In recent months, there has been both good news and bad news about diversity. The bad news is that diversity can lead to social distrust. The good news is that it can mean better decisions.
Computer games are all the rage, and many have themes that should trouble parents trying to raise children who care for the world. Fortunately, there are “games with a conscience” that focus on important issues such as poverty, climate change, and energy.
Did you see the Matrix trilogy, which posited that the word we live in was a virtual reality–a clever simulation of the real thing? As strange as it may seem, an Oxford University professor, Nick Bostrom, argues that there is some significant chance that we live in the simulated virtual reality of some future human. And as crazy as it may sound, thinking through the implications of being nothing more than a computer simulations actually raises some interesting philisophical (and yes, theological) questions.
There is a profound sense in which all of one’s life is lived out in God’s presence, and this recognition becomes a powerful tool for understanding all of one’s life as being consecrated unto God. The Carmelite lay brother Nicholas Herman (1611-91), known as “Brother Lawrence,” cultivated and practiced this sort of life, and its character has been preserved for us under the title Practice of the Presence of God (1692).