Pop Culture Roundup

By
I'm the type of pastor who starts anticipating the season of Advent in September. I always look for a new resource for that season; a way to express the familiar themes in new ways. I don't do this with any other season...there's just something about Advent that inspires me to do extra planning. Anyway, the resource I picked up this year is The Journey by Adam Hamilton. Hamilton attempts to retrace the steps of the various characters by traveling to Israel and visiting the holy sites commemorating each stop. The book is pretty good: his insights into the geography are interesting. I didn't find a whole lot new regarding the stories themselves, though.

I haven't seen any new Boardwalk Empire episodes yet. I have no real excuse. I am ashamed.

Being a fan of WWE, I see a lot of video game commercials during their TV shows. I saw one the other week that had me thinking, "What was that song playing the background?" A quick Google search showed that it was "My World" by Transmissions:



Here's an instrumental I randomly found by David Tolk called "In Reverence;"









Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: The Awakening of Hope by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

By
Image
As a pastor, I read a lot of theology. I read it in preparation for my sermon each week. I read it while planning Bible study. I read it while preparing for my next spiritual direction class. I read it to stay caught up on new trends developing in response to society and culture. And occasionally, I read it for fun.

There come points, however, when I get sick of theology, especially in its abstract form. How many different ways can I read basically the same things about God's love, grace, forgiveness, presence, and on and on and on? It all blends together and, quite frankly, gets boring. There's only so much of it that I can take, especially if it doesn't seem very tied down to something tangible; some way it's being lived out in real time. I'll admit that reviewing the last book by Doug Reed was difficult for that reason: I'd hit one of those points where I was tired of bodiless ideas about God.

The irony of such bodiless ideas might be obvious to some: we cl…
Read more

Book Review: The Silent Years by Alan W.C. Green

By
Image
It's not a terribly new or original thing to attempt to envision what Jesus' life was like before he began his public ministry. Before describing this 1- to 3-year period where he begins teaching, healing, and scandalizing the establishment leading to his death, the Gospels only provide a few fantastic infancy accounts and one episode as a 12-year-old during a visit to Jerusalem. The rest is left up to imaginative questioning: How did he discover his identity or his sense of call? What was life like for him growing up?

As mentioned, trying to answer questions like these is not a new idea. Dating back to the first few centuries of the church, there are non-canonical accounts of Jesus as a boy such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which feature Jesus discovering and using his powers in selfish and reckless ways like an X-Men Origins story. In more modern times, popular authors such as Anne Rice have made their own attempts at such storytelling, and Mel Gibson added a few imagin…
Read more