A difficult statistic to read, but the rise in middle-age suicides is presented as, perhaps, a result of economic woes. I would suggest a more centrally human issue than money. The loss of money merely brings us to a place where we are faced with an honest assessment of ourselves, and without some transcendent reality to cling to there truly is little hope.
America’s Suicide Rate Jumps – Breit Bart
Pastor Tullian Tchividjian offers a brief retelling of his testimony here. It’s a beautiful story with a lesson that will be controversial in some circles. But “turn the other cheek” is almost always praised in the realms of theory and then demonized in the concrete of practicality.
A Father’s Love – Tullian Tchividjian
This is an article that has to do with economic theory with regard to slave labor and the ethics of it, but Pat Buchanan is a very good writer and he offers an easy to navigate pathway through the issues. This is just a well-written moral argument against globalism, which is why I include it here. Buchanan makes the strong point that capitalism without individual morality is a heinous and ugly thing.
The Pope and Godless Capitalism – Pat Buchanan
This is another video interview of NT Wright similar to the one that I’d included a few weeks ago on how to read the Bible. In this short segment Wright is asked what he would want to tell his children about Jesus if he only had a few moments before his death. Two things emerge here: first, his answer is absolutely beautiful and so true; second, he offhandedly makes the comment prior to answering the question that he is pretty sure his children already know what his answer is. That second part is the embodiment of Christian parenting. There should be no “last words” for us other than, “remember what I’ve been telling you for all these years”.
Two videos this week, because they both have been a part of my thinking throughout the week. This one is of JK Rowling (the author of the Harry Potter books) at the 2008 Harvard Commencement. I do not care much for Harry Potter, I gave the first book in the series a go and thought very little of it, but I am obviously in the minority here. However, Rowling’s speech at Harvard is phenomenal. As a Christian I stray from some of the “bootstrap” philosophy that she uses, but at the same time the tone of her speech (which is a telling of her own personal journey through failure) is one of gratitude for where she’s been and how it shaped her, it is not an arrogant or prideful declaration of the human will.
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