Postmodern Realities Podcast

For us to have a robust free will, there must be an amount of divine hiddenness, or what John Hick called “epistemic distance.” Divine hiddenness is the teaching that for humans to act out of free will, God’s existence (or presence) can’t be too obvious. Not surprisingly, this is a doctrine that many Christians misunderstand and over which skeptics howl. Many Christians ask, and even sometimes com...

In 1999, the world was in a different place. Y2K loomed, personal computerized technology was still coming into its own, and September 11 was just another day. And into this world the Wachowskis came running and gunning with their runaway Academy Award-winning hit, The Matrix, changing the landscape of what brainy, science-fiction, action-adventure movies could be, seemingly overnight. Now, more t...

Should Christians make New Year’s resolutions? And if so, what kind? Are there any guiding biblical principles that might inform and shape such a task? This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journal author Anne Kennedy about her article in the 44:4 issue of the Journal, entitled, “I’ll Start My Diet Tomorrow: A Christian Makes a New Year’s Resolution.” For a special limited previ...

For more than four decades, organizations like Exodus International, Courage, and Homosexuals Anonymous have provided counsel and support to people who realized they were attracted to the same sex, considered homosexuality a sin, and wanted help dealing with their desires. These groups and the people they served made up what’s often called the “Ex-Gay Movement,” a phenomenon which has always gotte...

Nearly thirty years after his death, Isaac Asimov’s acclaimed Foundation series—long deemed unfilmable—has been adapted for the screen. Co-created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman for Apple TV+, season one of Foundation recently concluded with its tenth episode, and seven more seasons have been proposed (season two is already confirmed). The production itself is an impressive feat; Asimov’s myt...

Squid Game (Netflix, 2021–) is a Netflix mega hit, as Kevin Schut writes “within the first month of its release, Netflix subscribers had logged more than one billion hours watching Squid Game and it quickly became the number one series Netflix had ever released.” It’s “another entry in the gory, dystopian genre of forced human death games, like Guns Akimbo (2019), The Hunger Games (2012), The Runn...

“In any case,” writes Rachel Held Evans in the middle of her posthumously published work, Wholehearted Faith, “I wonder sometimes whether we’re playing at death and calling it life.” In characteristic and prescient candor, at the time of her death, Held Evans was in the act of asking the peculiar and essential questions that strike to the heart of what it means to be a creature created by God. She...

The back half of 2021 ushered in a new wave of subversive blockbusters in the aftermath of COVID-19. No Time to Die made a series of unprecedented choices with the character of James Bond, while Dune began a quiet, methodical deconstruction of the science fiction epic. Now, along comes Eternals to stand apart from the Marvel Studios catalog as the most interesting and solemn film of Marvel’s cinem...

God calls individuals into His family in Christ and privileges them to share the good news. When seeking to help people whose lives have been emotionally fractured, followers of Christ must tenderly handle the reality that families existing in a fallen world can break. God’s family is composed of imperfect people, but there will be a day when His people together emerge “holy and blameless” (Eph. 1...

For science fiction readers, the very mention of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune evokes a flurry of emotions. Some love it, some hate it. Some consider it the best science fiction novel ever written, others consider it the genre’s antithesis. Regardless, no history of science fiction worth its salt can go without at least mentioning the book, and the indelible influence it’s had on numerous genre...

The classical Christian consensus that only men should be set apart in Holy Orders to preach and celebrate the sacraments has been the target of withering critique at least since the sexual revolution that began in the 1960s. Many Christian communions have succumbed to the pressure to ordain women and to give them authority over congregations, dioceses, and denominations, accepting new and revised...

No Time to Die is the final outing for actor Danial Craig’s run as 007. Looking back on Daniel Craig’s tenure, it’s hard to imagine a time in which he did not don the tuxedo. Though he has not appeared in the most films (that distinction goes to the late Roger Moore, who appeared in seven), he is nevertheless the actor who has held the role the longest, with fifteen years having passed since his d...

African Traditional Religion (ATR) encompasses all indigenous African philosophies, worldviews, and religious practices south of the Sahara Desert. Though by no means a fixed religious system, sub-Saharan African cultures by and large share many similar views of God, the ancestors and spirits, honor and shame, magic and witchcraft, and rites of passage. While God is not considered to be near, or “...

There are few things more heartbreaking than watching a beloved son or daughter raised in the Christian community wander or walk away from the faith their parents faithfully demonstrated in the home as that child grew up. Wayward literally means “turned away from,” and this outward-facing posture can wreak havoc on family relationships. Parents of wayward children often struggle with feelings of h...

Unanswered prayer does not always lead to bitterness and cynicism, but once in a while it does. How will we respond when we pray for protection, and our mom dies instead? How will we respond when we cry out for years for the seemingly good gifts we believe the Father would give us — return of a wayward child, freedom from deeply rooted sin patterns, relief from chronic pain — and yet, with the Psa...

Of the legion of ways that we, since the dawn of time, have devised to deceive ourselves and others, the insidious cruelty at the heart of the phenomenon called gaslighting is one of the most fascinating and destructive. Derived from the play Gas Light (1938), the expression is visceral, referring to the deliberate attempt by the villain to drive the heroine insane. Gaslighting is a useful umbrell...

Perhaps life’s greatest challenge is coping with suffering — or how to suffer well. All religions address this, but not in the same way. Christianity uniquely gives meaning to suffering because of the redemptive suffering of its founder, Jesus Christ. Grace and Grit is a film by Sebastian Siegel (who wrote the script) about the suffering of a real-life young couple, writer Ken Wilber (played by St...

In 2019, Hulu announced that it would be adapting Trenton Lee Stewart’s 2007 novel The Mysterious Benedict Society as a streaming series. In some ways, this makes perfect sense. The book has been extremely popular, spawning three sequels, a prequel, and a puzzle book. For many children, tweens, and teens, it strikes a chord with its portrayal of gifted children who become heroes after emerging fro...

Almost all the exotic pets of my childhood in Africa were rescues, caught out of the bags of hunters and the clutches of small children who just wanted a more interesting dinner than maize porridge. I was the only one who mourned them. And, in the case of Ash, though all my family loved him, I am the one who still can’t look at his grave in our back garden. And I am not alone. Join any peculiar do...

The film CODA (2021) is a coming-of-age story about a hearing girl and her deaf family. While the arc of the story has the stereotypical beats of a teenage coming-of-age drama, it also explores the dynamics of growing up and letting go. Many Christians might resonate with the main protagonist Ruby’s parents that she must do “her part,” as a loving daughter to forsake pursuing her college dreams an...

Any amateur who has taken up a brush knows how hard it is to create a beautiful painting without training. Yet the natural world seems to produce beauty without any struggle at all. This common-sense observation provides a natural movement from wonder at the creation to awe of the creator. Making aesthetically good artwork requires skill and intention, so who should we credit with the ‘artistry’ o...

In the New York Times (NYT) opinion piece, “Miscarriages Are Awful, and Abortion Politics Make Them Worse,” abortion rights advocates Amanda Allen and Cari Siestra make the case that politically motivated abortion laws deny women facing miscarriages the best possible care.1 Both authors share tragic personal experiences with miscarriage and how their dread of walking through abortion opponents pro...

In the human heart burns a yearning to be free — to live by our own discretion, to choose what we think good, and to stand responsible for the lives we have lived. This same yearning, though, goes easily awry: the legitimate human desire for agency swelling into a desire for absolute autonomy. But the desire for absolute autonomy, even from divine authority, leads to frustration with the limits of...

Many Christians believe that there are good non-Christians. After all, if you actually know some good non-Christians, then there must be good non-Christians, right? Now, it is true there are many apparently good non-Christians, but we must not confuse outward goodness with inward goodness. For Jesus, evil is always, first and foremost, a matter of the heart. Still, Christians wonder: Is it possibl...

Harrison Dulin writes, “The second season of the anime television series Dr. Stone wrapped up in March, and as someone entrenched in the worlds of science and anime, I loved watching a show that brings the two together (especially after watching Cells at Work). Dr. Stone has all the traditional components of a good anime combined with insights into the natural world, which makes it a delight for b...