You can read and even encourage other people to read books you don't completely agree with. I don't know why this needs to be said in the Year of Our Lord 2023, but here we are. Actually, I do know why: because a virulent anti-intellectualism driven by paranoia and tribalism has infected the church.

The perverse incentives of a litigious society: the drive to "reduce liability" (which, by the way, is a form of efficiency--a method of maximizing profits/wealth/power) trumps moral values. Because that is the "best practice." Christians are morally obligated to adhere to external moral standards that do not care about liability, what the law allows, or efficiency as such.

We grossly underestimate how secular ideas have insidiously infiltrated the structures of our churches and culture.

Learning to trust in the wisdom of others is humbling and frightening. But I need it. Prayers appreciated. *need it to survive

I'm going to say something controversial, but it needs to be said. If it offends you, go ahead and unfollow me. Or mute this thread. If it upsets you, take a mental health break. I don't want my truth to traumatize you, but neither will I be silent. Too many people use this space to troll or make jokes or spout off inane half-thought out arguments which should have stayed in their head. But other of us have remained quiet when we should have spoken out. Well now is my time.

Maybe it's not healthy, but it's interesting to imagine how you would critique your own writing. Not complaints or "attacks," but if you were to write the most piercing and revealing criticism of your work, what would it be? "Reading Noble is like watching a boy play in his father's toolbox. Occasionally he discovers how a hammer or screwdriver works, but more often than not he invents new, less helpful or meaningful uses for these tools--the works of scholars who he loves to quote."

This is fantastic. Please read, @SenatorLankford.

https://twitter.com/drmoore/status/1348668245616824323

Let me add that our evangelical leaders should have remained firmly opposed to Trump. Moore wasn’t crazy and it wasn’t difficult to predict it would end in disaster. Many leaders knew Trump was dangerous and deceptive, but chose to overlook his faults.

Making this a new thread:
1. Both CB and HC struggle to feel the "right thing" at the right time. When they are "supposed" to feel happy or whatever, they feel depressed. For similar reasons, too.
2. Both are concerned with sincerity/phoniness.

https://twitter.com/TheAlanNoble/status/1338193531672928256

3. Both are depressed by children who act like adults or who are jaded.
4. Is Charlie Brown's baseball mitt Allie's, with poetry written in it?
5. Both find beauty in simple, unpretentious things: keeping all your queens in the back row, a pathetic Christmas tree

A Charlie Brown Christmas is the greatest work of popular culture in the mid twentieth century, and maybe ever since:
1. Art direction is lovely
2. Voice acting is endearingly stilted
3. Directly addresses depression
4. Directly addresses secularism and commercialism 5. Long reading straight from Scripture
6. Best Christmas album in existence

This thread is insane and worth reading because

https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1337791973122510851

This rally illustrates two of the grossly ignored dangers of Trump for evangelicals since 2016: that he would seduce them into abandoning truth and that he would make the distinction between Christianity and Trumpism in America harder and harder to disentangle.

I need to tell you about the Great Strawberry Shortcake Luddite Revolt. One day, Lemon was reading a trade magazine in her hair salon and saw an ad for a technology that promised to change her life.

So I joked a couple weeks ago that I had a new book out. This is a different Alan Noble. And if he can sell a kids book about not punching for $25, I say go for it. But I got some phone calls.l today. Someone called my work phone and my personal cell phone (!?!?) asking for “Alan Noble, author of We Can Play” to see if I wanted to have my book featured at some conference or something.

I probably can't be president because I would be a totalitarian and do things like outlaw YouTubers doing dumb stuff. EO 91238: Jake Paul is illegal. The list would be really long.

I have read claims that if we look at Trump's policies, rather than his rhetoric, then we'll see that he has governed as a conservative. There are many reasons why this is wrong, but I want to highlight the false dichotomy of rhetoric and policy. The essence of this argument is that rhetoric is aesthetics/surface/artifice/form/shell and policy is content/substance/reality.

But a consistent *use* of rhetoric *is* a policy. It has content and substance and a reality.

With his constant abuse of norms and power and his flagrant and arrogant disregard for the concept of truth, I don’t think there is a meaningful argument that Trump is a bulwark against progressivism or secularism. Far from it. Trumpian “conservatism” can involve policies that slow or reverse some progressive agendas, but they are policies without root. Easily overturned and lacking the essential accompanying cultural change.

Re: Don Lemon whatever
1. It is one thing to criticize this administration’s proud rejection of expertise. Ignorance in leadership is dangerous. Call it out. Don’t coddle it. 2. Voters are diverse and human and most of us are just struggling to get by in this world. We vote from bad motives. From bad information. We get manipulated by armies of propagandists, foreign and domestic. Have grace for voters. Criticize wrong beliefs, but have charity.

God help us. The spiteful, deceptive, divisions in the church are evil. Slander. Paranoia. A desperation to find creeping progressivism under every theological statement. It is not of God. It should be repented of. What's remarkable to me is how good so many evangelical colleges and seminaries are at biblically and excellently understanding and interpreting and contextualizing ideas without protests or shouting or walkouts or sit-ins or riots. For the most part, we can make space for debate

A number of things fascinating here.
1. The very first thing Graham brings up as evidence of Trump’s success as president is the economy. Not pro life judges. Not religious liberty. The economy. Which is telling.

https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1197651976596709377

2. Trump’s “tax cuts” *hurt* charitable giving: fortune.com/2018/12/26/tru…

Before he died, Peter Berger was a visiting professor at Baylor. He'd fly in and be around for a few weeks (days?) and then fly out. My dissertation was on secularism and transcendence and used his work, so I scheduled a time to meet with him and discuss it. But when I showed up to his temporary office, extremely nervous (did I misrepresent his work? Would he say the whole project was misguided? Was I wasting his time?), his assistant said there was no record of my appointment. So I just left and never rescheduled.

What's the best album you threw away because you felt guilty owning secular music or for some other extra-biblical reason?

For me, Led Zeppelin IV cause of the "backmasking." Also bought, listened to, then broke and threw away a CD of Korn's "Follow the Leader" because it made me feel guilty--which was the right choice, even if for the wrong reasons.

I want to use an argument brought up here concerning the "By What, Standards?" trailer to address a larger argument against critiques of "tone."

https://twitter.com/TomBuck/status/1158550018833469442

The argument goes: You are complaining about tone, therefore you are more concerned with how it makes you feel than with the substance of the video.

The implication is that there are two levels: style (of which tone is a part) which is trivial, and content, which is meaningful.

A word for myself and maybe you: “A soft answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

When someone pushes against their community’s norms, typically I see two possible responses: 1. They are warmly, gently, and *patiently* engaged with, including an honest assessment of their criticism of the norm. When this is done, the person usually remains in the community and they and/or the community (and it’s norms) mature and adapt.