http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/we-need-to-ditch-generational-labels/?utm_source=Aeon+newsletter&utm_campaign=e6f2cb765c-Daily_Newsletter_19th_May_20155_18_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-e6f2cb765c-68631581

Cosmology
Something’s out there. Something really big – as big as a third of the whole cosmos! – and really powerful. We can’t see it. Scientific instruments cannot measure it, and scientists can’t explain it. They only know it by its effects. If this sounds like the language of faith to you, you’re right, and wrong. This is actually the language of science, a summary of the latest faith-filled “findings” on dark matter, as reported in Scientific American (Clara Moskowitz, “Dark Matter Drops a Clue,” June 2015). The latest “clue” is really just another effect, caused by yet another unknown force, perhaps influenced by unknown particles – all of them “dark,” you see. Why is it that when the Christian says there’s something out there – actually, Someone – we can’t see or measure, though His effects, as even He describes them, are clear – why is it that such talk is dismissed by the scientific community as “religion,” but when it comes from cosmologists it’s “science”? Aren’t these rather both “faith”?

Worldview
According to terror management theory, worldviews have their origin in our fear of death. Everything we do in life, all our social and cultural engagements, are desperate attempts to achieve self-esteem and contribute something meaningful before the inevitable comes. Marc Parry provides a succinct overview of the history and premises of terror management theory in “Death Denial” (Chronicle of Higher Education, May 22, 2015). A fairly recent theory, terror management is not universally embraced, since accepting it means re-writing a good bit of psychological thinking. All people fear death – precisely as the Scriptures insist (Heb. 2.15) – and this leads them to develop all kinds of mechanisms in order to cope. These mechanisms – whether art, religion, science, politics, or any other discipline or avocation – coalesce into worldviews, to which we cling all the more firmly when we are reminded that our days are numbered. The founders of this theory believe that if we would accept it we might be more willing to tolerate one another, since we would recognize that every worldview, no matter how different, is just an attempt to cope with the one thing all humans have in common, the knowledge that we are going to die. No doubt fear of death provokes many different responses within the human breast. But it seems rather far-fetched to believe that acknowledging this fear, and being reminded of it from time to time, will make us more tolerant and peace-loving. Or am I missing something?

http://chronicle.com/article/Mortal-Motivation/230303/

Disciplines
Spiritual Disciplines of the Past
Can spiritual practice from our Christian past help to revitalize the Church in our day? This is the question Dr. Bernard McGinn raises in an essay in the Spring 2015 issue of Spiritus (“The Future of Past Spiritual Traditions”). Dr. McGinn gives an overview of the views of three recent thinkers on this question, whose conclusions he uses to express his own hope that past traditions will yet find a way into contemporary Christian practice with beneficial effects. He offers no specific guidance as to how this might come about. Instead, he merely raises the question, then expresses the hope that a conversation will continue and grow, a conversation he sees embodied in the work of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality. I certainly (and obviously) agree with Dr. McGinn’s expressed hope concerning our Christian past, and I am almost daily encouraged at the evidence I see of openness to and interest in this project. “As for the saints who are in the earth” (Ps. 16.3), we may hope that contemporary and future generations will yet discover and profit from their many excellencies. But we shall have to work diligently in our own present if such is to be the case.

Suffering
Brian J. Tabb investigates the role of suffering in the life of faith, and the contribution of suffering to the spread of the Gospel in the March 2015 issue of JETS (“Salvation, Spreading, and Suffering: God's Unfolding Plan in Luke-Acts”). This is an important article, as Dr. Tabb clearly shows the integral place of suffering in validating the Gospel and those who proclaim it, and in contributing to the progress of the Gospel and the Kingdom. Christians should not resist suffering, but welcome it with rejoicing, prayer, and witness, for it is only through many trials that we must enter the Kingdom of God, even as did our Lord. Suffering is not to be equated with persecution only; it takes many forms, involving self-denial for the good of others and the cause of the Gospel (cf. 1 Cor. 9.27; 2 Cor. 11.23-29). Our witness for Christ will necessarily involve resistance and perhaps mocking, ridicule, oppression, and even violence. It also requires exertions of strength and endurance beyond what we are capable of in the strength of our bodies alone – the strength of the indwelling Spirit (Eph. 3.20; Phil. 2.13; Acts 1.8). We must be bold and joyful in the face of all forms of suffering, looking into the heavens for the strength and hope of the Lord.

Art
Daniel Vargas Gómez reflects on “the loss of perspective on art” which, he explains, describes the current state of the discipline because of the abandonment of objective standards and the preference for mere subjectivism (“Art As An Encounter,” Philosophy Now, June/July, 2015). The result is “with time art has become more available, yet more difficult to understand and admire...” Viewers of art today need to be prepared to work harder during their encounters with art. They need to be able to determine the values and presuppositions of the artist, and to be willing to examine their own. The artist intends the values he expresses in his art to become the values of society, so it behooves us to understand as much as we can about works of art today, as in every age, since “at the same time it molds culture, art can mold the way society perceives itself, and also shape the way it would like to be perceived in the future.” All art is intentional, and has a purpose consistent with the values of the artist. Art can play a valuable social role in helping us to identify, critique, and assess the values by which we live. But we need to take art and artists seriously if we are to benefit from – and not be blindsided by – this “most outstanding expression of the human spirit.” Well said. Who has ears to hear?

Outcomes
Male Grossness
Why are fraternity men so gross? Whether in fictionalized film versions or reports on the evening news, frat men are seen to be hard-drinking, free-sexing rowdies, whose connection to higher education appears to be tangential at best. Emily Esfahani Smith explains that fraternities have moved away from their original ideal of manliness – intelligent, genteel, and handsome – to the present familiar trope over a period of years, influenced in part by a new ideal of manliness brought to colleges by war veterans (“On fraternities & manliness,” The New Criterion, May 2015). Fraternities began by looking back at the Greek ideal of man, but the changing social mores of the Civil War and the World Wars introduced a different view of what a real man should be. Contemporary pop culture has enlarged that ideal even more. When the vision of the ideal man changed, so did the reality on the ground, a clear demonstration of the power of vision to affect moral and social outcomes. And a reminder of the opportunity ever before Christian men to point in a new direction for manhood, from disgust to decency, ribaldry to royalty, beastliness to beatitudes.

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/On-fraternities---manliness-8167

Envoi
The Spark of Art and Spirit
     Czeslaw Milosz, 1911-2004

First day of class: The lies begin,
as students everywhere embark
upon their path of self-deceit.

Condemned to droning lectures, thin
with truth, they take their notes and mark
their textbooks, that they may repeat

the sought-for information in
exams when called upon to bark
for their degrees – a process neat

and quick, by which they hope to win
a cubicle, a space to park,
adoring lovers, and complete,

unbridled freedom. Truth is spin
and life is lust without the spark
of art and spirit. Time will beat

them finally, as, to their chagrin,
their youthful day fades fast to dark
and nothing but the end will meet

them. Thus the sickness that sets in
while they’re preparing for the lark
they hope their lives will be, will eat

away their souls, and they’ll grow thin
within, decrepit, wretched, stark
exemplars of an age replete

with things, but having nothing. Sweet
the antidote, would they but eat.

T. M. Moore