We are bombarded by more news than ever before, and many of us can no longer differentiate what’s real from what’s fake, or what’s important from what’s trivial. Jeffrey Bilbro, author of “Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News,” offers wisdom about what it means to engage the media as a Christian, why the first step may be a deeper engagement with our local church, and the value of cultivating a “holy apathy” about current events.
Also this week, Phil, Skye, and Christian respond to listener emails. Did Skye contradict one of his own sermons on a recent podcast? And what happened to the pipeline that used to carry kids in the church from birth all the way through college? Phil says it has completely blown up, but is that good or bad? And what does it mean for Christian parents? Plus, Jason is addicted to cinnamon rolls, and the magical musical armor of fireflies.
Let me say, too ... that I also have gone back and listened to a bunch of the older episodes and I noticed but did not respond to Skye's "change" in rhetoric. Love you guys. It's so good to hear you interacting with this stuff from some other frame than what Christians have become notorious for in our places, our times.
Okay... I'm really listening, I guess. I disagree completely with the interpretation of kairos vs. chronos given by Skye in the interview. The grounding for my disagreement is Cahill's "The Gifts of the Jews" -- where he points out that when Abram answered God's "Lekh L'kha" that history came unbound from itself in perpetual lozenges into an arrow that points from where humanity is to God's future for us -- and understanding that the Resurrection wasn't a completion of all of God's plans but only the completion of a major phase, resulting in the turn of a corner and an arrow pointed in a clearer direction.
"The wrong side of history" is a troubling phrase only if you accept the…
To my knowledge, the rebellious teenager is not a concept that crosses all cultures and time periods so why do we accept it as a given? Cultural Christians will certainly fall prey but isn’t it realistic to expect Biblical Christian families not to always experience it? Would the Church be better served with more focus on how it can be avoided than to prepare people to accept it as a given? Thank you for your time and work.
Hi Phil, I'm the same person who recommended Ben Shapiro as a guest last week. But I have a new proposal, what if you have Ben Shapiro on, but for an hour long butt news segment or for an hour where you just talk about silly things with him. You can trick him into thinking it's serious and just make it silly the entire time. Please! This would be so funny!
I didn't become a Christian until college, so I missed the 'pipeline' completely. I went to a secular university and most of the Christians I hung around with were also new converts. In our group of 50-70, there were very few that were raised in the 'pipeline'. Most of the people I knew back then (mid 1970s) that were could not handle the freedom and had trouble. Some came back and many didn't.
I'm the last person to be an expert or authority on parenting, but when it came time to decide where to send the kids to school, we decided on the public schools. My thinking was I wanted them to learn about dealing with people that didn't think…