May 17, 2024

When your dad's on top, everyone is your friend. When your dad is sinking, no one will take your calls. The post As Biden’s Polls Drop, Hunter’s Patron Stops Paying His Bills appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

In today’s streaming-media world, we’re inundated with visual stories. A good number are well done: Engaging and stylish. Well-acted. Killer soundtrack. Meme-worthy moments. We might finish watching and—in a burst of short-lived enthusiasm—tell a friend or post on social media about it, noting some of these “well done” elements. But a week later, we’ve moved on and largely forgotten about it (even though, in many cases, we gave it 10-plus hours of our attention). A few years later, we hardly remember anything about it. Such is the nature of contemporary media. Most of it is quickly forgotten and leaves us empty. But why? Aren’t we supposed to be living in the “golden age of television” (a.k.a. “peak TV”), where streamers present us with a never-ending buffet of top-shelf series and auteur-helmed movies? We’re glutted with “prestige” narratives. But it’s an abundance that feels oddly meager. It doesn’t satisfy or nourish; if anything, it makes us queasy. We’re glutted with ‘prestige’ narratives. But it’s an abundance that feels oddly meager. Writing in the Wall Street Journal recently, Peggy Noonan chalks up the current aesthetic malaise to “the uglification of everything.” She describes it as an artistic attitude that “speaks of self-hatred, and a society that hates itself, and hates life, won’t last. Because it gives those who are young nothing to love.” She’s partially right. But a distinction needs to be made between form and content. From my vantage point, the paradox is that we have a beautification of form alongside an uglification of content. Televisual technique is ascendent but meaningful stories are in decline. This is why so many shows and films look stunning but leave us confused and depressed. Renaissance of Style. Dark Ages of Story. Contemporary visual storytelling is stylistically advanced but morally regressive. We’re in a renaissance of style but a dark ages of story. The new Netflix show Ripley is a good case study for this theory. Noonan discusses Ripley (the latest adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Talented Mr. Ripley), but I disagree with her assessment that the series is “unrelievedly ugly.” I’d argue that Ripley, like countless other streaming series these days, is beautifully done on a stylistic level. The Caravaggio-inspired black-and-white cinematography is lush and moody, evoking the best of post-war noir style. The presence of stairs throughout the series underscores the moral elevations the story inhabits. And in the hands of cinematographer Robert Elswit, Italy has never looked so timeless. But Ripley as a whole feels like an exercise in decadent style more than a consequential narrative with clear ideas. It’s a crime story that boils down to a cat-and-mouse drama (will he get away with it?), but no character is particularly appealing, and viewers leave the show with that all-too-familiar feeling in modern media consumption: “So what?” Ripley feels like an exercise in decadent style more than a consequential narrative with clear ideas. In its highly stylized, almost elegant portrayal of skilled criminal behavior, Ripley reminded me of David Fincher’s hit-man drama The Killer, released on Netflix last year. Fincher is one of cinema’s greatest living artisans. He can do style like no one else. But The Killer was all style and no substance; it naturally left viewers empty. The coolest shots, most jaw-dropping set pieces, and most elegant editing sequences only go so far in cultivating resonance within the audience. Much more than a cool vibe is needed—namely, we need a compelling story with a “So what?” purpose and a raison d’être that goes beyond an exercise in genre or style. Why Style Has Become Everything Unfortunately, visual storytellers in our secular age increasingly can’t muster a raison d’être beyond style. This makes sense for a couple reasons. The emerging generation of visual storytellers came of age in a screen-based world, with a highly attuned vocabulary of visual aesthetics. Reared on YouTube, Instagram, iMovie, and Pinterest-style mood boards, they’re saturated in style and speak that language fluently. Unfortunately, they’re far less literate in the language of virtue and their moral vocabulary is underdeveloped. Having exercised the muscles of scrolling through eye-catching ephemera more than the muscles of flipping through the pages of brain-engaging Great Books, they’re more proficient in the visual logic of good design than in the moral logic of goodness. A Gen Z friend recently told me not to underestimate how much a good design aesthetic matters in reaching his generation. They’re highly drawn to what’s well-branded and aesthetically fresh, to the point that this can become more important than the substance. In a world where feelings, vibes, and appearances matter more than facts, logic, and reality, it makes sense that form in storytelling would matter more than content. The other major reason for this style-over-substance dynamic is that a secular culture has little consensus on what constitutes “good.” There’s no longer a transcendent basis on which to determine a “good” story, “good” characters, or “good” endings. There’s no objective grounding for what would make someone heroic or villainous, so the lines are blurred. Most drama now consists of “complicating” those categories and transgressing all established norms, lines, and expectations. Fluidity and ambiguity reign, both in gender and in morality. This is a major theme in Ripley, where Tom Ripley and almost all the major characters are hard to pin down both morally and sexually. Freddie Miles, for example (portrayed in the 1999 film version by the great Philip Seymour Hoffman), is here played by a woman (Sting’s daughter Eliot Sumner), further underscoring the story’s compassless moral commitments. But we also see it in the trend of Hollywood films about classic villains, whether Maleficent (2014), Venom (2018), Joker (2019), or Cruella (2021)—the latter of which is essentially a movie-length showcase for Vivienne Westwood–style punk couture. And it was a box office hit! Bespoke costume design and a 1970s Brit-rock soundtrack mattered more to audiences than Cruella’s repulsive, vice-celebrating story. Vibes over vision. Some might argue there is a moral vision and purpose to these stories because they show the nature of sin and corruption. I think that’s going too far. You might be able to argue this with a “turning inward on himself” series like Breaking Bad. But most of Hollywood’s villain-centric stories don’t explore sin’s nature. They use sin as an occasion for stylish world-building. Filmmakers keep returning to the Joker not because they want to seriously explore the nature of his depravity but because he’s an irresistible canvas for costume designers, makeup artists, actors, and other creatives. His anarchic sartorial vibe and transgressive brand are tailor-made for the spectacle-addicted social media age. Christian Mission in an Age of Aesthetics If it’s true that good design matters more to Gen Z than substance, how should the church respond? The answer is decidedly not to focus on packaging the church or the gospel in trendy branding and cool vibes. But this isn’t to say the church shouldn’t prioritize beauty. Good design isn’t the same thing as beauty. Design is for selling products to consumers; it’s always tied to trends. Beauty is for bearing witness to a higher glory; it’s always tethered to transcendence. One way the church can connect with young people in an aesthetics-obsessed age is to show how transcendent beauty is far more satisfying than trendy branding. We should lean into the cultural attraction to nice aesthetics but show how unsatisfying this ultimately is. When we notice something aesthetically pleasing, it’s a whispered reminder we were made to worship the God who is the source, standard, and arbiter of beauty. Good design scratches a topical itch. God’s beauty nourishes our whole being. One way the church can connect with young people in an aesthetics-obsessed age is to show how transcendent beauty is far more satisfying than trendy branding. The church should also lean into the angst and emptiness people feel in an entertainment world so advanced in style but remedial in substance. We should point people to Scripture as a narrative that celebrates style (poetry, genre, metaphor, imagery, and so on) but in a way that conveys real substance. The Bible is the perfect fusion of form and content, and Christian storytellers should model this in how we communicate biblical truth. If fewer and fewer secular artists are able to present both impressive artistic technique and a meaningful, compelling narrative, Christian artists are well positioned to do both. So let’s enter the cultural void and answer the “uglification” with gospel beauty. Let’s tell stories full of style and substance—not to grab the attention of scrolling eyes or the clicks of fidgety fingers but to point restless souls to the satisfaction they need.

“Why should I trust a man who lived 2,000 years ago, hung out with social outcasts, and got himself killed?” “Even if there is a God, I’d be only 40 percent sure he’d communicate with us.” “Isn’t the resurrection of Jesus just an inspiring concept?” “What do Christians have against the LGBT+ community?” As a pastor in one of America’s most educated and least religious states, I often hear these questions. In many cases, the inquirer is a sincere agnostic who wants to know whether the Christian faith is intellectually plausible, ethically just, and morally compassionate. But in many other cases, the questions come from church members. These people are committed to following Jesus, but they feel the pressure of navigating their faith in an increasingly post-Christian culture. They regularly ask me about issues such as the reliability of Scripture, the problem of evil, and the relationship between Christianity and science. As a pastor, I want answers too. When I was a young graduate student, my doubts about Christianity prompted me to investigate the rational basis for my faith and eventually to discover it was deeper, richer, and more beautiful than I could’ve imagined. So, like all Christians, I long to commend Christ in all his fullness and splendor to everyone I can. This is why I find Dayton Hartman and Michael McEwen’s book, The Pastor as Apologist: Restoring Apologetics to the Local Church, so relevant. Their central aim is “to recover an ecclesial approach [to] apologetics where apologetic engagement and Christian philosophy is intertwined with the ministry of the local church and not completely detached from it” (26). This book equips pastors to weave apologetics into their preaching and even into the administration of church programs. Reclaim Apologetics for the Church The local church is seldom considered the center of apologetic work. For most, the word “apologist” conjures up a picture of a high-profile Christian intellectual with several academic degrees, a broad reach, and a packed speaking schedule. That’s an image far different from a local pastor in his weekly work of shepherding the flock. The bulk of the work of commending the Christian faith is not done by high-profile speakers, but by little-known pastors. Hartman and McEwen, both pastors, want to shift apologetics back to the local church, and that’s a good thing. After all, the bulk of the work of commending the faith is not done by high-profile speakers but by little-known pastors. The authors write, “There is no spiritual gifting defined as ‘Christian Thinker.’ On the contrary, you see that God’s plan for the advancement of the gospel is the local church, and pastors, we believe, are called to help serve the local church in apologetic roles” (2). Pastors must answer the anguished “Why?” written on the faces of the young couple who just had a stillborn baby. They must preach sermons intelligible to both believers and skeptics. And they must present the hope of the resurrection in funeral after funeral. Yes, the pastor is an apologist. He might as well know how to be a good one. The authors make their case for an ecclesial and pastoral approach to apologetics by showing that rational defenses of the faith have come from the local church since the New Testament times. Based on that argument, they offer basic terms and example arguments geared toward pastors to help them embed apologetics in their preaching and throughout church ministries. Basics of Pastoral Apologetics The book’s weight rests on the rational and liturgical moves a pastor should make in commending the Christian faith: for example, sound arguments for the existence of God, solid historical evidence for the resurrection, apologetic training, and a winsome Easter service. These are nonnegotiables, of course. But in my experience, unbelievers are more often won over by a Christian’s good character than by her good arguments. The Pastor as Apologist doesn’t claim to be a comprehensive treatment, but it did leave me wishing for a more fleshed-out vision for the task. Specifically, I wanted to know how the rubber hits the road regarding the claim that “apologetics isn’t just a defense with our words, but also a defense with our whole selves” (7). I longed for more specific examples of how a pastor can shape an apologetic community that bears witness to Christ in both word and deed. The basic tasks of pastoring—faithfully expositing the Word, cultivating love and fellowship among the members, organizing worship gatherings—wield immense apologetic power. Peter Adam, for example, insists that “when the preacher uses biblical theology, the congregation learns more about the coherence of the Bible. . . . In an age in which knowledge is more and more fragmented, they learn the metanarrative that explains human existence and purpose in the context of God’s saving will and the coming of Christ.” Part of the apologetic task is showing how a Biblical worldview is more realistic, credible, and coherent than any other, which a pastor can do simply by faithfully preaching the Bible. Pastors should be aware that their strongest apologetic work over the long haul is likely their habits of faithful service. Helping pastors learn how to weave traditional apologetic arguments into their preaching is important. But pastors should be aware that their strongest apologetic work over the long haul is likely their habits of faithful service. So perhaps the best way a pastor can improve as an apologist is to improve as a pastor. Display the Glories of Christ The vision presented in The Pastor as Apologist is one which pastors, seminarians, and laypeople alike should hunger for: “to restore apologetics to the local church,” which begins by “restoring our understanding of Christ as King” (116). After all, it’s through the church that “the manifold wisdom of God” is displayed to “the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (Eph. 3:10). The Pastor as Apologist speaks to an ever-relevant need for pastors and churches in the 21st century: to make churches centers of apologetic engagement and to equip pastors in the basics of apologetic skills. Engaging, accessible, and succinct, it can serve as a primer for pastors needing a first-level orientation to apologetics and even as a refresher for pastors already trained in it.

In his breakout at TGC23, Michael Kruger argues doubt is a natural part of growing faith and can lead to stronger beliefs if handled with biblical and wise guidance. He offers suggestions for how Christians can confront and process doubts about their faith, especially in our skeptical age. And he calls the church to be a supportive environment that neither shames nor celebrates doubt but rather encourages constructive dialogue. This session provides hope and guidance for believers grappling with their uncertainties and for those who come alongside them.

The deeply troubling issue of mass school shootings, particularly prevalent in the U.S., has become an all too familiar part of contemporary society. This form of violence, often incorrectly assumed to have started with the 1999 Columbine High School incident, actually has a longer history. While Columbine shocked the world and is often seen as […] The post 10 Deadly School Shootings That Predated Columbine appeared first on Listverse.

Generally speaking, popular music is the antithesis of abstract. To be popular at all, it must have a large receptive audience, and the most receptive audience will often be one that knows what the song is about. This might explain why most singers stick to their native language. Doing so guarantees that their pronunciation and […] The post 10 Strange Times Singers Sang in Languages They Didn’t Speak appeared first on Listverse.

There’s a war being waged for America’s elementary, middle, and high school students. But the leftist agenda-driven campaign that began behind the closed doors of teachers unions and government-run schools is now out in the open and has led to a “parent revolution,” says Corey DeAngelis.  The “teachers unions overplayed their hand and awakened a sleeping giant, which happens to be parents who want more of a say in their kids’ education,” says DeAngelis, author of “The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools.”   DeAngelis—sometimes referred to as the “school choice evangelist”—dedicated his new book to “Randi Weingarten [president of the American Federation of Teachers] and the teachers unions for inadvertently doing more to advance school choice and homeschooling than anyone could have ever imagined.” School choice programs, which give parents the opportunity to use their tax dollars to send their children to a private school or even to homeschool them, are restoring parents’ power over their children’s education. Already, states across America are embracing school choice.  “We now have 11 states with universal school choice,” DeAngelis says, adding the programs are a fulfillment of the late Nobel Prize-winning economist “Milton Friedman’s vision for all families” to have choice over their children’s education. DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and Jason Bedrick, a research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, join “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss why school choice programs are a rising tide that will lift all of America’s education system. (Heritage founded the Daily Signal in 2014.) Listen to the podcast below: The post Parents Are Winning Education Revolution With School Choice, Corey DeAngelis Says appeared first on The Daily Signal.

WThe Battle of Shiloh, fought over two days from April 6 to April 7, 1862, marked a decisive moment in the American Civil War. The clash, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, saw the Union forces led by Major General Ulysses S. Grant face off against the Confederate troops commanded by General Albert Sidney Johnston. The battle took place in southwestern Tennessee and was one of the war’s earliest large-scale engagements in the Western Theater. The bloodiest battle up to that point in the war produced 23,000 casualties on both sides. The battlefield itself was a boggy, mud soaked hellhole. Medical services on both Confederate and Union sides were woefully unprepared for the scale of the slaughter, and many wounded were left to fend for themselves among the watery morass. When help finally managed to reach those poor souls, their rescuers noticed something odd. Their wounds gave off a faint glow in the night. Furthermore, the wounded whose injuries glowed had a better survival rate than their peers whose wounds did not. At a loss to explain what was happening, the flummoxed soldiers dubbed the strange phenomena “Angel’s Glow,” because it truly did seem to be the work of angels. For a long while, the story was regarded as little more than folklore. That is, until seventeen year old Bill Martin heard the story, and asked his mother, Phyllis Martin, who is a microbiologist, if the bioluminescent soil bacteria she was studying, photorhabdus luminecens, might be responsible for the strange tale. She encouraged her son and his friend, John Curtis, to do further research and experiment to uncover the answer (because that’s what happens when mom is a scientist.) What they found was a remarkable explanation behind a story that was long regarded to be little more than a legend. Photorhabdus luminescens Photohabdus luminescens‘weird lifestyle P. luminescens is an unlikely saviour. The bacteria hangs out in the guts of various nematode worm species, living in an odd symbiosis. The nematodes are predators of the soil, hunting down insect larva which they devour with P. luminescens’ help. The nematodes burrow into the unfortunate larva’s bloodstream, where they puke out their bacterial payload. P. luminescens releases toxins that kill the bug in short order, giving the nematode quick access to an insect buffet. These toxins also inhibit the growth of bacteria that would decompose the insect corpse, letting the germ and the worm have plenty of time to feast and multiply in their prey’s carcass. It is this toxin that was likely responsible for helping the soldiers survive their horrific wounds. The hypothesis that Martin and Curtis developed claimed that the glowing bacteria entered soldier’s wounds when nematodes attacked the insect larva who are naturally attracted to such injuries. The resulting infestation would wipe out any of the normal, disease causing bacteria found in wounds. The only problem with the hypothesis was that P. luminescens cannot survive at human body temperatures. The teenage scientists came up with a novel way to approach this problem. For once, hypothermia was a good thing Their answer lay in the muddy battlefield itself. The battle took place in early April, when temperatures were relatively low. Adding to the misery, it rained on and off throughout the battle. Injured men were left exposed to the elements for two days in some cases. By that time, hypothermia would have set in. That would have given P. luminescens time to take hold and kill off harmful bacteria. Then, when the soldiers were taken in and warmed back up, their bodies would have naturally killed off the bug. For once, hypothermia was a good thing. With that, the teenagers managed to present a plausible explanation for the Angel’s Glow, a phenomena that was long thought to be little more than fanciful thinking by desperate men. The exact nature of the toxin the bacteria uses to perform its medical miracles has yet to be identified, but the duo are working to isolate it. Perhaps the bacteria that saved lives 150 years ago might be able to save even more today. The post Battle of Shiloh: Strange Facts Behind the Legend of the Angel’s Glow appeared first on Anomalien.com.

You'd think NPR would be smarter than this after a 25-year veteran wrote a piece exposing the political bias at NPR. Their new CEO is an insanely woke leftist, whom Elon Musk called "one of the worst…