Friday Fun: Cubs Fan Pessimism

From The Onion . . .

CHICAGO—Stressing that “it’s only April” and that “there’s a lot of baseball still to play,” Cubs fans throughout Chicago told reporters Thursday that they remain cautiously optimistic about their World Series chances after pitcher Jake Arrieta threw his eighth no-hitter of the season, with the team scoring over 30 runs for the 12th straight game. “The Cubs have started really well, and Kris Bryant already has 38 home runs on the year, but it won’t matter unless they can play like this in October,” said longtime fan Spencer Palmer, noting that while he is happy with their performances, he isn’t getting ahead of himself after the Cubs’ five-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals by a combined score of 168-0, which included seven different batters hitting for the cycle. “Arrieta’s thrown six perfect games in his last 10 starts, but if he gets hurt, we really just have Jon Lester, John Lackey, and Jason Hammel, and they’ve only thrown five no-hitters between them all season. If everyone can stay healthy and maintain their average of two triple plays per game, I think they’ll have a great shot in the playoffs. But we’ll see.” At press time, Palmer had reportedly lost all faith in the Cubs’ hopes for a championship after watching right fielder Jason Heyward strike out for the first time all season.

True Masculinity and Feeling Other

HT: Matt Moore

My adolescence was a social nightmare. I grew up in the rural South but didn’t fit the mold of Southern masculinity in the slightest. Sports piqued no interest in me; roughhousing made me nervous; slaying innocent animals seemed cruel and gross. Of course I never expressed such blasphemies—I wasn’t stupid! But I was everything opposite of what my Duck Dynasty-like culture insisted I should be. I was sensitive. I liked to read. I liked to draw. I liked to journal. I wasn’t your mud ridin’, hog huntin’ kind of boy.

The nightmare cranked up to a Freddy Krueger level of horror when I realized I was attracted to the same sex. While my male peers were crushing on girls, I was crushing on them. I didn’t utter the word “gay” to describe myself until I was 19 years old, and no one prior to that time knew about my so-called sexual orientation. But I knew. I was painfully aware of how abnormal, unmanly, distorted, and screwed up I was, which made relating to other guys . . . well, I just didn’t relate to them.

You could see how this might make life a little scary for me.

Feeling Other

I really thought whatever god was responsible for creating me must have been a little drunk when he pieced me together. I never felt like a woman, nor did I want to be one, but I also didn’t feel like a man. I felt other, which made me feel inferior to other males and uncomfortable around them. I mean, sure, I had guy friends. But those friendships were a forgery. Those guys didn’t know the person I really was inside; they only knew the fake Matt—the Matt who played football, partied, and dated girls just to be perceived as normal. The real Matt Moore, the one I concealed from their sight, was constantly filled with fear and anxiety in their company since I didn’t believe I measured up to their standard of manliness. I felt less than what I was supposed to be. Incomplete. Distorted. Other.

You can read the rest.

Smugness of American Liberalism

Youch. This Vox article is long. I don't agree with everything it says, but it's bold.

There is a smug style in American liberalism. It has been growing these past decades. It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what's good for them.

In 2016, the smug style has found expression in media and in policy, in the attitudes of liberals both visible and private, providing a foundational set of assumptions above which a great number of liberals comport their understanding of the world.

It has led an American ideology hitherto responsible for a great share of the good accomplished over the past century of our political life to a posture of reaction and disrespect: a condescending, defensive sneer toward any person or movement outside of its consensus, dressed up as a monopoly on reason.

The smug style is a psychological reaction to a profound shift in American political demography.

HT: Emmett Rensin and Gene Veith

The Jewish Intellectual Who Predicted America’s Social Collapse

HT: Bruce Ashford

Freud’s exploration of neurosis was really an exploration of authority, as Western man was realizing the idea of divine authority is an illusion. God doesn’t exist; therefore, he isn’t a legitimate authority. Freud recognized that as belief in God faded, psychological neuroses multiplied. Instead of correcting this by pointing persons back to God, however, Freud sought to heal by teaching his patients to accept this loss of authority as a positive development.

Thus the therapeutic culture was born. In place of theology, Freud and his progeny left us with sociology. [Philip] Rieff warned that the tradeoff would not be a fruitful one.

You can read the rest.

Church Sign This Week

A church sign I photographed made it into Ed Stetzer's weekly trio!

Let's have a caption contest.

You can see the post.

HT: Ed Stetzer

MacBeth and Humility

HT: John Mark N. Reynolds

God exalts the humble and Satan tempts us with the kingdoms of this world. American self-help or business books may not like this truth, but true it is nonetheless. We are eternal beings and striving, coveting, lusting after place and position will destroy us. In this Presidential year, when we are apt to judge the candidates, perhaps we should turn the light of truth on ourselves.

You can read the rest.

Sitting in the Church's "Broken" Section?

Powerful testimony.

HT: Gaye Clark

Suffering can be unspeakably isolating. It can feel pointless and drive us toward depression. Depression, in turn, can drive us toward despair. And despair often keeps us from corporate worship.

Two years after my husband’s passing, the merciless cascade of grief tempted me to skip church. One Sunday I almost didn’t go because I couldn’t stop crying. Then I remembered it was communion Sunday, something my pastor called a means of grace.

The possibility of grace nagged at me until I got out of bed and looked in the mirror. My swollen eyelids told me I could use all the grace I could get. I put on little concealer, a clean shirt, a whole lot of hairspray, and went to church, 10 minutes late.

Where do unhealthy people sit?     

I stood at the entrance scanning the inside of the sanctuary. Slipping into the service proved harder than I thought. Every pew filled, a symptom of a healthy church. Where do the unhealthy sit? A deacon smiled and pointed me to the balcony.

You can read the rest.