In the age of “trust the science” and “fake news”, my estimation of any particular person’s “expertise” on anything has been greatly diminished.  For one thing, experts are still human beings – with their own unique biases and vast areas of complete ignorance. Add in faulty human reasoning. In fact, the more years that person invested in that study, the greater the pull of confirmation bias: everywhere they will see evidence that confirms “I was right!”  Meanwhile, all evidence to the contrary will be downplayed or ignored entirely. We all do this.   (Besides, how often do 100% of the experts…

As a general rule, I don’t pay for coffee away from home. What I pay is the price of admission to a coffee shop. I am buying an experience, not a beverage.  When indoor seating in coffee shops was suspended by the pandemic, I was amazed to see people continue through the drive-thru.  Why? For heated bean water? That’s not worth 3 or 4 or 5 bucks a cup. Not in my book. (If you are going to get addicted to something, find something cheap. That’s my motto.) But the value of even 20 minutes in a coffee shop cannot…

I think most present-day Americans would agree that our collective thinking leaves much to be desired. (Those who haven’t noticed this problem are probably not doing too much thinking at all, in my opinion.) We blame it on the short attention span that has been fostered by technology. To an extent, I am sure this has an impact. But maybe the bigger issue is how much of our time the screens consume. Especially the percentage of our leisure hours. There is no longer any “down time”, only “screen time”.  I doubt the cure for our lack of critical thinking will…

Tonight I fear I have discovered the cause and the cure for two minor health issues that have plagued me for years.  Problem #1 is in my left ear. It’s like a perpetual ear infection without the pain: the sort of sound distortion you get when your ears don’t “pop” as you drive up a mountain. It especially bothers me with hearing my own voice. I have stopped singing in church because of it.  (A minor inconvenience since I don’t care to sing along with most of the contemporary praise songs anyway.) The other problem is my voice itself. I…

As a freshman in college, I had no idea what career I wanted to pursue. And I was scared.  And ignorant. I was ignorant of my own skills and interests and I was ignorant of the incredible variety of jobs and workplaces in this big old world. So I went for the one job that I knew (outside of running a cash register at the family hardware store).  That was teaching. Very familiar territory by the time you have finished 12 years of schooling. Ultimately, it turned out that teaching was a good fit for me. So I had moved…

An old high school classmate of mine posted about his adult son on Facebook: “I am really not a religious person, but my son could use all the prayers he can get. He has just entered a rehabilitation center.“ It’s heartbreaking. Not only because of all the pain and destruction which addiction brings, but even more because this man seems to grasp on some level that faith holds the key. But the key is not in his hand. He is left to summon secondhand faith. It seems to me an indictment of the church that my old friend has no…

Does anyone else have a fear of the following equation? Our human propensity to Believe just about anything… + The current hair-trigger on getting Offended (On behalf of ourselves AND on behalf of others) … + The Internet as a whole and Social Media in particular… + America’s Poverty (Which is a poverty of relationships, not of material stuff) = Impending cultural Disintegration Please tell me my fears are unfounded.  Tell me the pendulum will swing back toward genuine conversations, rational disagreements, and grace-filled forgiveness. 

“Learning is so much fun. So enjoyable.” My students always protested whenever I said something like this. They would shoot back, “Are you serious? I hate school!” A handful seemed to grasp my reply: “I didn’t say school. I said learning. There’s a huge difference.” Sometimes I would use this example to clarify: “Take your favorite video game. The first time you sat down with it, you had no idea what to do. But you learned. And that learning was so much fun that it didn’t even strike you as learning. Now you keep coming back, drawn by the prospect…

Why do we experience a profusion of Christmas carols each winter and such a scarcity of “Easter carols” each spring? We get plenty of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” but maybe a single Sunday morning of “Up from the Grave He Arose” or “Christ the Lord is Risen Today”.  I am left to conjure up some good Easter music in my imagination.  Do you recall the name Sandi Patty? She was a popular Christian vocalist in the 80s with a powerful voice. Her Easter song, “Was It a Morning Like This?”, has been nearly forgotten by everyone else, but the melody and…