Let’s face it, $700 billion is too large a number and too widespread an issue for any single mind to wrap its thoughts around. I'm curious about the karmic effects of this crisis, looking for guidance not on how to budget my bank account but on dealing with the people around me on a daily basis.

One man, three funerals. How many funerals are enough to honor the person you were?

The Red Sea may have parted for the Israelites, but what about all the Egyptians who drowned? Were they just disposable evildoers?

It seems that every six months or so a flutter of press activity erupts over Christian Yoga. Typically, the press reduces this complex and juicy issue into two opposing sides. In one corner we usually meet one of a growing handful of Christian yoga “innovators”, who have stripped yoga of its popular Hindu roots and iconography and grafted Christian elements therein. In the other corner, we typically meet Subhas Tiwari, professor of yoga philosophy and meditation at the Hindu University of America in Florida, whose famous line is “Yoga is Hinduism.” He stresses how you can't separate yoga from Hinduism because they are one and the same.

The Brick Testament is a version of the Bible—illustrated entirely in three dimensional scenes, rendered with Legos, and then photographed—meticulously constructed by a tireless artist known as the Rev. Brendan Powell Smith. Rolling Stone called his work The Passion in Plastic. And it’s a decidely provocative exploration of the text. Smith’s latest installment is a scene-by-scene depiction of the Book of Judges, which includes the gang rape (Judges 19:25) and dismemberment (Judges 19:29) of a concubine. The East Bay Express decribes the effect like this:

Homer Simpson in prayer: “Dear Lord, the gods have been good to me and I am thankful. For the first time in my life everything is absolutely perfect the way it is. So here’s the deal: you freeze everything as it is and I won’t ask for anything more. If that is OK, please give me absolutely no sign. [pause] OK, deal. In gratitude, I present you this offering of cookies and milk. If you want me to eat them for you, please give me no sign. [pause] Thy will be done. [eats food]. “

Conventional wisdom has long held that the religious right is, generally speaking, hostile to environmental regulations. There’s no denying that a strong and influential group of dominion theologists have aggressively lobbied against federal-level protections because they believe that the Bible sanctions humanity's exploitation of natural resources. As a passage in Genesis puts it: “God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”