Joshua Gibbs

To Grade Or To Edit

At the moment, I am going over the first draft of my next book, which has been copiously marked up with red pen by the editor. The following thought occurred to me (during my ninth hour of looking over the proposed edits): Many teachers fill student papers with editorial marks and corrections, indicating that aContinue reading “To Grade Or To Edit”

Bad Taste Is Its Own Punishment

“Modern beliefs about politics, church government, democracy, and so forth are all neatly and appropriately reflected in modern literature, modern music, and modern liturgies. We do not deserve a better culture than the one we have. Every culture is perfectly suited to the music it produces, the churches it builds, and the poems it writes.Continue reading “Bad Taste Is Its Own Punishment”

One Shelf

A reader recently asked what books I would include in a “concise” library which could fit on a single shelf. When I began putting the list together, I had it in mind to distinguish between books I would choose simply because I enjoy teaching them and books I would choose for pleasure. The longer IContinue reading “One Shelf”

Why It Matters If Movie Theaters Fail

“At the moment, it appears movie theaters are on their way out. I think this a shame for the same reasons I think the casualization of church over the last fifty years is a shame.” -from “If We Lose Movie Theaters,” my latest for CiRCE

Let Us Solve That

Christians who are tempted to gaze longingly at the world and regard the world as a paragon of sophistication, all the while thinking Christians a lowly and embarrassing crowd of underfunded fundamentalists, really ought to spend five minutes scrolling through the “Origin of language” page on Wikipedia.

Not Clever

If you’re going to claim one corporate slogan is an informal fallacy, you might as well claim they’re all informal fallacies. For my money, though, no corporate slogan is an informal fallacy, but this is because informal logic have more to do with rhetoric than mathematics. Formal logic is the other way around. I amContinue reading “Not Clever”

Proverbial, Episode 55: Horace the Bear

“In the same way that very few people who have tattoos only have one, very few people trying to buy happiness are trying to buy it for the first time. You try to buy happiness—you buy something— but when it doesn’t make you happy, as opposed to concluding that happiness can’t be bought, you assume it wasContinue reading “Proverbial, Episode 55: Horace the Bear”

What We Are All Especially Afraid Of

Nothing is more permanent than ‘temporary’ arrangements, deficits, truces, and relationships; and nothing is more temporary than ‘permanent’ ones. -Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

Free Lecture: Love What Lasts

“While some Christians still prefer worldview analysis as a cultural hermeneutic, worldview analysis has largely been replaced by cultural engagement. With the ascendance of Emergent Christianity in the years following the World Trade Center attacks, worldview reductionism fell out of fashion and young Christian essayists and bloggers adopted a softer approach to analyzing secular films.Continue reading “Free Lecture: Love What Lasts”

Heliocentrism

In his well known speech on order from Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, Ulysses claims that the sun sits “amidst” the other planets and “corrects the ill aspects of planets evil.” While Ulysses does not believe the sun is at the center of the solar system, the geocentrist does believe the sun is at the centerContinue reading “Heliocentrism”