Gene Edward Veith Jr.'s Blog, page 26
April 12, 2018
“Beyond Anything I’ve Seen Before from Modern Lutheran Writers”: A Review of Our New Book
I hate promoting myself, but I have to share with you this review of my new book with Trevor Sutton, Authentic Christianity: How Lutheran Theology Speaks to the Postmodern World. It’s by a former student of mine at Patrick Henry College, John Ehrett. He’s utterly brilliant, a graduate of Yale Law, with a Master’s from […]
How You Are Being Psychologically Profiled by Your “Likes”
Facebook is getting hit hard in the fallout over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a British political firm gleaned tons of personal information about 87 million Facebook users and used it for the Trump campaign. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is getting raked over the coals in a congressional investigation, an interrogation so serious that […]
April 11, 2018
How Can Churches Retain Their Youth?
The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has sponsored two research projects on the retention of young people in the church, as they move from confirmation to adulthood. The findings were interesting–with some surprises and facts in need of interpretation–and I suspect they are applicable to other church bodies as well. One survey was of congregations; the […]
In 10 Years, the National Debt Will Be 96% of the Gross Domestic Product
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has run the numbers, finding, as expected, that the combination of a $1.5 trillion tax cuts and the $1.3 trillion spending bill will send the national debt soaring. How bad is it going to be? The CBO estimates that in 2028, ten years from now, the national debt will […]
April 10, 2018
“The Pleasure of Boredom”
Boredom has been described as one of the major spiritual problems of our time. The hyper-stimulation that comes from our technology and our constant-entertainment mentality actually makes us more bored, since we become jaded and weary of it all, as stimulation eventually fails to stimulate. But there is another sense in which a carefully-cultivated boredom […]
Google Comes to Pryor, Oklahoma
Since retiring to a small Oklahoma town, such as the one I grew up in, I’ve been interested in the fate of small town rural America. Why is it that once-prosperous communities–where we live now used to have 4 movie theaters, a barber shop on every corner, and restaurants galore (now we have no theaters, […]
April 9, 2018
Not the Empty Tomb, but the Risen Christ
The true sign of the Resurrection is not the Empty Tomb, as we often say. Rather, it is the Risen Christ. That’s the point our pastor, Rev. Ned Moerbe, made in his sermon yesterday, on the Second Sunday of Easter. In the gospels, the empty tomb made people afraid or confused. Did the gardener take […]
China’s Weapons in the Trade War
President Trump recently slapped $50 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese goods. Whereupon China slapped $50 billion worth of tariffs on American goods. So now President Trump is imposing an additional $100 billion worth of tariffs against China. So China says that it will respond in kind. This is in line with President Trump’s practice of tit-for-tat, escalating […]
April 6, 2018
A Close Reading of Leonardo’s “The Last Supper”
One of the most famous religious paintings is Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” (1495-1498). I came across a fascinating article on the painting that attends to the details of how each figure is portrayed, showing the different reactions to Christ at the moment Jesus says, “one of you will betray me.” That moment, dramatically […]
China’s High-Tech Plan to Control Its Citizens Completely
It is now technologically possible for a government to monitor and control its citizens as never before. Now China is going to take advantage of that capability. The still-Communist country is in the process of implementing a “social credit system” that will give points for good behavior and deduct points for bad behavior. In one […]
