(This is an excerpted chapter from a devotional book project called “Holy Forsaken” that I am still very much in the middle of)

To me the most amazing thing about Job’s story is how it ends. Many people remember that he got everything back and then some. But what amazes me is that God literally makes him the agent of his friends’ reconciliation with God.

“After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my…

This was originally published on Conatus News, now Uncommon Ground.

I recently came across an older article critiquing the Trumpian Right’s “affirmative action” for conservatives. Much of that article was laudable, and I recommend reading it. But there ιs a fundamental blind spot in most of these left vs right discussions that goes unaddressed by the author. This concerns the fundamental problem driving the culture war today.

The author writes:

“I do not think the left’s and right’s respective positions on this are of equal moral and factual merit. …

There’s this old joke that Ph.D. actually stands for Partial Head Damage. If you’ve met enough people with doctorates this starts to seem fair. Dr. Kendi seems to be one of them. I dare you to go read his Twitter feed and try to convince yourself this is a functioning adult writing these things.

But a better use of your time would be to read something by Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Glen Loury, John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, or Jason Riley. If you don’t know who those dudes are you need to.

RBG was a worthy adversary of the constitution and I will miss her presence. Not because I agreed with her on anything but because she was a person, with a lot of personality and in many ways a great Lincolnian American. As the Lincolnian age comes to an end, as the involuntary union is slowly collapsing before our eyes, all those who represent the unfortunate empire of enforced equality forged by the involuntary union of states can be seen for what they were and are. RBG was a lover of abstract ideology, an idealist who believed that government could in…

I’m stealing these from Gary Chapman (the five love languages guy) and blogging about them for my own sake. I’m going through something right now, a struggle I always new was coming, and it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be. Thankfully, due to God’s grace, I think I’ve been better prepared for it than I thought I was.

Myth One: my environment determines me

We believe that what surrounds us is totally determinative of who and what we are from moment to moment. I used to hate living in California so much that it gave me constant anxiety. Now that it’s an even…

Some poor soul posted this on Medium

“I wrote earlier about trying to express my reasons to my dad in a calm and intellectual manner. I actually thought I had been calm and well-reasoned. I thought I might even be making progress.

Today I found out he put a Trump sign in his yard.

I got pissed. Really pissed. And I sent him and my mom a text message. Hands shaking, tears in eyes. This is what it said:

Due to the signs in the yard, the kids and I will not be down. The current occupant of the White…

I love Cobra Kai. I love everything about it. And apparently like most of the world I only became a fan a few moments ago. Paying for YouTube seems ridiculous right?

Well maybe I should have been paying for YouTube because Cobra Kai has probably knocked Stranger Things out of my Top Five favorite tv shows. And its not because I’m replacing Nostalgia with nostalgia. Cobra Kai barely relies on Nostalgia, and to be fair ST isn’t nearly as dependent on that ineffable emotion as many think. The main thing that makes ST so wonderful is how it depicts friendship.

…

This morning a good friend sent me an article from The Imaginative Conservative (easily one of the best “blogs”) that outlined Robert Nisbet’s ten conditions of revolution. The piece is excellent and very worth reading in its entirety.

I’m not going to comment on all of the conditions, or even discuss revolution really, but what stuck out to me was Nisbet’s famous distinction between power and authority.

“By authority, Nisbet meant not power (which is presumed and assumed), but a mutual and consensual understanding of respect both given and earned. An example would be a professor who earned the respect…