New Direction for the Podcast

Dear Friends,

I want to thank you for your support in presenting the Toward Creativity podcast. The past 11 episodes have really been fun in presenting and I think I have begun to cut my teeth in this medium.

Personally, I am finding that in this particular medium I need to be freed from the general, topical constraints of focusing just on creativity and the business thereof. I feel that I need to make a change. And so, rather than having an overarching theme to the entire podcast, each episode will have a topic or thesis presented. I do need constraints but will constrain every episode to an idea. I do not want to have you guessing as to where I am coming from. I need to be upfront with you and I will try to present at the beginning of each episode my angle and bias of the topic.

We all have our points of view. These worldviews shape our thinking, and help to curate our content intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. This is a lesson that I learned deeply in high school in my Theory of Knowledge class and I have been conscious of this approach ever since.

When I listen to podcasts and long form content, I find myself going deeper and listening to the author’s point of view. For some, I hear Buddhist overtones and others echoes of transcendental meditation. For some, I hear a longing for money, and power. For others, I experience undertones of an understanding of Stoic philosophy.

There is no getting around the fact that I am a Christian man that actually believes in the Nicene and Apostles Creeds and in historic, orthodox, and systematic theology. Not only that, but I commune with the Lord Jesus Christ personally. And so, my profession, scholarship, and work is all shaped deeply by this.

I don’t want to be accused of being covert about my faith or apply ‘bait and switch’ tactics in bringing you to these ideas. I do think, however, that a rigorous application and testing of the Christian faith will result in goodness, truth and beauty surrounded and supported by love. I am not interested in cheap, brittle, and flashy Christian thinking that is often found on cable “news” programs or on pithy Twitter feeds. I am also not interested in adding to the ‘jerkiness’ that one finds in negative polemic Christian commentary.

And so, the new direction of the podcast will be assessed week by week. I am renaming the podcast - The Benjamin Harding Podcast. It will handle multiple topics from a Christian worldview. I want to invite you to listen. Hopefully, if you are a Christian scholar in a public or private setting, you will find these episodes refreshing and encouraging. If you are a parent who is longing for their child to go deeper in the faith, I hope that you will listen. If you are a student who is wondering about whether or not you can pursue academic disciplines in an excellent and real way while being a Christian, I hope that you will find resonance here.

Blessings to you,

Benjamin