R. Henson "The priest, though, shrugged and offered the bread to him anyway. Now, it would have been easy for the priest to simply send Jeff away with a blessing only and not with the bread. It was technically the right thing to do. But by placing the thin wafer of Christ’s body onto Jeff’s tongue, the priest broke church law and, to some Catholics, violated the Sacrament itself." 4) I Don't Always Tell You by Rachel Held Evans "I don’t always tell you about the mornings I wake up and feel the absence of God as though it were a presence—thick and certain, remembered all over again the way you remember in the morning that someone you love has died. Or about the days when the idea that a single religion can stop the CNN crawler from reporting one more missile strike, one more downed plane, one more bombed hospital, strikes me as freshly stupid, dangerously naïve." 5) "I Used to Believe X for Reason Y..." and the Failure of Intellectual Imagination by Derek Rishmawy (Note: Read the comments) "This, as I said, is a failure of the intellectual imagination, and for reasons I’m not entirely sure of (and I’d love others to weigh in on), it’s one that seems increasingly common. I will say that I’m fairly sure it has something to do with the narcissism of human experience. The story we know best is our own and our human tendency is to shrink the world to fit our experiences. We take our personal stories, and instead of seeing them as one, particular, unique experience, we expand them out and unjustifiably universalize them." Honorable Mention Mark Driscoll and Me and Our Desperate Desire To Be "Okay" by Ben Moberg
Tweets of the (Last Two) Week(s) "I've seen a lot of Jesus billboards on this road trip. Call me crazy but I don't think he likes being hung up on display to make a point." - @primaawesome "HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA, CLIMBING FROM THE BLOOD PITS, HOWLING THEIR AWAKENING TO THE VOID BETWEEN THE STARS, LISTENING TO THEIR REPLIES" - @hottestsingles "I'm just a girl, standing in front of a guy, asking him for all the money in the cash register." - @lindzeta
"You can do anything if you put your mind to it and are willing to disassociate and become a goddamn monster" - @ashfein
"Maybe I'm reading this chart wrong, but according to my weight, I'm 7'3" tall." - @Thing_finder
"I violently wiped all the fingerprint smudges on my iPad and I think I accidentally earned an online degree from the University of Phoenix" - @MeetGreg
The Best Things You Could Have Hypothetically Read Last Week
On Pop Theology Fortnight in Review On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 58 - Arts & Entertainments w/ Christopher Beha "This week on the show Ben talks with author Christopher Beha about his new novel Arts & Entertainments, his Catholic faith, and the nature of the novel of ultimate concern." On Metaphors and Summer Breaks by Lyndsey Graves "It has been ten weeks since I last attended church. I didn’t plan it this way, and there are a hundred reasons why this is a terrible state of affairs, but it is how the summer has turned out." Chaos and Fictional Theology by Ben Howard "As a writer who occasionally has opinions about Christianity I am required by divine fiat to have a definitive position on the issue of the afterlife." How The Bachelor Illuminates the Falsehoods In Our Lives by Emily Joy Allison "I get a lot of scornful, “I can’t believe YOU watch THE BACHELOR” sort of comments from my friends when they find out about my obsession. Granted, if you know me even a little, it’s a bit surprising."
"A photo of a man holding a limp child lit up my computer screen as I clicked on the Twitter link. The boy was one of four Palestinian children playing on a beach, killed by an Israeli airstrike." Song of the (Elongated) Week "Secrets" by Mary Lambert
Peace, Ben You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to help us pay the bills, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
Contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com. You might also like:
by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust Reads of the Week 1) Speaking Fear, Praying Shalom by Osheta Moore "I don’t want to tell the truth that his mama is afraid. This Black Mama is afraid when I roll deep with my three kiddos in the affluent parts of Cambridge. I’m afraid of sideways glances and watchful eyes. I don’t want to tell my kids that they must been seen and not heard, not because their little voices don’t matter, but because the sound of our invasion invokes fear or annoyance. I don’t want to tell them that today, I read another story of racial profiling resulting in another black boy’s life cut short, and I keep seeing my oldest son’s face replace the victim’s face." 2) Urban Church Planting Plantations by Christena Cleveland "This is happening all over the U.S. In Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Boston , Charlotte and many other cities, I’ve seen predominantly white, wealthy suburban churches take an imperialistic glance at the urban center, decide that they are called to “take back the city” and then proceed with all of the honor and finesse of a military invasion." 3) Sermon on Earthly Things, Wombs and the Resurrection of the Deadby Nadia Bolz-Weber "And understanding the heavenly within the earthly, the transcendent within the mundane, is not an intellectual logical, reason-based experience. You can’t make the gospel make sense by using your head. You have to use your hands. And eyes, and mouth, and ears and nose. Because the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus says, is At HAND, reach out and touch it, see it, eat it, feel it. In other words, take in the glory of God in the common, unexpected and totally crazy ways in which our Lord Jesus Christ still seems to be redeeming us." 4) Cheese Ball Rosaryby Tamara Lunardo "I explained my anti-death stance to my 11-year-old last night while I boiled pasta for our dinner: 'The problem with death is it takes away all hope for life.' I talked about the possibility for redemption and healing while a person was still living; I talked about God being God and us, definitely not. I talked, impassioned and impotent, and the spaghetti turned limp from the boil." 5) A Voice in the Desert by Jamie Wright "Into the desert, I carried my own. A dry spirit. An empty cup. An impressive expanse of cracked and broken foundation. Unknown and unlovely. The tiniest signs of life, waiting for rain. Waiting for water. Thirsty and wanting. No one could have known how lost I'd been when we arrived. No one could have known how small I felt. No one knew, as I climbed down the wobbly ladder, that doubt was shaking my soul. And then a steady hand reached up and took mine." Honorable Mention When the Abused Becomes the Abuser by Elizabeth Esther When Christian Feminism is Anti-Judaic by Krista Dalton In Which I Grow Wings by Amanda Williams Tweets of the Week "Oh, your bracket is still perfect? What about your parents' marriage, tough guy?" - @celebrityhottub "Frantically not writing a blog post about Mark Driscoll. It's going to be a good one, y'all. And by good I mean nonexistent." - @TheAlanNoble "The horrifying realization that if everything goes according to plan, you spend most of your life old." - @laureneoneal On Pop Theology Week in Review On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 53 - Christ and Pop Culture w/ Alan Noble "This week I talk with Alan Noble, the managing editor of the website and online magazine Christ and Pop Culture." Fat Thursday by Lyndsey Graves "'Cute joke,' I thought. 'Weird that someone happened to bring donuts on the same day the boss bought us lunch.'" Pastors on Pedestals by Carly Gelsinger
"The children of an evangelical megachurch are given pictures of their pastor to color with crayons, a picture demanding their loyalty to him as their fearless, visionary leader." What A Preacher Looks Like by JaneAnn Kenney
"On the last night of February, I stood before my classmates. I shivered as I reminded myself once again, 'A preacher looks exactly how I look tonight, because tonight I am a preacher.'" Song of the Week "Coming of Age" by Foster the People
Peace, Ben You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to help us pay the bills, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
Contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com. You might also like:
by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust Reads of the Week 1) Ash Wednesday Sermon on Truth, Dust, Babies, and Funerals by Nadia Bolz-Weber "And this God of which I speak is nothing if not a God of hope and promise. Here’s the image I have of Ash Wednesday: If our lives were a long piece of fabric with our baptism on one end and our funeral on another, and us not knowing what the distance is between the two, well then Ash Wednesday is a time when that fabric is pinched in the middle and then held up so that our baptism in the past and our funeral in the future meet." 2) Remember You Are Dust by Richard Beck "We just finished the Ash Wednesday service for our majors here at ACU. And I tell you what, it's a profound and moving experience to have your students--all these bright, talented young people--come up to you, one by one, so that you can impose the ashes." 3) Wrong Side of the Story: How "Captain Phillips" Affected a Somali Community by D.L. Mayfield "The closer we get to stories like these–not just the Captain, but of the young men forced into lives of hopelessness and violence–the more shock we will experience ourselves. We will start to see students, instead of headcoverings. We will start to see people made in the image of God, instead of simple stereotypes. We will see talented actors like Barkhad using his language and his culture to tell beautiful, redemptive tales many times over. And the closer we get to these other worlds, the more we will long for the day when the appetites for singular stories change." 4) She Is Not Her Circumstances by Erika Morrison "This is not a mystery to me anymore, nobody is the sum of their circumstances and on the other side of Jesus, everybody is my family – it’s just going to take an eternity to get to know all the people I’m related to." 5)What Really Changed After The Resurrection? (A Challenge for Lent) by Zack Hunt "In other words, if the kingdom of God is really at hand, the only way people are going to notice is if we become the physical embodiment of the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. Only if we take seriously our call to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world, doing justly and loving mercy, will anyone ever be convinced that the resurrection really did happen and something really did change and really is changing as the result." Honorable Mention Ageism in an Age of Hipster Christianity by Mary DeMuth To Be Seen by Fiona Koefoed-Jespersen My Cause For Hope (The Next Generation) by Benjamin Moberg Tweets of the Week "One of my favorite things about Lent is that I get to give up all the people who fast from social media..." - @JesusNeedsNewPR "Happy Fat Tuesday! Remember to sin continuously from sunup to sundown or it doesn't count." - @LissGrunert "Things one can deduce from '80s music: cocaine makes saxophones sound AMAZING" - @pauljaycomic Song of the Week "Corallina" by Lulu Mae
Peace, Ben and Sebastian You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to help us pay the bills, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
Contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com. You might also like:
by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust Reads of the Week 1) Bad Theology Can Kill You by Zack Hunt "You may have heard the tragic news over the weekend that Pastor Jamie Coots, a snake handling pastor who starred in the reality show Snake Salvation, died after he being bitten by a snake while handling it during a recent church service. The story quickly spread in large part because of our fascination with the odd and the taboo…and you don’t get much more odd or taboo in the church world than handling snakes. And if my Facebook and Twitter feeds are any indication, the story was also an opportunity for the rest of us to show how superior and sophisticated our theology is by mocking Pastor Coots and his kind across all social media channels for the inevitable result of their redneck ignorance." 2) Sermon on Jesus Rolling His Eyes (and also divorce) by Nadia Bolz-Weber "I thought, how the hell is it that the church can manage to take a text meant to protect people and make sure violence is not done to them, and then use this same text to do violence to so many for so long? I don’t know what to say. I just know that it is real. And if Jesus rolled his eyes when having to re-orient his disciple’s understandings of things, I can only imagine his reaction to what has been done with his teachings about protecting people." 3) The Cost by Rachel Held Evans "It’s painful to see your beliefs mocked in the media and satirized on TV. There’s a cost to sticking with your values when they strike others as old-fashioned or strange. It hurts like hell to be the butt of jokes at your office or called a "bigot" or "extremist" on your college campus when nothing could be further from the truth. It takes guts to raise your hand and challenge the professor in a secular classroom or walk away from a compromising situation when it may mean damaging relationships that have been hard-won. And it's got to sting to be called a fundamentalist by other Christians (like me) when you're just trying to do the right thing and do it in love. It must hurt to be subjected to the rolled eyes and the know-it-all attitude we progressive-types can conjure as well as anybody." 4) This is what actual ‘religious liberty’ looks like by Fred Clark "In doing so, Wright Allen also shredded the warped notion of “religious liberty” as a defense of religious privilege now being advanced by pseudo-intellectual Christianist chauvinists. Those chauvinists — from the billionaires of Hobby Lobby, to the U.S. Catholic bishops, to the Manhattan declarers — have been trying to redefine “religious liberty” to mean a “monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments” for their particular strain of religion. It’s not enough, they say, for us to be free to marry as we like — if we are not also free to prohibit others from marrying as they like, then we are not free. It is not enough, they say, for us to be free to reject the use of contraception — if we are not also free to prohibit others from using contraception, then we are not free." 5) What Jesus Said to the Transgendered Woman by John Stonecypher "Back to Facebook Jesus… One of his awesome-est followers was a transgender woman who never failed to come to Jesus’ aide when the Pharisees came trolling. Her sexuality just hadn’t been a topic of discussion yet. But I knew it was coming. I tried to prepare myself to have an answer when the question came. Something theologically nuanced and artfully worded; I’m pretty good at that…" Honorable Mention On Preferential Options by Maria Gwyn McDowell Inhabiting Fear by Jen Luitweiler For the Moms with Wild Ones by Flower Patch Farmgirl Tweets of the Week
'Mr. Jay-Z, I hate to bother you, but I ran the numbers & came up with 107 problems.'" - @earfdae
"When God closes a door, he opens a window. Our heating bill is outrageous & six raccoons got in last night. Please God, this has to stop." - @robfee
"Dear Huffington Post, that was no where near the best goat video I've watched today. Signed, Disappointed Goat Video Watcher" - @_lxnx On Pop Theology Week in Review Come As You Are by Ben Howard "It’s meant to be inviting. And I’m sure it’s well-intentioned. For all their sins, churches are certainly well-intentioned when they invite strangers to come and join them." Bad Music Theology: "Dark Horse" by Katy Perry (feat. Juicy J) by Ben Howard "Every so often I come across a pop song so catchy that I can't stop listening to it, but with lyrics so terrible that I hate myself every time I press play. Such is the case with "Dark Horse" by Katy Perry and Juicy J." On Being Too Serious (Or, Why True Detective Sucks) by Charity Erickson "I’ll get right down to disagreeing with the general critical community at large: True Detective—which debuted on HBO in January—sucks." On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 50 - The Winter Olympics by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust "Sebastian and Ben settle in for a discussion about the Winter Olympics in Sochi."
Song of the Week "When I Write My Master's Thesis" by John K. Samson
Grace and Peace, Ben and Sebastian You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to help us pay the bills, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
Contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com. You might also like:
