This week’s question at “On Faith,” the religion project of The Washington Post and Newsweek was posed against the tragic backdrop of the shootings at Fort Hood. The question comes down to this: “How far should the military go to accommodate personal religious beliefs and practices?”

Is the fact that fertility is falling around the world good news? You would certainly think so if you agree with the analysis cheerily offered by The Economist. That very respected journal of economic analysis recently offered a cover story that celebrated falling human fertility as “changing the world for the better.”

The twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is an important landmark in human history. That wall, one of history’s most heinous symbols of oppression, stood as a physical reminder of Communism’s essence. The Wall was not built to keep invaders out, but to imprison a people within. In the singular interest of avoiding its own evacuation, the Soviet-backed government of the German Democratic Republic erected that wall and murdered those who attempted to cross it.

TRUTH-TELLING IN A TIME OF TRAGEDY:

Jeffery Zaslow of The Wall Street Journal opens his article with the story of a 17-year-old boy sent to the vice principal’s office after being caught sending text messages in class.  The vice principal, Steve Gallagher, told the boy to pay attention to the teacher, not to his cellphone.  Even as the boy nodded politely, Gallagher noticed something amiss — the boy was texting about his discipline for being caught texting.

Every individual human being is embedded in a complex of culture, language, relationships, and ideas. What we see as normal is a product of our perception from within that embedded social location. It takes considerable intellectual effort to escape our own cultural cage. Furthermore, it is far easier to notice when others reveal their cultural assumption than when we reveal our own.