The Adventures of ChatRoulette Jesus
Recently I’ve been having some fun using ChatRoulette as a sort of evangelization tool/sociology experiment. For those unfamiliar with the site, ChatRoulette pairs you up with a random stranger in a chat room. If you both have web cams you can even see each other. (Note: Many people take advantage of this function to display highly inappropriate material. Enter ChatRoulette at your own risk.) Using a piece of software called ManyCam I’ve replaced my image with that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (see above). The fun has been in seeing people’s reactions to Christ appearing on...
Read MoreHappiness and Evangelization
I recently finished reading psychologist Dan Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness, an examination of how the human brain attempts to make decisions about what will make us happy — decisions that, if studies are to be believed, we don’t make very well. Gilbert’s book is summarized in this 2008 TED talk (the whole talk is about 24 minutes long and is well worth watching on its own merits): Gilbert’s explanation vis a vis how we make decisions about happiness over time got me thinking about the aims of evangelization. Given that comparisons over time are...
Read MoreA Frightening Call to Arms
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about evangelization. This has been sparked in part by some conversations with principals around the diocese in which I work; in part because of the recent elections; and in part because of the flurry of recent surveys showing the declining adherence to traditional Christian beliefs and practices. Catholics, in particular, have been hard hit, with nearly 30% falling away in the U.S. One in ten Americans now describe themselves as “lapsed Catholics”; the gross number of Catholics in the U.S. remains stable only because of immigration. As...
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