In Search of Good Religious Blogs
Apparently, they’re much harder to come by than you’d guess. If blogging is an activity for loud mouthed and opinionated people (that’s why you’re here, right?), then imagine my surprise when I tried to seek out reasonable people for their insight’s on religion.
Well, I found one that I think’s worth reading.
(That buzzing sound you hear, like high voltage electricity, is the sound of my millions of readers — okay, dozens — allright allright, ten — getting ready to pass final judgment on my orthodoxy, based on who I linked to…)
Real Live Preacher has some interesting, and often funny insights, and he’s going on the blogroll.
ZAP!
As examples of his good writing, I proffer the following two three articles.
Something reflective: What are the chances that I’m actually here to write this dribble, and you, my reader, are actually here to read it? Real Live Preacher has a post titled Unmade Children and Never Written Words which points out that the answer to this question is, abysmally low. I really like that he’s asked a question head on that has no easy answer, perhaps no answer at all.
Something hilarious: In examining a recent NBC miniseries on Daniel, he wrote an article for Salon.com titled, Sinfully Bad TV. You’ll have to watch a short ad to read the article. Don’t let your ad filters block you. (He writes in various places, but if he’s not posting the whole thing on his blog, he’ll always point you to his writings.)
I wanted so badly to like “The Book of Daniel,” NBC’s new series about an Episcopalian minister and his rather interesting family. I wanted to like it if only because some of the religious right are soundly condemning it. I usually can’t pass up an opportunity to distance myself from those guys.
But I couldn’t like it. I just couldn’t. Not because it is sacrilegious, but because it is bad. It is very bad. This is a bad and boring show. I stayed with it as long as I could, but when the two bishops were having a torrid affair while the priest with the Mafia connections was calling in favors to find the missing $3.2 million, all the while trying to convince the reverend to hire a Mafia construction company — something the reverend seems to be seriously considering — I had to call it a night.
[…]
And I’ve got news for you, Christian. If your faith isn’t changing your life enough to make a difference in the world, you’ve got bigger problems than NBC.
Oh, there is something a little ironic that I want to mention. The first six chapters of the actual book of Daniel — the one in the Bible — are about a young man named Daniel and some of his friends who are trying to live out their faith in a very hostile foreign land. Trust me, the Babylonians were much worse than NBC. Daniel’s solution was to doggedly worship God in their own way, and let their lives be a quiet and steady witness of their faith.
Their devotion produced a living and real goodness that even won the heart of the King in the end. And all of this happened because they were not foolish enough to try to change Babylon, but rather changed themselves.
Yeah, I’m a big fan of good religious satire to get the point across without pistol whipping those you disagree with.
Something profound*: To the man who claims, “I believe every word of the Bible”, Real Live Preacher offers some reflections that show how profound it would be to truly believe one verse of the Bible…
And so while I can’t guarantee that I’ll like or agree with everything he posts, it appears to me that he’s worth keeping an eye on, for something spiritual to reflect on in addition to the vast amounts of scientific gibberish that I try vainly to understand each day.
* The last example was added a few hours after the post had been published.