Photo Credit: https://www.emmys.com/events/fyc/2017/the-handmaids-tale The Handmaid’s Tale, a popular Hulu drama series, just won eight Emmy Awards, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series. The series, which is based on the book by Margaret Atwood, follows the story of Offred, a handmaid, during a time where America falls under an extreme fundamentalist “Christian” totalitarian state of Gilead. In this dystopian society, women are enslaved and some are assigned roles of “handmaids,” where they are...
I left my Church this week, and it was the most painful and beautiful thing I have ever done. For many people, Church can be a great source of pain, for others, it is a building or a place to gather. For some, Church can be a crutch, a community that supports them. As for me, my Church has become my family. I don’t even know where to begin my story, as I feel like...
As a student devoted to the intersection of theology and literature I’m always assessing ways in which literature accomplishes theological work and how theological thought appears in literary form. Most often these points of conversion occur by means of metaphor. To refresh your memory, metaphor is a kind of comparison in which one thing is described as another. Metaphor can be as colloquial as “love is war” or lengthy and complex underpinning an entire narrative....
One of my latest antics in life happens to be pursuing another degree in biomedical diagnostics. Now, as a pastor, it’s obvious that there’s really no purpose for me to do so, but I’ve been finding this program quite unique and challenging, maybe not necessarily in content but in my personal walk with the Lord. To give a little bit more context, my undergraduate studies were in biomedical engineering. Then after some industry experience,...
Recently Harry Potter fans celebrated the arrival of the “nineteen years later” day from the epilogue on September 1st, 2017. Here’s an interesting write-up about this momentous occasion. In case you don’t know, this is the day that Harry and Ginny sent their son Albus Severus off to Hogwarts, which can be found in the epilogue from Deathly Hallows. For some fans, the epilogue stands as an important ending to the seven-part narrative, which provides...
Where to begin… Charlottesville The world knows of the American embarrassment that is the recent happenings in Charlottesville, Virginia. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists incited violence surrounding the profanely displayed statue of Confederate General and beater of freed slaves, Robert E. Lee. Gen. Lee’s brutality should be condemned along with the then-institution of chattel slavery. However, certain southerners (and unfortunately, many southern Christians) have insisted on the statue remaining and continue to venerate Gen. Lee as a...
This post isn’t intended to shame you into working out, or for eating more than you ought, or overindulging in what is meant to be a delicacy as if it were a bowl of rice. I’m sure you feel as uncomfortable reading that as I do writing it, as these things already have major cultural stigmas attached to them. Instead of just showering you with guilt, social exile, or doom and gloom health style, I...
Since the regrettable events in Charlottesville, Donald Trump has been fond of proclaiming (and tweeting) that Americans should “come together as one.” We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2017 The message rings hollow at the moment for many Americans who feel that Trump’s recent statements (and...
Thes past few weeks have sucked. By far, I cannot remember a more emotionally draining, politically charged season. I kept looking at the news to see what would happen next; I kept checking Facebook to see what my friends and acquaintances thought about the events that have been unfolding. My heart is so burdened by the amount of ignorance, hatred, and complete lack of empathetic love I have seen at Charlottesville and online. I am...
Our imaginings of the afterlife often include getting answers to questions the knowledge and experience of the world couldn’t answer. Likewise, the pilgrim of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy seeks out heavenly wisdom to satisfy his own burning question: How is God just if people who never received knowledge of Christ’s salvation or the opportunity for baptism are condemned? In Canto 20, the souls represented in the heavenly sphere of Jupiter direct the pilgrim’s attention to...
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