Stuff White People Like #2: Religions Their Parents Don't Belong To
White people will often say they are “spiritual” but not religious. Which usually means that they will believe any religion that doesn’t involve Jesus. Read the rest here.
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Five favorite books?
Great question. Here are the ones that come to my head in no particular order.
On Being a Theologian of the Cross by Gerhard Forde. Highly, highly recommend this one. It’s a commentary on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation that shows the difference between a theologian of the cross and a theologian of glory - in our words, religion vs. the gospel. Powerful and devastating.
The Courage to be Protestant by David Wells. His first four books coalesced into an incredibly helpful critique of church and culture. Wells is a sociological theologian.
The Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther. Most people know Luther for the Five Solas, the Protestant view of salvation. What, unfortunately, most people don’t know is how that is applied. The Bondage of the Will is what he called “the hinge upon which everything turns”. He also said that if all of his writings were burned but one survived, he’d wish it was The Bondage of the Will. J.I. Packer’s intro is worth the price of the book alone.
Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman was a writer for SPIN, Esquire, and, I believe now, ESPN. Has some entertaining and sharp insights into culture.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I read this in my early 20s and had never seen someone write with such power. The way he uses words and the way he can paint scenes is really unique. It is a fictionalized autobiography about how both of his parents died when he was 21 and he had to raise his 11 year old brother. This book was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Eggers went on to write other highly acclaimed books as well as the script for Where The Wild Things Are. Lastly, he art directed Thrice’s album Vheissu.
Bonus:
Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper. I think anyone in the church in their 20s should read this.
What about you?
Marshall McLuhan on televised political debates and the television as a medium.
The mad mob does not ask how it could be better, only that it be different. And when it then becomes worse, it must change again. Thus they get bees for flies, and at last hornets for bees.
—Martin Luther
Lady Gaga: People Pleasing as a Maze With No Exit
I’m telling you, Stephen Marche is brilliant. In this article over at Esquire, he just summed up the end results of people pleasing, the fear of man, actual creativity vs. mimicking, and what that reveals about a generation in a few devastating key strokes.
Why did we all laugh at Björk when she wore a swan but cheered Gaga when she wore Kermits?
Was it because Björk’s radical openness is terrifying in its boldness and uniqueness whereas Lady Gaga’s subservience — her obvious posiness — is reassuringly slavish?
Don’t we all enjoy, in a sick way, how obviously she would do anything for our attention?
Why do we want that?
What is wrong with us?
Is it that Lady Gaga is representative, outside of whatever private crisis has led to her deep need to please, of a generational shift?
Isn’t it telling of the millennials that even their most radical pop star, their rock ‘n’ roll monster, is fundamentally a pleaser?
So doesn’t Lady Gaga represent, in the end, a profound closing of the collective soul rather than an energetic bursting-forth?
A maze with no exit rather than a path to new worlds?
Or in 2011 has everything worth saying been said and everything worth doing been done and ripping off the recent past will have to do?
That there is no escape from the maze and so all we can do is expand it?
While you’re at it, check out my other posts on Lady Gaga
“The global village is a world in which you don’t necessarily have harmony. You have extreme concern with everybody else’s business and much involvement in everybody else’s life. It’s a sort of Ann Landers column writ large… huge involvement in everybody else’s affairs. So the Global Village is as big as a planet and as small as the village post office.”
Marshall McLuhan
Christian Smith: “Liberal Whateverism”
Breaking Radio Silence
I haven’t posted anything in over a month because, in addition to planting Mars Hill Orange County, I had the opportunity to join a church planting cohort with six other pastors from all corners of the US. It has been brutal in terms of traveling - if anyone has any travel health tips I welcome them! - but it has been a great experience and I’m grateful to be in the company of great men with passions for Jesus, their families, and their cities. Actually, I’m on a plane heading home now and am about to jump out of my seat with excitement to see Kim and Eva.
MTD & Liberal Whateverism
Anyway, I’m happy to break the radio silence for Christian Smith. His book, Souls in Transition, was incredibly helpful for me in understanding the Millennial generation and still serves as a oft-referenced resource. From that research, Smith helpfully diagnosed the spiritual malaise of America as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”. Smith is back with another helpful term to describe an aspect of American spirituality, “Liberal Whateverism”.
I have been studying the lives of American teenagers and emerging adults for the past decade. In our recently published book, “Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood,” my co-authors and I describe the larger world in which liberal whateverism makes sense. Many emerging adults have few considered moral bearings, are devoted to mass consumerism, routinely become intoxicated and engage in casual sexual hook-ups, are civically and politically uninformed and alienated. Our story is not a tirade against “kids these days.” It is about wider, deeper problems in American society and culture — concerns that should trouble liberals and conservatives — which show up in disquieting ways in the lives of youth.
Be sure to read the rest of the article here.
[H/T Justin Holcomb]
