Brett McCracken's Blog, page 8
August 18, 2017
From This Place
Places shape us. They seep into our bones and grab hold of our hearts. As much as we live our lives digitally these days and find connections in the vast placeless spaces of the Internet, the reality is we are embodied beings who are wired to shape and be shaped by specific, physical places.
Biola University has been a profound place in my life. The 65,000+ people who have been students here can surely attest to the shaping influence of this community, a Christ-centered liberal arts instituti...
August 16, 2017
Gospel Continuity
It was a Tuesday morning in July when I sat down in President Corey's office and told him the news. I had accepted a job to work as a senior editor for The Gospel Coalition and would no longer be working at Biola University.
With tears in my eyes I told him how hard it was for me to leave. I'd worked at Biola for nine years and met my wife Kira there. I loved my job working in the Office of the President. I was not looking to leave. The Gospel Coalition job, I told him, had come as an unexpec...
August 13, 2017
The Wisdom Pyramid
Do you remember the old food pyramid that shows how a healthy body depends on a balanced diet, with the right proportions of food groups and nutrition vs. junk foods?
In our current epistemological crisis, where we are bombarded by a glut of content and information but have so little wisdom, I think we need guidance on healthier habits of knowledge intake. We need a wisdom pyramid. We need to think about what sorts of “knowledge groups,” and in what proportion, feed a healthy life of true wisd...
August 12, 2017
Five Facets of Our Epistemological Crisis
We are facing a crisis of epistemology in today's world. How do we know things? How do we distinguish between true beliefs and delusions, facts and fiction? What can be trusted?
There are many angles we could explore in this crisis of epistemology. Here are just five:
1) Post-Truth“Post-truth” was Oxford Dictionaries’ international word of the year in 2016, defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to e...
August 8, 2017
Notes on 10 Years of Blogging
I started blogging ten years ago this summer. Some of you may have been readers back then. My blog was originally called “The Search,” after a Walker Percy quote and the idea of going deeper than Google searching and searching not for searching's sake, but for the sake of inching toward truth.
The blogging volume ebbed and flowed over the years, and in 2015 I transitioned “The Search” to the admittedly less interesting brettmccracken.com.
As utilitarian and burdensome as they sometimes feel,...
August 6, 2017
"Columbus" and Discovery in the Modern World
Who is Kogonada? He is a renowned video essayist who just released his acclaimed feature debut, Columbus, starring John Cho, Haley Lu Richardson, Parker Posey and Rory Culkin. But for me, Kogonada is more than that; he's a person who has greatly influenced my thinking about and passion for cinema.
Kogonada was my professor, advisor and friend when I was a college student in the early 2000s. I took new media and film classes from him. I asked him to write recommendation letters when I applied t...
August 3, 2017
The Difference Our Difference Makes
Ever since Abraham was called by God to leave his homeland to found a new nation in an unknown land (Genesis 12), uncomfortable obedience and uncomfortable difference have been a part of what it means to be the people of God. Why? Because God is perfectly holy.
“Be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11:45; 19:2; 20:7; 21:8). God’s holiness is no joke. It’s why the Israelites crossing the Jordan were instructed to stay a thousand yards or more away from the ark (Josh. 3:4); it’s why Uzzah died for touc...
July 30, 2017
Recent Writings / Summer 2017
A collection of my publications from recent months
'THE LOST CITY OF Z' POINTS TO THE CITY THAT IS TO COME (APRIL 21, 2017, CHRISTIANITY TODAY)My review, for Christianity Today, of James Gray's The Lost City of Z.
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BORDERS AND THE BIBLE (SUMMER 2017, BIOLA MAGAZINE)A cover story on biblical approaches to immigration for the Summer 2017 issue of Biola Magazine.
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THE DANGER OF "CHURCH SHOPPING" (JUNE 12, 2017, 9MARKS)A blog post on Charles Taylor and "church shopping," republished by 9Marks.
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July 24, 2017
When the Internet Enrages You, Read These Psalms
Recently, on one of those "too much time on social media" days, where my frustration and anger about all manner of things reached a Twitter-fueled boiling point, I took a break from technology and opened my (physical) Bible. I turned to the seven penitential psalms (Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143) and spent some time there.
The exercise was powerful, sobering, cathartic, spiritually enriching; an antidote to the "who and what can I rage about today?" posture that so dominates Internet...
July 18, 2017
9 Uncomfortable Things About Church
My forthcoming book Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community (preorder here) is a love letter to the church in all her imperfect glory.
In the book I discuss a whole range of uncomfortable aspects of following Jesus and committing to a local church. As painful as it is to rehash the warts of the church and as much as it makes me cringe to think of it all, it also fills me with joy. For it is on account of the uncomfortable, the awkward, the difficult and the c...
