Dreams Unlocked

Contemporary America is attempting something amazing: the creation of an autonomous free floating value matrix, which can be traced directly back to Christianity, while simultaneously severing the taproot which provides said values.  I posted this on  Facebook - it elicited a very lengthy and eloquent response from my childhood friend, Andy Tait. You can read it on my Facebook page. Andy says that "the modern west began when ties to Christianity began to fray". He gives a lengthy explanation of a variety of advances that have taken place as church and state began to separate. This has been of particular interest to me over the past 5 years. I have been studying a lot of the cultural changes happening in the West. The person who has helped me the most is Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. He has written with the greatest insight and comprehension on the pivot, the West has taken from theism to secularity. See A Secular Age, Sources of Self and The Malaise of Modernity.

Other seed fell on good soil.  It came up, grew and produced a crop,  some multiplying thirty,  some sixty, some a hundred times. On Wednesday June 17,  Dylan Roof went to a Bible Study at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston South Carolina. An hour into the study he pulled out a gun and shot and killed 9 of the people in the study, including the pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney. The passage they were studying was the parable of the sower found in Mark 4. In this parable, Jesus teaches how the Word of God is like seed sown on a variety of soils.  Some seed missed the soil, hit the path only to be eaten up by birds.  Some fell on rocky soil and had no chance to set down roots. The sun burned them up. Some seed fell among thorns - the thorns killed the seed. But other seed.... That seed fell on good soil - that seed did not die. It came up It grew. It produced far beyond its humble beginnings. The men and women felled by Roof's gun are like that seed. The reason I

Last week, Felicia and I attended an orientation evening at the middle school that Adam will be attending next year. It's one of those nights where the staff and administrators do their best to assure you that your kids will learn something and not grow disillusioned or bitter in the process. There are a certain type of parent who for some reason feel that they know more about kids education than the actual child educators who have both the training and experience to actually know what they are doing. Despite, the fact that these qualified men and women are there to present to us some of the plans they have for our kids education, these spritely parents feel compelled to pop up and pontificate on their personal philosophies of education. Most of these theories seem to be based on daydreams they have while dozing in their recliners while netflix plays in the background. Or (worse), they are a hodge podge of theories culled from day time talk shows and poorly written blog posts