As a young Jewish boy living in German-occupied Paris in the early 1940s, Nobel-prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman had a hair-raising encounter that, he later recalls, quite probably influenced his decision to study psychology. He tells the story beautifully: “It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of […]
Read More On our vilifications of Trump, Biden and, um, JesusAnyone who’s been a participant or spectator in a conversation about racism in America knows that, as soon as the topic is broached, things usually become really difficult really quickly. Difficult as in agonizing and antagonistic, awkward and awful. In fact, at times it can be so difficult that one would be forgiven for wondering […]
Read More Why are discussions about racism so difficult?What if the littlest humans on the planet, who are least vulnerable to COVID-19, are in fact most vulnerable to its indirect yet possibly avoidable effects? What does research from previous outbreaks suggest? According to UNICEF: “Experience with past epidemics like the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak and SARS has shown that indirect effects [upon […]
Read More Will children overseas become COVID-19’s greatest victims?At present I’m teaching not one but two teenagers to drive. And somewhere in the midst of the shrieks and skid marks, I’ve wondered: Is teaching my kids to drive a microcosm of the entire parenting process? For those of you parents who’ve already done this (or if you can imagine how you’ll do it […]
Read More Teaching our teens to drive…on the road of lifeRecently my 8-year-old son Winston and I spent a week with my dad on a beautiful lake in Montana. Being a very large mountain lake, its water temperature wasn’t exactly warm. Whereas the air temperature was a delightfully dry if intense 92° (F), at its surface the water temperature was somewhere in the high 60s […]
Read More Parental love can mean forcing our kids to try new thingsIn the Spring of 1941, after a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz, guards responded by randomly selecting ten other prisoners to be executed. By starvation. When one of the ten selected reportedly cried out, “My wife! My children!”, prisoner #16770, German-Polish priest Maximilian Kolbe, who had already suffered severe beatings at the hands of guards, volunteered […]
Read More “Love alone creates”: the life-giving sacrifice of Maximilian KolbeIn his own day MLK was regarded by many Afro-Americans as a man “sent from God,” even as “a modern-day Moses.” Indeed, some regarded him as their “savior.” A certain Montgomery activist Rufus Lewis, who himself was not religious, observed that he couldn’t “see what’s the difference between him [MLK] and the Messiah. That’s just […]
Read More So who shouldn’t be “canceled”?“There is no subject that is more in need of dispassionate analysis, careful factual research and a fearless and honest discussion than is race.” – Thomas Sowell With sacred Scripture as our lens, in the midst of the overwhelming cacophony of voices in our culture, what can we know for sure about racism in America?
Read More Racism in America: what can we know for sure?What’s at stake this election season? Overwhelmingly, the American news media would be inclined to say, “Pretty much everything.” And many Americans, whether progressive or conservative, would say the same: We need the right president, with the right policies, nominating the right Supreme Court justices, if America (and, in turn, the world) is to flourish. […]
Read More Why politics shouldn’t divide Christians[Prefatory note: I wrote the majority of this post last Friday, August 11th, before the grievous events in Charlottesville, VA, took place. My original aim was that it would be a resource for anyone who, like me, has much need to grow and who desires to listen, repent, and learn to love. May it serve this […]
Read More Some helpful reading on the topic of race and racism
Hope Unbroken 