by | Mar 13, 2024 | Uncategorized
What the author sees in the narrative of Scripture.
Author Marilynne Robinson has long brought layered characters and powerful plots to the page. It is perhaps no wonder, then, that she is looking to a book of Scripture that abounds with both.
On this episode of The Russell Moore Show, Moore welcomes Marilynne for a discussion of her new release, Reading Genesis. They talk about what drew Robinson to Genesis and the Mesopotamian and Babylonian myths that are often compared to it. They consider how various disciplines—from science and physics to philosophy and theology—emerge in the text. They ponder the current cultural interest in multiverse stories, what makes a narrative compelling, and the likability (or lack thereof) of biblical figures.
Tune in for a rich conversation on justice and mercy, secularization, and how God reveals his character both in Scripture and in our lives today.
Books by Marilynne Robinson mentioned in this episode include:
Reading Genesis
Gilead
Home
Lila
Jack
Housekeeping
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
Wendell Berry
Walker Percy
Frederick Buechner
Jonathan Haidt
Do you have a question for Russell Moore? Send it to questions@russellmoore.com.
Special offer for listeners:
Russell Moore will join friends David French and Curtis Chang in Washington, DC, for The After Party LIVE! on April 19. As a faithful listener to the podcast, we’d love for you to join us and use this $20 off offer just for listeners! The After Party is a free six-part video curriculum designed for people and pastors alike, and offers “a better way” for Christians to engage in politics. Learn more and buy tickets here—we’ve saved a seat for you! Use code RM SHOW for $20 off, just for listeners.Click here for a trial membership at Christianity …
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by | Mar 12, 2024 | Uncategorized
As a pastor, I’ve wrestled with the theological implications of my child’s disability.
When my nine-year-old son Benji was an infant, we were in and out of hospitals for the first few months of his life. He suffered from focal motor seizures and received innumerable pokes and prods to figure out the right medication and dosage to get them under control.
Then, one grey and rainy November afternoon—amid countless sleepless nights, doctor appointments, and learning how to be parents for the first time—we received a call to set up an appointment with a geneticist about our son’s newly discovered diagnosis: 1p36 deletion syndrome. We were told not to Google anything, but of course we Googled everything.
Before the appointment, my wife and I prepared several big questions, including: Is this hereditary? Is this degenerative? What else do we need to know about this syndrome?
On the day of the appointment, we arrived early and waited expectantly to satisfy our curious and concerned minds. The specialist was behind and arrived late, even by doctors’ standards. He came into the small office, still talking on the phone. A few moments passed while he finished his conversation. Then he hung up, saying Goodbye and then Hello to us in what felt like the same breath. He tossed his phone and a folder on the table before slumping into the chair.
After we asked our questions, he flipped open the folder to glance at the papers before closing it quickly. A faint buzzing noise prompted him to reengage his phone and reply with a text. Then his phone hit the table for the second time in less than a minute. He straightened up and leaned forward slightly. After glancing at us, at our infant son, and then back to us, he said:
This is your life now. You just need to love him as he is. The …
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by | Mar 12, 2024 | Uncategorized
Bandits, Japanese invaders, and Communists all threatened her life. Her dedication never wavered.
In 1923, 26-year-old Mamie Johnston (韩悦恩, Han Yue-en) was sent by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, under the sponsorship of its Women’s Missionary Association, to Faku County in northeast China’s Liaoning Province, part of the region then known as Manchuria. Johnston’s adventures in China would span 28 years. She lived through bandit attacks, the Japanese invasion of China, and the rise of the Communist regime.
Thanks to the short memoir Johnston composed 30 years after leaving China, the compelling tales of her missionary experience, including her rustic life in Manchuria and her legendary wit and bravery when dealing with the Japanese, have been preserved.
Fulfilling an early invitation
Johnston’s fascination with China began when she was just eight years old. Isabel “Ida” Deane Mitchell, a female medical missionary from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, was preparing to travel to Manchuria. She invited the young Johnston to come and join her in China when she was old enough. This invitation remained in Johnston’s heart and would guide her own mission plans nearly 20 years later.
Mitchell settled in Faku, Manchuria, in 1905. The first Western medical doctor ever seen in Faku County, she adopted the elegant Chinese name Qi Youlan (齐幽兰, “serene orchid in the valley”). Tragically, in 1917 she succumbed to an infection she contracted while treating a diphtheria patient, dying at age 38.
Johnston’s dream of joining Isabel in China was shattered. Nevertheless, she applied to become an overseas missionary, setting her sights on either India or China. Ultimately, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland dispatched her to northeast China as a missionary educator.
After arriving …
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by | Mar 11, 2024 | Uncategorized
Climate activists say finance is a justice issue and moving accounts can have a significant impact.
Rosie Venner has been talking a lot about banks. She thinks it matters—to God.
“We are called to be good stewards, to love our neighbors, to seek peace, to act justly. Surely this should shape how we relate to money and where we bank,” she said.
Venner is a British Christian climate change activist working on the Money Makes Change campaign with the JustMoney Movement, a group that aims to be “the go-to organisation for Christians and churches” applying the teachings of their faith and the biblical calls to justice to the way they handle their money. Which brings her to British banks, and the choices they make when investing the money deposited by Christians who are concerned about the negative environmental effects of burning fossil fuels.
Barclays, for example, which is considered by some experts to be a key corporation controlling global financial stability, was the biggest funder of the fossil fuel sector in Europe from 2016 to 2021, some years investing more than 23 billion pounds (about $30 billion US) and investing in oil extraction in the Arctic Circle and the Amazon rainforest.
Altogether, according to the most recent data, banks pumped more than 733 billion pounds (about $942 billion US) into the fossil fuel industry per year.
Venner would like Christians to pull their money out of banks like that, because the Lord has shown us what is good and requires us to act justly (Micah 6:8).
JustMoney is partnering with a number of Christian climate organizations—Just Love, Operation Noah and Switch It Green—to encourage Christians to make financial changes during Lent. They’re calling it The Big Bank Switch. It’s an invitation for believers during the traditional period of …
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by | Mar 11, 2024 | Uncategorized
I asked ChatGPT to illustrate passages from the Old Testament prophet, and the results raise important questions for the church.
Children have an uncanny ability to ask deep questions about things we adults have come to take for granted. One of the earliest such questions I remember asking my father was about language: Why do some people speak different languages than us?
He answered by telling me about the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1–9): about how, when everyone spoke the same language, they cooperated to build a tower so high it would reach into heaven. He told me that God, frowning on their arrogance, made them speak differently, then scattered them throughout the earth. And that’s why, my father concluded, so many languages are spoken throughout the world.
Of course, this only raised many more questions for me—some of which I’m still pondering today. It occurs to me that every significant advancement in technology and society comes on the back of an advancement in communication. The Protestant Reformation rode on the back of the Gutenberg printing press. When electricity let language move almost instantaneously over great distances, significant changes followed. And the advent of the internet heralded an era of unprecedented technological growth and social change.
In a way, it seems to me we are still trying to build that tower, every technological advancement another brick in the wall. Now, we have a new technology literally built of our words: generative AI models like ChatGPT. To many technophobes and technophiles alike, these programs feel like the tower’s tallest height. Some predict a new era of prosperity; many others portend doom. Will God confound our tongues and scatter us again?
The child in me wants an answer to that question. But it is too big a question for our purposes here. Instead of telling you what to …
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