On Culture

This episode of On Culture is an extension of the latest article there - A Redemptive Arc. Here is an excerpt: When I showed up for that coffee with my friend, I wasn’t thinking about redemption. Because, as far as I knew, it hadn’t arrived. As far as I knew, the redemption that has seemed to arrive, wasn’t going to. It is a thing that takes many forms and often arrives in an unexpected packages....

This episode of On Culture interacts with the most recent dispatch from The Embassy - The Noble Lie . You may want to check it out before or as you listen to this. Here is an excerpt … You may have heard of what we call the noble lie. It can be a bit subjective to define, but, simply, it is a lie for a good purpose. You may have noticed that we have a difficult time agreeing on what ‘good’ means....

In this episode, Susan James and I talk about gratitude. This episode is based on the latest dispatch from The Embassy - Counting Blessings . Here is an excerpt … Most of us take what we have for granted and many of us feel that we are losing out on something that others have. Or, even if things are better now, that we lost out before on something so we are not as far as we ‘should’ be. Everything...

This episode of On Culture interacts with the latest piece from The Embassy - check it out at theembassy.substack.com Here is an excerpt … In the tragic vision, individual sufferings and social evils are inherent in the innate deficiencies of all human beings, whether these deficiencies are in knowledge, wisdom, morality, or courage. Moreover, the available resources are always inadequate to fulfi...

On Culture - In this episode, Susan James and I talk about the choice between bears and men … and how we can talk to and listen to one another. As with most episodes, we interact with the latest piece from The Embassy - Of Bears and Men - here is an excerpt … Recently, a question (for women) was placed before the national consciousness - if alone in the woods, walking down a trail, would you rathe...

This episode of On Culture starts from the most recent written piece from The Embassy - Why So Serious? Here is an excerpt … As I was in the process of collecting my thoughts for this essay, I noticed a number of pieces that are noticing the same trend. In the wake of the 2016 election, there were a number of attempts to explain the Angry Right. Strangers in Their Own Land was a National Book Awar...

This is the podcast that goes with A Drug for Everything , which we revisited last week. I will also post a new “print” piece this weekend - and we will go on a path of something new every other week, followed by that podcast (what we have been doing) plus revisiting a piece every other week, now that we have over 100 posts over these last couple of years - hope you enjoy. Mike talks with Susan Ja...

This episode uses as its starting point the piece from The Embassy - Anatomy of Belief - which uses as its starting point the movie Anatomy of a Fall. Here is an excerpt: Anatomy of a Fall is set in France, the house that is the principle setting is high up in the snowy mountains. There is (as you might guess) a “fall” in this movie - a physical fall causing the death of someone - but it isn’t the...

This episode of On Culture interacts with this piece from The Embassy. Here is an excerpt … From time to time a psychology experiment will enter the cultural attention span - perhaps because we can relate to the findings of the experiment, even if those findings reveal a disturbing truth. One such experiment has been labeled The Invisible Gorilla . The Invisible Gorilla is part of the popular cult...

View Chris Bantz and I talk about finding common ground based on the latest edition of The Embassy called Something in Common. Here is an excerpt … Over the past three editions of The Embassy, we have looked at what transformation from within is and how it can impact our culture , instead of our efforts to ‘change the world’. We have looked at how we can resist the impulse to draw ever shrinking c...

A conversation between Chad Myers and me on our mission in this culture - based on the latest from The Embassy Here is an excerpt … I am not here to tell you how to be the Ambassador from the United States to (Sweden, Norway, Germany …). But let’s reflect on what the job is - on why we are there. We, as ambassadors, are there to represent the interests of the United States and to represent the U.S...

This episode is taken from last week’s dispatch from The Embassy - Two Steps Forward. Here is an excerpt … View There is a principle that those within the Christian church have claimed for centuries: In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity. There are essentials, but there aren’t very many of them. In Christianity, maybe ten , maybe a dozen - not more. Even the refo...

View This podcast is based on the piece How Not to Change the World (in this very substack). Here is an excerpt … Starting with the acknowledgement that there is a culture war, and that, to some extent at least, we find ourselves in it - what do we do? For some, it seems that the point of the culture war is to keep fighting the culture war. Fighting this (good?) fight has become an identity and a...

This Episode of On Culture Interacts with Gnats and Camels - from The Embassy - Here is an excerpt - Instead of a real conflict about a real situation faced by real people - answering the question how does our Christian theology fit into this real life situation? … what are the missional implications of loving those whom we are called to reach while holding to what we believe to be true theologica...

This episode is, as usual, based on the preceding piece from The Embassy - check it out for the full show notes. Here is an excerpt … Shalom means peace and harmony and community and everything being as it should be - extending far beyond the bounds of mere avoidance or absence of conflict. If the shooting stopped today in Ukraine, and everyone froze in place - what many people are calling for - w...

Anti-institutional, Anti-authority, populist ... and lost This episode is based on the latest dispatch from The Embassy - here is an excerpt: … Institutions Surely you have noticed the cultural trends toward anti-institutionalism. It may be true that we were too trusting in institutions - our company, our government, our universities, even our churches. And some skepticism, as we have seen, may ha...

View What are you doing for the environment? It is a question that is at once easy and difficult to answer. We recycle. (Of course we do, we aren’t demons.) We don’t run the heat very high in the winter or the AC very high in the summer - though, to be honest, there are other factors at play there. I just traded my gas mower in for an electric model. I don’t dump old motor oil down the storm drain...

This episode comes out of the latest dispatch from The Embassy - The Best Year. Check it out in its entirety - but here is a bit of it … View 2024. Will it be the worst year ever? Or maybe the best? Those of us who are old enough remember when Prince sang - … I was dreamin' when I wrote thisForgive me if it goes astrayBut when I woke up this mornin' Could've sworn it was judgment day … The sky was...

This is a companion podcast for the piece from The Embassy - A Season of Gratitude. Here is an excerpt from that piece: (please check out the whole piece at theembassy.substack.com ) One of our grandchildren has discovered a joy from my youth - A Charlie Brown Christmas. Do you remember when we had to find out when this show, and Rudolph, and Frosty, and the Grinch! … were broadcast over the netwo...

View Susan and I talk about the universal experience of growing old and / or growing into our parents - while being surprised by our participation in this universal reality … and what to do about it. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9 Call the Smithsonian, I made a discovery Life ain't forever and lunch isn't fre...

I talk with Trey Herweck, pastor of Refuge Church in St. Charles about how difficult it can be to be forgiven. Based on the latest from The Embassy - theembassy.substack.com Link “I Want to be Forgiven. I Just Want to be Forgiven.” - Dave Barry, The New York Times Forgiveness - Psychology Today Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

Evan Sherman and I talk about the Mideast (some) - but also how we have turned politics into the primary expression of the moral - and how that has moved dogma from religion into world of politics - altering what we acknowledge as fact. An excerpt … But morality exists within this reality we are called to live in. We don’t create it ourselves. Our in-group does not define it. And in order to act m...

Susan James and I talk about the latest post from The Embassy - All the President’s Dogs. On the mortgage crash, the President’s Dogs and the spells we are under Here is an excerpt … In C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair , the good Prince Rillian of Narnia is captured and put under a spell by someone known as The Lady of the Green Kirtle while above ground and the Queen of Underland in her underground Q...

From the latest piece from The Embassy - Do You Believe in Miracles? An Excerpt … When it comes to the paranormal, the extra-terrestrial, unexplained phenomena or UFO’s … we are a bit conflicted. We want there to be more, we hope we are not alone, we want the believe there is a truth that is out there, while we have a hard time actually believing in any particular piece of evidence. The recent rel...

(excerpts from the written piece - In Spirit and in Truth - theembassy.substack.com) I get it. I understand the search for meaning in community, in ritual, in spiritual experience. I just think that is a search in the wrong place. Jesus had a memorable conversation with a woman who went to a well in the middle of the day. She was a Samaritan, and the Samaritans had their own way of worshiping God....