Category: Uncategorized

The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter sprang up this year as black deaths in the media brought to light the fact that racial oppression is still alive and well in our society—and in much of the subconscious programming that we get from the media and other people. Some complained that all the concern over racial justice was overblown, and worried that the media was inciting a firestorm rather than...

I went to a 40th anniversary showing of JAWS on the big screen last night. How did that movie not scare me as a five-year-old? Seriously. How? How did that movie not bother me? How did it not send me into a lifetime of nightmares that would drive me slowly insane and end with my teen years spent taking a “break” in a sanitarium? Yes, I saw it when I was five. With my grandparents, if you can...

The literary community went into mourning this week when Harper Lee’s novel Go Set A Watchman showed a darker side of our favorite fictional lawyer, Atticus Finch. Set 20 years after Lee’s original masterpiece, To Kill A Mockingbird, the book portrays elderly Atticus as someone who holds quiet but devastatingly patronizing attitudes about the role and capabilities of black citizens in Maycomb...

In the past 18 months, the church has seen two very well-known Christian figures fall from grace in the media. First Mark Driscoll did a Citizen Kane sort of nosedive off his Mars Hill tower, and now the Duggars are in the middle of a child sex scandal. It’s been a strange year. As I reflected on that last night, it occurred to me what these two situations have in common. In both cases, the...

I hate Mother’s Day sermons. This has actually become an established fact in the Heston-Davis household: Rachel hates Mother’s Day sermons. There are many legitimate reasons to hate Mother’s Day sermons, such as if you are struggling to conceive or adopt, or have lost a child, or lost a mom. If that’s you, my heart aches for you; please accept an internet hug and a prayer from me. Hang in...