How Should Christians Respond to Crisis?

At the time of writing this article, all anyone sees in the news is COVID-19. There is a lot of fear and confusion around the virus and it can become easy for Christians to get caught up in the chaos. We can under-react and pretend like this is going to be gone tomorrow. We can overreact, sell all our 401k stock, and buy a year’s supply of toilet paper. Neither of these options is helpful or really even Biblical.

I have seen many well-tempered and well-informed responses to this crisis from Christians. So many in fact, that I thought that perhaps my writing about this was redundant. But this is a series about engaging life with proper theology and so I decided to give my take on the issue. As always there will be a livestream to discuss. The livestream for this article will be Wednesday April 15th at 8pm EST.

Fear, Climate Change, and Greta Thunberg

Back in December, TIME magazine named Greta Thunberg as their person of the year. Whether or not you agree with Greta Thunberg, this seemed like a reasonable choice. Last year she quickly became a household name. This is in no small part because of her stance on climate change.

Often discussions of Greta involve some talk of her age and whether or not that makes her worth listening to on social and political issues. Though I think there is a discussion to be had around those issues, that is not the point of this article. What I came to realize quite quickly with Greta Thunberg, and what this article is about, is that the passion and urgency that she speaks with sounded very familiar. I began to realize that she sounded much like a fire and brimstone preacher.

Netflix and Jesus

No, our second installment of Everyday Theology is not some weird slang for bible dating. There has been a lot of news around these two topics recently. Though I plan to give a little background on two recent additions to Netflix’s lineup, the point is not to give a review in the typical sense. The point of this series is to apply the truth of the gospel to our everyday life. Since much of the media is not Christian, I think it is important for us to consider how our response to movies and television displays Christ.

One note before we get into the topic. By the time you read this I will have already had the first installment of Everyday Theology Q & A. Yet, at the time of writing this we are still a week out. That’s the time travel of print media. I say this because I want to remind you that we will be doing another Q & A livestream on February 20th at 8pm EST. If you want more information on how to get involved or you want to get questions in ahead of time you can visit the Facebook page for my blog. That page will always have the most up to date information.

How to Have a Productive Conversation

Yesterday I posted a rant to my Facebook page. Usually I reserve these for Twitter, that seems a more apt place for rants. They are more likely to get lost in the general attitude of contempt there. This particular rant was a little long for Twitter. At one point I thought that I might make it into a blog, but I like my blogs to be more thought out than a rant. So it went on Facebook.

What's ironic (and a little bit sad) is that my rant involved me criticizing people for not wanting to have a conversation. But this is the pull that social media has on us. Sometimes it feels like we have lost the art of good conversations. We are quick to judge, quick to anger, and slow to listen. We don't really care about what the other person has to say. All we really want is to prove to the world that we are right.