#culture

The Upside Down World ~ The Blog

May 25, 2012
4 min

The Real Reason the Term “White Privilege” Needs to Die

Want to start a fight? Put an honest white person and an honest person of color in a room together and tell them to discuss white privilege. “White privilege” is one of those phrases that means two totally different things to most white people and most people of color. Outside of colleges and and multi-cultural training seminars it is a complete conversation stopper that does nothing to illuminate anything and everything to sow seeds of enmity between races. In fact, I would

May 17, 2012
3 min

The Myth of Sex by Tim Muldoon

I came across this today at patheos.com and I thought it was so beautiful that I’m totally cutting and pasting the whole darn thing because you should read it too: The Myth of Sex by Tim Muldoon This is the myth of all myths: that people could use each other and still remember what compassion and tenderness looked and felt like. In the beginning, the LORD created man and woman in his image. He blessed them and made them fruitful. Among his many gifts he gave man the gift of p

Feb 10, 2012
6 min

Why Christians Have a Moral Obligation Not to Have Sex Outside of Marriage

Bibledude.net has a series of posts on the issue of fatherlessness that you can check out by clicking this picture I cribbed from him. Everyone has a theory to explain the breakdown of the family: culture, government policy, the sexual revolution, poverty, racism, global trade, etc, etc. A few days back, I shared my theory: unresolved trauma from often horrific life experiences. I said I was going to write about what I think Christians have a moral obligation to do in respo

Jan 22, 2012
3 min

In Which I Call Creationism Demonic

From “Thinking SciFi” “O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.” (Psalm 139:1) Perhaps the most frightening attribute of God is that He knows everything about us. Everything! He has “searched” (literally “penetrated”) us and “known” (“understood”) us. . . Furthermore, He is everywhere around each one of us (vv. 7-10), wherever we are or could be. He fills all space, and there is no escape. Go ahead, ask me where I found that quote. Or even better, how ’bout I up the fun

Jan 7, 2012
5 min

Gabriel Santorum and our Rituals of Grief

In 1996, Rick and Karen Santorum lost a child just past 20 weeks gestation. The baby died 2 hours after birth. The Santorums held and spent time with their deceased infant. They took the baby home for their other children to be able to do the same. They also had a funeral service and burial. We know all of this because Karen Santorum wrote about it in her book Letters to Gabriel which came out in 1998. The reason it is in the news is because two commentators – one real l

Dec 1, 2011
1 min

Dear Marketing Geniuses

Quote from The Upside Down World – A Book of Wisdom in Progress copyright R. Trotter 2011 Painting by Akeem Scott. Don’t feel this way yet? Read this: You are a Beautiful Woman. Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #women #demonicmarketing #bodyimage #culture #beauty

Sep 27, 2011
6 min

Why Creationism Does Not Honor God

Just let me say at the outset that I am not saying that people who hold a belief in what is called “biblical creationism” do not honor God. They may or may not. But the belief system itself does not honor God. Why? Because it denies the work of God’s own hands. The creation is very important to God. “It is good,” was his judgement on it. Scriptures tell us that the created world speaks so clearly of the reality of God that even those who have never heard the name of Ch

Sep 22, 2011
5 min

Raising a bunch of characters

There are several problems with situational ethics. First of all, how do we know what the right thing to do is? What are the standards? Do we value justice higher than mercy? Personal autonomy higher than the good of the community? Situational ethics also struggles with the fact that sometimes the same actions are morally different. So at my son’s school, it is considered sexual harassment to ask someone for a hug. Why? Because there are times when it may be sexual ha

Sep 21, 2011
2 min

The Death of Common Sense

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: – Knowing when to come in out of the rain; – Why the early bird gets the worm; … – Life isn’t always fair; – And maybe it was my fault. Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies, don’t spe

Sep 16, 2011
7 min

A Letter to a Young Black Man

Andrew, I saw your post from earlier and wanted to check and see if you are OK. I have been meaning to write you anyways because yesterday when I was out walking, God put a message on my heart that I think he wanted me to pass on to you. It’s about how important you are. I’m sure you’ve been told before that you are important, but I’m also sure that you don’t actually believe it or have any idea how true it is. You can’t. Because no matter how often you may have been tol

Jul 24, 2008
5 min

The power of culture or the power of economics?

I recently ran across a story which mentioned a variety of studies that have found that imposing financial fines for poor behavior can actually increase that behavior. For example, studies at day care centers have found that when schools impose fines for parents who pick their children up late, they actually see an increase in the frequency of late pick-ups. It turns out that parents were more lax about picking their children up on time when they saw their obligation as fin

Jun 29, 2008
2 min

What Liberals Don’t Get

This American Life on NPR. The story I was listening to was about 2 middle class guys who became homeless in New York City and lived in the streets for a couple of years while becoming writers. While being asked about what it was like to be homeless, the men noted that there is no such thing as a hungry homeless person. This is because there are soup kitchens all over the city. Then they said something which I’ll just paraphrase: “There are all these churches that run sou

Jun 28, 2008
2 min

American Dreams

survey of Americans asking about their ideal life. According to the findings, over 75% of us view the following things as “very important” parts of our ideal life: Have good health (85%) Living with a high degree of integrity (85%) Having one marriage partner for life (80%) Having a clear purpose for living (77%) Having a close relationship with God (75%) Having close personal friends (74%) More than half of Americans also listed “having a comfortable lifestyle (mentioned by

May 21, 2008
6 min

The American Race and Race

Imagine for a moment, a long relay race where for generations it has been considered acceptable and in some cases even required to break the limbs of a one group of people trying to run the race. The people thought this was OK. After all, it wasn’t long ago that this group of people had been used as horses to pull everyone else’s carts around the track. At least they were free of that back-breaking work. Now, they just had to contend with some needed cobbling. Anyone who

May 1, 2008
2 min

Who’s your role model?

article in the Chicago Tribune this morning about the whole Miley Cyrus debacle. If your hiking party left you stranded in a cave for the last week and you have been blessed not to hear about it, young Ms. Cyrus is age 15 and star of Disney’s hit show Hannah Montana. She appears in a Vanity Fair photo shoot this month posed nude with a crumpled bed sheet across her various goodies. Congress is holding hearings and considering approving funding to send out oxygen tanks to h

Apr 14, 2008
8 min

Black-White Conversations We’re Afraid To Have

Northwestern University just put out a study which found that white people avoid dealing with black people or discussions of race out of fear of doing something which will cause them to be accused of bigotry. This is probably one of those “We need researchers to tell us this?” things. As many of my readers know, I am married to an African American man, so we’ve had many of those conversations which most white people avoid like the plague. I’ll just say that it’s been intere

Mar 22, 2008
1 min

While I’m gone . . .

Be sure to check out this fantastic column over at Slate by Emily Yoffe (aka Dear Prudie) on the disaster of normalizing single parenthood. Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #culture #family #life #singleparenthood

Mar 6, 2008
2 min

This seems creepy to me

story in the Chicago Tribune about scientists who have figured out how to get a computer to “read” brain scans to figure out which picture out of several choices a person has viewed. This is considered one of the first steps towards eventually figuring out how the brain works, which I suppose if good. However, it could also the be the first step towards creating machines able to mind read, which I think is creepy. What I find both worrying and fascinating about these sort o

Feb 8, 2008
3 min

Christians as a “Creative Minority”

I came across a great quote today from Pope Benedict which presents a way of thinking about living an authentic Christian life in our modern, western world: We do not know what the future of Europe will be. Here we must agree with Toynbee, that the fate of a society always depends on its creative minorities. Christian believers should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority, helping Europe to reclaim what is best in its heritage and thereby to place itself at th