(Seeing that it’s already Saturday, it seems odd to call this a “Friday overflow,” but let’s not get too picky about our days of the week.)

Here are a few things that I’ve come across this past week.

A New Podcast

I came across an interesting podcast this year called “We Can Talk About This.” You really should check it out.

Full disclosure: My wife and I are the podcast hosts, guests, producers, graphic designers, sound engineers, and video editors.

Currently, our most popular episode is How We Met, Broke Up, and Got Married.

American Men Avoid Emotional and Physical Closeness with Other Men

This past week my Bible reading took me through 1 Samuel 20, in which I read that David and Jonathan “kissed one another and wept with one another.” Later on, after Jonathan’s death, David laments his passing: “Your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:26).

I have felt more than a twinge of discomfort with that physical and emotional closeness, but I’ve suspected that the problem is with me and my culture, not with David and Jonathan’s relationship. 

Then later this week I came across this article from TIME magazine, “Why Men Struggle with Friendship,” that helped clarify and confirm what I was thinking: current American ideas about male relationships—in particular, the fear of male touch and emotional connection—is recent and not normal. As late as the 1850s through the 1890s, photographs of men indicate that “physical closeness was once a prime feature of male friendship.” This is true not only in the America of yore, but also in modern less Westernized nations, such as Uganda.

The article regards homosexuality relationships as morally acceptable; I disagree with this. However, I think it rightly diagnoses a problem American men should be attentive to: In a culture that is morbidly curious about people’s sexual orientation, we men worry that physical and emotional connection with men will be interpreted as gay. Therefore we tend to avoid such connections completely, thus losing what in other cultures and times were emotionally intimate, physically appropriate, and completely straight male relationships.

I’m not suggesting American men artificially adopt another culture’s approach to male physical connection. Rather, it’s important for us to be aware of how much our culture’s obsession with sexual orientation is affecting everyone. David’s and Jonathan’s relationship was on point; our culturally-tainted cringy reaction is off.

There is No Neutral Education

I read an essay by Herman Bavinck this past week in which he makes an important point about the non-neutrality in education. In this essay, Bavinck was replying to arguments that education should be “neutral.” To the contrary, he replies, every education harbors certain assumptions about the worth of the individual, the nature of reality, the purpose of life, and what it means to be a flourishing individual. The essay “Christianity and Modern Science” can be found in Essays in Religion, Science, and Society.

Listening to the Bible

This year, I’ve been listening to the Bible on YouVersion almost every spare moment I have. Thanks to the ability to listen to it nearly everywhere I am, I’m on track to read the Old Testament three times this year. 

If you’re having a hard time reading through the Bible, listening to it on audio is a great place to start!