The Psychologist and the Ad-Man: Saviors of the World?

David Wells, the historian and theologian, has pointed out that a number of transitions have occurred in our culture since the 19th century, including:

Virtues→Values
A move in conversation about the necessity and importance of Virtues (of character manifestations such as goodness, integrity, courage, fortitude) to Values (personal preference).

Romantic Comedies Bad for You? Who Would Have Guessed?

I recently read a nail-biting, shocking headliner from BBC News entitled: “Rom-coms spoil your love life.” It was the conclusion of a university survey from Edinburgh that Romantic Comedies in fact generally set unrealistic expectations for viewers in their perception of real-life romances. The main problem: “if someone is meant to be with you then they will know what you want without you needing to communicate it.”

My sappy side took a hit as I perused the informant’s report. Who doesn’t like sweet mushy feelings as they dream of the ‘certain someone’? Or hope that their relationship will grow in excitement? But the good educators of Scotland have finally pointed something out that we should be aware of as we prepare for the holi-daze of visual stimulation:

“We now have some emerging evidence that suggests popular media plays a role in perpetuating these ideas in people’s minds.”

So be alert to renew your mind in truth, goodness, and beauty this holiday, and don’t be too quick to buy in to more than just Christmas sales.

(To read the full BBC article, click the tagged link below.)

Feeling Distinguished?

As I spelunk the dark caverns of further academic study–an exploration in which always carries it the question: “Did I pack properly, can I handle this task?”–I have discovered one potent provision of the academic task: distinctions.

When you say a girl is “smart,” you could mean several things:

She knows lots of data. She may be the veritable “Wikipedia” of information on a certain topic.

She can follow steps of logic to really think something through.

She has an excellent memory: she is a steel trap.

Or you could mean that she can clearly distinguish parts of a big idea in order to better understand the whole. She can make distinctions: much like I am doing now in my definition of “smart.”

You might want to distinguish the nature of something: “That’s not what I meant. I meant this…”

Or you might want to distinguish all the parts of a whole. Sometimes being able to split something up is the best way to figure out the whole thing.

I have found that this is the best way for me to write a paper, write a sermon, or exegete a passage. In fact, I almost stopped in the middle of a ten-page Greek paper to call my 6th grade grammar teacher: “Mrs. B, thank you for teaching me how to diagram a sentence. I realize that because I can identify the ten different verbs in this passage I now have an idea of how to follow what it’s trying to say!”

I guess all those grade-school mornings of diagramming sentences with prepositional phrases or participles really paid off.

So, next time you are staring at your screen wondering where to start on this huge hunk of information you are supposed to discuss, get out the pie server and eat it up one piece at a time.

On Browning’s “Christmas Eve”

One of the interesting struggles I always faced at the holidays during my time back at college was the terrible collision between the new life and identity that I was discovering for myself away at school with the old, established and traditional way of life back home. I would walk through the doors of the old house with the joy of homecoming, only to quickly be knocked flat with the realization that I had changed, but life back home had not.

Now, I went to Biola University, basically a Bible college, and so one of the places where I felt this collision most was going to Church with my family again on Sunday morning. You see, I had just spent a whole semester expanding and broadening my mind as to how to think about who God is, how to read and interpret the bible, and how to worship. You name the topic, and you can bet that my new-found friends and I had spent hours pouring over all the possible ways of looking at the topic and, obviously, had found the only solution imaginable.