Faith or Moralism?
Is your spiritual life based on genuine faith in God, or are you coasting on believing you’re a good person?
By Chris Queen
I’m going through the book of Romans with a friend of mine, and the first two chapters offer an interesting contrast. The second half of the first chapter talks about people who wallow in their sins and deny their need for repentance and salvation – and God – while chapter two talks about how religious people need the Gospel too.
The first half of the chapter warns against judging others. This isn’t in the sense that the world claims – that we don’t have the right to call out sin. It’s judgment in the sense of looking down on others whom we don’t perceive as being as “good” as we think we are. It’s an easy human tendency, and not just in religious and moral circles, to give the side-eye to people we deem as less worthy of love and attention as we think we are.
The Presumed Rise after the Fall of Civilization
By Tamara Wilhite
If we fall, we’ll get back up again. If we tear it down, we’ll rebuild, bigger and better. That’s what we tell ourselves. That’s what we believe.
That isn’t necessarily what happens, as the ruined cities and collapsed civilizations scattered around the world demonstrate.
Where does this belief come from? And how does it affect societies, both in the real world and in science fiction?
NEW ESSAY: People in Boxes
By Jamie K. Wilson
It has been a little more than 18 years since my husband proposed to me in perhaps the least romantic way possible. But that’s not the story.
We are gamers and science fiction fans, which, as anyone who knows that segment of the population will attest, tend to be WOKE. And most of our friends were indeed Woke (the few exceptions were ex-Marines) and young. This means chaotic lifestyles, lots of partner switching, lots of atypical pairings – or triadings, if that’s a word. I knew three different MMF relationships, and there were always sleeping-around dramas going on somewhere.
In other words, our crowd were not the most maritally stable of people.
In Defense of Moviegoing
By Jon Bishop
The moviegoing experience is in danger.
The Walt Disney Company recently announced that it would make streaming its primary focus, if need be. What that means is that its big-budget films, such as its superhero franchises, would go straight to Disney+. And Cineworld, the owner of Regal Cinemas, the second-largest theater chain in the United States, has shuttered its theaters. They’ve been unclear as to whether this is a permanent or temporary thing, but if it is permanent — and with the company’s insolvency talks, it could be, in part — then it’s not hard to imagine other theater companies, like AMC (which has indicated it could run out of money by the end of the year) and National Amusements, either closing or significantly altering their business model.
This would totally alter the movie landscape — and not in a good way.
Janet Malcolm’s Second Chance: Or How To Be a New Yorker New Yorker
By Scott Seward Smith
The article, in the September 24 edition of The New York Review of Books, clangs like a false note. I read it once and wondered what its point was? I read it again and wondered what its hook was? The article by long-time New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm begins with her recollection of visits in the spring of 1994 to a speech coach at his apartment on Manhattan’s Lower West Side. So far so King’s Speech. But Malcolm is different from her speech coach’s typical client: an actor cast to play “Prospero, say, or Creon, so that they did not sound as if they came from the Bronx or Akron, Ohio.” She was there to rehearse her part as a witness in a court case.
The Hero With a Thousand Options: The Anti-Mythology of the Star Wars Sequels
By Shant Eghian
The original Star Wars trilogy stands as one of the greatest cinematic trilogies ever made. It spawned a franchise that consists of additional movies, novels, comic books, video games, and even radio dramas. The genius of the Star Wars franchise is in how it created something that feels entirely original, but is deeply indebted to millenia of stories that came before it. Star Wars contains influences from not only space adventure serials and Westerns, but also Arthurian tales, Greek Myth, and even religion.
That being said, the Star Wars movies have not always lived up to their original standard. For years, George Lucas’s prequel films detailing the transformation of Jedi Anakin Skywalker into the evil Darth Vader were reviled as some of the worst films ever made. When Disney announced its acquisition of the franchise and subsequent plans to make new movies in 2012, fans went wild. It couldn’t possibly get any worse than the prequels.
Or could it…?
Come Back Poetry, We Need You
By Scott Seward Smith
For several decades subway riders in New York have been confronted with random slabs of verse entitled “Poetry in Motion”, whose main effect, whatever its purpose, is to confirm the onward sterility of modern poetry. More is the pity. Times of existential uncertainty summon the need for poetry, or at least good poetry. It provides a unique consolation.
A West Side Story
By Scott Seward Smith
Willy, our retired super and part-time Bachata musician, told us that the street used to be a major avenue for drug dealing until Giuliani cleaned it up. He said that one of the local drug dealers once told him, after Willie refused to take money to not report the dealing, “the only reason I haven’t killed you is because you’re a nice guy.”
Midnight Diner: Where Everybody Knows Your Ramen
By Scott Seward Smith
Which brings me to the other night, a frustrating roam through Netflix trying to find something worth watching. An evening laziness that sought something distracting but not annoying. A night of tourist entertainment. Even with that low bar I couldn’t find anything. I tolerated a few shows or movies and had to switch them off. Reluctantly I clicked on “Midnight Diner,” a Japanese show now streaming on Netflix. I wasn’t looking for subtitles or something foreign, but I was out of options. And I was delighted from the beginning.
What Covid Changes will be “Permanent?”
By Robert Arrington
A little over a month ago, I was in a ZOOM meeting hosted by the Bristol Bar Association, in which all of the judges in the Second Judicial District spoke about the measures they were taking concerning in-person hearings, remote hearings, and social distancing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in light of the directives of the Tennessee Supreme Court.
One of the lawyers asked, “When are things going back to normal?” One of the judges (I can’t remember which) immediately answered, “Never.” He added that what he meant was that a timeframe for restoration of normalcy could not be established at that time. I suspect his answer to the same question would be the same today.
