Image of God in an "Evil" Culture

“I think the American Christian subculture has this posture of ‘the world is evil, and therefore we need to create our own subculture and then hide out [from it].’ I think that the world has a lot that’s beautiful, that the image of God is in everyone, but that the world is also broken, and in our selfishness that’s there as well. So let’s engage and participate in it, find God in it, and find redemption in it. You can do that with art, you can do that with anything.”

—Pastor Gideon Tsang of Vox Veniae church in Austin, Texas. Quoted in The New York Times: “Breaking the Evangelical Mold in a Church with Ethnic Roots.”

I wouldn’t lie about this …

Brigham Young University professor Tom Meservy studies how digital conversations impact honesty and communication behavior. In a recent interview, he opined about the relationship of our communications to truthfulness:

“What’s fascinating here is the way that our media shapes our behavior … digital conversations—like over chat, text, or email—are fertile for lying because people can easily conceal their identity, and their messages often appear credible.

“Even more intriguing, the media we’re using shape the kind of truth telling—or lying—we’re up to … ‘lean’ media (like emails and texts) can easily offend people since they don’t have the expressiveness of ‘rich’ media (like a phone or video call)—so a quickly typed message, even if you mean well, can come off curtly … We’re more likely to deceive people over lean media than rich media. The more anonymous we feel, the more likely we’ll lie.”—From Fast Company

Bikinis or Burqas?

Modesty matters, but not like we think

“Men of all stripes will continue … ogling women whether they wear bikinis or burqas. And it will take more than clusters of women donning one-piece swimsuits to counteract things like Porn Star t-shirts for six-year-olds and American Apparel ads (the ones supposedly for women, that is). When it comes to the pervasive sexualization of women and girls in Western culture, change needs to occur at the top levels of corporate leadership and political power. But it can also begin at the level of personal choice. Many women have an enormous amount of agency in choosing what they wear or don’t wear, in a variety of social contexts. Women can conscientiously signal, via symbolic dress, that their sexuality is only a piece of their personhood.”

—Christianity Today managing editor Katelyn Beaty, in The Atlantic: “Toward a New Understanding of Modesty.”