By: Jean de Dieu Ndahiriwe on March 25, 2023
We are consumers. In Matthew 9, we see Jesus having compassion on crowds that came to him as sheep without a shepherd. In July 1990, I was in Kigali and attended Reinhard Bonnke in a crowd of thousands of others hungry and passionate to hear and hope in Jesus. In September of the same year,…
By: Kally Elliott on March 25, 2023
“If you don’t like TikTok it’s because you haven’t spent enough time on it. Once they figure out which mental illness you have, your celebrity crushes, and which cute animal you like the most…it gets really good.” (random internet meme) This meme is not only humorous, it is true, and it’s talking about me. I…
By: Dinka Utomo on March 24, 2023
“There is a strong linear relationship between confidence and being wrong” -Bobby Duffy- One of the main things in this book that challenges my comfort zone in thinking is when Bobby Duffy also references the theory of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which identified that the illusory superiority bias—our tendency to think we’re better than others—has…
By: Jana Dluehosh on March 24, 2023
It is not lost on me that most of our books this semester has been about being wrong, or solving a problem or a “how to” book. Pursuing a doctorate (imposter syndrome not withstanding) takes a certain level of confidence and belief in ourselves that we have something the world needs. What if we are…
By: Audrey Robinson on March 24, 2023
Us versus Them Vincent Miller’s work in Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture is not an ‘Us’ (Christianity) versus ‘Them’ (Consumerism) read. Instead, Miller has taken a unique approach that provides the reader with a description of ‘Them,’ i.e., consumerism and all its tentacles in culture, and insights into how the Church…
By: Adam Harris on March 23, 2023
I can still remember a few times as a kid when I believed I had been “left behind”. Meaning I thought Jesus had come, taken my family, and left me behind on earth. Just watch the movies. I grew up in a faith tradition that preached all kinds of ideas around the “end times”. These…
By: Esther Edwards on March 23, 2023
I must confess, just by reading the title, I did not envision this book to be on my desired “must read” list of books for the semester. Why? Because I don’t like to think I’m wrong about nearly everything. I went to the doctor this week and stepped on the scale. Shockingly, it showed that…
By: Scott Dickie on March 23, 2023
It appears that authors who feel compelled to tell the rest of us that we are generally misinformed and delusional are witty and entertaining writers. That is probably a necessary ingredient in a book that is repeatedly telling us how wrong we are about most things! In this respect, Duffy’s “Why We’re Wrong About Nearly…
By: Roy Gruber on March 23, 2023
Patrick Deneen serves as a professor of Political Science at Notre Dame University. His book Why Liberalism Failed offers a scathing review of the current state of cultural alienation and emptiness that the author attributes to liberalism. Often, failure comes from one or more issues detrimental to an effort. Deneen offers a counterintuitive premise for…
By: Pam Lau on March 23, 2023
My parents were first generation Christians who each experienced a radical life change when they accepted Christ. My mother converted from Judaism to Christianity through a neighbor who convinced her Jesus was the Son of God; while my father walked the aisles to “Just As I Am” at a Billy Graham Crusade. To say my…
By: Jenny Dooley on March 22, 2023
I tell myself stories. They are usually harmless assumptions about why people do, say, or believe certain things which are confusing or cause me distress. The stories can be positive or negative. When telling myself a story I usually try to make it a good one. I recognize my storytelling arises out of uncertainty, my…
By: Mathieu Yuill on March 22, 2023
My best game of golf was one I played alone. On vacation at a cottage we had rented for the week, I went into the local town and played a round of 18. The course is a typical municipal course, each hole is fairly straight, the sand traps are easy to navigate and there certainly…
By: Eric Basye on March 22, 2023
Liberalism has failed because liberalism has succeeded. As it becomes fully itself, it generates endemic pathologies more rapidly and pervasively than it is able to produce Band-aids and veils to cover them. The result is the system rolling blackouts in electoral politics, governance, and economics, the loss of confidence and even belief in legitimacy among…
By: Shonell Dillon on March 22, 2023
I am guilty of staying too long in what is familiar. When the CD era came about, I was still trying to carry around my box of cassette tapes. I was not an “out with the old in with the new” kind of person. I was what one might call “ole school”. As advancements started…
By: Andy Hale on March 22, 2023
“Progressive,” “Fundamentalism,” “Liberalism,” “Conservatives,” and “Neoliberals” are all terms that are thrown around often as a label for a particular way of thinking or belief system; equally as often, they are used as grenades to lob at the other side for their “extreme” or “woke” agendas. However, like many words, a large segment of the…
By: Kim Sanford on March 22, 2023
The evidence is mounting. The conclusion is clear: we are likely to misread reality. We’ve read about this through various lenses. Be it admitting our errors (Kathryn Schulz’s Being Wrong) or the risk of developing cancer (Chivers and Chivers How to Read Numbers), we must face our own misperceptions and just general lack of ability…
By: Greg McMullen on March 21, 2023
In my teens my parents divorced, remarried, and relocated. I was still in high school and just recently lost my football scholarship. I was in a world of emotional hurt and destruction and all alone. The next four years was devastating for me as I tried to bury all the hurt and despair I was…
By: Kristy Newport on March 21, 2023
After reading Vincent J. Miller’s book, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture, I was ready to sign up for his class at Georgetown University. Miller makes some interesting observations regarding Christian consumer culture. He states he wrote his book out of “a profound concern about the corrosive and destructive consequences of…
By: Cathy Glei on March 21, 2023
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Proverbs 1:7 The more I read, the more confused I think I am becoming. I was asking my husband all sorts of questions and sharing quandaries in my thinking; not sure that any of it was connecting. My system…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on March 21, 2023
I think of the things that I have been wrong about; it is a list that is longer than I care to admit. But let me list a few. I was wrong when I thought that me and my best friend in second grade would be friends forever, we are not even Facebook friends. I…
