Eps 101: How Racism Came to America, Guest Dr Kendi

Welcome to Spark My Muse!
• Audio is released each Wednesday.

Scroll down for the AUDIO PLAYER to hear the latest episode!


• If you appreciate the show, please help with a one-time gift (of any amount) through this secure PayPal link (credit cards are also accepted through this secure link).

paypal
THANK YOU so much.
~
Lisa


 Today my guest is award-winning author and historian Dr Ibram Kendi. He is the 2016 winner of the National Book Award for non fiction and the youngest winner ever in that category. At the time of this interview, he was teaching at the University of Florida, and weeks later became Professor of History and International Relations and the Founding Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University


Dr. Kendi’s book:

Would you like more information about Dr Kendi, a link to his website, minute-by-minute detailed notes of the show, or links to the people or other things mentioned in the episode? Then, don’t forget to check out the SHOW NOTES!


• Click here for the

extras! SHOW NOTES,
plus the Access Pass

The Access Pass unlocks Show Notes to previous episodes and includes Show Notes for the rest of the month, too.

• SHOW NOTES are just $1 per month and you can cancel anytime.

ENJOY THE SHOW!

Listen now using the Audio Player:

 


Listen to recent episodes:


Pick an option that works best for you:


If you like the show, please share it with one other person TODAY, OR write a review on iTunes. Don’t know how to write a review on iTunes, exactly? Here’s a short how-to video:


What did you like about this episode? I’d love to hear from YOU!

Protected: Discernment Series: Being Found (Final Post)

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Protected: Discernment Series: 5 Insights from Peter Kreeft

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Were Adam and Eve Tripped?

That’s right I said Tripped, not Tricked.

ooo, maybe it’s both. Tripped for Treat…

Rachel Held Evans is hosting an interesting dialogue.

She invited Justin Taylor (author of Between Two Worlds blog) to field questions on the doctrine of Calvinism. Justin is a prominent leader in the contemporary Christian Reformed movement, and has many visitors on his popular blog.

The dialogue that ensues when you talk about predestination and free will can get heated; but more than anything, it seem this exchange at Rachel’s blog is more thoughtful and interesting, than negative or abusive. I do encourage you to read more there, and to whet your appetite…Here is an excerpt:

Question for Justin, from Don:
I do not see how Calvinism does not lead to a kind of fatalism, if what will be will be and cannot be changed, why try to change anything?  Just accept your fate.   When I read Calvinists it seems like they keep trying to explain why their faith is NOT like this, even though from an outsider’s perspective it really IS like this.  So any wisdom you can impart here would help me better understand.

From Justin:
Thanks for asking, Don.

The reason for the pushback you’re getting is that the Bible is opposed to “fatalism” (which makes our actions inconsequential for changing things and leads to resignation in the face of such powerlessness) but teaches and presupposes “compatiblism” (that God’s absolute sovereignty is compatible with genuine human freedom and responsibility).

D. A. Carson explains the biblical both/and:

1. God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions in such a way that human responsibility is curtailed, minimized, or mitigated.

2. Human beings are morally responsible creatures—they significantly choose, rebel, obey, believe, defy, make decisions, and so forth, and they are rightly held accountable for such actions; but this characteristic never functions so as to make God absolutely contingent.

I think we see this both/and approach on nearly every page of Scripture. Just a few examples: Gen. 50:19-20; Lev. 20:7-8; 1 Kings 8:46; Isa. 10:5; John 6:37-40; Acts 18:9-10; Phil. 2:12-13; Acts 4:23-31.

Or if you want just one example to examine, take a careful look at how things play out in this story of Paul being shipwrecked.

For more explanation of how genuine means and consequences function in a world of absolute sovereignty, this imaginary conversation may prove helpful.

I have wondered (until the ideas got so heady that it seemed pointless and too distracting from more important things–like Jesus), how the entrance of sin came into the world, if we are to take the Genesis Garden Story seriously. This idea of forbidden fruit and a human “Fall” (The primeval human couple and their disobedience in paradise that lead to a human sin nature for all their posterity (i.e. “us”), etc.) was really a Fall at all. If God planned for those two humans to Fall, wasn’t he then sort of tripping them?

It’s a bit to wrap one’s mind around, but I welcome your thoughts.

Will You see “The Tree of Life” movie? Here’s the 411

I’m a big fan of Brett McCracken, the author of Hipster Christianity (Baker, 2010). He is a regular blogger I read too, here.

Art, and specifically, film, have a unique way of introducing themes and truths, even those we’ve forgotten. Or it may re-intorducing ones we have forgot that we forgot. The Big Fish (Tim Burton) did this for me.

I haven’t seen the film The Tree of Life, from Terrence Malick, but my enthusiasm is now whet.

Like the narrative style of the Bible, story can bypass our protective–but growth inhibiting–cynicism, or shortcut our ineffectual preconceptions. Apparently, The Tree of Life may have this in spades.

Here’s the wooing The Tree of Life article done for RELEVANT magazine, by Brett McCracken.

And here’s a short Excerpt I really enjoyed:

Finding “Christ figures” and “redemptive themes” in the movies can be overdone and convoluted, but if ever there were films where it was appropriate and natural, it would be Malick’s films…The Tree of Life, for example, is one gigantic whistle-stop tour through existence, taking us from Genesis to Revelation, reflecting on the nature of God all along the way. As Roger Ebert says of Life: “It’s a form of a prayer.”

Trailer:

What is your most recent “favorite film,”
and why?