CHICAGO, IL (September 29, 2017) — Covenanters routinely share links to social media articles and videos that Covenant News Service believes may be of interest to others. Each Friday we post five of them. Following is a sample of those submissions—their inclusion does not represent an endorsement by the Covenant of any views expressed.
This Is Your Brain on Art
Worship is telling and experiencing the narrative of God’s great love for us, which has always has been about creating and re-creating. Reading this article is a reminder that we can tell the story in artful ways and when there is a personal connection, it is ultimately more fully experienced in community.
From the article: “The brain helps us make sense of human behavior, a large part of which is evaluating movement and emotion within us and around us. Our brains like to share emotions with others. This is just one reason that seeing a live performance—a concert, play, opera, etc.—is a neural rush. With our brain’s capacity for emotion and empathy, even in the wordless art of dance we can begin to discover meaning—and a story.”
Petition Launched to Recognize Great Pacific Garbage Patch as a Country
Most countries are trying to get rid of pollution within their borders. But there is a move to create a country out of pollution that would even have its own passport. Organizers say the amount of pollution floating in the ocean is equal to the size of France.
From the article: “We knew that, even though the trash patch covers an area the size of a country, it is easy for world leaders to ignore it—the saying ‘out of sight out of mind’ could not be more applicable than with this issue,” Hughes told Dezeen. “We wanted to come up with a way to ensure world leaders can’t ignore it anymore, a way to stick it under their noses, literally.”
Ought I to Repent of Being a White Male?
Evangelical theologian Roger Olson’s column is not as much about white males as it is about the nature of repentance.
From the article: “If I have privileged status, social power, and do not use it for the benefit, empowerment, of oppressed people, I should repent. Now, I realize that some liberationists and others will respond that I still do not understand the dynamics of privilege in a power-stratified society and that I am letting myself off the hook too easily….Calling for any group to ‘repent’ of being what they cannot help being, because they were born that way, is counter-productive to their own cause.”
A Tale of Two Christianities on Its Knees
Tim Tebow and Colin Kaepernick are both well-known athletes who seek to live out their deep religious faith. In some ways, they represent different emphases of the whole gospel, but in the church today, we have made a false choice of choosing one over the other. If the church can’t begin to understand one another, then the divide will only grow wider.
From the article: “This is the tale of two Christian sports personalities, one of whom is the darling of the American church while the other is reviled. And their differences reveal much about the brand of Christianity preferred by many in the church today.”
Scientists Spent a Month Terrifying Guppies to Prove that Fish Have Personalities
I knew my betta fish had different personalities—one even let me stroke its back. But I had no idea about guppies. Who knew that learning about fish personalities might help us better understand ourselves? I wonder how scientists tested prawns.
From the article: “Scientists have long known about such differences in other animals, (biologist Tom Houslay) said—from chickadees to prawns. But guppy personalities hadn’t been studied well, he said. And the species makes especially useful subjects for evolutionary biologists because communities mature rapidly and—in their native Trinidad—face vastly different environmental challenges depending on what type of predators live in their particular stream.”
