Worth Reading - 4/9

1. A look at Southern Baptists and the sin of Racism:

““Racial reconciliation is not something that white people do for other people,” proclaimed Russell Moore in March. Moore, a white man from Mississippi, was opening a meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, with an eminently tweetable, infinitely complicated call to end racial division within the church.

As membership in the Southern Baptist church stagnates and baptisms decline, and as America’s younger generations are becoming more diverse and less religious, this kind of rhetoric could seem like a straightforward bid for survival. Millennials care deeply about race and racial justice, so the church has to care, too. Moore’s calls for reconciliation seemed heartfelt, though, as did those of many of the pastors and leaders who met at the Southern Baptists’ conference on race. And they are part of a consistent, longstanding effort. Since at least 1995, the church has been publicly repenting for its history of racial discrimination. Arguably, it has made progress; minority participation in Southern Baptist congregations has blossomed. Yet after two decades, the public-policy arm of the church is still focused almost exclusively on conservative social issues, rather than topics like poverty and mass incarceration, which have a significant impact on racial disparities in America. As the demographics of the church change, the Southern Baptists will have to reckon with these issues—or, perhaps, face future decades of division within their churches.”

2. In praise of irrelevant reading. A fun essay by Wesley Hill over at First Things:

“When I moved to England to start a Masters degree in theology, I knew I wanted to study St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. Like many of my counterparts in the Reformed theological orbit, I was enthralled with questions of law and grace, election and final judgment. During my first year of undergraduate study, I’d sat out on the front lawn of the college green, sweating in the spring sunshine, reading N. T. Wright’s What Saint Paul Really Said. I was certain that the most important questions I could write about in my postgraduate study would have something to do with Jews and Gentiles in Christ in those dense later chapters of Paul’s Romans.

I remember stepping into my advisor’s office with confidence, brandishing a sheet of paper with my notes and proposed outline, like a beaming kid shoving his latest Play-Doh creation into Dad’s line of sight for approval. And my outline was met with approval, at least in part. But what I didn’t yet realize about theological research is that it can almost always benefit from paying attention to the irrelevant. Which is what my advisor wanted to show me.

“Why don’t you go have a look at Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans,” he said, sliding my notes back to me across his desk. I blinked. Having been steeped for the past few years in Greek and Hebrew exegesis and historical study of the first century, I didn’t see much point in reading Barth. Hadn’t the great biblical scholar Brevard Childs paid Barth the backhanded compliment of calling his exegesis a “virtuoso performance,” effectively condemning it as too creative for its own good? Hadn’t James Barr, another accomplished biblical historian, dubbed Barth’s exegesis—you can hear him sighing as he wrote these words—“wearisome, inept, and futile”? I couldn’t see what benefit I would gain from reading Barth, mired as his commentary was in early twentieth-century debates about Protestant liberalism and existentialism. What I wanted was to understand Paul, not wriggle down some rabbit trail of philosophically inflected theology.”

3. Stop pretending to be offended by everything! Here is a helpful post from the National Review that is arguing we should quit our addiction to outrage porn:

“If I treated The Daily Show as a serious news program, I’d probably note the irony of Noah’s replacing a didactic scold whose entire shtick is predicated on making fun of people whose statements he has taken out of context. And though Noah asks for understanding, it’s unlikely he will be extending the same to conservatives. But just as no one is coercing liberals to listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck (although the Left has campaigned to banish both from the airwaves), it’s easy to ignore The Daily Show. I do it almost every day.

The problem with this kind of prefabricated reaction is not that it emboldens haters but that it crowds out legitimate grievances. Everything begins to stink of politics, and we start sounding like a bunch of humorless protesters. There is nothing wrong with calling out people for the things they say, but there is something fundamentally illiberal about a mob’s hounding people for every stupid tweet or making snap judgments about entire careers based on a few comments. Most often, the purpose is to chill speech. At some point, Americans decided they were going to be offended by everything. And, I guess, that’s what really offends me most.”

4. Often our first response is the wrong one. Aaron Earls argues our first thought should be to pray, not to speak:

“When I saw Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, had been shot and killed by a white police officer in Charleston, my first response was wrong.

When I heard about the mess surrounding Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, I didn’t have the right initial response then either.

If I’m honest, the first action I usually take after every significant global, national, local or personal event is mistaken.

It’s not that I lash out in misdirected anger or refuse to follow the facts of the case. Instead, my first response is always to say something to anyone except the One who can actually do something about it.

I want to tweet something or post on Facebook or write a blog post or do anything—and everything—except pray.

Praying seems so passive, so weak, so much of a responsibility shift. But that’s kinda the point.”

Worth Reading - 4/8

1. How did the Nazi concentration camps work? A somber topic, but an informative read from the New Yorker:

“One night in the autumn of 1944, two Frenchwomen—Loulou Le Porz, a doctor, and Violette Lecoq, a nurse—watched as a truck drove in through the main gates of Ravensbrück, the Nazi concentration camp for women. “There was a lorry,” Le Porz recalled, “that suddenly arrives and it turns around and reverses towards us. And it lifts up and it tips out a whole pile of corpses.” These were the bodies of Ravensbrück inmates who had died doing slave labor in the many satellite camps, and they were now being returned for cremation. Talking, decades later, to the historian and journalist Sarah Helm, whose new book, “Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women” (Doubleday), recounts the stories of dozens of the camp’s inmates, Le Porz says that her reaction was simple disbelief. The sight of a truck full of dead bodies was so outrageous, so out of scale with ordinary experience, that “if we recount that one day, we said to each other, nobody would believe us.” The only way to make the scene credible would be to record it: “If one day someone makes a film they must film this scene. This night. This moment.”

Le Porz’s remark was prophetic. The true extent of Nazi barbarity became known to the world in part through the documentary films made by Allied forces after the liberation of other German camps. There have been many atrocities committed before and since, yet to this day, thanks to those images, the Nazi concentration camp stands as the ultimate symbol of evil. The very names of the camps—Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Auschwitz—have the sound of a malevolent incantation. They have ceased to be ordinary place names—Buchenwald, after all, means simply “beech wood”—and become portals to a terrible other dimension.”

2. A view of writing that is like a view of life:

“We in the English-speaking world have survived thirty-seven years without “How to Write a Thesis.” Why bother with it now? After all, Eco wrote his thesis-writing manual before the advent of widespread word processing and the Internet. There are long passages devoted to quaint technologies such as note cards and address books, careful strategies for how to overcome the limitations of your local library. But the book’s enduring appeal—the reason it might interest someone whose life no longer demands the writing of anything longer than an e-mail—has little to do with the rigors of undergraduate honors requirements. Instead, it’s about what, in Eco’s rhapsodic and often funny book, the thesis represents: a magical process of self-realization, a kind of careful, curious engagement with the world that need not end in one’s early twenties. “Your thesis,” Eco foretells, “is like your first love: it will be difficult to forget.” By mastering the demands and protocols of the fusty old thesis, Eco passionately demonstrates, we become equipped for a world outside ourselves—a world of ideas, philosophies, and debates.

Eco’s career has been defined by a desire to share the rarefied concerns of academia with a broader reading public. He wrote a novel that enacted literary theory (“The Name of the Rose”) and a children’s book about atoms conscientiously objecting to their fate as war machines (“The Bomb and the General”). “How to Write a Thesis” is sparked by the wish to give any student with the desire and a respect for the process the tools for producing a rigorous and meaningful piece of writing. “A more just society,” Eco writes at the book’s outset, would be one where anyone with “true aspirations” would be supported by the state, regardless of their background or resources. Our society does not quite work that way. It is the students of privilege, the beneficiaries of the best training available, who tend to initiate and then breeze through the thesis process.”

3. What's it like to become a joke on the internet? This is one woman's story of how her slightly odd behavior became the subject of derision and how it made her feel. (Note there is some language in this, but it is well worth reading despite that.)

“One night, about 10 months ago, I got an email from a friend in Vermont, with the subject line “Is this you!?”

I clicked it open, and the friend had sent me a link to a website called “Youredoingitwrong.com,” which is a site of all viewer-submitted photos of people doing things hilariously, ignorantly wrong in public. The exact page, or image, that this friend had sent was the inside of a Snap Fitness workout center, and the camera point-of-view was looking at the back of a person on a treadmill—looking through and past some pieces of exercise equipment in the foreground, as if, you know, spying.

The person we see on the treadmill is quite large, and though we can’t see her face, she seems to be female because she has long hair in pigtails. She’s wearing denim overalls, big denim overalls, like a farmer, and—this is the important part—she’s not walking on the treadmill. Her big body in her big overalls is sitting in one of Snap’s spindly little red folding chairs, on the treadmill—which is not moving—and she’s looking up above the treadmill display, watching the flat-screen TV that’s mounted on the wall. She is definitely “doing it wrong.””

4. How much profit do corporations really make? It's probably less than you think:

““Someday this will all be yours,” I said, waving my hand across the aisles of the Piggly Wiggly. I was trying to ingratiate myself with my boss, the general manager for the biggest grocery store in Clarksville, Texas. He just smirked and shook his head. “For every dollar in sales, how much do you think this stores earns in profit?”

At the time I was taking high school economics and considered myself something of a financial savant because I knew the difference between stocks and bonds. Still, I was in full-on toady mode and thought it best to undershoot what I believed the true profit margin to be. I went with a safe number that I knew must be far too low. “About forty cents?” I asked.

“One cent,” he said. “For every dollar we put in the cash register we keep about one penny in profit.””

Worth Reading - 4/7

1. How did coffee become an acceptable vice for Christians? A thoughtful commentary on coffee culture:

“Christians and coffee have a long and storied history, from the Reformation to the church basement coffee hour. Wherever two or more are gathered in the name of God, you can usually also find an urn of mediocre brew and a stack of Styrofoam cups.

The trajectory of coffee drinking in America, from a shared and slow activity to a personal and quick transaction, mirrors the trajectory of evangelical Christianity. Lent is almost over, and many Christians will rejoice that they can once again get their regular coffee fix. But most of us would never give it up in the first place.

Coffee fuels many of us—54 percent of American adults drink it on a daily basis. It gets us through the worst days, gives us a reason to get out of bed and restores us to the angels of our better nature. If that sounds a little religious, it’s no coincidence.

Coffee is an acceptable vice. Unlike alcohol, which many evangelicals either abstain from or approach warily, coffee has been enthusiastically embraced.”

2. On the cultural bias against Christians in the U.K. Is it fundamentally backward to be faithful?

“The question was asked in a tone of Old Malvernian hauteur which implied that spending time in religious contemplation was clearly deviant behaviour of the most disgusting kind. Jeremy seemed to be suggesting that it would probably be less scandalous if we discovered the two men had sought relief from the pressures of high office by smoking crack together.

Praying? What kind of people are you?

Well, the kind of people who built our civilisation, founded our democracies, developed our modern ideas of rights and justice, ended slavery, established universal education and who are, even as I write, in the forefront of the fight against poverty, prejudice and ignorance. In a word, Christians.

But to call yourself a Christian in contemporary Britain is to invite pity, condescension or cool dismissal. In a culture that prizes sophistication, non-judgmentalism, irony and detachment, it is to declare yourself intolerant, naive, superstitious and backward.”

3. "Joy to the World" is really an Easter hymn. This is my latest contribution at The Institute for Faith, Work and Economics:

“One of my favorite hymns is “Joy to the World.” We usually sing it around Christmas, but for years I have thought of it as an Easter hymn.

The first verse calls for us to have joy because the Lord has come, and calls for heaven and nature to sing. Nature is singing in anticipation of the redemption spoken of in Romans 8:19–21, when the effects of the Fall are removed.”

4. A thoughtful post by Tim Challies that helps explain why so much ethical discourse seems impossible in our contemporary milieu:

“We are at an interesting point in history. I guess there’s never really a boring point in history, but there are definitely times when things advance or unravel in a hurry. And today we are seeing the full-out charge of a new kind of morality. We see it playing out in the media just about every day, and Nancy Pearcey’s book Total Truth is still one of the most helpful guides to understanding what is happening around us.

Our society insists that there needs to be a radical split between two different spheres: the private and the public. In the public sphere we have society’s great institutions: the state, academia, multinational corporations, the mainstream media, and the like. In the private sphere we have the family, the church, and personal relationships. We are told that these public institutions are based only on what is scientific and objective. Meanwhile, the private sphere is composed of all those things that are subjective or based on personal values; we are allowed to have them, but they are less important than the public sphere and must never be allowed to influence it.”

Worth Reading - 4/6

1. Five things to think about before you get offended online:

“I am tired of making disclaimers for everything I say.

It feels like if I post anything without a dozen caveats, I risk starting an unwelcome avalanche of opinions. I rarely write a post or make a comment without first ensuring minimal margin for offense.

In a world that encourages patience and acceptance, people sure can be touchy, particularly some Christians. Too many times, we can be like over-eager watchdogs, sniffing out any morsel of what we deem as offensive, inappropriate or even “heretical.”

It’s gotten to the point where it’s almost become trendy to be offended.

Even with all of the qualifiers available in the English language, there is no way to prevent offending someone, at some point. We can only seek to be clear in what we say and not intentionally stir up controversy just for controversy’s sake.”

2. Breaking away from "lifeboat theology" to establish "ark theology."

“Paul Marshall wisely calls us to abandon a lifeboat theology for what he refers to as an ark theology. The Genesis writer tells of humankind’s deep dark plunge into sin. The corruption of God’s good creation and the wickedness of sin were so unimaginably horrific that God seriously considered wiping out his creation. In Genesis 6 we read, “So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them” (Gen. 6:7). But rather than annihilating what he had made and starting completely over, God extends gracious favor to a man named Noah. God makes a covenant with Noah and commissions him to build an ark. Rather than blotting out all of creation, Noah and his family and a host of living creatures are rescued and preserved in the ark from the destruction of the flood. God remains committed to restore the earth and to continue on with his original creation. After Noah exits the ark, God makes a covenant with him, promising to never destroy the earth with a flood again.

The story of Noah and the ark reminds us that God has not given up on his good world, even though it has been ravaged by sin and death. In a burst of rapturous praise, the psalmist in Psalm 24 declares that the whole earth, and everything in it, belongs to the Lord. God still loves his world. A glorious future awaits the earth.”

3. Here is an outstanding example of an entrepreneur going beyond his minimal ethical requirements to recognize the value his employees add to his business: 

“Employees of the Huizenga Automation Group got a great surprise earlier this week. According to Mlive, after selling the company, owner J.C. Huizenga gave away $5.75 million in bonuses to his employees at two manufacturing companies that were part of the Automation Group. Huizenga acknowledged that his success was due to the work of his employees so he wanted to share his profits with them: “We all worked together at J.R. Automation and Dane Systems” and the companies “had amazing success. It was the right thing to share with everybody.” Bonuses were based on years of service and responsibilities.”

4. A thoughtful piece on the value of adjunct instructors. Although I disagree with the conclusion that using adjuncts is unjust (after all, they agree to it and don't pursue other work), there is a remarkable growth in the percentage of adjuncts compared to "real" professors:

“Adjuncts are generally hired on semester-to-semester contracts, given no health insurance or retirement benefits, no office, no professional development, and few university resources. Compensation per course—including not just classroom hours but grading, reading, responding to student e-mails, and office hours—varies, but the median pay, according to a recent report, is twenty-seven hundred dollars. Many adjuncts teach at multiple universities, commuting between two or three schools in order to make ends meet, and are often unable to pursue their own academic or artistic work because of their schedules. In the past four decades, tenured and tenure-track positions have plummeted and adjunct instructor jobs have soared, second only in growth to administrators. Adjuncts have always had roles to play: filling in for a last-minute class, covering for a professor on sabbatical, providing outside expertise for a one-off, specialized course. But the position was not designed to provide nearly half of a school’s faculty or the majority of a person’s income. It’s estimated that adjuncts constitute more than forty per cent of all instructors at American colleges and universities.”

Worth Reading - 4/2

1. It's official, Americans should be drinking more coffee:

“When the nation’s top nutrition panel released its latest dietary recommendations on Thursday, the group did something it had never done before: weigh in on whether people should be drinking coffee. What it had to say is pretty surprising.

Not only can people stop worrying about whether drinking coffee is bad for them, according to the panel, they might even want to consider drinking a bit more.

The panel cited minimal health risks associated with drinking between three and five cups per day. It also said that consuming as many as five cups of coffee each day (400 mg) is tied to several health benefits, including a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

”We saw that coffee has a lot of health benefits,” said Miriam Nelson, a professor at Tufts University and one of the committee’s members. “Specifically when you’re drinking more than a couple cups per day.””

2. Thomas Kidd wonders what Evangelicals can do to make themselves more likable:

“It is a good day for evangelicals when we get positive coverage in the New York Times, but it also raises a perennial question for traditional Christians. How much should we expect, or seek, the world’s approval for what we’re doing? Dr. Foster and other missionaries like him are great examples of Christians whose undeniable self-sacrifice and benevolent work overcomes all but the most hardened secularists’ questions about why they insist on talking to patients about Jesus.

It’s nice to be liked. But it also comes with temptation – that of focusing all the church’s work on things that will engender the world’s approval. A hundred years ago, social gospel Christians began to suggest that service and aid, not evangelism, should encompass all of a believer’s missionary responsibility. Thus began one of the most important turns away from evangelical Christianity which has haunted the mainline denominations in America ever since.”

3. According to Tim Challies, a clean house is a sign of a wasted life:

“You have probably heard the saying before: A clean house is a sign of a wasted life. Whatever else the phrase means, it expresses some of the frustration and the sense of futility that attends life in this world. I thought of that saying when I spotted this proverb: “Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox” (Proverbs 14:4). A little bit of research shows that commentators are divided on exactly what it means, but I think one of the explanations rises to the top.

According to this explanation, the proverb is about the messiness of a life well-lived. Tremper Longman says the moral is that “a productive life is a messy life.”

I love productivity. At least, I love productivity when it is properly defined—as effectively stewarding your gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God. By this definition, each one of us, no matter our vocation, ought to pursue productivity with all the vigor we can muster. And if you do that, it is inevitable that along the way you will accumulate some mess. You cannot focus your time, attention, gifts, energy, and enthusiasm toward noble goals while still keeping every corner of life perfectly tidy.”

4. Absolute truth in an upside down age:

“Whether we realize it or not, we all end up at times on our backs staring at the sky screaming, Water! In our family, political, occupational, and even spiritual lives, we make decisions and take stances based on bad theology, personal benefit, political correctness, or simple convenience. We think the right thing to do is whatever the majority thinks at the time. Like a ship without a sail, we are tossed back and forth by the prevailing trends and stances of our cultural leaders, anchorless in a storm of popular opinion.

In a moment of misguided sincerity, my baby boy needed absolute truth. And contrary to popular belief, absolute truth is what we all need. As Proverbs 14:12 warns, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” No doubt the person in this proverb is sincere in his beliefs. He may even think he’s doing what’s best for himself, his family, his country. Unfortunately, though, sincerity by itself is never an accurate indicator of right and wrong. Many of the decisions we make—both individually and collectively—that we think are good are ultimately leading us down pathways of destruction. In fact, many of us deceive ourselves by assuming our thinking is wise—or, as we sometimes express it, “enlightened” or “evolved.””

Worth Reading - 4/1

1. What does Christ's resurrection mean for how we live and work?

“Our work will be fully restored when Christ returns, both the good work we have done in the past and all the good work we will do in the future eternity of the New Earth.

The frustration and decay of this current age aren’t the whole picture.

We live in what theologians call the “already, but not yet.” We live between the resurrection and the second coming of Christ. Redemption enables us to imagine a new creation, and to work to begin the process of building it, right here, right now, through the power of Christ at work within us.

As we celebrate Easter and affirm again that “He has risen,” let us also remember Apostle Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians 15. ”

2. An author at Slate argues that we should not blame the mass murder caused by the German co-pilot on depression:

“Was Andreas Lubitz depressed? We don’t know; a torn-up doctor’s note and bottles of pills don’t tell us much. Most people who commit suicide suffer from a mental illness, most commonly depression. But calling his actions suicidal is misleading. Lubitz did not die quietly at home. He maliciously engineered a spectacular plane crash and killed 150 people. Suicidal thoughts can be a hallmark of depression, but mass murder is another beast entirely.

Using the word “depression” to describe inexplicable or violent behavior sends two false signals: First, that society has no obligations with regard to our happiness—because misery is a medical problem—and second, that a depressed person is in danger of committing abhorrent acts.

Depressed people need help. “Depressed” people do, too—but not the same kind.”

3. Five tips on how to win every online argument ever:

“Twitter, Facebook, the comment sections of blog posts and YouTube videos, and all sorts of Internet meeting places have turned into nothing more than virtual gladiator arenas in which we fight to the death about stuff we forget about the next day.
—-
It’s easy to get caught up in angry Internet discussions. But I think everyone, Christians especially, really ought to consider the ways in which they communicate with others online.

You don’t win an argument by being the loudest person in the room. You don’t win an argument by being the biggest jerk in the room.”

4. Eight reasons we need the Puritans:

“For many years before entering vocational ministry, I worked as a journalist in the dog-eat-dog world of secular media. While working as a reporter for a metropolitan daily newspaper in Georgia, one of my more progressive colleagues teased me good-naturedly about being a “conservative boy” from a small town in the sticks of North Georgia. She said, “You know what you are? You’re a Puritan!” At the time, I didn’t really know what to make of this remark. Today, I would see it as a high compliment.

In the minds of many, Puritanism equals scrupulous rules-keeping, dour Christianity, or, as the inimitable American journalist H. L. Mencken famously quipped, “Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

Over the past few decades, thanks in large part to the publishing efforts of Banner of Truth and the advocacy of Martyn-Lloyd Jones, the English and American Puritans have made a strong comeback among Reformed evangelicals. During my years in seminary, I fell in love with the Puritans. Now, I delight in teaching about the Puritans, and during my time as pastor, men like John Bunyan, Thomas Watson, and John Owen were among my shepherds through their deeply devotional theological writing. Though dead, they certainly still speak. And we need to hear them.”

Worth Reading - 3/31

1. Six questions every writer should ask about every sentence, from Aaron Earls:

“When a writer connects with his or her readers, they will undoubtably inspire questions.

The audience will ask: Can this help me in any way? Does this reveal some truth that can impact my thinking on a topic?

Even humor or fiction writing should provoke thoughts and questions in the reader. The best writing always does.

So how can you as a writer provoke questions within your readers—by asking your own questions first.

Here are six questions George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and 1984, encourages every writer to ask about every sentence they write.”

2. The tricky logic of laws protecting the unborn. Some thoughtful commentary from Trevin Wax:

“On March 18, Michelle Wilkins answered a Craigslist ad for baby clothes. When she arrived at the seller’s home, Dynel Lane, a former nurse’s aide, attacked her, cut her open, and removed her unborn child. Wilkins survived the incident; her child did not.

Hearing about this horrifying crime provokes a sense of moral revulsion, as well as a demand for justice to be carried out against the killer. But this crime took place in Colorado, and therefore, the attacker will not face murder charges. Colorado state law does not recognize the fetus as a person unless the fetus has reached the point he or she can survive outside the womb.

Today, 38 states have fetal homicide laws that increase penalties for crimes involving pregnant women or explicitly refer to the fetus as a person worthy of protection.

But creating and passing these laws is a contentious process because it takes lawmakers to the heart of our society’s debate over abortion: What is the unborn?”

3. Just in case you need it, a how-to guide on jumping from a speeding car from the Art of Manliness:

“Sometimes when I’m driving, I’ll imagine scenarios that would require me to jump out of my speeding car. I know I can’t be the only one who does this. I do it mainly to pass time while in traffic, but I think there’s also a part of me who wants to be prepared if (in the unlikely instance) I actually have bail out of a moving vehicle to save my life. The scenarios that I usually come up with are 1) my brakes go out and my car is about to fly off a cliff Thelma and Louise style and 2) a criminal organization has put me in the backseat of a car and is transporting me to an abandoned warehouse to beat me with a baseball bat. In both cases, jumping from a speeding car is probably the best option for survival.

Okay, so my scenarios seem unlikely, but when I lived in Tijuana, two of my friends actually did have to jump from a speeding vehicle. True story.”

4. An overview of the Big Story of the Bible in five minutes. This is designed for kids, but it is worthwhile for adults, too.

Worth Reading - 3/30

1. Nicholas Kristof defends evangelical Christians in this weekend's New York Times:

“Today, among urban Americans and Europeans, “evangelical Christian” is sometimes a synonym for “rube.” In liberal circles, evangelicals constitute one of the few groups that it’s safe to mock openly.

Yet the liberal caricature of evangelicals is incomplete and unfair. I have little in common, politically or theologically, with evangelicals or, while I’m at it, conservative Roman Catholics. But I’ve been truly awed by those I’ve seen in so many remote places, combating illiteracy and warlords, famine and disease, humbly struggling to do the Lord’s work as they see it, and it is offensive to see good people derided.”

2. Aaron Earls takes a more detailed look at the hyperventilation over boycotting Indiana for protecting religious freedom. Here is a helpful analysis of what the RFRA bill actually entails and what you will have to do to be consistent if you decide to boycott Indiana:

“After Indiana governor Mike Pence signed a state-level Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), many people are calling for a boycott.

The NCAA, headquartered in Indianapolis, is “concerned” about the ramifications. The NFL is “studying” the bill. Other groups have already decided it’s time for a all out boycott of the entire state. But they might want to reconsider that response.

While I understand the desire to be passionate about your closely held beliefs (ironic since that’s what the RFRA is designed to protect), a boycott of Indiana will not be enough. In order to be consistent, protestors will have to stretch that boycott far beyond the Hoosier state.

Currently, 19 states, including Indiana, have passed RFRA laws (AL, CT, FL, ID, IN, IL, KS, KY, LA, MO, MS, NM, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, and VA). Seeing Texas on the list, is the NFL planning on taking the Super Bowl away from Houston in 2017?

In addition, there are 10 other states where courts have interpreted their laws to provide the same type of religious protections (AK, MA, ME, MI, MN, MT, NC, OH, WA, and WI). If they want to be consistent, I guess the NCAA has to be “concerned” about the 2019 Final Four in Minneapolis.”

3. The lament of a parent and educator over the process of education as it now stands:

“My seventeen-year-old son has just completed fifteen examinations in the course of two weeks. They varied in length – some in excess of three hours, with a half hour break before the next exam – and we are still feeling the fallout from this veritable onslaught. These were not ‘the real exams’ – the ones that ‘counted’ – the ones that will help to discriminate between the sheep and the goats, who gets into university (and which ones of course), and who will be left outside the doors. Theoretically, then, the pressure on him should not have been so very great, at least not as pronounced as it will be a few months from now.

Not only as a mother, but as an educator, I cannot help but wonder about this process. Looking at my son, increasingly silent and exhausted, it is hard not to feel that formal education – at least at this particular juncture in his life – is anything but a stimulus to thinking in a deep and creative way about the world around him. As a young child he was nick-named ‘What if’, always posing questions about how the world might be transformed. It will be a miracle if that sense of curiosity and wonder is not beaten out of him by the time he graduates.”

4. How not to read the Bible if you want to remain a Christian. An interaction with John Dominic Crossan's recent book.

“The God of the Christian Bible is a God of perfection. A God who deals with sin in the crucifixion of Christ since we could not bear the weight of his law ourselves. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, he came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. On the cross, Jesus experienced the retributive justice of God on behalf of his people. God’s wrath was poured out on Christ, and the resurrection proves that he satisfied that wrath. Christians look forward to God’s restoration of his creation, the day when all things will be perfect again.

Crossan doesn’t have any faith that God will restore things. It’s up to us. Crossan says in an interview, “We invent a Second Coming because we cannot tolerate the first one, which is the only one.” In Crossan’s understanding of the Incarnation, Jesus came to tell us to share and to avoid violence, and it’s up to us to follow his advice. Jesus the Messiah becomes Jesus the kindergarten teacher. Crossan thinks this message of nonviolence is so urgent because now we have nuclear weapons, and he suggests that some fool fundamentalist will use these nukes to bring about the Apocalypse. But this won’t be a Biblical apocalypse of judgment that ends in restoration. It’s just the end of evolution. It’s somewhat amusing to see that Crossan hasn’t outgrown his generation’s fear of nuclear winter.”

Weekend Reading

1. What is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and why does it matter? Should we really ban Indiana for considering such a bill? Joe Carter explains some background on the issue. which is much different than what most people understand from many of the reports going around:

“The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) is a 1993 United States federal law aimed at preventing laws that substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion. The legislation was introduced by Rep. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on March 11, 1993 and passed by a unanimous U.S. House and a near unanimous U.S. Senate with three dissenting votes. The bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

According to the text of the law, the purposes of the RFRA are:

(1) to restore the compelling interest test as set forth in Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963) and Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972) and to guarantee its application in all cases where free exercise of religion is substantially burdened; and

(2) to provide a claim or defense to persons whose religious exercise is substantially burdened by government.”

2. Social Justice considerations often target racial minorities, leaving the largest group of those in need of justice in the US out. Here is Anthony Bradley explaining why poor whites need social justice, too:

“If you want to hear crickets in a room full of educated, missionally minded, culture-shaping evangelicals, ask this question: “What are you doing to serve the needs of poor white people?”

A recent seminary graduate, who is white, asked me what he needed to do to prepare to plant a church in a small lower-class town that is 76 percent black and 21 percent white. He was rightly cautious after reading in Aliens in the Promised Land about Rev. Lance Lewis’ call for a moratorium on white evangelicals planting churches in black areas because of evangelicalism’s cultural obtuseness and patriarchal disposition toward ethnic minorities. Since most black communities in the South are already saturated with churches, I asked this young man why he was not interested in planting a church among the lower-class whites in his county. His response: “It had not occurred to me to plant a church among lower-class whites.””

3. How many stars are there? Here's a video that tries to explain the concept:

4. Grant Castleberry reflects on losing his father in a plane crash:

“As you can probably imagine, one of the most difficult things the family members or loved ones of a victim of an airplane crash face is not having a body to mourn. Sometimes bodies are recoverable, but in many cases, as in the recent Airbus tragedy, they are not.

An airplane crash makes death even more dramatic, too, since the loved one is seen by friends and family one moment only to take off on a plane the next and never be seen again.

Then there are the questions that follow in the wake of the tragedy. Did my loved one suffer? Was it traumatic? Did they have time for any last thoughts? Did they survive the crash only to later?

Now in the case of the recent Airbus tragedy, where it now appears the accident was caused purposely by the co-pilot, there are even more sickening questions. I personally can not imagine what those mothers with babies were thinking as they were holding this little life in their hands, knowing it was about to end.”

Worth Reading - 3/27

1. From First Things, an essay on John Wesley and religious freedom:

“Last year I wrote for First Things on John Wesley’s reaction to anti-Methodist riots in the mid-1700s as it relates to contemporary assaults on religious liberty. Recently a letter by John Wesley revealing his views about law enforcement and religious freedom was tweeted by its owner, the Wesley Hobart Museum of the Uniting Church in Tasmania, Australia. The letter, addressed to an ironmonger turned Methodist preacher in Winchester named Jasper Winscom, dated May 9, 1785, when Wesley was almost age 83, barely appears in Methodist literature. This letter initially concerns plans for a Methodist preaching house but mostly focuses on how to deal with anti-Methodist rioters, with whom Wesley and his Methodist followers in Britain had contended since almost their start.”

2. The mass murder of the German pilot who intentionally crashed his airliner demonstrates how much we tend on others to be people of good will, and how no matter how safe we try to be, we must still rely on God:

“It seems to have been no accident, officials said Thursday.

Information collected by investigators suggests the co-pilot who was in control of the Germanwings airplane when it crashed, killing all 150 people on board, was acting deliberately, the prosecutor said Thursday.

The co-pilot apparently “wanted to destroy the aircraft,” Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said.

Lufthansa officials are “speechless that this aircraft has been deliberately crashed by the co-pilot,” CEO Carsten Spohr said. The company owns Germanwings.

It’s unknown whether the co-pilot planned his actions in advance, Robin said. But the co-pilot, 28-year-old German national Andreas Lubitz, “took advantage” of a moment in which the pilot left the cockpit.”

3. Peter Enns here is castigating scholars that hold to inerrancy, because, you know, its better for Christianity if everyone believes there are lots of errors in it. In less snarky terms, he is going after scholars that look for ways to resolve apparent discrepancies in Scripture in ways that are faithful to the text. I disagree with his methods and conclusions, but it is worthwhile to see how he does what he does:

“I recently posted, with some commentary, an article published by Stephen L. Young on inerrantist biblical scholars employing “protective strategies” and “privileging insider claims” in their publications.

In that article, Young, “examines how Evangelical Christian inerrantist scholars theorize their biblical scholarship and its relation to the broader academy, highlighting (1) their self-representation as true academics, and (2) the ways they modulate historical methods to prefer interpretive options that keep the Bible inerrant.”

Young just published a second article illustrating this thesis by focusing on the complex issue of Israelite literacy: “Maximizing Literacy as a Protective Strategy: Redescribing Inerrantist Scholarship on Israelite Literacy.””

4. Voices from both sides of the "same sex marriage" debate present their perspective on the opposing view's strongest argument. This is a though provoking post:

“In advance of the Supreme Court’s consideration of the gay marriage issue, we asked five people on the Right with differing views on gay marriage to share doubts or misgivings they have about their own position. On an issue where so many people are sure of the rightness of their views, what’s the one thing that gives you pause? Here’s what they had to say.”

5. I found this ESPN story on what Penny Hardaway has been doing after the NBA to be enjoyable. He is making good use of his talents in a way that benefits society, and helping his friend makes for a very good story.

Worth Reading - 3/26

1. An interview with Ryan Anderson about physician assisted suicide at the ERLC's Canon and Culture. Sound ethical reasoning that is worth reading:

“Physicians are always to care, never to kill. They are to eliminate illness and disease but never eliminate their patients. Not every medical means must be used. Patients can refuse or doctors can withhold particular treatments that are useless or causing more harm than good. But in deciding that a treatment is useless, we must not decide that a patient is worthless. Doctors should not kill. But doctors should help their patients die a natural death with dignity.

Instead of embracing PAS, we should respond to suffering with true compassion and solidarity. People seeking PAS typically suffer from depression or other mental illnesses, as well as simply from loneliness. Instead of helping them to kill themselves, we should offer them appropriate medical care and human presence. For those in physical pain, pain management and other palliative medicine can manage their symptoms effectively. For those for whom death is imminent, hospice care and fellowship can accompany them in their last days. Anything less falls short of what human dignity requires. The real challenge facing society is to make quality end-of-life care available to all.

Doctors should help their patients to die a dignified death of natural causes, not assist in killing. Physicians are always to care, never to kill. They properly seek to alleviate suffering, and it is reasonable to withhold or withdraw medical interventions that are not worthwhile. However, to judge that a patient’s life is not worthwhile and deliberately hasten his or her end is another thing altogether.”

2. Can we balance ecology and economic flourishing? Charlie Self, a pentacostal theologian, thinks so:

“Being a follower of Jesus includes a hopeful vision of the future. In the fullness of the kingdom of God, we will live on a new earth as embodied humans, worshiping and working, married to Christ and in fellowship with sisters and brothers from all nations (Rev. 21-22). There will be no more war, perfect justice, a restored ecology and each person will steward gifts and responsibilities consistent with his or her created design and fidelity during this present age (Isaiah 2; Mt. 25).

The resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit are the historical/personal guarantees of this eschatological vision (Acts 2-3). This audacious Christian hope inspires our covenant fidelity to the Triune God and concrete service to the world. Because of God’s unconditional love expressed in the Cross-and the liberating power of the resurrection, we now serve others sacrificially and all our present good works are signposts of the future.”

3. What is the relationship between work, common grace and the curse? Jordan Ballor considers this:

“That human beings were created to be creators, to work, is undeniable. The anthropological concept of homo faber, man the tool-maker, attests to this basic aspect of what it means to be human. From a Christian perspective, we confess that human beings make things in a way that imitates their Maker. While God creates “out of nothing” (ex nihilo) and then orders and arranges it, we create in a creaturely way, dependent on God’s primary acts of creation. All this is true about the human person, and it is good that it is so.

But ever since the fall into sin, work has been bittersweet. This negative aspect of work is communicated to us in the biblical narrative in the form of a curse. As God says to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:17-19 NIV). As fallen creatures we no longer relate to the world around us, whether the world of plants, animals, human beings, or spiritual truths, the way we did before.”

4. A little after the date of Mr. Rogers birthday, Chris Martin writes a post about the importance of Christian kindness and being neighborly:

“Somewhere between episodes of Full House, Boy Meets World, and Pappy Drew It, Mr. Rogers became the neighbor I never really had.

It got me thinking this weekend, though, about what made Mr. Rogers truly unique: his kindness.

Obviously, I never knew the guy personally, so I can’t speak to his kindness in real life or his Christian faith (though he did go to seminary with R.C. Sproul and was a Presbyterian minister for a time). But, I get the sense Fred Rogers was a genuinely kind, good-natured person.

What would it look like if Christians treated their real neighbors with as much kindness as Mr. Rogers treated his fake ones?”

5. Nathan Finn discussion Baptist Associations. Should they be affinity based or geographically based? Or both? A helpful essay on someone who's been thinking about this for a while:

“I think the future of Baptist associationalism is best served by finding a balance between geography and affinity. On the one hand, this means many traditional associations will need to rethink how they currently do things. They will need to be willing to encourage greater theological unity among constituent churches when it comes to primary and secondary matters while honoring local church autonomy when it comes to tertiary matters. Many local associations will need to revisit the idea of some sort of confessional basis of cooperation as a way to cultivate this sort of unity and maintain a consistent witness to the watching world.

Furthermore, traditional associations will need to narrow their mission to focus on a handful of priorities. I would suggest four priorities: local evangelism, church planting, ministries of mercy and justice, and practical theological education for pastors and other ministry leaders. As much as possible, local associations need to become localized, contextual mission boards and informal seminaries that mobilize churches for mission and educate leaders for ministry faithfulness.

On the other hand, many affinity-based associations will need to find ways to cultivate a more “local” feel. While modern technology makes it possible to be closely connected with churches across the continent, there is something to be said for regular face-to-face interaction and hands-on partnership. As affinity-based associations grow, they need to consider either splitting into multiple like-minded associations or forming regional chapters of the wider association.”

Worth Reading - 3/25

1. Making an idol out of theology is a real possibility for seminary students. Desiring God considers that problem today:

“We have often loved what we’ve learned about God more than God himself.

The Bible warns us about the dangers that come with our knowledge of God, especially for the theologically refined and convinced. “You cannot serve both God and theology.” Good theology is a means to enjoying and worshipping God, or it is useless.

Has your theology turned into idolatry? Has your knowledge of God ironically and tragically drawn you away from him, not nearer to him? Here are nine questions that might help you diagnose theology idolatry in your own heart and mind.”

2. "What would Jesus do?" is the wrong question according to Ellen Painter Dollar. I've thought this for a while and her blog helps explain why this is so:

“In the 1990s, evangelicals by the thousands began wearing simple bracelets also posing the question “What would Jesus do?”—abbreviated as “WWJD.” While I never wore a WWJD bracelet, in the same time period I worshipped at a church that voiced traditional Christian doctrine but, because of our very nontraditional practices (no church building, no clergy, a two-year process toward membership, required tithing, etc.), also attracted people disillusioned with traditional Christianity, sometimes including doctrine. For a number of my friends in that church, believing that Jesus was God incarnate was a stretch they couldn’t quite make. But they did believe that Jesus clearly modeled a more compassionate, just way of living that we ought to follow.The church was full of people—those who accepted Jesus as God incarnate and those who didn’t—doing works of mercy and justice in Jesus’s name.”

3. My post yesterday at the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics on 1 Corinthians 15 and our life in this world:

“We are called to serve faithfully in our callings in light of the gospel, just as Paul was called to fulfill his task.

Our vocation may not be to take the gospel to new places and preach it to people who have never heard it, but it is no less important to be faithful in the mundane.

As we do our daily work, we should do it in light of the gospel, which ends in the hope of the resurrection when everything will be set right and sin will be no more. Our aim should be to live in that future state as well as we can in a fallen world. We should strive to bring order from disorder, treat others with love, and demonstrate integrity in all that we do.”

4. Do we read Scripture for information or for delight? Here is an essay designed to encourage us in that spiritual discipline:

“This reminded me of something that Alan Jacobs observed in his book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. He noted that with the advancement of technology, in particular web media, we are becoming people who are relentless scanners for information. This is not a bad thing of course, but we must remember that technological advancements are never free—they always cost us something. In this case our grazing for information is costing us our love for reading. His book, in my view, is eye-opening.

I have seen a similar phenomenon in the church. When I visit with people and ask them about their Bible reading they often look and sound guilty. Comments include: “I need to get back to that.” “I just need to be more committed.” “I really need to do a better job.” However, when I ask why they don’t read the answer is almost always the same: “I don’t know.”

I certainly don’t know the precise reason, however, I have a hunch that it is somewhere between what Jacobs observes and what I concluded about my lack of devotion to the Omaha newspaper: we don’t delight in the Bible. We just scan it for information we don’t drink it in and digest it.”

5. Union University's C. Ben Mitchell reflects on the growing trend toward commodification of education and why a relational approach is necessary:

““As low as $157 per month!” What does that sound like to you? An ad for a used car? A pitch for a new sofa? No, it’s a recent advertisement for college courses at an institution of higher learning. The ad reeks of crass commercialism and turns education into a commodity like bathroom tile or truck tires. But education — at least education worthy of the name — is not a commodity.

Think about what our elementary and secondary school teachers do every day. They aren’t just teaching lesson plans, they are shaping, forming and molding entire generations of future citizens. What’s that worth? Chances are, among their students is a future physician, nurse, firefighter, college professor, judge, or mayor. Teachers invest themselves in the lives of their students far more than their time in the classroom might suggest. They give their energy, imagination, gifts, talents, resources, and skills to their students. And more often than not they give their love, care, and their very selves to ensure that those under their charge not only get correct answers on exams, but, as much as possible, flourish as human beings. How much is that worth per month? Treating education like laundry detergent, pickled pig’s feet, or other consumables trivializes what teachers do.”

Worth Reading - 3/24

1. An interesting essay in The Atlantic on the possible canonization of an unlikely saint, G. K. Chesterton:

“If the Catholic Church makes G. K. Chesterton a saint—as an influential group of Catholics is proposing it should—the story of his enormous coffin may become rather significant. Symbolic, even parabolic. Chesterton’s coffin was too huge, you see, to be carried down the stairs of his house in Beaconsfield, its occupant being legendarily overweight at the time of his death, in 1936. So it went out a second-floor window. Very Chestertonian: gravity, meet levity. Hagiographers might pursue the biblical resonance here, citing the Gospel passages in which a paralyzed man, unable to penetrate the crowds surrounding the house in Capernaum where Jesus was staying, is lowered in through a hole in the roof. Or they might simply declare that Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s was a spirit too large to go out through the conventional narrow door of death—that it had to be received, as it were, directly into the sky.

In his vastness and mobility, Chesterton continues to elude definition: He was a Catholic convert and an oracular man of letters, a pneumatic cultural presence, an aphorist with the production rate of a pulp novelist. Poetry, criticism, fiction, biography, columns, public debate—the phenomenon known to early-20th-century newspaper readers as “GKC” was half cornucopia, half content mill. If you’ve got a couple of days, read his impish, ageless, inside-out terrorist thriller The Man Who Was Thursday. If you’ve got an afternoon, read his masterpiece of Christian apologetics Orthodoxy: ontological basics retailed with a blissful, zooming frivolity, Thomas Aquinas meets Eddie Van Halen. If you’ve got half an hour, read “The Blue Cross,” the first and most glitteringly perfect of his stories featuring the crime-busting village priest Father Brown. If you’ve got only 10 minutes, read his essay “A Much Repeated Repetition.” (“Of a mechanical thing we have a full knowledge. Of a living thing we have a divine ignorance.”)”

2. From The Art of Manliness, MacGyver manhood and the art of masculine improvisation:

“MacGyver is stuck in the attic of a house. Bad guys are coming up the stairs and about to bust into the room. The only way out is through a window, but it’s a ways up, and angry Doberman Pinschers await below. MacGyver searches through the attic and grabs a bottle of cleaning fluid, mothballs, a telescope, a pulley, a rope, and a metal rod. He hastily assembles a rocket-propelled harpoon from the seemingly random materials, which he then uses to create a zip line to a tree outside. Just as the bad guys breach the room, he glides away to safety.

Awesome, right? This was just one of the many improvised gadgets and explosives MacGyver created during the 7-year run of the television series that bore his name. The show was so successful and memorable, that despite being canceled in 1992, it remains one of the most recognizable touchstones of popular culture and has even entered our lexicon; to jury-rig something using only the materials you have on hand is to “MacGyver” it.”

3. Trevin Wax on the wonder of a Sunday Morning:

“Every Sunday, a deacon unlocks the door, an usher picks up a stack of bulletins, a pastor kneels in the study, and they wait. Soon, the parking lot fills, and people from all walks of life stream into the building for weekly worship.

They are not paid to be here. They are not forced to be here. Yet they come and serve in beautiful ways.

In the nursery, volunteers change diapers without complaint, step in to mediate the toddlers’ dispute over sippy cups, and dole out a weekly supply of animal crackers.

Down the hall, men and women open their Bibles and discuss the meaning and application of God’s inspired Word. A doctor with more than a decade of education in medicine takes notes as a construction worker who never went to college exercises his gift in teaching the Scriptures. The small groups then rearrange their classroom space in preparation for the homeless women they will shelter during the week.”

4. David Mills writes about scientific sounding excuses for poor sexual ethics:

“One of man’s persistent dreams is to find a good reason he can’t help sinning. It started with Adam’s trying to blame Eve. Modern man naturally turns to science for this, and as he has learned more about himself and the world around him, he has also grown more ingenious in finding ways to explain why he cannot help breaking the moral law. On the one hand we have cell phones and brain surgery, on the other sophisticated defenses of sexual treachery.

One popular excuse for sinning I call the “Margaret Mead Method.” I was reminded of it when flipping through my files and finding an article titled “The Virtues of Promiscuity,” the kind of title that gets your attention.

According to a journalist named Sally Lehrman, writing in The San Francisco Chronicle, anthropologists have found that “‘Slutty’ behavior is good for the species. Women everywhere have been selflessly engaging in trysts outside of matrimony for a good long time and for excellent reasons. Anthropologists say female promiscuity binds communities closer together and improves the gene pool.””

5. An attempt to argue that belief in Hell is a heresy. Universalism is alive and kicking. This article is why we need to continue to study historical theology, because it is recycling old teachings that were debunked biblically in previous generations:

“Allin also argues that a hell from which there is no ultimate restoration—whether that be eternal torment or annihilation—would undermine the doctrine of God (his love, his justice, his goodness, his omnipotence), the victory of Christ, the power of the atonement, and so on and so forth.

Of course, those who believe in hell also affirm God’s love and justice, omnipotence, the atonement, divine victory, etc. But, Allin’s point is that when they do so they either have to add in qualifications that serve to undermine the very beliefs that they affirm or they have to simply ignore the contradictions in their belief set and talk out of both sides of their mouth at the same time.

Given the oft-heard, though incorrect, assertion that universalism is heretical, what is interesting is that the heart of Allin’s case, though he does not put it in these words, is that in order to maintain a consistent and healthy Christian orthodoxy one ought to jettison belief in eternal hell. Hell, in other words, is bad for orthodoxy.”

Worth Reading - 3/23

1. As unlikely co-belligerents, two men in South Dakota are working to curb predatory pay day lending practices. Their relationship began as a Twitter battle, moved to coffee and is now focused on something for the common good:

“Payday lending in South Dakota may become greatly curtailed, thanks to the unlikely friendship between an evangelical pastor and a former Obama campaign official.

Steve Hickey, a state legislator and pastor of The Church at the Gate in Sioux Falls, is an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage.

Steve Hildebrand, owner of Josiah’s Coffee House and Café, is openly gay and served as former deputy national campaign director for President Obama in 2008.

They met, according to a thorough article in The Atlantic, with the following exchange on Twitter, after Hickey made some controversial comments about homosexuality.

“You are becoming a huge joke in this state—huge,” Hildebrand tweeted.

“We should have coffee,” Hickey replied.

That meeting over coffee led the two Steves to start a ballot initiative that would limit the amount of interest payday lenders can charge.

Currently, payday borrowers in South Dakota can pay as much as 574 percent in annual interest on a loan, according to data from the Pew Trust.”

2. Support for government redistribution is falling, except among political liberals. An informative look at current trends from Joe Carter:

“Here’s the thing: Liberals would still support “generous redistributive policies” even if the new policies didn’t make the poor better off materially. If you doubt that’s true, just ask them. When pressed, many will admit helping the poor is merely one reason among many to support redistribution (and not necessarily the primary justification). They are also concerned with “fairness” and it’s simply unfair, in their view, that some people have much more wealth than others (i.e., than they do). Much of the concern about “economic inequality” is about trying to make people less envious by making some people poorer.

The elderly and African Americans are beginning to recognize they are not necessarily “among the groups that have the most to gain” from redistribution, at least not from additional redistributive policies. The ones that truly have the most to gain are liberals who can’t stand the idea that some people have more than they do.”

3. Why are the humanities failing? Another opinion on the topic from First Things:

“If you can’t make a case for a discipline on the basis of the actual objects studied by that discipline, it’s doomed. The field needs to have confidence in the things it takes as its subject matter. Apparently, though, the figures in the forum don’t believe that great novels and paintings and historical events are sufficient to justify the humanities. They turn to instrumental values instead, what studying those things will do to students’ cognition.

Unfortunately, even if true, those affirmations will not increase the popularity of humanities courses. What sophomore will be drawn to a course in Renaissance sculpture because it will enhance her critical thinking skills?

Only the actual materials will sustain the humanities, but we have to believe in them enough to say so. We need more conviction than this. We need to be able to say to incoming students, “In this course, you are going to encounter words and images and ideas that are going to change your life. We’ve got Hamlet and Lear, Achilles and David, Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Bennett, Augustine’s pears and Van Gogh’s stars—beauty and sublimity and truth. If you miss them, you will not be the person you could be.””

4. The revenge pornographers next door. There is general shock at what some 
"good" guys in a college fraternity are capable of. Could it be that total depravity is a thing, and that we should expect sin from everyone? When people are taught to value other humans only as animals and not as the imago Dei, this sort of this is more likely:

“Of all the deeply disturbing revelations to emerge from the recent investigation into a Penn State fraternity’s secret Facebook page, perhaps none was quite so alarming as this: At least 144 people knew about the page, where Kappa Delta Rho brothers posted pictures of nude, unconscious women without their knowledge. Of those 144 people, 143 just rolled with it.

If you attend Penn State right now, there’s a fair chance you passed them on the quad or saw them in class. They probably wore Penn State hoodies and fund-raised at Thon. The fact that such ordinary people are capable of such casual cruelty should, frankly, boggle the mind.

And yet, it’s exactly these ordinary, everyday people who commit this kind of crime.”

5. Hard work cultivates character. Joseph Sunde discusses the importance of childhood chores:

“Today’s parents are obsessed with setting their kids on strategic paths to supposed “success,” pre-planning their days to be filled with language camps, music lessons, advanced courses, competitive sports, chess clubs, museum visits, and so on.

Much of this is beneficial, of course, but amidst the bustle, at least one formative experience is increasingly cast aside: good, old-fashioned hard work.

In an essay for the Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Breheny Wallace points to a recent survey of U.S. adults where “82% reported having regular chores growing up, but only 28% said that they require their own children to do them.” Paired with the related decreases in youth employment outside the home, such a trend is a worrisome sneak peak at our economic future, but even more troubling for those who believes that work with the hands produces far more than mere material benefits.”

Worth Reading - 3/20

1. 17 things every Christian parent should do. This article presents the wisdom of J.C. Ryle, a great preacher in the Anglican tradition, and one from whom I have learned much about holiness:

“In the preface to his book titled The Upper Room, J.C. Ryle writes these words about the compilation of articles that will follow: “All of them, I venture humbly to think, will be found to contain some useful truths for the times, and words in season.”

Those words were written back in 1887 and yet, it is as though they were written for today—applicable truths for this time, and needed words in this season. One of the articles in this book that impacted my heart most is an article written for parents about how to raise our children in the way they should go. It’s a wonderful article full of convicting truth, but in every way seasoned with grace, intended to encourage, and full of hope.

Ryle calls the article “The Duties of Parents,” but I wonder, if he were one of our contemporaries and was writing today, perhaps J.C. Ryle would contribute to a blog and would have called this article “17 Things Every Christian Parent Must Do.”

The following 17 points are all Ryle’s points and words. The full article was several thousand words long, so I’ve chosen favorite quotes from each point. I’m writing them here not only to better remember them and engrain them upon my own heart, but also because I know others might benefit from these reminders, too”

2. Here is John Piper explaining why someone with a PhD in Theology could commit adultery. The answer is that knowing about God is much different than knowing God himself, but watching Piper explain it is powerful:

How many Christians do you see bent with all their powers to know God more and more — more truly, more clearly, more sweetly? Or, rather, do you see thousands fighting graduate school sins with a grammar school knowledge of God? John Piper answers in this 2-minute clip. Visit http://www.desiringgod.org/sermons/why-phds-in-theology-commit-adultery for more information.

3. In positive news toward religious freedom, the Canadian supreme court has ruled that Catholic schools in that nation cannot be forced to teach an ethics and religion course that contradicts historic Catholic belief:

“In an important victory for religious liberty in Canada, the country’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that the government cannot force a private Catholic high school to teach a government-mandated ethics and religion course that includes teaching contrary to Catholic belief.

An attorney working with the Alliance Defending Freedom International filed a brief last year with the high court in defense of the school after the court granted them the right to intervene in defense of the school’s freedom of religion and conscience. ”

4. From National Geographic, what is it like to be stuck on Arctic Sea ice? This is a fun story with some amazing pictures:

“Trapped in ice, the Lance meanders at the mercy of wind and current. Some days, low, moist clouds engulf the ship from the south; on others, cold northerly winds chill it by 50 degrees. Switched off at this latitude for four months of the year, the sun now rises higher each morning, casting long shadows off surface ice ridges and snowdrifts as it traces a low arc across the horizon.

From January to June, in six-week stints, scientists are on board the Lance, a research vessel operated by the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI), to study how the ocean, atmosphere, snow, ice, and biology all interact in the Arctic amid a backdrop of significant warming. “Right now we’re just trying to take as much as we can, because this is a one-off opportunity to get this data,” said Amelie Meyer, an NPI oceanographer. “And nobody’s got it.”

Isolation has settled in. The Lance is currently some 250 nautical miles from another human dwelling or vessel—farther than the distance between New York and Washington, D.C.”

5. Some advice from the Art of Manliness crew on how not be be an absentee father:

“My mother and father were divorced by the time I was 3 or 4 years old. He wasn’t especially interested in continuing his relationship with me afterwards, either. My mother never re-married, and I’m an only child, so not only did I grow up without a father, but without any other immediate family. I had my work cut out for me, but through it all I think I gathered enough experience to achieve one very important goal: how not to become my deadbeat father. If you, too, want to avoid this or if you think you might be taking on the traits of your own absentee dad, maybe I can help you drop those bad habits before they hurt you or someone you love.

Modern studies conducted by the Family Research Council now indicate that about half of American kids won’t reach adulthood without seeing the breakup of their parents. To be precise, only 45.8 percent of American children reach the age of 17 with both their biological parents married.

These statistics reflect that our culture is in need of a serious overhaul, and the job of fixing it falls to each and every one of us to do our part. The aim of this article is not to delve too deeply into the how or why of what got us to this point. Rather, I hope to bring your attention to several characteristics or personality traits possessed by men who had an absentee or abusive/alcoholic dad growing up. If we can identify the garbage in our own characters, we can take steps to throw it out before it overflows and we end up passing our unhealthy traits on to someone else.”

Worth Reading - 3/19

1. Instead of trying to inject meaning into our work, we should look for the meaning that is already there:

“The beautiful paradox of the Christian life is that even when we find ourselves in “cog-like” work environments, God has oriented our hands toward both material provision and blessing as well as transcendent purpose and beauty — the stuff of “cathedrals” what-have-you. “Happily, a genuine cog is a round peg in a round hole, fitted precisely to being what, at that point, the mosaic of culture requires,” DeKoster writes elsewhere. “There alone resides our freedom to enjoy civilized life.”

As we continue to be bombarded by various forms of “meaning marketing” and the sloganeering of forward-thinking executives, let’s indulge what turns out to be true, but be careful to not inject our own version of “meaning” where the authentic purpose already exists.

God put it there for a reason.”

2. How to handle rejection in writing, in this case Academic writing:

“Recently I wrote an odd sort of thank-you note.
It was to a journal editor who had rejected one of my articles. The careful critique he had provided helped me reconceptualize my argument and revise the article into acceptance with a different journal (you can read this ‘revised’ article in the recent Journal of Religious History volume 39:1, March 2015). So I sent him a quick email of thanks for his constructive comments.

Of course, at the moment of rejection, my thoughts were not as benevolent. I was angry, confused, and embarrassed as a scholar. Indeed, one rejection so immobilized me as a young scholar that I deep-sixed my first rejected article and still have not resurrected it into a new submission. Time (and the accumulation of more rejections) has changed my perspective on how to deal with this unpleasant, but necessary component of the academic life.”

3. Some advice for young men on maturing from Desiring God:

“Younger men, you do need guidance from older men. At the same time, the myth that the older generation has it all together must be erased. We don’t. We are learning and growing in many of the same ways young men are.

God has taught older men a number of things, though — through our strengths and weaknesses, through our successes and failures — that he may have intended for you. There is counsel that can ground you in the midst of life’s turbulence (inside of you and around you) and equip you to become more mature in Christ (Colossians 1:28).”

4. Meaning in an ordinary day:

“What do your days look like? How do they begin, and how do they end?

If you’re anything like me, my days look pretty ordinary.

They are filled with instant oatmeal in the morning as I scurry out the door, somehow always forgetting my laptop charger, as I begin my half-an-hour commute to the office, where I work diligently until about 5 o’clock, when I then rush home to participate, if I’m lucky, in some brief form of exercise, cook a quick meal for dinner, and then face the loads of laundry and mounds of house chores and rent bills that seem to never end.

Ordinary life and ordinary time are what some may call my “bread-and-butter.” How, though, can these rhythms of ordinary living be nourishingly sweet and even glorious?”

5. An excerpt from Martyn Lloyd-Jones on not tracking our successes:

“There is no need to waste time keeping the accounts; he is keeping them. And what wonderful accounts they are. May I say it with reverence, there is nothing I know of that is so romantic as God’s method of accountancy. Be prepared for surprises in this kingdom. You never know what is going to happen. The last shall be first. What a complete reversal of our materialistic outlook, the last first, the first last, everything upside down. The whole world is turned upside down by grace. It is not of man, it is of God; it is the kingdom of God. ”

Worth Reading - 3/18

1. Russell Moore explains why adoption isn't for everyone:

“Some said the parents thought the children they had adopted were demon-possessed. The story was that they’d tried exorcism, and couldn’t drive the devils out. The parents say the story was nothing quite so supernatural. The children displayed severe mental and emotional trauma, they claim, to the point that they feared for the safety of their other children, so they sent them to live with another family.

I can’t judge from here who’s right or wrong in the particular case of reports surrounding why Arkansas state Rep. Justin Harris (R) gave away his adopted child. I just know this story is all too familiar.

Every few weeks or so, it seems, I hear of another family on the verge of “disruption,” the term used to describe families relinquishing back to the system children they have adopted. As with divorce, in some of these situations, there is no alternative to the tragic outcome. But as with divorce, in other cases, many of the adoptions did not need the nuclear option.

As a Christian, I believe every part of the church is called to care for widows and orphans.”

2. When sharing on social media trumps the experience itself:

“I usually avoid Times Square, but I had bought my ticket to see American Authors five months earlier and so happily jostled the turtle-paced tourists. As we entered the dark Best Buy Theater, my friend said, “This is so nice!” I thought she was happy about getting a spot soclose to the stage, but instead she smiled at her phone, “There’s Wi-Fi here.” My friend wasn’t alone. Before the first jubilant percussion beats could settle, an iPad blocked my visibility like a solar eclipse. Turning for a better view revealed a conglomeration of glowing devices – not only grabbing pics and vids, but tweeting, texting, snapchatting, posting, gramming, vining.

I saw an audience controlling the experience instead of letting the experience entrance them. Our smartphones, and the instant communication they lend tempt us to forget the real moment in which we are involved. Musicians create something powerful to enjoy, but most audience members insist on retaining the power of tangible devices instead of surrendering to the music’s intangible beauty. The guttural throb of the bass guitar resets my heartbeat, but nothing can overpower the frenetic pattern of fingers on lucent screens. Is this an essential part of the concert experience or a divergence from it?”

3. With memories of the Holocaust fading in Europe, is new persecution of Jews such a reality that emigration may be necessary?

“The resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe is not—or should not be—a surprise. One of the least surprising phenomena in the history of civilization, in fact, is the persistence of anti-Semitism in Europe, which has been the wellspring of Judeophobia for 1,000 years. The Church itself functioned as the centrifuge of anti-Semitism from the time it rebelled against its mother religion until the middle of the 20th century. As Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Great Britain, has observed, Europe has added to the global lexicon of bigotry such terms as Inquisition, blood libel, auto‑da‑fé, ghetto, pogrom, and Holocaust. Europe has blamed the Jews for an encyclopedia of sins. The Church blamed the Jews for killing Jesus; Voltaire blamed the Jews for inventing Christianity. In the febrile minds of anti-Semites, Jews were usurers and well-poisoners and spreaders of disease. Jews were the creators of both communism and capitalism; they were clannish but also cosmopolitan; cowardly and warmongering; self-righteous moralists and defilers of culture. Ideologues and demagogues of many permutations have understood the Jews to be a singularly malevolent force standing between the world and its perfection.

Despite this history of sorrow, Jews spent long periods living unmolested in Europe. And even amid the expulsions and persecutions and pogroms, Jewish culture prospered. Rabbis and sages produced texts and wrote liturgical poems that are still used today. Emancipation and enlightenment opened the broader culture to Jews, who came to prominence in politics, philosophy, the arts, and science—Chagall and Kafka, Einstein and Freud, Lévi-Strauss and Durkheim. An entire civilization flourished in Yiddish.”

4. Is a biblical vision for human sexuality really dangerous and harmful as many critics claim?

“One of the most common and significant charges leveled against the traditional Christian understanding of sexuality and marriage is that it is damaging. Denying someone’s sexuality is seen as denying who that person really is. It’s telling people to repress something central to their identity and ability to flourish. This is harmful to anyone, but especially to teenagers coming to terms with their sexuality while still at a young age. Christians, it is claimed, are to blame for gay teenagers killing themselves.

This accusation has been made perhaps most forcefully by Dan Savage:

’The dehumanizing bigotry set forth from the lips of faithful Christians give your straight children a license to verbally abuse, humiliate, and condemn the gay children they encounter at school. They fill your gay children with suicidal despair. And you have the nerve to ask me to be more careful with my words.’

Many Christians are beginning to conclude the traditional understanding must be wrong if it’s having this sort of effect on people. Surely, they reason, this kind of self-loathing and despair cannot be the fruit of God’s truth.”

Worth Reading - 3/17

1. The real history of St. Patrick in just a few minutes:

Click here to read more about this amazing Bible study series: http://www.rose-publishing.com/Complete-Kit-for-Christian-History-Made-Easy-12-session-DVD-based-study-P1370.aspx Did St. Patrick really drive all the snakes out of Ireland? Was he even a saint? Find out in this 2 minute excerpt from the 12-Session DVD study Christian History Made Easy from Rose Publishing.

2. A humorous retelling of the doctrine of the Trinity in honor of St. Patrick's day:

The problem with using analogies to explain the Holy Trinity is that you always end up confessing some ancient heresy. Let the patron saint of the Irish show you what I'm talking about.

3. Here is an attempt to explain why the American church isn't more concerned with the killing of Christians in the Middle East:

“Since last summer, the plight of Assyrian Christians and the Yazidis in Iraq has been on the front pages of every news outlet in the Western world. The tragic fate of these people has drawn the attention of people from the left to the right, Christian and non-Christian.

Yet, Mainline Protestants in America have remained conspicuously silent.

In the past few weeks, ISIS beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians. Following that, the terrorist group kidnapped more than 200 Assyrian Christians in northeast Syria and has also systematically destroyed the centuries-old works of art housed in the Mosul Museum in northern Iraq.

Yet, if you visit the news section of the United Church of Christ’s website, you would be hard pressed to find anything about the Assyrian people and their fate. It took my denomination nearly four days to issue an odd statement of solidarity with the “Egyptian partners.”

The denomination’s official Facebook page shows something similar. Since the beheadings, it ran three stories about real and alleged instances of discrimination against Muslims in the United States, the same number about the Keystone Pipeline, and one story about the beheading of Copts. It took two days for the Assyrians to make it to their wall.”

4. Why are business cards surviving in an electronic age?

“THE details may vary. Americans sling their business cards casually across a table; the Japanese make the exchange of cards as elaborate as a tea ceremony. Some cards are discreet. Guangbiao Chen, a Chinese tycoon, crams his with titles such as “China earthquake rescue hero”, “Most prominent philanthropist of China”, “China’s foremost environmental preservation demolition expert” and, in case you didn’t get the message, “Most influential person of China”. But the swapping of business cards is as close to a universal ritual as you can find in the corporate world.

Business cards have been around a long time in one form or another. The Chinese invented calling cards in the 15th century to give people notice that they intended to visit. European merchants invented trade cards in the 17th century to act as miniature advertisements. They can provoke strong emotions. Nothing will provoke more discussion at a board meeting than the design of the company’s business cards, says a veteran director. In Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, “American Psycho”, the serial-killer antihero tries to impress some fellow masters of the universe with his new business card. He is crestfallen when they all whip out equally fancy ones—and aghast when one produces an absent colleague’s card, which is on thicker paper and has a watermark.”

5. Gene Veith explains how Max Weber got the Protestant Ethic wrong:

Max Weber's classic study The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism made the case that the Reformation had a major impact on the rise of free market capitalism. But Weber assumed that this influence came from Protestants believing that achieving prosperity was a sign of God's election, which completely misunderstands Reformation spirituality and its influence.

Worth Reading - 3/16

1. Ross Douthat, thinking aloud, questions the idea that increasing centralized government control and spending will improve family structures. Rather, he points out, quite the opposite was once true:

“The post-1960s cultural revolution isn’t the only possible “something else.” But when you have a cultural earthquake that makes society dramatically more permissive and you subsequently get dramatic social fragmentation among vulnerable populations, denying that there is any connection looks a lot like denying the nose in front of your face.

But recognizing that culture shapes behavior and that moral frameworks matter doesn’t require thundering denunciations of the moral choices of the poor. Instead, our upper class should be judged first — for being too solipsistic to recognize that its present ideal of “safe” permissiveness works (sort of) only for the privileged, and for failing to take any moral responsibility (in the schools it runs, the mass entertainments it produces, the social agenda it favors) for the effects of permissiveness on the less-savvy, the less protected, the kids who don’t have helicopter parents turning off the television or firewalling the porn.”

2. Andrew Wilson promotes the trustworthiness and clarity of Scripture in a short post at The Gospel Coalition:

“Jesus knew, all too well, that lots of people who read the Scriptures did not really understand them. It’s true today, and it was true in the first century. Modern Christians disagree over all sorts of issues—baptism, spiritual gifts, the end times, church government, and so on—and if you read church history, you’ll soon discover that we’re not the first generation like that. So Christians often ask: “Is the Bible clear? Surely, if it were, we’d all agree on what it meant, right?”

There are two answers we could give to that question. The first is: when it comes to the essentials, we do. All Christians, everywhere, believe in one church, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord Jesus Christ, one faith, one baptism, one God. Whenever I feel discouraged about the confusions and debates within the global church, I go and read the Nicene Creed, and it reminds me just how much we agree on.”

3. An author at Slate opposes evangelical involvement in ending sex trafficking because it make the cause less feminist:

“When evangelicals picked up the issue of trafficking around the turn of the millennium, they drastically expanded the existing movement’s influence and reach. By now it has spawned major institutional efforts by nonprofits like World Relief, not to mention both state and federal legislation. According to some critics, however, Christians also changed the movement’s character. “It wasn’t until this evangelical coalition emerged that sex trafficking became this huge everyday issue,” said Soderlund. “Once the evangelicals got on board, it became a much more mainstream issue, and less feminist. You had innocent victims, and you had evildoers, and it wasn’t as much about patriarchy.”

The contemporary anti-trafficking movement has attracted plenty of criticism. Some point out the disproportionate focus on sex trafficking, when labor trafficking is a much more common phenomenon. (Many evangelical organizations do tackle labor trafficking as part of their missions, even though the issue doesn’t attract as much attention. Dillon now runs a nonprofit, Made in a Free World, which focuses on labor trafficking.)”

4. A recent book argues that the college you attend is not as significant as many would have us believe:

“Do yourself a favor: Don’t sweat the college admission process. Don’t beat up your kids and pressure their counselors. Don’t fall prey to the greedy exploitation of college administrators. Don’t be part of what author Frank Bruni calls “the great, brutal culling.”

In his new book, Where You Go is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania, the New York Times columnist tries to bring some sanity to this season of high anxiety. “What madness,” he calls the pressure imposed upon teenagers making their first major decision. “And what nonsense.”

While this is not a political book, politics is one of the many corners of society scoured by Bruni for proof of his twin theses: First, the admissions game is too rigged to be the source of such palpitations. Second, the nature of a student’s college experience – “the work that he or she puts into it, the skills that he or she picks up, the self-examination that’s undertaken, the resourcefulness that’s honed” – matters more than the reputation of the institution he or she attends.

For every George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who started at, or matriculated to, a top-tier college, there are dozens of Ronald Reagans, Bruni notes. Reagan attended Eureka College, a tiny school in Illinois that, in 2014, was ranked only 31st among “Regional Colleges (Midwest)” on the U.S. News & World Report survey (Bruni loathes that survey, with good reason).”

5. Pi day was on Saturday, but here is a neat video on how Pi can be calculated using lines and matches. The idea is weird, but the theory and the math work:

Weekend Reading

1. J.R.R. Tolkien's hope for the modern world, from the Imaginative Conservative:

“One would be blind to miss Tolkien’s disgust. “I wonder (if we survive this war) if there will be any niche, even of sufferance, left for reactionary back numbers like me (and you). The bigger things get the smaller and duller or flatter the globe gets. It is getting to be one blasted little provincial suburb.” Soon, he feared, America would spread its “sanitation, morale-pep, feminism, and mass production” throughout the world.. Neither “ism”—corporate consumer capitalism or communism, both radical forms of materialism—seemed particularly attractive to Tolkien, a man who loved England (but not Great Britain!) and who loved monarchy according to medieval conventions, while hating statism in any form.

Indeed, as with St. Augustine as the barbarians tore through Rome’s gate on August 24, 410, at midnight, Tolkien looked out over a ruined world: a world on one side controlled by ideologues, and, consequently, a world of the Gulag, the Holocaust camps, the Killing Fields, and total war; on the other: a world of the pleasures of the flesh, ad-men, and the democratic conditioners to be found, especially, in bureaucracies and institutions of education. Both East and West had become dogmatically materialist, though in radically different fashions. In almost all ways, the devastation of Tolkien’s twentieth-century world was far greater than that of St. Augustine’s fifth-century world. At least barbarian man believed in something greater than himself. One could confront him as a man, a man who knew who he was and what he believed, however false that belief might be. “I sometimes wonder,” C.S. Lewis once mused, “whether we shall not have to re-convert men to real Paganism as a preliminary to converting them to Christianity.” Twentieth-century man, led by fanatic ideologies, used state-sponsored terror to murder nearly 205 million persons outside of war. War in the same century claimed another 50 million persons. Simply put, the blood ran frequently and deeply between 1914 and Tolkien’s death in 1973.”

2. What is meaningful work and how can we find it? Hugh Welchel from The Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics explores the question:

“Research done last year by the Barna Group shows that 75 percent of U.S. adults say they are looking for ways to live a more meaningful life. Only nineteen percent of adults say they’re extremely satisfied with their current work.

The desire to find meaning in our work is important across all age groups.

Many people in their forties and fifties are leaving their occupations for what they perceive to be more important, meaningful jobs.

Twenty-somethings currently entering the job market are particularly interested in work that will make a difference to them and society. They are looking for work that expresses their identity and lets them creatively use their talents to help others. They believe this type of work is to be found, for the most part, in the NGO/nonprofit world.”

3. Is God really infinite? Stephen Webb explains why this is still a worthwhile question to ask:

“Classical theism, with its identification of God with infinity, has developed a reputation for emphasizing divine transcendence to the point of making God nearly unknowable. The problem with this judgment is that infinity—as in, God is infinitely unknowable—does not admit to degrees. An infinite God is not like an unimaginably large number that we could count to if only we had enough time. Nor is an infinite God like the largest possible number we know, or at least know well enough to use in any practical way. That would be, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, Graham’s number, which has to do with the theoretical dimensions of the geometric shape known as a hypercube. Paradoxically, Graham’s number is at least as mysterious as the idea of infinity, since it exists only as a function of an extremely complex mathematical proof, and infinity, though hotly debated, is a fairly fixed idea—even if it is really nothing more than the idea of that which is unimaginable.”

4. Russell Moore explores what it means to live as a Christian in this culture after the culture wars:

“As a child growing up in a Southern Baptist church, I learned my place in American culture through rapture movies. These films—based on a pop-dispensationalist reading of prophecy—pictured a time when the church would be suddenly ripped from the earth, sailing through the air to be with the invisible (to the viewer) Jesus Christ. These films would always then picture the panic of those who were “left behind” and depict the societal chaos that would emerge once the “salt and light” of the culture had disappeared. We never considered that if such a rapture were to happen, American culture might be relieved to be rid of us.

Historian Rick Perlstein notes the “culture wars” that ignited in the 1960s and 1970s were really about dueling secular prophecy charts. “What one side saw as liberation, the other side saw as apocalypse,” and vice-versa, he writes. It’s hard to argue with his thesis. The scenes of LSD-intoxicated college students frolicking nude in the mud of the Woodstock Festival in New York would seem horrifying to the salt-of-the-earth folk in Middle America for whom “the dawning of the Age of Aquarius” would seem like a threat. At the same time, Merle Haggard’s counter-revolutionary anthem would have the same effect, in reverse. The words, “We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee,” must seem like hell, if you’re in Woodstock.”

5. Micah Fries explains why we should care for God's creation now:

“Gnosticism was at the heart of much of the New Testament writers’ objections. At its root, Gnosticism argued that the material world was bad, and the spiritual world, or realm, was good. The majority of Gnostics, then, practiced a mix of asceticism and even philanthropy as they tried to divest themselves of material goods in an attempt to pursue knowledge through the spiritual world. The New Testament writers wrote in detail about the danger of Gnosticism, and we consistently affirm their objections, but when it comes to the underlying theology in Gnostic thought, I wonder if the church isn’t guilty of embracing its premise?

Since I was a small child, I have been taught that our time here on earth was limited. All of history points to the return of Jesus Christ when he would call his children home to his eternal kingdom. Earth, then, is a temporary holding place—a place for us to live in such a way so we honor God, but a temporary home, none-the-less. ”