Download or read book Seculosity written by David Zahl and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the heart of our current moment lies a universal yearning, writes David Zahl, not to be happy or respected so much as enough--what religions call "righteous." To fill the void left by religion, we look to all sorts of everyday activities--from eating and parenting to dating and voting--for the identity, purpose, and meaning once provided on Sunday morning. In our striving, we are chasing a sense of enoughness. But it remains ever out of reach, and the effort and anxiety are burning us out. Seculosity takes a thoughtful yet entertaining tour of American "performancism" and its cousins, highlighting both their ingenuity and mercilessness, all while challenging the conventional narrative of religious decline. Zahl unmasks the competing pieties around which so much of our lives revolve, and he does so in a way that's at points playful, personal, and incisive. Ultimately he brings us to a fresh appreciation for the grace of God in all its countercultural wonder.
Download or read book Seculosity written by David Zahl and published by Broadleaf Books. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans May be Going to Church Less, But we're more Religious than Ever. David Zahl's popular and enlightening exploration of our unintended replacement religions-career, parenting, technology, food, politics, and romance-is new in paperback, now updated and expanded with a new chapter on celebrity, a reader's guide, and an interview with the author. Book jacket.
Download or read book Seculosity written by A.M Wynter and published by Alhassan Maliba . This book was released on 2024-11-06 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a time when the quest for "enoughness" has taken on religious proportions, David Zahl's Seculosity demonstrates the subtle and frequently unexpected ways that our contemporary lives have transformed routine activities into sources of constant strain. Do you feel like you're constantly having to prove yourself in your work, your diet, your parenting, or even your romantic life? You're not alone. We have developed new, secular "religions" that demand our time, attention, and self-worth, leaving little opportunity for genuine happiness or self-acceptance, as a result of the demise of old sources of meaning. According to David Zahl, the issue is that we have replaced traditional values with a web of uncompromising expectations, making busyness, success, and prestige symbols of deservingness. However, this need for approval has a high price: ongoing tension, loneliness, and a persistent feeling of inadequacy. Zahl explains in Seculosity how our seemingly innocuous routines and interests are actually contributing to our worry rather than our happiness. Zahl gives a clear way ahead by providing psychological observations, interesting personal stories, and real-world experiences. He pushes us to reconsider our morals, to prioritize human connection over unending success, and to accept the mercy that our contemporary "religions" lack. Can we recover a life based on genuine contentment and escape the cycle of "seculosity"? Seculosity is not simply another self-help book; it is a mirror showing our way of life and asking: Will you search for a more meaningful path or will you continue to strive for "enoughness" at the expense of your peace?
Download or read book Low Anthropology written by David Zahl and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of us spend our days feeling like we're the only one with problems, while everyone else has their act together. But the sooner we realize that everyone struggles like we do, the sooner we can show grace to ourselves and others. Now in paperback, Low Anthropology offers a liberating view of human nature, sin, and grace. Popular author and theologian David Zahl shows why the good news of Christianity is both urgent and appealing. By embracing a more accurate view of human beings, readers will discover a true and lasting hope. "[This] fresh and unexpectedly positive take on sin and pride makes for a lighthearted yet high-minded exploration of failure's ability to serve as a gateway to grace. Readers will find this a balm." --Publishers Weekly "I know of few people better equipped to cut through the religious noise of our day than David Zahl." --Mike Cosper, author and director of podcasts at Christianity Today
Download or read book Beyond Deserving written by Dorothy W. Martyn and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2007-05-18 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on thirty years of practicing psychotherapy, Dorothy Martyn here gives readers a unique look into a play-therapy room where three children individually present their own journeys over some months. These children, in that setting, provide us with a special lens through which we can better understand what transpires in their minds -- and in ours. Through the children's creative, poetic utterances -- enhanced by the poetry of Emily Dickinson and other literary giants -- Beyond Deserving persuasively argues against the justice idea of reward according to what is deserved and for the superior potency of a beyond-deserving model in cultivating love and creative work in children. Written primarily for parents and other mentors -- teachers, youth leaders, counselors, and so on -- Beyond Deserving draws the subject of child rearing back to its roots in the biblical declaration of unconditional love, love that moves first, without a prior "deserving."
Download or read book Upside Down Spirituality written by Chad Bird and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our age when the church can too often seem like a poor copy of the world, Chad Bird challenges us to reclaim the astounding originality of our ancient, backward faith. Where the world stresses the importance of success, Bird invites readers to embrace nine specific failures in the areas of our personal lives, our relationships, and the church. Why? Because what human wisdom deems indispensable is so often an impediment to our spiritual growth, and what it deems insignificant is so often essential to it. With compelling examples from the Bible and today, Bird paints an enticing picture of the counterintuitive, countercultural life that God wants for us. He helps readers delight in all of the ways that Jesus turned the world upside-down, allowing us to experience true freedom, not from our weaknesses but in the midst of them.
Download or read book Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School written by J. A. Mangan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Games obsessed the Victorian and Edwardian public schools. The obsession has become widely known as athleticism. When it appeared in 1981, this book was the first major study of the games ethos which dominated the lives of many Victorian and Edwardian public schoolboys. Written with Professor Mangan's customary panache, it has become a classic, the seminal work on the social and cultural history of modern sport.
Download or read book Grace in Practice written by Paul F. M. Zahl and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2007-01-02 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grace in Practice is a challenging call to live life under grace -- a concept most Christians secretly have trouble with. Paul Zahl pulls no punches, contending that no matter how often we talk about salvation by grace, in our "can-do" society we often cling instead to a righteousness of works. Asserting throughout that grace always trumps both law and church, Zahl illuminates an expansive view of grace in everything, extending the good news of grace to all creation. Conversationally written and filled with fascinating insights, Grace in Practice will reward any Christian who seeks to understand the full measure of God's grace and the total freedom it offers.
Download or read book You May Also Like written by Tom Vanderbilt and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we get so embarrassed when a colleague wears the same shirt? Why do we eat the same thing for breakfast every day, but seek out novelty at lunch and dinner? How has streaming changed the way Netflix makes recommendations? Why do people think the music of their youth is the best? How can you spot a fake review on Yelp? Our preferences and opinions are constantly being shaped by countless forces – especially in the digital age with its nonstop procession of “thumbs up” and “likes” and “stars.” Tom Vanderbilt, bestselling author of Traffic, explains why we like the things we like, why we hate the things we hate, and what all this tell us about ourselves. With a voracious curiosity, Vanderbilt stalks the elusive beast of taste, probing research in psychology, marketing, and neuroscience to answer myriad complex and fascinating questions. If you’ve ever wondered how Netflix recommends movies or why books often see a sudden decline in Amazon ratings after they win a major prize, Tom Vanderbilt has answers to these questions and many more that you’ve probably never thought to ask.
Download or read book Hidden Mercy written by Michael J. O'Loughlin and published by Broadleaf Books . This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1980s and 1990s, the height of the AIDS crisis in the United States, was decades ago now, and many of the stories from this time remain hidden: A Catholic nun from a small Midwestern town packs up her life to move to New York City, where she throws herself into a community under assault from HIV and AIDS. A young priest sees himself in the many gay men dying from AIDS and grapples with how best to respond, eventually coming out as gay and putting his own career on the line. A gay Catholic with HIV loses his partner to AIDS and then flees the church, focusing his energy on his own health rather than fight an institution seemingly rejecting him. Set against the backdrop of the HIV and AIDS epidemic of the late twentieth century and the Catholic Church's crackdown on gay and lesbian activists, journalist Michael O'Loughlin searches out the untold stories of those who didn't look away, who at great personal cost chose compassion--even as he seeks insight for LGBTQ people of faith struggling to find a home in religious communities today. This is one journalist's--gay and Catholic himself--compelling picture of those quiet heroes who responded to human suffering when so much of society--and so much of the church--told them to look away. These pure acts of compassion and mercy offer us hope and inspiration as we continue to confront existential questions about what it means to be Americans, Christians, and human beings responding to those most in need.
Download or read book ChurchToo written by Emily Joy Allison and published by Broadleaf Books . This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Emily Joy Allison outed her abuser on Twitter, she launched #ChurchToo, a movement to expose the culture of sexual abuse and assault utterly rampant in Christian churches in America. Not a single denomination is unaffected. And the reasons are somewhat different than those you might find in the #MeToo stories coming out of Hollywood or Washington. While patriarchy and misogyny are problems everywhere, they take on a particularly pernicious form in Christian churches where those with power have been insisting, since many decades before #MeToo, that this sexually dysfunctional environment is, in fact, exactly how God wants it to be. #ChurchToo turns over the rocks of the church's sexual dysfunction, revealing just what makes sexualized violence in religious contexts both ubiquitous and uniquely traumatizing. It also lays the groundwork for not one but many paths of healing from a religious culture of sexual shame, secrecy, and control, and for survivors of abuse to live full, free, healthy lives.
Download or read book Loserthink written by Scott Adams and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the creator of Dilbert and author of Win Bigly, a guide to spotting and avoiding loserthink: sneaky mental habits trapping victims in their own bubbles of reality. If you've been on social media lately, or turned on your TV, you may have noticed a lot of dumb ideas floating around. "We know when history will repeat and when it won't." "We can tell the difference between evidence and coincidences." "The simplest explanation is usually true." Wrong, wrong, and dangerous! If we're not careful, loserthink would have us believe that every Trump supporter is a bigoted racist, addicts should be responsible for fixing the opioid epidemic, and that your relationship fell apart simply because you chewed with your mouth open. Even the smartest people can slip into loserthink's seductive grasp. This book will teach you how to spot and avoid it--and will give you scripts to respond when hollow arguments are being brandished against you, whether by well-intentioned friends, strangers on the internet, or political pundits. You'll also learn how to spot the underlying causes of loserthink, like the inability to get ego out of your decisions, thinking with words instead of reasons, failing to imagine alternative explanations, and making too much of coincidences. Your bubble of reality doesn't have to be a prison. This book will show you how to break free--and, what's more, to be among the most perceptive and respected thinkers in every conversation.
Download or read book The Road Trip that Changed the World written by Mark Sayers and published by Moody Publishers. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can’t find no satisfaction? There’s no shortage of prescriptions for restlessness out there: Seek adventure. Live your life. Don’t hold back. Sound familiar? The Road Trip that Changed the World is a book challenging the contemporary conviction that personal freedom and self-fulfillment are the highest good. Like the characters in a Jack Kerouac novel, we’ve dirtied the dream of white picket fences with exhaust fumes. The new dream is the open road—and freedom. Yet we still desire the solace of faith. We like the concept of the sacred, but unwittingly subscribe to secularized, westernized spirituality. We’re convinced that there is a deeper plot to this thing called life, yet watered-down, therapeutic forms of religion are all we choose to swallow, and our personal story trumps any larger narrative. This is the non-committal culture of the road. Though driving on freely, we have forgotten where we’re headed. Jesus said His road is narrow. He wasn’t some aimless nomad. He had more than just a half tank of gas—He had passion, objectives, and a destination. Do you?
Download or read book A Way with Words written by Daniel Darling and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social media was made to bring us together. But few things have driven us further apart. Sadly, many Christians are fueling online incivility. Others, exhausted by perpetual outrage and shame-filled from constant comparison, are leaving social media altogether. So, how should Christians behave in this digital age? Is there a better way? Daniel Darling believes we need an approach that applies biblical wisdom to our engagement with social media, an approach that neither retreats from modern technology nor ignores the harmful ways in which Christians often engage publicly. In short, he believes that we can and should use our online conversations for good.
Download or read book Law and Gospel written by William McDavid and published by . This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There's a big difference between judgment and love, obligation and freedom, a wage and a gift. The difference characterizes an extraordinary amount of our day-to-day experience, often dividing fear from hope, and death from life. At the heart of Christianity lies a similar and related dynamic: between the Law and the Gospel. Far from being a reductive or antiquated distinction, understanding where one ends and the other begins allows a person to see both the Bible and themselves-indeed, the whole world!-in a fresh and enlivening way. Written with the non-theologian in mind, this short volume unpacks the good news of God's grace with practicality, humor, and a whole lot of heart.
Download or read book Simply Complexity written by Neil Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new branch of science which will reveal how to avoid the rush hour, overcome cancer, and find the perfect date What do traffic jams, stock market crashes, and wars have in common? They are all explained using complexity, an unsolved puzzle that many researchers believe is the key to predicting - and ultimately solving - everything from terrorist attacks and pandemic viruses right down to rush hour traffic congestion. Complexity is considered by many to be the single most important scientific development since general relativity and promises to make sense of no less than the very heart of the Universe. Using it, scientists can find order emerging from seemingly random interactions of all kinds, from something as simple as flipping coins through to more challenging problems such as predicting shopping habits, the patterns in modern jazz, and the growth of cancer tumours.
Download or read book The Self Driven Child written by William Stixrud, PhD and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Instead of trusting kids with choices . . . many parents insist on micromanaging everything from homework to friendships. For these parents, Stixrud and Johnson have a simple message: Stop.” —NPR “This humane, thoughtful book turns the latest brain science into valuable practical advice for parents.” —Paul Tough, New York Times bestselling author of How Children Succeed A few years ago, Bill Stixrud and Ned Johnson started noticing the same problem from different angles: Even high-performing kids were coming to them acutely stressed and lacking motivation. Many complained they had no control over their lives. Some stumbled in high school or hit college and unraveled. Bill is a clinical neuropsychologist who helps kids gripped by anxiety or struggling to learn. Ned is a motivational coach who runs an elite tutoring service. Together they discovered that the best antidote to stress is to give kids more of a sense of control over their lives. But this doesn't mean giving up your authority as a parent. In this groundbreaking book they reveal how you can actively help your child to sculpt a brain that is resilient, and ready to take on new challenges. The Self-Driven Child offers a combination of cutting-edge brain science, the latest discoveries in behavioral therapy, and case studies drawn from the thousands of kids and teens Bill and Ned have helped over the years to teach you how to set your child on the real road to success. As parents, we can only drive our kids so far. At some point, they will have to take the wheel and map out their own path. But there is a lot you can do before then to help them tackle the road ahead with resilience and imagination.
