1. The Hangman’s Nous. In this episode, we read an excerpt from The Maniac, by G.K. Chesterton, followed by Myth Became Fact, from C.S. Lewis’ book of essays, “God in the Dock.” The primary question we discuss, then, is whether men and women can live a healthy and sane life with mystery, without myth, and without higher truth. What has happened to modern churches that exorcised mystery from preaching, teaching, evangelism, and worship? What anchors the Body of Christ when it’s unmoored from Church history and tradition? What have been the consequences for churches that treat the Christian story as more fantasy than fact? What does Lewis mean that God is “mythopoeic”? What does it mean that Christianity is, according to Lewis, “perfect myth and perfect fact”?
  2. What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? In this episode, we gather for a post-Christmas, post-New Year pastoral debrief. We talk about symbols and meaning, Christmas and holidays, signs and seasons, and how modern churches quietly cleared the path for culture to push Christ out of Christmas without much resistance. We explore the strange and largely arbitrary ways the world measures time, along with the old Adam’s never-ending pyramid project. That is, his need to build meaning upward by effort, progress, and control rather than receive it as a gift. From there, we return to symbol and meaning. We ask why ancient liturgy’s nostalgia or ornamentation, but the distilled shape of reality itself, why the Lord’s Supper isn’t a side practice, but the beating heart of the Church, of worship, and of the Christian life. And why stories’ decorations for faith, but the way truth takes on flesh and finds us where we actually live. This is a conversation about time, worship, memory, and why the Church invents meaning but receives it again and again at the table.
  3. Today on the Christian History Almanac, we go to Washington, D.C., to consider one of the world’s most famous cathedrals.
  4. In this passage Jeremiah is enthusiastically praising God, then cursing the day he was born, then speaking as a warrior, then speaking fearfully.
  5. Chad tells us the story behind this timeless hymn, and we also look into the struggles of the great prophet Jeremiah.
  6. Waiting on God, Who alone is our only hope in this life and will safely guide us to be with Him for eternity.
  7. This episode deals with the all too familiar situation known as "No good deed goes unpunished".
  8. We've all been wronged, sometimes by those closest to us, or those who we trust the most. So, how do we respond, especially when we know that we can't truthfully claim our own righteousness and demand God's wrath against those who have hurt us. Oftentimes we hold our feelings inside, keeping our thoughts to ourselves, which only makes things worse.
  9. Little Plastic Castles. In this episode, we read the first Inkling, Owen Barfield, as he defends the use of old words, old stories, and old ways of expressing what’s good, beautiful, and true against modern proponents that argued for more modern “scientific” ways of judging language, esp., poetics and myth, as well as religion and culture.
  10. Broken lives, broken spirits, broken hearts; the ravaging results of sin in our lives and the world we were born into.