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ODD MAN OUT
One of my doctorate classes met by Zoom for the first time today. The class has the somewhat intimidating title of “Sacramental Spirituality and Disciple-Making Leadership”. Early in our two hours together, the professor discussed what shape our final paper will take. He was almost apologetic for making the assignment too short (by doctorate-level standards) at 10 to 12 pages. Thankfully, it is not due until February of 2022. Not going to lie – it made me nervous to even talk about it. There was discussion of research, analysis, and footnotes. And I became aware of my need to brush…
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ASSUMPTIONS
Speaking of debates, Kathryn Schulz in Being Wrong writes, “We look into our [own] hearts and see objectivity; we look into our [own] minds and see rationality; we look at our [own] beliefs and see reality” (107). We don’t give the same benefit of the doubt to others, at least when they disagree with us. If someone challenges OUR beliefs, Schulz points out, we make one of three assumptions about them: The Ignorance Assumption “Since we think our own beliefs are based on facts, we conclude that people who disagree with us just haven’t been exposed to the…
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DEBATES
A friend posted a video on Facebook about a week ago. I checked it out and it led me down a rabbit hole of various podcasts by a guy named Dr. Leighton Flowers. (Thanks, John!) Dr. Flowers has a YouTube channel called Soteriology 101. From what I can tell, it is 100% dedicated to debating Calvinists. I might be weird, but I enjoy watching theologians fight. If you are not up on your theology terminology, remember that “soteriology” is simply the study of salvation. How is salvation accomplished? Who is capable of being saved? Why are some saved but not…
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AUTUMN DAY
Today Melissa and I dropped Sarah off at her restaurant job at 11:00 am and we headed back to Madison, Indiana, in the minivan to pick up a dresser we bought there two weeks ago. Sadly, that one little errand took us ALL day.
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TAKEN OPPORTUNITY
I found a way to work “unconditional love” into my lesson plans for today in three of my classes, while reassuring my students that this is exactly the type of love I seek to practice with them day to day. We are reading The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, and when I stopped to think about it, one of the major themes of the book really could be summed up as “unconditional love”. It is the story of ongoing friction between two distinct groups of teens in Tulsa during the early 1960s. The narrator, Ponyboy, is a proud “greaser” who has…
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OIL PAINTING
Autumn in Indiana always makes me want to break out my oil paints. I still have a tackle box full of them here in my office, but the decades have left most of the tubes rock hard. (I know because I checked the other day while I was daydreaming of painting.) What I really want, though, is to be Dwight Steininger. I don’t know what my brothers thought of childhood trips to Nashville, Indiana, but I was in my element in my state’s own “artist colony”. It was less than an hour’s drive from Shelbyville, but it seemed like an…
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MISSED OPPORTUNITY
I had a student who asked to leave the classroom to fill a water bottle. I wouldn’t allow it. “Why not?” “It’s unnecessary.” “I’m thirsty.” “You can survive three days without water.” At this point a second student chimed in, addressing the first student, “It’s OK. He doesn’t like me either.” Now, of course, I took this opportunity to re-affirm the fact that I like ALL my students. They don’t believe this, but it’s true. And then the subject was dropped. Within seconds, I realized what I SHOULD have said to the second student: “I like you just fine. What…
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DISRESPECT TRENDING
Apparently I am not alone in getting very frustrated with the quantity and quality of disrespect I endure from some students on a daily basis. To be clear, most students are pretty well behaved, but the sheer volume of sneers, snide remarks, and forthright refusals to work from a handful of students is starting to get to me. Re-entering the American public school classroom in January of 2021 after nearly a decade away from it, I was never sure if the disrespect was rooted in A) my own classroom management skills being rusty after 7 years of very small classes…
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NOVEMBER FIRST
I am always so conflicted on November 1st. On the one hand, I am so glad to see Halloween’s celebration of death and gore and fear in the rearview mirror. Don’t get me wrong, I am no crusader against Halloween – I just have no use for it. I do, however, envy the extra time, energy and money some of my neighbors seem to have in connection with the “holiday”: So I am glad when it passes. On the other hand, November 1st discourages me because we have hardly finished burying Halloween before we start trotting out all the Christmas…
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THE PLATTE
For years I have heard American Christianity criticized from many angles and I believe much of the criticism is justified, don’t you? Unless you care to make a case that modern American church life and practice looks exactly like what Jesus and the New Testament writers describe and command, in which case I will wait and hear you out. Often, criticism is mean-spirited, judgmental and unproductive. But – more rarely – criticism can be offered as rebuke, warning, or correction, with only the best interest of the target in mind. I hope my criticism falls into the second category. I…