There is little excuse for pretending eloquence about the meaning of the Resurrection while holding reservations about whether the event really happened. The assertion that Jesus was raised from the dead cannot at the same time be theologically true and historically false.
Andrew Christiansen, paraphrasing Carl Braaten - Covenant blog
Two-and-half years after his death, I miss reading new essays (and reviews and blog posts and tweets) by Terry Teachout. Here’s a good piece about Tom Stoppard, whom I also will miss profoundly, someday. (He said, perhaps naively).
Trite, perhaps. But true. Often, the “tried and true” is trite. But, so what? The truth is the point.
Just about everything researchers understand about resilience and mental well-being suggests that people who feel like they are the chief architects of their own life — to mix metaphors, that they captain their own ship, not that they are simply being tossed around by an uncontrollable ocean — are vastly better off than people whose default position is victimization, hurt, and a sense that life simply happens to them and they have no control over their response. That isn’t to say that people who experience victimization or trauma should just muscle through it, or that any individual can bootstraps their way into wellbeing. It is to say, though, that in some circumstances, it is a choice to process feelings of discomfort or even offense through the language of deep emotional, spiritual, or even physical wound, and choosing to do so may make you worse off. Leaning into the language of “harm” creates and reinforces feelings of harm ...