This Week in Word from the Bird
Empire is Everywhere? Gay Dolphins and Ethics. Is God a bad investment? The burial of Jesus. NT canon. Global news.
Changes are coming to Word from the Bird and I promise I’m about to set a date for the meeting of the Aviary, please indulge my tardiness for this grading season!
Still, good stuff to come!
Monday: When Empire is Everything (Free Sign-Ups)
We all live in empires or in the shadow of empires long since gone. Whether we are reading about the Persian empire in the Book of Ezra, or reading about Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea, we must learn to think about empire(s) with critical acumen and not be content with shallow and superficial tropes about them.
Tuesday: Nature, Ethics, and Gay Dolphins (Paid Subscribers)
The other day I saw an advertisement for a documentary about homosexuality in nature called Queer Planet. I don’t want to get into debates about Judaism, Scripture, sexuality, and nature, but I do want to offer a few caveats about the perils of appeals to nature in ethical reasoning.
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Wednesday: I’ve been investing in God and I want a refund! (Free Sign-Ups).
There are days when I feel like I’ve been investing in God and I suspect I’ve been suckered into some religious ponzi scheme. I’ve been pouring in prayer, piety, worship, ethics, and nearly my whole professional life and what do I have to show for it? Do you ever feel that way?
Thursday: Was Jesus Buried? (Paid Subscribers)
The Gospel of Mark reports that Jesus was hastily buried by Joseph of Arimathea, after he petitioned Pilate for the body, then placed Jesus’s body in a nearby tomb from his family’s holdings. But an alternative theory to the burial story is that Jesus’s body was left up on the cross as carrion for scavengers and any remains of his corpse were thrown in an unmarked grave. So what happened?
Friday: New Video and News of the Week (Paid Subscribers)
A video about the NT canon and commentary on recent global news.