PZ's Podcast

A scene near the beginning of the Russian movie version of War and Peace (1965-67) conveys the inner dialogue of a young woman as she lays dying after childbirth -- actually, as she has just died. Her spirit wonders to herself in sorrowful bewilderment: "I gave everything to everyone else, sought to love everyone else, but I was rejected by them, treated badly by them. I don't understand." The pas...

There is so much talk just now about the decline of Christianity in this country. But try to listen to the right music on that score. Or rather, the more accurate music! The fact is, young people and young families are flocking to churches where the Gospel is preached. From Charlottesville to Lower Manhattan to Bedford to Waco to Louisville to Winter Park to Rice to Bradford to "Baltimore and D.C....

The subject of the cast is inspiration: where it comes from and how to get it. That may sound a little ambitious, but lots of us are looking for it, whether in our family and our marriage or in the pulpit and our ministry or just in the Wee Wee Hours of a stressed-out life. Joe Meek, the odd independent English record producer from the late 1950s and early-mid '60s, is a moving example of an inspi...

It seems that human nature, or rather, one's understanding of human nature, is the Achilles Heel of theology -- and philosophy, too -- throughout the "Spin-Me-Round" (Dead or Alive, 1985) of cyclical human history and cyclical failed answers to the problem of being human. If you have a high doctrine of human nature, and human potential, you'll generally opt for a low doctrine of God. (You don't ne...

This is part two of a series on the arithmetic increase, as one grows older, in unchangeability within the human personality and yet the extraordinary palpable power of absolving grace to stop the decline! In the same way that perceived personal rejection, especially at a young age, becomes a kind of iron straitjacket defeating almost all attempts to change oneself -- and certainly defeating attem...

The downhill momentum of inertia and prior woundedness in people begins early but seems to pick up speed the older you get. In other words, the more time elapses since an early rejection or early hurt was sustained, the more impact it seems to have on you as you age. I keep seeing contemporaries of mine, most of them in fact, in whom what was an idiosyncrasy or "slight defect" in youth or early ad...

Human nature is extremely vulnerable. I'm thinking of one's inwardness, and the way a seemingly small rejection, loss or blow of some kind can be enough to unravel a person's entire equilibrium. You can compare yourself, even if you're basically a coper -- many people aren't -- to the seemingly impregnable 'Death Star' in "Star Wars". That massive circular spacecraft/world is perfectly defended. E...

I was dumbfounded, in a good way, when a pastor I respect prayed for God to hold Hurricane Dorian at the Central Florida coastline and not permit the storm to go inland. In 44 years' ordained ministry, I have sedulously prayed never for the weather, "pro" or "con", believing that such a prayer would in all cases be extreme. After all, the Lord said that "it rains on the unjust and the just". Moreo...

An awful lot of truth is coming out just now, on several fronts. As to why exactly this is happening, I can't precisely say. But when the truth about anything, from ill-anchored relationships to cultural captivities to urban blight, comes out, "Some People" (Belois Some,1985) become threatened. And more than threatened. This cast talks about Quentin Tarantino's movie "Once Upon a Time... in Hollyw...

Tyrone Davis sort of says it all in the title track to this cast. He's "Running a Losing Race", and it sounds to me a lot like life. As a person ages, they have to watch out not to 'diss' the legitimate aspirations and engagements of people who are still, by necessity shall we say, "in the world". It's way too easy from a retired perspective to pour cold water on the hopes and dreams of younger pe...

There are certain subjects that seem verboten in the pulpit. I'm not referring to political issues, or contemporary social themes; but, rather, to pastoral situations/experiences that are so "close to home" that one's listeners literally rise up in fury against the preacher. One of these subjects is suicide, if preached honestly and urgently from the pulpit. Another is a familiar theme of this pod...

We all want to know, when we are down -- I mean, when we are really down -- where we can turn for help. It happens to almost everyone, at least once in your life, that circumstances -- outward, inward, or a combination of both -- pull the rug out from under you and you find yourself flat on the ground. I don't write this to upset you, because you probably wouldn't be reading it if you didn't alrea...

It's not just Tyrone Davis. It's almost any artist who captures the popular imagination. He or she is talking about real things, personal and individual issues, the things everyone is carrying. As opposed to abstractions and concepts. I was looking at a church news service the other day and noted that every single item featured had to do with a "social-justice" or group-identity concern. And every...

A little bit of surgery can compose the mind, right? In any event, in my recovery I went back to Nevil Shute's novel The Rainbow and the Rose . It concerns the twilight of a man's life as he lies dying in an overturned airplane in remotest Australia, and the insights he has -- and someone else has -- about himself. These insights concern the inward man, not the outward man; and the reader learns t...

I'm wary of telling a story about myself unless it has potential resonance and carries some possible hope to a listener. Here I am giving a short witness of a counter-intuitive Word received in church the other day; and an even more counter-intuitive "Word" from the world of pop music, which came crashing through my windshield on the way home from church. The initial Word related to chain-breaking...

Imputation is the prime "agent" within the great dynamic of the Grace of God. As one need never tire of saying, imputation is when you regard someone as better (or finer or prettier or stronger or kinder) than they are. And the effect of imputation is to make the person actually become, in "real time" and real life, the way they are being regarded. Often imputation is understood as a sort of "lega...

So I was looking high and low for a little peace the other day. An article I read had upset me, and I thought to myself, "Well, if that's true, then why not just go to sleep for the next ten years, say, and not be conscious." Then suddenly, an hilarious Instagram post came up from a Mockingbird contributor, which sparked an old association: the 1973 single by The Tymes, entitled "You Little Trustm...

As the human soul makes its trajectory through life, it "lights on" hoped-for objects of connection. From birth to death, the soul is looking for, urgently aspiring to locate, a substitute for the connection with God that it had before it was born. Unfortunately, the soul is almost always disappointed. That is because no created entity and no living being can satisfy what only God can satisfy. No...

It was touching beyond words to attend and witness the Institution of Stu Shelby as Rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, Winter Park, FL. Mary was a Presenter, and I had the chance to just take it all in. Sarah Condon preached the sermon, and it was an absolute home run. The whole affair felt like "Mockingbird Embodied"; and the message of God's Grace in Christ was utterly tangible and fully fle...

Huge -- Yuge -- feedback from the previous two casts, entitled "Surprise Surprise" and "Soul Searchin' Time". So here I am looking at two basics, two core issues I have with current religion -- religion in the David Zahl/"Seculosity" sense, that is, every attempt to solve the problem of being human by conceiving a lever to fix it. I see two core problems with most religion, let alone culture, toda...

The previous cast, "Surprise, Surprise", raised the vexing question of exceptions in the practice of grace to sinners and sufferers. I spoke about the chronic inability of Christians who emphasize grace to embody it in relation to specific sinners and specific sins. One example I chose was from the Reformed world and one was from the Social Progressive world. The context of each was different, but...

A friend recently surprised me with the observation that Christians he knows who preach a "theology of glory" seem to be more welcoming, and forgiving, of real actual sinners than Christians he knows who preach a "theology of the Cross". In other words, the folk who you'd think would be the most merciful to people who've fallen aren't! And people with whose theology you can't necessarily sign on t...

Justin Hayward is a sort of archivist for romantic relationships. He is 72 and still going strong. Two 'Live' performances book-end this cast, which is intended as fresh therapy towards a happy marriage. Appeals to grace, forgiveness, and empathy in relating to this impossibly different person with whom you are now living, are good. They are probably the only behaviors that will turn your ship aro...

One's Christian life will fail if it is not rooted in the truth of human nature, which we all share, like it or not. Similarly, everyone's life, whether Christian or non-Christian or anti-Christian, will fail if it's not rooted in reality. And reality, the reality of people, includes hidden drives, hidden emotions, hidden disappointments, and hidden resentments. As the Rose Hobart character remark...

When it comes to rules or advice for long-term marriage, I often seem to hear words like "covenant" and "promise-keeping". These conceptions of keeping faith with another person are laudatory and fine -- and even necessary to keep the love going. But "covenant" and "promise", excellent as they are in principle, are insufficient to give you the oomph, the power, to do the thing you both want so muc...