Marginal Christianity

Jean Vanier, the Canadian philosopher and theologian and the founder of L'Arche communities, turned ninety this week. To commemorate the occasion he released a YouTube video laying out his “ten rules for life to become more human” by sharing his thoughts on life and on growing older. He speaks about success, vulnerability, listening, fear and love.  1. Accept the reality of your body Vanier says, “For a man to become a man he has to be at ease with his body. That body is fragile, like all bodies. We are born in weakness (as a little child); we will die in weakness. And when we get to a certain age – ninety – we begin to get weaker.” He adds, “I have to accept that I’m ninety. I’m not fifty, or forty, or thirty.” 2. Talk about your emotions and difficulties He acknowledges that men in particular “have difficulty expressing their emotions.” 3. Don’t be afraid of not being successful Vanier adds, “you have to discover you are beautiful as you are” ...

Luke BrethertonABC Religion and Ethics 25 Jun 2016 When the world is out of control, the absurd can begin to feel like common sense to those who have the absurd notion that the world should be controlled for their benefit alone. Trump and Brexit are the result. They are responses to the sense of precariousness and disorder we experience now. This sense of disorder is no illusion. We are in a moment when we are beset by foundational and basic questions about what human flourishing consists of, in every area of life. Among the many questions being asked in our present moment some are these: Read more at http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2016/06/25/4488887.htm

Biblical Studies , Theology J. Richard Middleton The most well-known, and perhaps well-loved, verse in the Bible is John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (NRSV). God so loved the world — the kosmos , in Greek. Could that mean what we mean today by the “cosmos”? God loves … this universe? We know that elsewhere in the Gospel of John, and also in 1 John, the term kosmos refers to the social order, indeed, the corrupt, fallen “world” that humans have constructed. So 1 John 2:15 tells us: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in them.” This verse understands human beings as loving, desiring creatures; what we set our hearts on shapes our lives. So we’re warned against internalizing the values of this corrupt world, this twisted social order. Love of the world in this sense is antithet...

  April 18, 2015 Zeynep Tufekci   CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — THE machine hums along, quietly scanning the slides, generating Pap smear diagnostics, just the way a college-educated, well-compensated lab technician might. A robot with emotion-detection software interviews visitors to the United States at the border . In field tests, this eerily named “embodied avatar kiosk” does much better than humans in catching those with invalid documentation. Emotional-processing software has gotten so good that ad companies are looking into “mood-targeted” advertising, and the government of Dubai wants to use it to scan all its closed-circuit TV feeds.   Yes, the machines are getting smarter, and they’re coming for more and more jobs.   Not just low-wage jobs, either.   Today, machines can process regular spoken language and not only recognize human faces, but also read their expressions. They can classify personality types, and have started being a...