Mere musings on culture, life, and theology by Samuel James
Samuel James on September 11, 2017 I commend to you this excellent essay by Gracy Olmstead on our current American news culture. The entire piece is well-worth your time and reflection, but I want to zero in on one particular point Gracy makes. Toward the end of the essay Gracy says that "the news you click on is the news you…
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Samuel James on September 6, 2017 It's becoming common nowadays to see atheists and skeptics ridicule prayer in the aftermath of disasters like Hurricane Harvey. One clever meme that I've seen this time around contains a picture of an empty truck, with the caption, "Good news! Your shipment of prayers has arrived." Funny, right? Secular scoffers who speak thus usually explain…
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Samuel James on August 29, 2017 "Kids need smartphones. Get over it." Thus says Jeanne Sager at The Week. I'll give Ms. Sager credit for going all in here. Her advocacy for giving preteen children iPhones is full throated and unequivocal, which is better than some of the self-tortured do-we-or-don't-we parenting we often see nowadays. Unfortunately, she's completely wrong. Her argument…
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Samuel James on August 24, 2017 Rod Dreher reprints a correspondence between one of his readers and their child's school principal, regarding a teacher's lesson on transgenderism and sexual orientation. As the emails indicate, the parents had requested advance notice if their child's classrooms were going to teach on the topic, so as to officially request an exemption. When that didn't…
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Samuel James on August 23, 2017 Since deactivating my Twitter account two weeks ago, the following reflections have come to me: If there were any question before that my relationship with Twitter was addictive, now that it's gone, I have zero doubt. It seems to me that sometimes you can't tell how hooked you are until you're off the hook. I…
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Samuel James on August 21, 2017 The NAACP’s boycott of the NFL over Colin Kaepernick’s lack of a contract exemplifies in vivid focus the many ways that the American conversation about race and culture is dysfunctional. Admittedly, the stakes in this particular drama are low; whether a professional athlete is paid tens of millions of dollars to play a game or…
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Samuel James on August 16, 2017 One thing I am continually appalled at is how many professing Christians I know seem to think the following line of thinking is OK: "When I look at the people who dislike President Trump, that makes me like him all the more." I want us to get honest for a minute about what this sentence…
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Samuel James on August 14, 2017 Freddie deBoer explains why he's planning to drop out of the freelance business: I just find, at this point, that the process of pitching, composing, shepherding through edits, promoting, and trying to get paid sucks the life out of me. The commercial interests of publications require editors to ask for things that are tied to…
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Samuel James on August 13, 2017 Amidst the violence and brokenness in Charlottesville, Virginia, this picture (I'm unsure of the source) has been circulating widely: There's a lot going on here, and probably nothing as striking as the image of a black police officer standing guard for the safety of a group that looks with nostalgia on the time when Americans…
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Samuel James on August 10, 2017 First Baptist Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress's comments about President Donald Trump (for whom he is an official surrogate) and North Korea are deeply irresponsible, even if interpreted in the most charitable light imaginable. In remarks to The Washington Post, Jeffress said: When it comes to how we should deal with evil doers, the Bible, in…
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