intersect

The messes we leave tell a story about us.  Lego pieces and barbie dolls scattered across the family room floor are the happy remainders of a day well-spent in play. Pieces of Scotch Tape left stuck to the ceiling perhaps held balloons and streamers for a child's birthday party.  The baked-on crud left on the oven rack might have been the spillover from a casserole hastily thrown in the oven on a busy school night. The smudges on the wall and the stains randomly scattered in cupboards or on baseboards are proof of life. The thin layer of dust on the top of your cabinets is --well, never mind what it actually is , but this too is evidence that your home is a place humming with activity. Granted, most of us don't hold such a romanticized view of dirt, and grime, and grease. And neither should we. Left alone, a house or an office that is given a pass on cleaning day will grow, quite literally, into a place that is not just unattractive, but actually uninhabitable and even tox

Yesterday , I shared some of my observations that I've drawn over the last three months as I've been reading and reflection on the meaning of culture. I focused there mainly on how we as Christians should think about culture -- what is it, and how we ought to view view culture as faith-neutral, but fallen. Today, I want to summarize what we ought to do about that. If culture is our shared story of meaning, what role might a Christian have in the public realm? If culture is faith-neutral, but fallen, how can Christians play a meaningful role in telling and shaping this story? Christians Should Think in Terms of Influence Rather Than Transformation:  After describing four possible options for the relationship between Christ (read "Christians") and culture, Richard   Niebuhr moved on to his fifth option, "Christ Transforming culture." Although he himself did not formally tie himself to any one approach, most readers agree that this was his preferred option. C

"Culture is not only what we live by. It is also, in great measure, what we live for. Affection, relationship, memory, kinship, place, community, emotional fulfillment, intellectual enjoyment, a sense of ultimate meaning." -- Terry Eagleton Mission accomplished...sort of.  That's how I'm feeling as I wind down a three month Sabbatical. I had set out this three months wanting to learn more about how faith and culture come together in everyday life -- and to that end, this was a very fruitful summer. I read a lot, wrote some, observed different people in their everyday work, and had a lot of fun doing it. Yet I can't help but feeling that I've barely scratched the surface -- some thoughts and ideas have settled into my mind quite nicely, but there other topics under this umbrella where I feel I've barely scratched the surface (though I think that's the best possible place to be -- lots of room for new discovery and learning!). So what have I learned?