Overall the start of my pop cultural year has felt a big sluggish. So I'll reflect on that a bit during the deep dive section today. But first, the roundup. Roundup Music The past couple of weeks have been slow again for new album releases, with the only standout for me being indie group Ratboy's Singin' … Continue reading Culture Roundup (February 7, 2026): On Diminishing Returns
In the middle centuries of the first millennium BCE, the Hebrew peoples experienced a series of blows that drastically transformed how they understood themselves and their relationship with God. First, the fall of the kingdom of Israel to the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which created an influx of well-educated YHWH-worshiping refugees into the kingdom of Judah, and … Continue reading The God of the Exiles
One of the most important things we need to remember about the Bible is that it is a library, not a book. And like any library worth its salt, the Bible contains different perspectives within it (while, yes, telling an overarching story). This is especially true of the Old Testament, where we see theological debates … Continue reading The God of the Prophets
[I originally wrote this post three years ago, the last time these readings came up in the lectionary, and it was still the message that was on my heart for them. If you'd like a more focused discussion of the Beatitudes, please see my two posts on them from the Back to Basics series, here … Continue reading What God Requires of Us: A Reflection on Micah 6.1-8 and Matthew 5.1-12 [Re-Post]
While they say history is written by the victors, sometimes it’s written by the survivors — people trying to understand and contextualize what has happened to their people. This seems to be the case with the mysterious group of historians known to scholars as the Deuteronomists, whose hands are all over the books of Deuteronomy, … Continue reading The God of the Historians
Matthew Root 