Features
What can Christians give? Pertinent visions
In this new century, any credible answer to that question needs to be prefaced by what we cannot give. “I have no silver or gold,” says the apostle Peter, “but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” Perhaps one of the things we Christians no longer have to give, and probably never had to give, is a neat solution to every human dilemma. But we can give something more precious than solutions. We can offer visions of abundant life.
Lost in the digital cosmos: Trying to ask the right questions
Writer Jon Katz recently said that news coverage of the Internet lurches “from one extreme to the other.” Either the Net is “a dread menace or it’s a Utopian vision.” Journalism, he concluded, “has been asleep at the switches,” because the Net is “not simply a story about technology, but it’s a revolutionary change in the society and culture.” As a result, journalism “is in the sad position of having to play catch-up, if it can.”
Voices
Roberta Bondi
Diabolical sentimentality
Ever since I was a child, my mother has observed the season of Christmas in the same way. Some time around Thanksgiving she begins shaking her head, looking disgusted and sighing, “Oh Lordy, Lordy; it’s almost Christmas and I haven’t done a thing!” Then come four intense weeks of shopping, baking and Christmas card writing. These activities are accompanied by a strange combination of anxiety (“Am I going to be ready this year?”) and cozy stories of happy Christmases in the past. Christmas Day itself is the biggest, most exhausting cooking and cleaning-up-afterwards day of the year.