Recap and Recs

Here’s a breakdown of my three posts from this month:

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Success and Stupidity“Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who is famous for having been imprisoned and ultimately executed for his participation in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Third Reich. As an anti-fascist theologian, Bonhoeffer is instructive for our time. I was re-reading Bonhoeffer on inauguration day and found some deeply insightful sections I want to share with you.”
• Dialectical Thinking“Dialectical thinkers maintain that pursuing truth requires dialogue between different viewpoints. The dialectical method follows from thesis to antithesis to synthesis. The synthesis is the result of holding the thesis and antithesis in tension.”
• Contempt for the Earth is Contempt for God“It turns out, we can wound God. We can crucify God. We do this by upsetting the natural balance of our ecosystem and destroying more life than we create. Our planet is filled with incredible biodiversity, and every living thing is interconnected. When we pump more carbon dioxide in the air than our planet can process, we start killing the planet. Earth’s biodiversity dwindles, as various species struggle to survive under diminished returns. We are facing a heap of extinctions, and countless species are living a sad existence in small pockets of refuge as we turn more and more of the planet into vast centers of pollution and lifeless wasteland.Revelation 11:18 in the Bible offers the solution:Those who destroy the earth should be destroyed.”

And here are some movies, books, and songs I’ve been enjoying recently:

Movies:

• The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)Rest in peace Gene Hackman! I re-watched this just a couple days before he died. Still one of my favorite films. It was one of the first movies I watched where comedy was expertly blended with drama and style.
• The Father (2020)Anthony Hopkins plays an elderly man suffering from dementia. The movie is shown from his perspective, with multiple actors playing the same characters, so we enter into the poor man’s confusion. My dad showed it to me after raving about Hopkins’ Oscar-winning performance. I found it powerful, a low key horror film.
• Mulholland Drive (2001)Rest in peace David Lynch! Neither my wife nor our roommate had seen this movie, so after Lynch died we decided to honor him by putting it on. It was my second viewing, and like the first time, by the end, I didn’t care that I couldn’t resolve the plot (plot? what plot?). The journey is just so captivating.

Books:

• A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo GutiérrezThe seminal text for liberation theology, this book changed the field forever. I had read portions before but never the whole thing, and I’m glad I went back and read through it. One thing I learned is that this wasn’t by any means the first statement of liberation theology, as he outlines the development of this revolution in theology, showing how certain groups of priests in Latin America began to offer the church a theory to match their revolutionary praxis.
• Doomed to Fail by J.J. AnselmiAn exciting walk through the history of doom, sludge, and post-metal. As I read along, I made a playlist of all the songs he mentions. By the end, the playlist was 56 hours long! And not everything he mentioned was available on Spotify. I highly recommend it for metal fans, or folks who are metal-curious. My one complaint is that there isn’t an index or a table of contents for easily navigating where he talks about which bands.
• Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo FreireAnother foundational text for liberationists, Freire compellingly argues that revolution requires a unique approach to education. We shouldn’t seek to educate the way the oppressors educate, by seeking to deposit information into passive recipients. Liberationist pedagogy uses dialogue to empower the oppressed to become the instigators of their own liberation. I am especially thankful for this quote: “There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world” (p. 87).

Music:

• THE NADIR - Spotify / Apple MusicI made this playlist after watching Donald Trump’s AI-generated Trump Gaza video. I needed music that matched the horror I felt watching it. I discovered Cirith Ungol and Noothgrush thanks to Anselmi’s book Doomed to Fail. My friend Chris introduced me to Dropdead. I’ve been listening to these songs a lot lately. They are punishingly brutal—perfect for our time.

What about you? What have you been listening to, watching, and reading lately?

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