Three to Read (Mar. 8, 2017)

This week’s Three to Read contains some explicit language. But it is explicit language used to help us discern what is going on in the wider world, as well as uncover what so often goes unnoticed in our own.

The word is bullshit.

It’s probably a word we say under our breath whenever we hear Trump open his mouth. And so the first article is entitled, The Bullshit of the Trump Administration. It asks the question, “What do we mean when we say someone is “bullshitting”? In answering that question we are better able to see how bullshit differs from and is more dangerous than simply lying.

The second article wants us to know that There’s One Thing Pope Francis Wants Christians to Give Up for Lent. It’s easy to point out all the nonsense coming out of the White House, but Lent is a time where we turn the finger back on ourselves, when we stop staring at the bird turd in our neighbor’s life and start cleaning up the steaming pile of bullshit in ours. (NOTE: The harrowing passage about Lazarus that Pope Francis references is Luke 16:19-31.)

The last reading is just some practical advice on How to Break a Bad Habit That’s Holding You Back. For many of us, our problem is that we just do the same crap over and over and over. As the saying goes, bad habits are so easy to make and so hard to break. This article will give us a good starting place to do the latter.

As we continue in this Lenten season let us keep in mind what the first article concludes: “The bullshitter is the greatest enemy of the truth.” If Jesus is the Truth, as we Christians claim him to be, let us not be his greatest enemy when it comes to our witness of him in the world.