Spent Sunday morning at home with a 4-year-old. Mom was at work. Between answering emergency calls for help, I performed kitchen duties, NPR providing the background noise.
Why is "Speaking of Faith" played on Sunday morning? You'd think the target audience would be away from the radio. I find myself annoyed by host Krista Tippett, her evident earnestness, the tincture of pride. By her own account she stands above the fray of the culture war, "addressing issues of value and meaning."
My annoyance made me listen more closely, like a man picking a scab. The topic was science and religion, that old favorite, and the talk was of "new perspectives," "new frontiers." It's all very new, old wine in new skins you might say. Tippett seems especially keen on physics: quarks, for example, and other "things unseen," "signposts" pointing the way to "the deep structure of reality." Surely the audience makes the connection and swoons appropriately. The phrases in quotation marks are just signposts pointing the way to an effective emetic.
Having as a youth collected certificates for perfect attendance in Sunday school, I am used to grinding my teeth while listening to people theologize. I've never been able to respond in the approved fashion. For example, there is in John 20 the story of doubting Thomas, who on hearing news of Jesus' resurrection declared (Revised Standard Version): "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe." The sturdy monosyllabic march of his words seems to me now a welcome antidote to the effusions of Krista Tippett. Thomas had something resembling the scientific spirit. Of course he had to be the villain of the sermons and Sunday school lessons.
"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe!" It's the paradigm of the quarks!
How long till "Car Talk"?
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