From the Center

What exactly is a Millennial?  Is a Millennial different than his older and younger relations?  What are the myths about this curious creature?  How can we best communicate with one?  Sign language?  Gifts of video games?  Just kidding - Hodges picks Vowell's brain (a Millennial brain, by the way), to discern the unique experiences and motivations that come with being born after the fall of the Soviet Union.

What are the pros and cons of Institutions in general?  Are they necessary?  Is an Institutional Church the same as the Body of Christ?  How does the Bible call believers to be organized?  Many today deride the Institutional Church, with its organization and its creeds.  But don't we need both in some fashion?  Director Hodges and Host Jack Vowell discuss the need for both in their right places, and compare "organization" to "organism."  This is the second tangential follow-up topic that came from the number 13 podcast that addressed how the culture is regularly tempted to take parts of Jesus instead of all of Him in support of our own projects .

Is everything political?  Are all communications simply attempts to gain power?  Was Nietzsche right that we are all doomed to play a real-life version of SURVIVOR where we are all pitted against each other in a battle to be the last man standing?  What is the realm of Politics in God's economy?  What is government for?  Where does holiness fit in with politics?  Hodges and Vowell discuss the possibility that life is far more than politics, and that our politics should serve that larger life.  But how?

What does Liberation Theology do to the Christmas story?  Host and Center faculty member Jack Vowell and Center Director John Hodges discuss an article in which the "real" meaning of Christmas is described as liberation from oppressive economic and political forces.  The author claims that this can be done without a need for a historical Person of Christ.  The article is used only as an example of how ideological politics of all sides always wants to take pieces of Jesus' teaching to support their positions instead of embracing Him wholly.  This discussion leads to a vow to discuss two tangents in future podcasts, in hopes of clarifying the place of the political in the life of God's economy, and the place of the "institutional Church."

What is the difference between Advent and Christmas?  First and Second Comings, and how the Good Samaritan parable speaks of each.  Robert Herrick's poetry.  Merry Christmas to all our listeners!

The 60s sexual revolution has come around to bite us.  Maybe prudish Christians have something to say after all?  With influential members of the Media, Hollywood, and Politics falling right and left by way of accusations of sexual misconduct, are we heading back toward sexual chastity?  Probably not...but everyone agrees that there are limits that need to be put on sexual behavior, and no one anywhere condones rape and abuse.  A NYT op-ed piece seems to offer only one way out:  male libido is inherently oppressive and should be done away with.  In this issue of FROM THE CENTER, Hodges and Vowell (admittedly male and thereby inherently unreliable sources) discuss the article and offer a perspective that will surely enrage everyone.

Hodges and Vowell discuss the question of purpose of worship:  is it primarily for God, for believers, or for unbelievers?  The answer to this question can give guidance to such questions as, "what music should we sing in church?" and "what constitutes good music?"  and "what exactly is style in music?"

Frustrations with both sides of the political spectrum lead to a discussion of how political solutions cannot address the real problems of a society.  We relate the moral and idyllic imaginations (Burke, Eliot), and show how left and right seem to assume the idyllic view.  We underestimate the depth of evil in the hearts of men when we think that if we only change political and social systems we will have utopia.  But does this mean we can do nothing?  Certainly not...

Correction:  Jack mentions Robert Sheer interview with Matt Walsh, but the man's name is actually Matt Welsh.

Could God have had a hand in the birth of Western Civilization?  Hodges and Vowell talk about why the Center reads in Western Civ, and how the story in Acts 16 played a part in the history that follows.

Hodges and Vowell have a conversation with Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, in which they discuss the way truth is understood.  Do we follow reason or emotion?  Are they two different ways to know?  In debates are we missing each other because one side is reasoning and the other is feeling?  The problem arises in more than debates about global warming, it becomes a key element of discussions about sex and marriage, abortion, economics, tax plans, sexual abuse of women and children, gun control...each side thinks he is reasoning, but more often than not, no amount of reasoning will change minds anymore.  How can very real emotions be related to very real facts?