In ancient societies, people would collectively vent their anger and frustration within a fixed time on the calendar, and they would unleash their violence as a collective on a single victim in the form of sacrifice. These times are what we know today as carnivals; the subject is addressed at length by David Gornoski and […]
I am blown away in discovering Jesus’s seemingly hyperbolic symbolic aside at the entrance of Jerusalem is actually a prophecy: Luke 19:37-40: “As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works […]
“The past cannot be undone”. I don’t know how many times I have heard this. I generally dislike it. Of course the past cannot be undone, which is why I’m unsure why I recently used the phrase in a motion to the court asking for compassionate release. I am a non-violent, first time offender serving […]
This article originally appeared on The Aquila Report. It’s time to acknowledge simultaneously that we have come a long way from where we once were, and we still have a long way to go. These are not only consecutive narratives, they are concurrent narratives of the racial journey we are on in this country. If […]
Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way […]
“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” ~Fyodor Dostoevsky Before the Gospel revelation, justice consisted of directing the guilt of the entire society against a single victim. It was widely experienced, just as it is today, that shifting the blame onto another is an effective way of postponing […]
The Lord abhors the man of violence and deceit. But as for me, in the fullness of Your mercy I will come in Your house… ~Psalm 5:7-8 It can be safely assumed that much of society today operates under the fear of looming death. St. Athanasius said that death came as a corrupting consequence of […]
Very few films have defined a genre. One of these films is the 1927 German silent movie Metropolis. Directed by legendary filmmaker Fritz Lang, Metropolis is a dystopian sci-fiction movie that touches on important socio-political and even theological aspects of modern society. Made during the Weimar era—a time when Germany was in political and economic […]
Christian anthropology stems from theology. That is why it is important to note that the Christian God is a Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And it is also important to know that there exists within the Trinity, between the three persons of the Godhead, mutual glorification, submission and love. ‘God is love’, says […]
According to Rene Girard, plague is an omnipresent theme in literature. It features prominently in the stories of the great bards of history: Homer, Sophocles, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, and Camus to name but a few. It spans the whole spectrum of literary genres: epic, tragedy, short story, sonnet, novels, history, science fiction, and science. In […]