Our old gods are dying, and our new ones are yet to be born, so we best be careful asking people about what they believe about God. It isn’t simply that the familiar, conventional (theistic, old-man-in-the-sky, all-powerful, all-knowing god who created the universe, who loves us, judges us, responds to our prayer and guarantees an afterlife) is irrelevant to increasing numbers of people. It’s that this God is actually far more disquieting. I need to come clean and say clearly: There are indeed some days when I do call out and surrender......
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Currently, the front-runners to win the presidency in 2016 include a Republican who has essentially bragged, “I buy politicians and they do what the hell I tell them to,” and a Democrat facing criticism about emails and allegations of using her position to lure donations to a global philanthropy affiliated with her family’s foundation. In light of that, Jimmy Carter’s recent press conference informing the world he’s battling cancer was a reminder that, at least once in recent American history, someone held power without corruption. But the 39th president’s announcement was much......
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In the midst of a very eventful summer for the European Union, German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently found that she’d unexpectedly gone viral on YouTube. During Merkel’s otherwise pedestrian TV appearance on Good Living in Germany, a 13-year-old Palestinian refugee named Reem asked a heartbreaking question about facing deportation from Germany to her native Lebanon. When Merkel noticed the girl cry, she reached out to console her, saying that she’d done well. But the moderator took exception, saying this was not about doing well, but about Reem’s anxiety. Merkel insisted she was......
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You know the rhyme: “The butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker, they all sailed out to sea…” Turns out, they won’t be out there alone: They’ll soon be joined by the bookkeeper, the ticket-taker and the telemarketer, with hundreds of other professions following in their wake. Our jobs are at risk, and so are we. Just check out this 2013 report from Oxford, and this “Will Your Job Be Done By a Machine?” tool on NPR’s website. They’re a reality check about the many jobs we may soon see computerized and/or automated......
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It’s been said that being a parent is like having a piece of one’s heart walking around outside of one’s chest. Being a parent means being vulnerable to everything that can go wrong in the world. It means (or should mean) being intimately attuned to someone else’s physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual well-being; feeling their sorrows and their joys. However, this is not only true of being a parent. It’s the complicated blessing of being a person who loves any other person deeply. When someone is beloved to me, and I to......
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