Lecture Needs Discussion; Discussion Needs Lecture

The modern educator draws too neat and stiff a distinction between lecture and discussion. A good teacher lectures during discussion, discusses during lecture. The line which separates the two is not nearly as neat as we think.

Lecture is the authority of the teacher; discussion is the autonomy of the student. Obviously, these things need each other, even as God gives Job autonomy but does not hesitate to lecture Job.

Some Art Warrants A Generous Audience And Some Does Not

“In the first few years I wrote for FilmFisher, I believed a position of lenience and generosity toward a work of art was necessary to truly understand it. However, while I was writing generous film reviews, I was also teaching Dante and Jane Austen, and eventually I came to the rather obvious conclusion that it was unreasonable to grant the same hearing to Transformers 3 that I offered to The Divine Comedy. Some art warrants a generous audience and some art does not. A book which has survived a seven-century long vetting process and boasts universal acclaim cannot be evaluated on the same terms as a blockbuster film wherein a lingerie model doubles as an actress and alien robots destroy a major US city.”

-from tonight’s lecture, “How Should Christians Watch Movies?”

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Sentimentality Makes Life Harder For The Weak, Not Easier

Over the last twenty-five years, smoking rates are down and suicide rates are up. This must have something to do with the rules of discourse which surround either subject. If we spoke of suicide as bluntly as we speak of smoking, suicide rates might go own, as well. And yet, the more common suicide becomes, the more squeamish Christians are to condemn it.

Book No. 6

“Student: But I have taken personality tests before and found them helpful.

Gibbs: What would you say to a person who claimed to find horoscopes helpful?

Student: I would want to know how horoscopes were helpful.

Gibbs: How was the personality test helpful?

Student: The test told me about myself.

Gibbs: Did you, by any chance, tell the test quite a bit about yourself first?

Student: I suppose so.

Gibbs: So you answered some questions about yourself and then an algorithm said you have quite a lot in common with Stephen Hawking, Winston Churchill, and Rosa Parks?

Student: You make it sound so tawdry, but it made me feel quite special.”

Many Classical Christian Schools Have Their Own Sort Of Cancel Culture

“While somewhat awkward (and perhaps a little macabre), it would be worthwhile for any ecumenical school administration which fires an Orthodox or Catholic convert to ask in the exit interview, “What does it feel like to suffer such a huge loss for your convictions?” I suspect the answer would help the school deal in a more psychologically realistic manner with the next convert.”

-from my latest for CiRCE  

Heirlooms

“While progressives have great contempt for the past, they often have a more accurate sense of the past’s worth than conservatives do. Naïve and unrefined conservatives are sometimes willing to sell off huge tracts of the past at cut rates, but progressives who buy up the past never underestimate its worth. Because traditional things are so profoundly valuable, progressives are constantly angling for conservatives to give them up. The person who controls icons of the past also has some power over everyone whose identity is represented by those icons.”

-from Love What Lasts

Lecture: How Should Christians Watch Movies?

On the evening of Thursday, April 22nd, at 8:00pm EST, I will give a lecture entitled “How Should Christians Watch Movies?” The lecture will include readings from Love What Lasts, my forthcoming book from The CiRCE Institute. As per usual, the lecture will not be recorded.

While there is a good deal of conversation among Christians about how to watch movies, the two most prominent viewing strategies of the last twenty-five years are worldview analysis and what I refer to as the sympathist position, which often goes hand-in-hand with “cultural engagement.” While I think both of these strategies have some merit, I do not believe either is all that classically minded. Instead, I offer a third way which is neither novel nor innovative, and yet is not a viewing strategy I have hear anyone else put forward. It is not grounded in philosophy, but common sense.  

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