Danny Taylor: Skinny Guy Thinking it Through

This scenario has played out repeatedly in the last week: A person in authority, surprisingly well-respected in some segments of the religious community, says or does something inflammatory, offensive, and in no way representing biblical values and expectations.  A sincere critic responds something to the effect of, “Boy, that just seems completely un-Christian.  Those words and attitudes conflict with everything the Bible endorses.”  The response to that response from the camp that offers unusual support to the authority is thoughtlessly repeated and customarily serves as the final word:  Judge Not Lest You Be Judged! I wonder if you can see the hypocritical irony in that retort.  Do you not know that in order for you to utter the words, “Judge not lest you be judged,” you must first have made a judgment yourself?  It is impossible for you to criticize someone else for “judging” unless you first have already “judged” that person to be wro...

It is not unfamiliar, though thankfully rare, when a husband and father must make a soul-crushing decision. Something went wrong during labor, and doctors can either save mom or baby but not both.  To intensify this bleak reality, doctors leave the decision in the hands of the husband/father.  Who does he save?  The woman to whom he promised love and fidelity, or the child created as a product of their love?   As if to rub salt in his mortal wound, he will have no shortage of critics.  If he chooses to save his wife, many will say he should have saved baby (“Isn’t the highest act of love a mother giving her life so her child may live?”). It would be equally true if he saves the baby (“They could have just tried for another child.”)  If he is a religious man and his friends are theological nitwits, he will hear abusive voices telling him he should have prayed more and just believed that God could have saved them both....

I have seen Disney Pixar’s  Cars  enough times in my life I could quote it in my sleep.  Over the last decade, every time we tried to retire it from our movie-watching rotation, another child came to know of it for the first time all over again.   Lightning McQueen, a young hot-shot racecar, gets lost on his way to a big race in California and incidentally causes major damage to the main road in a small town.  The town’s judge, Doc Hudson, holds a long grudge against racecars.  He wishes to dismiss the case and force McQueen out of town as quickly as possible, only to be overruled by a clever Porsche, Sally, who rallies the town behind an impassioned speech. Reminding the citizens of their proud history and value as “the glorious jewel on the necklace of Route 66,” she compels the town to make McQueen fix the road.  Why?  “ Because we are a town worth fixing! ” Radiator Springs seems to be nothing more than...

I wish I could have met Eva Cassidy.  I can’t; she died a while ago, but I think her story has much to say to a culture whose buzzword these days is “empowerment.”  In the fallout of another halftime show bonanza (it isn’t the first, it won’t be the last), debate rages as to whether two voluptuous women of Latin heritage turned family-friendly entertainment into softcore pornography or whether their command of the stage and demand for your attention “empowered” women.  If I may tip my hand, I fall in the more conservative camp.  I found the first 20 seconds raw and uncomfortable enough that our family simply shut the TV off for the next 20 minutes (Hey, no one held a gun to my head and demanded I watch!  You could have done the same thing too).  It was uncomfortable for various reasons which I don’t care to articulate more than this: I don’t want to give to another woman the kind of attention that belongs exclusively to my ...