Resident Theologian

I have a mixed relationship to the Marvel movies that have so dominated the last decade of Hollywood. On the one hand, I readily enjoy them. I think, for the most part, that they are well made blockbusters, occasionally quite good, directed competently, written with care, and acted superbly. Their achievement as TV-like serialization across 23 films (and three "phases") is, as Matt Zoller Seitz has written, without precedent and accordingly impressive.

On the other hand, I'm neither a comic books "fan" nor an apologist for the MCU. I've read all of two graphic novels in my life, and have nothing invested in "geek culture." I furthermore share the general sentiment that the Marvel-fication of cinema as such is an unhealthy trend. It isn't good that there's a new superhero movie out every three weeks, and that Hollywood wants any and all blockbuster filmmaking to be (a) built on preexisting IP and (b) part of a larger "cinematic universe…

This semester I wanted to experiment with teaching my courses without the use of an LMS. For those unfamiliar with the term, LMS stands for "learning management system," i.e., an online program for turning in assignments, communicating with students, updating the syllabus, inputting grades, etc. Some of us used Blackboard back in the day. My campus uses Canvas.

Now, Canvas is without question the best LMS I have ever encountered: intuitive, adaptable, not prone to random glitches and failures, useful for any number of pedagogical and technological ideas and goals. So far as I can see, after 15 years or so, the technology has finally caught on to the vision of using the internet well for teaching purposes, a vision ahead of its time one to two decades ago, and which probably, as a result, led to a lot of wasted time and self-defeating habits.

But, you might be wondering, if Canvas is a good LMS, why did I want to experiment with not using one? Here's why.

1. I want to be i…

A single question has lingered over Mike Judge's Silicon Valley from the beginning. That question is whether he and his writing team—call them "the show"—believe that Richard and his unlikely crew of can-do programming losers not only can but ought to "win," and that such a win could be genuinely transformative and good for the world, or whether the system and culture of Silicon Valley are so fundamentally corrupted that even to win is to lose.

This dynamic has made the show worth watching till the end, but frustrating at times as well. It's not just whether Richard or his friends might "break bad," which the show entertained for a while. It's whether we, the audience, ought to cheer on Richard when he triumphs over the big bads of Google and Twitter and Facebook (or their stand-in "Hooli"), with his dream of a "free internet," or whether we ought to see through the self-serving rhetoric that attends every such dream.

Judge…

Being off Twitter continues to be good for my soul as well as my mind, and one of the benefits I'm realizing is the ignorance that comes as a byproduct. By which I mean, ignorance not in general or of good things but of that which it is not beneficial to know.

When you're on Twitter, you notice what is "trending." This micro-targeted algorithmic function shapes your experience of the website, the news, the culture, and the world. Even if it were simply a reflection of what people were tweeting about the most, it would still be random, passing, and mass-generated. Who cares what is trending at any one moment?

More important, based on the accounts one follows, there is always some tempest in a teacup brewing somewhere or other. A controversy, an argument, a flame war, a personal beef: whatever its nature, the brouhaha exerts a kind of gravitational pull, sucking us poor online plebs into its orbit. And because Twitter is the id unvarnished, the kerfuffle in question is…

Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves, Philadelphia 76ers, San Antonio Spurs.

Just sayin'.

In their new book, For the Life of the World: Theology That Makes a Difference (Brazos Press, 2019), Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun make the argument that the lives of theologians matter for the writing and evaluation of theological proposals. Reading through chapter 5, though, where they make the argument, I was left unsure about what exactly they were claiming. Let me offer a sample of quotations and then offer a range of interpretations of the claim or claims they are wanting to make.

(Full disclosure: Miroslav and Matthew are at Yale, and were there when I earned my doctorate; the former was a teacher, the latter a fellow student and friend. Take that for what it's worth. Here on out I'll call them V&C.)

Consider the following quotes (bolded emphases all mine):
"execution of the central theological task requires a certain kind of affinity between the life the theologian seeks to articulate and the life the theologian seeks to lead." (118)"an affinity b…

Everything I wrote here stands, but man alive is that a beautiful trailer.

It's a reminder of what Abrams gets: emotion, character, rapport, scale, energy, world-building, and—as this trailer not-misleadingly reminds us—composition and cinematography.
What we will see here in just 8 weeks is whether he delivers on everything he has always failed to accomplish, at least in full, not least those crucial modifiers of popular storytelling: original (not derivative), creative (not nostalgic), and conveniens (not mystery-box surprising).

I'm not optimistic, but it's not hopeless just yet. No matter what, it will be an experience. The only question is whether he'll be able to stick the landing.

A few comments and predictions while we're at it.

1. I genuinely appreciate how much Abrams has withheld from us. I only wish he'd kept that shot of faux-dark Rey from us.

2. Rey will not "go dark." That brief glimpse is a Force vision (false or future), a clone, h…

"Free speech" is a legal concept: whether the state in any way muzzles one's ability to speak or whether it responds punitively based on the content of one's speech.

Within civil society, an organization (for profit or not) is not a "player" in the realm of free speech. Organizations place all kinds of controls on one's speech within the workplace and, in certain respects, outside of it. These can be reasonable or unreasonable; they can fairly or unfairly applied. But they are run of the mill, and have no bearing on "free speech."

Whether or not Daryl Morey is disciplined or even fired by the NBA for his tweet in support of Hong Kong has nothing to do with free speech. This isn't a free-market point, along the lines of "the NBA is free to do whatever it likes; it's a business, and Morey is an employee." That's technically true, but not my point.

Let me put it this way. To respond to the crisis elicited by Morey's twee…

"Despite all the affected teenage rebellion, I continued to call myself a Christian into my early twenties. When I finally stopped, it wasn’t because being a believer made me uncool or outdated or freakish. It was because being a Christian no longer meant anything. It was a label to slap on my Facebook page, next to my music preferences. The gospel became just another product someone was trying to sell me, and a paltry one at that because the church isn’t Viacom: it doesn’t have a Department of Brand Strategy and Planning. Staying relevant in late consumer capitalism requires highly sophisticated resources and the willingness to tailor your values to whatever your audience wants. In trying to compete in this market, the church has forfeited the one advantage it had in the game to attract disillusioned youth: authenticity. When it comes to intransigent values, the profit-driven world has zilch to offer. If Christian leaders weren’t so ashamed of those unvarnished val…