Jonathan Simcoe

We should not say to fearful people, “You’re overreacting.”

It is absolutely true that people immersed in media of any kind react to news and rumors in unhelpful ways. But meeting anxiety with an accusation of overreacting is not likely to help. The biggest problem in most of the United States as I write is that many people, and many institutions,

It is a terrible and terrifying thing to know what you want to be and then realize you’re the only one standing in your way—to want with every fiber of your soul to be someone different, to escape the “you” you’ve made of yourself, only to fall back into the self you hate, over and over and over again.

You don’t need a PhD to study something you care about. You don’t need to publish papers in academic journals to become widely respected. You just need a curious mind, a bankroll, and a commitment to learning in public. Producing work that makes other people think, and perhaps change their behavior, is the validation, and it’s enormously

WHOSE HEART ISN’T prodigal? One of the gifts Augustine offers is a spirituality for realists. Conversion is not a “solution.” Conversion is not a magical transport home, some kind of Floo powder to heaven. Conversion doesn’t pluck you off the road; it just changes how you travel.

What’s emerging here isn’t just an admission of failure; rather, it’s the problem of getting exactly what you want.

“The Big Book of AA,” Jamison notes, “was initially called The Way Out. Out of what? Not just drinking, but the claustrophobic crawl space of the self.”

Sometimes, mistakes are actually necessary tools God uses to shape us. Faithfulness is not a spiritual sprint; it’s a marathon.