Middletree

Before Miley Cyrus stole the spotlight Sunday night, approximately 75% of the nation's Internet's bandwidth was being consumed by comments about the selection of Ben Affleck as Batman in the upcoming " Batman vs Superman " movie.  Most of the talk was negative, some supportive, and some was just funny. (The best line: "I've just seen Christian Bale going to Affleck's apartment with some Huey Lewis records and an axe.") The protests kept coming, drowning out admonitions from level-headed people like myself to just. calm. down. We're talking about a fictional character, people. As one of the few who refused to contribute to the vitriol, I could step back and notice some things about the way these discussions were going. Besides the Bennifer and Daredevil references, the bulk of the protests (and even some of the pro-Affleck comments) focused on comparisons : "Ben Affleck will be the worst Batman since that fat guy in the ill-fitting s...

In a recent tweet, Rosanne Cash said that she is obsessing over the order of songs for her new album: Resequencing my record for 94th time even tho only 5 people in the universe listen to a record in sequence now. Don't care, obsessing anyway — rosanne cash (@rosannecash) August 23, 2013 Within a minute, she received over 100 replies from fans (including myself) who still find value in listening to whole albums, in order. I don't do it all the time, of course. Listening to various songs by different artists is how music fans have listened to the radio for longer than I have been alive. Clearly, there's no harm is doing the same with our personal music collections. But some albums are so well put together, and have a common theme running throughout, that they actually have a stronger impact when heard in their entirety, in the intended sequence. It's a matter of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. My favorite CD's to listen to in o...

If you were asked to name the single biggest threat to American Christianity these days, what would it be? Some will argue that laws curtailing free speech are doing the most damage to Christians today. Some will argue that changing marriage laws and acceptance of various sexual sins are a bigger threat. Some Christians seem to think that it's those Target employees who say "Happy Holidays" and find other ways to secularize Christmas. From where I stand, none of the items listed above, which all originate from sources outside the Church, has as much potential to do the most damage to the cause of Christ and the work of the Church in America as this one thing, and it's coming from within: Christians refusing to see God as He is, and replacing the real God with one which makes them most comfortable. The most uncomfortable, difficult thing to accept about God is His anger, and the most difficult thing for 21st-Century American believers to accept is that w...