The Screen-Time Battle Begins With You
How do we set and keep reasonable and appropriate screen-time limits for our children? With the proliferation of screens everywhere—largely due to the explosion of smartphone and tablet usage in the last few years—this is a pressing question for many parents. But what if the answer begins not with our kids, but with us, not […]
Mom’s ‘Extreme’ Movie Advice to Son is Right On
What would you do if your teen wanted to see the recent movie Pitch Perfect 2? Author and blogger Glennon Doyle Melton said yes to her son Chase’s request to see the movie. But she didn’t want her son to be just a passive viewer, so her yes was a conditional one. And the conditions […]
Dogs. Why’d It Have to Be Dogs?
My kids don’t like dogs. Oh, they’ll say that they like the furry critters if you ask. But in real life, when dogs show up, all three of my kiddos kind of freak out and run the other way. Many of our friends own dogs, but to watch my children, you’d think they were pet […]
Art & Culture: Personalizing Politics
Plugged In has often said that the entertainment we engage and indulge in has the power to mold how we see and think about the world—whether we realize it or not. And in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision making gay marriage legal in the United States, openly homosexual actor Harvey Fierstein is—perhaps […]
Did ‘Internet Evil’ Influence a Young Mass Murderer?
A young man has once again unleashed murderous rage upon unsuspecting victims, this time in the hallowed halls of Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. And once again, a nation is trying to make sense of the crime. Given the online manifesto left behind by accused 21-year-old shooter Dylann Roof, it’s clear that his […]
Miley Cyrus Has Become the Poster Child for Consent
America’s sexual revolution has been underway for some time now. And at least as far back as 1967’s so-called “Summer of Love,” traditional and biblical understandings of the purpose and place of sexuality in our lives have been under open assault. But what began as a countercultural movement has in the ensuing decades become anything […]
Three Snapshots of TV’s Power to Change Us
Media can impact culture in surprising ways. And I came across three stories recently that illustrate how television, in particular, informs and influences the way we see the world and interact with it. First, there’s the case of TV finales and the stock market. Would you think that there’s a correlation between the two? Turns […]
The Spy Who Loved the Box Office
Spy flicks generally feature suave, debonair action heroes dodging death, seducing seductresses and meddling with megalomaniacs. And there is one such agent in the espionage spoof Spy. But he’s killed off quickly and replaced by someone who, while technically an agent, is hardly a spy in the familiar Hollywood sense of that word: CIA basement […]
When Demons Go Viral
At play practice one night when I was a high schooler in the late ’80s, some friends broke out a Ouija board. Though I’d grown up in a Bible church and had professed faith in Christ as a child, I definitely wasn’t walking with God at the time. If anything, I was running the other […]
How Old Were You When You Quit Listening to New Music?
It’s sort of a given, I think, that most of us quit listening to new music at some point. After all, what do your parents listen to? Exactly. I’m a big Beach Boys and Neil Diamond fan (among many other bands), for instance, because that’s what my dad was listening to back in 1974. And, […]