1980's Metaphors We Live By is a classic book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. The authors suggest that the conceptual metaphors we use in day-to-day conversations both reflect and create the way we think, feel, perceive, and interact in the world. A popular American metaphor like "time is money" shapes our collective cultural values and cultivates our individual interior … [Read more...] about Beatnik Christianity Calls for Discernment with Our Theological Metaphors
Greco-Roman
Beatnik Christianity Supports An Unapologetically Positive Theology of Pleasure
After 2,000 years of avoidance, it's high time that Jesus followers develop a holistic, nuanced, and overtly positive theology of pleasure. This whole time Christian culture has been, at best, dubious because of the precedents established by Stoicism's ethical influence upon the emerging Christian community in the Greco-Roman world. There's a reason we've got a word for the … [Read more...] about Beatnik Christianity Supports An Unapologetically Positive Theology of Pleasure
Beatnik Christianity Repudiates Honor-Guilt And Honor-Shame Cultural Paradigms
One of the insights I most appreciate from the field of cultural anthropology is the identification of the sister paradigms of honor-guilt cultures and honor-shame cultures. In guilt societies, control is maintained by continually reinforcing individual themes of inward guilt for condemned behaviors. The moral order is preserved through law, punishment, and forgiveness. In … [Read more...] about Beatnik Christianity Repudiates Honor-Guilt And Honor-Shame Cultural Paradigms
Beatnik Christianity Exists in Perpetual Spiritual Deconstruction And Reconstruction
To channel my inner-William Goldman via Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." That's what I think whenever I hear most Christians use the word "deconstruction." Conservatives believe it's about dangerously questioning inherited tradition in nihilist despair. Meanwhile, for progressives it's often taken on a … [Read more...] about Beatnik Christianity Exists in Perpetual Spiritual Deconstruction And Reconstruction
Wrong from the Start: How Christian Culture Keeps Pulling Us Away from Jesus
I love Jesus but loathe most elements of Christian culture. The reason is that Christian culture usually has little to do with following Jesus and when there is a direct connection it is often in direct conflict with The Way of Jesus. The more I study it the more I become convinced it's more influenced by Screwtape than the Holy Spirit. Let's be clear. This isn't about … [Read more...] about Wrong from the Start: How Christian Culture Keeps Pulling Us Away from Jesus
