Postmodern Realities Podcast

In The Book of Longings Sue Kidd Monk paints a monochromatic spiritual landscape, tediously rehearsing the contours of feminine longing. As the story unfolds, her characters near perfectly portray the values, the assumptions, the hopes, and the expectations of now. If a stranger to this place and time were to require a primer of the ideal person, I would hand her this book. Let’s look together at...

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a new religious movement founded by Li Hongzhi in China in 1992. Based on a mix of Buddhist and New Age principles, it began as a form of qigong, a worldview that aims to strengthen a person’s vital energies through bodily movement. Adherents of Falun Gong believe their teachings and practices are the sole means of attaining Consummation — a state in which...

There’s a shift in the characterization of modern adaptations of Sherlock Holmes that goes beyond the intensification and acceleration of contemporary storytelling. Conan Doyle’s Holmes is, despite his flaws, still admirable. Holmes is a flawed hero. Modern portrayals of Sherlock seem to lean into his flaws so strongly that there is almost nothing to admire except his brilliance. Why have our mode...

Luca is a fun, eccentric film that exudes personality and leaves room for some rumination regarding friendship and fatherhood. The notion of platonic friendships is one you don’t hear too much about. That is to say, a close, intimate relationship, much like a true friendship, but one that is not sexually charged or defined by physical intimacy. Current cultural trends seem diametrically opposed to...

The best sports stories are the ones that are not really about the sport itself at all. The sporting, or coaching, or athleticism should play a supporting role to whatever else is happening in the story — so much so that the particular sport could be swapped out for practically any other related discipline, and the heart of the story would remain the same. This is the case with the Apple TV+ sitco...

“Go, be free!” concludes Beth Allison Barr in her recently released, best-selling book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women became Gospel Truth. In the intersection of her life in the classroom and the strictures placed on her by her local church, her beliefs about women radically shifted. Eventually, after a difficult conversation with the theologically unbending comple...

Zack Snyder’s approach to the DC material is to skin the heroes as modern mythological figures. And he does so by using blatantly obvious parallels. Superman? That’s Jesus. He literally dies sacrificially, he literally resurrects. Batman? That’s Hades. He’s grim and glum and sulks around in an underworld called Gotham. His is a Divisive approach but he has something to say. Because Zack Snyder’s J...

Since Albert Einstein rose to international fame during the first half of the 20th century, the natural sciences have only risen in prestige and cultural influence and the scientific community is now widely regarded as the ultimate authority on truth about the world. Some of its members have produced bestsellers that popularize cutting-edge scientific thought. The issue, though, is that they often...

Most of the time in conversations with skeptics, they want to pit faith against fact and throw it to the vicious onslaught of reason to be torn apart and devoured by the likes of science, truth, evidence, and reality. Faith against fact — these words not only find their way into book titles and chapter headings, but they also serve as common rebuttals to Christian beliefs in ordinary conversations...

Debates with Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) often prove frustrating, an endless ping-pong of futile talk, especially when the topic is the Holy Trinity. While essential Christian doctrine asserts that God subsists in three eternally distinct persons — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — JWs craft their New World Translation (NWT) to mask the New Testament’s otherwise clear teaching that Christ i...

In Deuteronomy 22:5, perhaps the key text regarding clothing, God tells us that, “a woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.” Some Christians hold to the conviction that pants are garments for men. If a woman wears pants, therefore, she violates God’s law by wearing men’s clothing. She has si...

Perhaps the most interesting storytelling initiative undertaken by Disney since its acquisition of the Star Wars franchise comes in the form of The High Republic, a multi-platform publishing enterprise begun in January of 2021. Set 200 years before Lucas’s The Phantom Menace, this interconnected series of books, comic books, and future television series, looks to chart a course for the future of S...

Some people proclaim that they are Christians, that “my faith is very important to me,” and talk openly about Jesus, but they say these things while they are living in overt, unrepentant sexual sin. Hopefully, that’s not you. But if it is, then you probably aren’t saved, and, unless you repent, you will be lost forever. The idea that someone is probably not saved if they are living in overt, unrep...

“Yeah, but who created God?” The question can feel like an attempted gotcha moment in apologetic encounters, even to seasoned apologists. In a culture increasingly conditioned to “win” arguments with soundbite retorts, Christian apologists must not react dismissively to this common question. This episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author R. Keith Loftin about how to seriously answer the questi...

An irrepressible note of joy rings throughout the literary corpus of the magnificent English writer G. K. Chesterton. It is surprising, then, that Job, the book that plunges headlong into the problem of unjust suffering, was Chesterton’s favorite book of the Bible. He found “the riddles of God…more comforting than the solutions of man.” This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Jour...

To date, nearly 2.9 million people have died worldwide in the Covid-19 pandemic. The global economy struggled while nations enacted stay-at-home orders, and our politics fractured under the weight of heated disagreements. Illness, travel restrictions, and protective hospital protocols separated loved ones in the time we needed each other the most. Reports of depression and suicide dramatically inc...

Midlife is a season of challenge and change―professionally, relationally, physically, and spiritually. On our better days, we experience a sense of growing clarity and satisfaction about who we are in midlife. We might even come to terms with our limitations and vulnerabilities, letting go of some dreams and creating new ones. But many days, we are overwhelmed and exhausted by the intense transiti...

Pixar’s twenty-third film, Soul (Disney+), offers glimpses into the afterlife and the nature of the soul, not as an academic presentation on metaphysics or theology, but to tell a story about life. Nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature Film, there’s no doubt that Soul is a fun, compelling film, beautifully scored and animated, and voiced by excellent talent (such as J...

WandaVision is a weird television series (Disney Plus). Even by modern television standards, where hardly any project can get a greenlight from a studio unless it is “high concept” or experimental, WandaVision seems like the kind of series that would look mighty dubious even on paper. The story here could easily have been told in the usual straightforward manner—and, in some ways, this might have...

Richard Rohr is a prolific author and popular speaker. His biography states that he “is a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition.” In 1987, Rohr founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and has been a strong force in the contemplative prayer movement. Oprah has inter...

Many Christians may not admit it but they probably have entertained the dark fantasy of avenging a loved one in a roaring rampage of revenge. Did the hit movie Taken, with its perfectly delivered and iconic dialogue, create this fantasy? Or did it merely tap into an unspoken desire? Does Liam Neeson’s deep-voiced threat sound cool because we all have a deep-down desire for vigilante justice? Rarel...

The term YOLO was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 20162 but appears as early as 2011 when Drake, the Canadian singer and hip-hop artist, used it in a famous, excessively profane song.4 A fresh iteration of the ironically timeless “Carpe Diem,” YOLO is as plastic as that term, molding itself to any single person’s perception of the good life. How I employ it reveals my heart priorities, t...

C. S. Lewis once wrote in this book Miracles that “the Central Miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation….Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.” Important as the mysteries of the death and resurrection of Christ are, without the supreme mystery of the Incarnation, the crucifixion and resurrection would not have their saving power. The very Person of...

Few actors have become so intrinsically tied to a character they’ve played like Hugh Jackman and his portrayal of James Howlett, better known as Logan, the Wolverine. A central figure in 20th Century Fox’s long-running X-Men film series, Logan is a mutant with an accelerated healing ability and a bad temper who sprouts bony, claw-like protrusions from his hands when it comes time for some down and...

When struggling with the loss of a loved one, it is sometimes more helpful to turn to poetry than to philosophy for answers and for consolation. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the greatest and most representative poet of the British Victorian Age, struggled mightily with the problem of pain in an epic poem that he wrote as a way of dealing with his grief over the sudden death of his closest friend, Arthur...