Too Hot to Handle: Culture and the Gospel

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Immanuel Can: I’m going to temporarily suspend our self-imposed five-sentence limit, Tom, in order to tell you a story about something that happened last year when our provincial standardized test was performed.

You need to know that teachers are all given a specific script for what they are and are not allowed to tell students on the day of the test. They are expressly forbidden to go beyond this script, and doing so is grounds for firing. Teachers cannot add any directions, explanations, definitions or any other kind of information to this. They are not allowed to give any guidance once the test begins, no matter what a student wants or needs. It’s standardized, period.

One of the questions on the test asked kids to imagine a picnic, and then write based on their imagining.

The Language of the Debate (6)

Yesterday’s post introduced the expression “The Right’s Cancel Culture”. It comes from an opinion piece at TheBulwark.com in which journalist Chris Rufo is taken to task for his ongoing campaign to inform people that Disney is promoting the LGBTQ+ cause and that your poor kids don’t deserve to have new Disney propaganda inflicted on them.

Apparently telling the truth and promoting a Disney boycott from conservatives constitutes “cancelation”. So let’s talk a bit about how the expression “cancel culture” is being used and what it really means.

10. Cancel Culture

The Cambridge Dictionary defines cancel culture as “a way of behaving in a society or group, especially on social media, in which it is common to completely reject and stop supporting someone because they have said or done something that offends you”. That seems to be a reasonable definition, and it would certainly include the efforts of a man like Chris Rufo to make fellow conservatives aware that Disney is embracing and promoting the LGBTQ+ cause, and to discourage people from putting their money into Disney product.

Is the Right Engaged in Cancel Culture?

TheBulwark.com is taking aim at Chris Rufo. Rufo says he is waging moral war against Disney, attempting to target the corporation’s public reputation and turn its customers against it. That’s all well and good, says The Bulwark, but they claim Rufo is misrepresenting Disney’s stated intentions.

What’s Rufo’s terrible misrepresentation? Good question.

Too Hot to Handle: Feeding the Gators

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Tom: Let’s do something a little different today, Immanuel Can. I was thinking about the social implications of that clip you sent me this morning from the action-adventure video game Red Dead Redemption 2. It seems like that might be worth talking about from a Christian perspective.

Do you want to take a crack at describing it?

Immanuel Can: It’s hard to imagine if a person has not seen modern video games. (Of course, for those who have children, avoiding video games is all-but-impossible nowadays.) A lot are now story-based, but a lot are also what’s called “first-person-shooters”, designed to let players kill a lot of characters as they move through a maze or follow some kind of prepared story line.

Too Hot to Handle: Culture and the Gospel

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Anonymous Asks (54)

“How do biblical texts apply to modern society?”

Does scripture address hot-button topics like immigration reform, gay marriage, abortion, eugenics, internet porn and gun control? More importantly, in the event the Bible does not give us answers to the major questions of our day, does that mean we are free to do whatever we please in these areas?

These are relevant questions.

Too Hot to Handle: Feeding the Gators

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Too Hot to Handle: Culture and the Gospel

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Love Is All Around

Mary Tyler Moore died last week, and her passing merits a word or two even if no millennial has the slightest clue who she was.

I am the child of Christian parents who went to the mission field in the sixties with me in tow and came back just in time for Abba, Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Get Smart and the tail end of the Guess Who’s first incarnation. Pop culture in the seventies blew me away, and it fascinated my mother in her own way, or so it appeared to me. When we finally got a TV, she watched her share of then-current fare, flipping channels whenever the content became inappropriate for family viewing. I watched with her to the extent I was allowed — and sometimes from behind the couch when I wasn’t.

And boy, did I LOVE those early seventies sit-coms.

Too Hot to Handle: Culture and the Gospel

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Scientific Materialism and The Good Wife

Popular culture is an ocean of leftist muck, propaganda and uncritical thinking.

Still, there are rare occasions when you run across something so thought-provoking and strikingly out of place in its lucidity that you just can’t believe it’s actually on TV.

It is sadly common these days to leave entirely unexamined the real life implications of one’s philosophical and religious beliefs, or the lack thereof.

There are about 100 comments that come to mind about the following scene, but maybe I’ll just let it speak for itself.

Courtroom drama from The Good Wife:

Alicia: When we left off, Professor, you said you believed in right and wrong, and that it was wrong to hurt people. Professor?