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. ”

Worth Reading - 3/13

1. Nathan Finn of Southeastern Seminary and First Baptist Durham Fame, writes about how Chuck Colson helped shape the way he thinks. To be clear, for Nathan, this occurred on the college campus not from experience in prison.

“I was raised in Southeast Georgia, close to the buckle of the Bible Belt. I came of age in the mid-1990s, when the Christian Coalition was at the height of its influence, Newt Gingrich was making contracts with America, and it seemed like national revival was closely tied to the fortunes of the Republican Party. Those were heady days for politically conservative evangelicals, Bill Clinton’s presidency notwithstanding. I was a proud member of the College Republicans and listened regularly to D. James Kennedy and James Dobson on American Family Radio.

I was also what my friend Bruce Ashford calls a “cultural anorexic.” To my thinking, American culture was decadent and should be avoided by believers—with the exception, of course, of voting for Republican politicians. I didn’t listen to secular music for a couple of years. I didn’t watch any R-rated movies and avoided most PG-13 movies. I even avoided G-rated movies (at least the ones made by the Walt Disney Company). I wore a lot of Christian t-shirts and rocked a “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelet. As I have reflected on those years, I think I meant well. I really wanted to honor God. But I was an arrogant, condescending, and pretty ignorant religious reactionary.

All this began to change the summer between my junior and senior years of college. Simply put, I discovered Chuck Colson. Previously, I had listened to the “Breakpoint” radio program, so I knew Colson’s name. But that summer, I read his book How Now Shall We Live?. Next, I read The Body: Being Life in Darkness. I started subscribing to Christianity Today, and Colson’s columns became a monthly highlight. I started reading every essay of Colson’s that I could find on the internet. By the time I graduated from college, by God’s grace—and with Chuck Colson’s help—I was no longer a religious reactionary.

Through his writings, Colson taught me three lessons that have continued to shape how I think about the relationship between faith and culture.”

2. Joe Carter from Acton Institute evaluates a recent OpEd that calls for government bailouts of students who went deeply into debt for low-value and low-opportunity degrees:

“In reality, though, student loan forgiveness would make the economy worse off. Mr. Hopp doesn’t seem to care about the “corporations doing the lending” because he fails to recognize that corporations are just people. The money was lent by people who expected to get repaid so that they could spend the money on “things like houses, cars, plane tickets”—or expensive private colleges for their kids. If they don’t get paid they are much worse off.

Why not just have the government pay the loans? Because, again, “government” in this case is just another word for “American taxpayer.” Every dollar that the American taxpayer gives to pay off someone’s student loan debt is one less dollar they can use for “things like houses, cars, plane tickets.”

What Mr. Hopp’s is really asking for is a redistribution of income from people who didn’t make bad educational decisions to people who feel entitled not to pay their debts. Mr. Hopp is making the case that he and millions of other Americans should be freeloaders. They want the taxpayer equivalent of moving into their parent’s basement and living rent-free.

The one thing I agree with Mr. Hopp about is when he says, “We need to have a serious conversation about student loan debt.” Indeed, we do. The main thing that needs to be said is that if you take out a loan to buy luxury goods (like expensive colleges) you have a moral obligation to repay it. It’s time we start expecting that all Americans—especially those who want to lead our churches— to start acting like adults instead of whiny, entitled children.

There are many issues of economic and social justice that should be of concern for Christians. Paying back the student loans of middle-class snowflakes who feel “called” to make bad decisions is not one of them.”

3. From First Things, the importance of keeping Catholic schools Catholic:

“This has been the issue in the U.S. bishops’ contest with the Obama administration over the HHS contraceptive/abortifacient mandate in Obamacare: Will Catholic institutions and Catholic employers be able to conduct their affairs according to the Church’s settled convictions, protected by the robust definition of religious freedom contained in the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act? Or will the government attempt to coerce those institutions and businesses into becoming de facto extensions of the state insofar as the delivery of certain “reproductive health services” is concerned? That question of identity, or integrity-in-mission, will be the issue in other culture-war assaults on Catholic life; one of the next lines of battle involves employment practices in Catholic schools. Will the Church be allowed to staff its schools with teachers who teach and live what the Catholic Church believes and teaches, hiring those who meet those criteria and declining to employ those who don’t? Or will the state try to coerce Catholic schools to employ teaching staff according to other criteria?

This is going to be a nasty fight, given that “tolerance” has become the all-purpose bludgeon with which the sexual revolution, in all its manifestations, beats its adversaries into submission or drives them into catacombs. All the more reason, then, to be grateful for the courageous leadership shown by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, whose San Francisco archdiocese is arguably ground zero of the culture war that cannot be avoided—and that must be fought if Catholic institutions are to remain free to be themselves.”

4. Why the university is not (or should not be) a complete free for all. On order and tension in the academy:

“Universities were founded to sustain faith by reason—to maintain order in the soul and in the commonwealth. My own university, St. Andrews, was established in the fifteenth-century by the Scottish Inquisitor of Heretical Pravity to resist the errors of the Lollards, the levellers of that age. The early universities’ teaching imparted both order and freedom to the intellect: that was no paradox, for order and freedom exist necessarily in a healthy tension.

But in our day, as in various earlier times, many universities have lost any clear general understanding of either freedom or order, intellectually considered. So it seems worth-while to review here the relationship between order and freedom, and the part of a university in maintaining the tension between the two.

Indulge me first in some observations concerning the connection between faith, order, and freedom, all of which are intertwined in university studies. In recent generations, many professors have failed to apprehend the connection. Let us commence with that popular but vague term “freedom.”

Freedom is normal for mankind. I mean that ordered liberty is natural for truly human persons. Yet, human freedom, like much else in human normality, is denied at least as often as it is affirmed.”

5. 40 motivational speeches in 2 minutes, in honor of the last day of my final PhD seminar:

Worth Reading - 3/12

1. Charlie Self shares how we can find joy and meaning in our work:

“One of our favorite coffee shops when we lived in Washington, D.C. in the 1980s was The Daily Grind. The name’s humorous wordplay about everyday work and the delicious fresh-roasted coffee made us smile.

But too many of God’s people are not smiling as their alarms sound and they head to their daily tasks. Recent surveys reveal their deep dissatisfaction in their jobs, with few finding joy and significance in their efforts. Last year, Barna Group reported 75 percent of American adults long for meaning, while less than 20 percent say they’re extremely satisfied with their current work.

Young adults in their 20s and 30s are unhappy about the disconnect between their educations and expectations and the scarcity of some jobs. Many are working two or three part-time jobs and waiting for their “destiny” and their “dream” opportunities.

It makes one wonder: Can work be purposeful when it is often boring, repetitious, and sometimes unjust, with nasty bosses and challenging work conditions? Is it truly possible to derive joy and meaning from a job?”

2. Craig Blomberg responds to three critiques of inerrancy:

“In Can We Still Believe the Bible?, Craig Blomberg offers some observations on critiques of inerrancy and the idea that inerrancy “dies the death of a thousand qualifications” (pp. 126-130).
He first employs Paul Feinberg’s definition: “Inerrancy means that when all facts are known, the Scriptures in their original autographs and properly interpreted will be shown to be wholly true in everything that they affirm, whether that has to do with doctrine or morality or with the social, physical, or life sciences.”
Blomberg says that inerrancy, then, actually has far less qualifications than most major doctrines like the Trinity or various schools within soteriology and eschatology. Feinberg’s definition has only four qualifications, all of which are left to hermeneutical and exegetical debate within these caveats.”

3. Some interesting thoughts on leadership from a former submarine captain. I think some of these things might work better in that environment, but empowering employees is important:

Worth Reading - 3/11

1. One of the biggest differences between Eastern and Western cultures has been the emphasis on guilt vs. shame as a mechanism for social correction. Andy Crouch notes we are moving toward a shame culture and provides some thoughts on how to deal with that:

“The beauty of the gospel is that it acknowledges guilt and shame, covering both with the shame- and guilt-bearing representative Son. What honor–shame cultures are offering to missionaries, our own fame–shame culture may offer as well: a chance, in the depth of both our guilt and our shame, to discover just how completely good that news can be.”

2. With all the emphasis on vocational training and being prepared for the workforce, you would think Americans would be near the top of the heap, but a recent study shows otherwise:

“There was this test. And it was daunting. It was like the SAT or ACT — which many American millennials are no doubt familiar with, as they are on track to be the best educated generation in history — except this test was not about getting into college. This exam, given in 23 countries, assessed the thinking abilities and workplace skills of adults. It focused on literacy, math and technological problem-solving. The goal was to figure out how prepared people are to work in a complex, modern society.

And U.S. millennials performed horribly.

That might even be an understatement, given the extent of the American shortcomings. No matter how you sliced the data – by class, by race, by education – young Americans were laggards compared to their international peers. In every subject, U.S. millennials ranked at the bottom or very close to it, according to a new study by testing company ETS.”

3. David Brooks on the cost of relavtivism:

“One of America’s leading political scientists, Robert Putnam, has just come out with a book called “Our Kids” about the growing chasm between those who live in college-educated America and those who live in high-school-educated America. It’s got a definitive collection of data about this divide.

Roughly 10 percent of the children born to college grads grow up in single-parent households. Nearly 70 percent of children born to high school grads do. There are a bunch of charts that look like open scissors. In the 1960s or 1970s, college-educated and noncollege-educated families behaved roughly the same. But since then, behavior patterns have ever more sharply diverged. High-school-educated parents dine with their children less than college-educated parents, read to them less, talk to them less, take them to church less, encourage them less and spend less time engaging in developmental activity.”

4. One Pastor/Blogger shares how he reads so much:

“The other day I was eating with another pastor and we were talking about books and reading. I had mentioned several books I had finished recently and he said something like this, “Tim, you’re a husband, father of five young children, and a busy solo pastor. How do you find time to read so much?” The question literally surprised me and struck me as a bit odd, since I really don’t consider myself a true book-devourer. I recently heard Don Carson at a conference and he mentioned that he typically reads somewhere between 300 and 500 books a year (gad-zooks!!!). If you take those numbers and lop off a zero from each, that’s about how many books I typically read annually. I consider myself very much a person of average intelligence with probably a slightly below average reading speed who needs around eight hours of sleep a night.

I have gathered, however, that many pastors hardly read at all. Not including what’s absolutely necessary for sermon and lesson prep, I get the impression that many pastors might read three or four books a year, none of which are serious academic books. I believe this is unfortunate and likely a contributing factor in the overall weakness and ineffectiveness of the evangelical church in America today (especially since we have such easy access to so much good stuff).

I want to help remedy this situation. So today and in the next two posts I’ll be giving you nine recommendations for reading more and better in pastoral ministry.”

Worth Reading - 3/10

1. Matt Emerson argues that leaving the low church isn't necessary to get liturgy. This is important as many young Baptists are abandoning biblical doctrines over worship style by heading to Anglicanism:

“Increasingly, I hear of younger Southern Baptists leaving for the Anglican Church. Two of my friends (along with two acquaintances) in seminary and doctoral work made the shift from the SBC to the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). I have met others who have made the same jump, as one friend put it, “from Nashville to Canterbury.” In my conversations with these men, two factors were mentioned time and again: the aesthetic and theological beauty of the liturgy and the principled evangelical ecumenical spirit of the Anglican church planting movements in North America. More recently, Preston Yancey expressed much the same sentiments, as did Bart Gingrich over a year ago in an American Conservative article on millennials and liturgy.

As a younger Southern Baptist who is also drawn to liturgical worship forms, I have to ask – is this move necessary? Is the only option for SBCers who feel affinity with liturgy and principled ecumenism to leave, for Canterbury or Geneva or Wittenberg?

I believe the answer is no. Younger Southern Baptists, if you are drawn to liturgical forms, if you find attractive the principled evangelical ecumenism of other manifestations of Christ’s body, you can have that in Nashville. You can stay in the SBC.”

2. The "Black Dog" of depression; it strikes in males, too. This is an important series by Art of Manliness:

“Depression runs in my family. I grew up hearing stories and seeing family members sink into low moods for extended periods of time.

When I was in high school, the “black dog,” as Winston Churchill called it, finally paid a visit to me. It was the spring semester of my senior year. (Between 20 and 30 years old is when most people experience their first major depressive episode; at 18, I was about on schedule.) I had been super busy balancing AP classes, student council, church youth activities, and work. I guess all the stress caught up to me (research shows that prolonged periods of intense stress can set off a depressive episode). At first I thought it was just burnout, something I had experienced and recovered from before. But as the weeks passed, I started feeling more and more down. There came a point when I just felt emotionally numb. I didn’t feel sad or happy — just gray from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. Motivation was non-existent. Simply going through the motions of school and work was an exercise in pure will. I just wanted to stay in bed and not do anything.

After a few months, this pervasive, impenetrable fog of grayness started to really get to me. I would have done anything just to feel something different — to feel anything, really. “Why can’t I be happy?” I kept asking myself. I figured I could just snap out of it and get back to normal. But no matter how much I tried, nothing changed.”

3. As proposals for "universal" child care are taking center stage, Trevin Wax considers a prior debate on this subject between Bertram Russell and G. K. Chesterton:

“Now, we can’t deny there are difficulties inherent in the discussion; neither can we leave any room for self-righteous snobbery. But Chesterton was right to press us toward ideals, without which we have no real guide or purpose. In this case, Chesterton found that ideal in the ancient notion of children at home, raised at their mother’s knee, father providing and protecting, both parents tied intrinsically to the home and the children for which they are responsible.

It’s not necessary to appeal to Scripture for such an idea, nor even claim that such an ideal is the right course of action in every circumstance. But the painful failure in achieving the ideal should not lead us to abandon or alter it. Instead, the idea needs to be upheld as beautiful and true. We are better off when we pursue it, even if we stumble on the way. After all, the story of the world centers on the family: holy mother, father, and Child, in a starlit stable that became a home.”

4. A sixteen year old Harvard "drop out" has learned some significant lessons by working at a startup:

“It’s an extraordinary academic achievement to be admitted to Harvard University. It’s arguably an even bigger accomplishment when you’re only 15 years old.

When he entered Harvard, Patrick Pan was a 16-year-old student from Texas, armed with a 2400 SAT score and a plan to graduate in four years with a degree in biomedical engineering. Among his other accomplishments was graduating fifth out of 568 students at Clear Lake High School and being named a 2014 US Presidential Scholar, one of only two in the state.

Now, he’s taking time off from the Ivy League university to be a founding team member and the third employee at GIFYouTube, a San Francisco-based website that allows users to convert their own uploaded videos into GIFs.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the startup was founded by two other Harvard dropouts — brothers Rory O’Reilly, formerly Harvard Class of 2016, and Kieran O’Reilly, formerly Harvard Class of 2017.”

Worth Reading - 3/9

1. In search of a civil public square. Some thoughts on contemporary etiquette from David Leonard:

“In my experience, people tend to have rather passionate convictions about a range of social issues, which makes it extremely difficult to separate emotion from reason, when discussing them with others. But of course, at least one component of the good life is to be intellectually virtuous, to love God with your mind. Among other things, this requires the ability to objectively analyze the pros and cons for a particular issue. To be sure, complete objectivity is an impossible ideal. Our experiences and assumptions will always be influencing, to some degree, how we approach any important subject matter. Nevertheless, I do believe that we have an obligation, especially as Christians, to diligently strive to achieve that ideal, and be willing to follow the evidence wherever it may lead us. Very simply, our chief devotion isn’t to dogma, but to the truth. And since we don’t create the truth, but rather we merely respond to the truth, it follows that we must rigorously seek after it, and be willing to submit our lives to it. ”

2. Katherine Paterson, renowned children's author, has written an autobiography. If you enjoyed Jacob have I Loved, Bridge to Terebithia, or any of her books, you'll be interested in this review of her life story:

“Among the books my parents were pleased to see me returning to were those by Katherine Paterson. My favorite, then and now, was Jacob Have I Loved, the story of Sara Louise “Wheeze” Bradshaw, who lives on a fictional island in the Chesapeake, and in the shadow of her tremendously gifted and beautiful twin, Caroline, struggling to make her own way in a world where her options seem to be narrowly circumscribed. Sara Louise stops praying and stops going to church; at one point, she says, “if I had believed in God I could have cursed him and died.” She doesn’t curse God, and when at last she finds her calling, God’s grace and providence are subtly invoked.

At the time I had no idea that Paterson was a pastor’s wife, and that she had been a Presbyterian missionary in Japan; the daughter of missionaries, Paterson was born in China in 1932. Her books did not appear on the shelves of our church library or upon those at the Christian bookstore. They are full of irreverence and doubt, cussing and bad attitudes. Indeed, Paterson’s most highly acclaimed books—including Jacob Have I Loved and also Bridge to Terebithia and The Great Gilly Hopkins—have been among her most frequently banned and challenged, not least by Christians fearful, for example, of the supposedly pagan dabbling in certain passages in Bridge to Terebithia that most readers would probably be inclined to describe as “children playing imaginatively in the woods.””

3. How much does it take to keep a college going? What is going on with liberal arts? A women's only, liberal arts college is closing while it still owns a $94 million endowment:

“Sweet Briar College — located near Lynchburg, Virginia — will close “as a result of insurmountable financial challenges,” the school said in a statement.

Sweet Briar administrators cited several trends that informed the decision to close, including the declining number of female students interested in all-women colleges and the dwindling number of students overall interested in small, rural liberal arts colleges.”

4. What is the relationship between nature and grace? Bruce Ashford helps us explore the options with a little help from Abraham Kuyper:

“The relationship between “nature” and “grace” is one that can be answered only by looking at the overarching biblical narrative, discerning the meaning of creation, fall, and redemption, and the relation between those three plot movements. How one conceives of the relationship between these various plot movements shapes one’s worldview, theology, and spirituality. It determines one’s view of theology and culture, Christianity and politics, and church and state.

The four views I present here each have proponents that represent the view well and others that represent it poorly. The healthiest members of any category will, in many ways, look more like one another than the other members of the category I have created for them. Thus while adjudicating between these views, it is helpful to see those of other views as fellow travelers toward right belief and practice rather than dismissing them as opponents.”

Worth Reading - 3/6

1. A satirical article from the New Yorker on the standing desk movement and why YOU should switch from sitting to standing:

“Do yourself a favor and take a moment to think about who stands up: George Washington (to the British); hilarious comedians who hold a mirror up to society; Bob Marley. Now think about who sits: Caligula on his throne; Jabba the Hutt; men at strip clubs; dogs. Which group would you rather belong to?

For me, the choice was easy. Until somebody describes a WebMD article that changes my mind, I will use a standing desk. In a few months, I even plan to switch to a treadmill desk, which is a great way to prepare for eventually using a swimming desk. By this time next year, I will hopefully be dangling from a ceiling-mounted rock-climbing desk, my body swollen to twice its original size from all the extra L.P.L. I’m producing.

Unfortunately, by this time next year—unless you’ve made the switch from sitting to standing—you will almost certainly be dead.”

2. Micah Fries on the importance of friendship for the advance of the gospel:

“Jesus was a friend of sinners. This is clearly established throughout the gospels. Jesus was among them, in relationship with them, respected by them and evidently they enjoyed his company enough that they continued to seek him out. In all of this Jesus didn’t sacrifice the content of his character or the clarity of his gospel message. Yet, it seems as though many of us in the church today find this oddly challenging – and some even argue that it’s not possible for strong believers to be in these kinds of consistent social settings, and even authentic friendships, with non-believers. So, which is it? Well, given the priority of scripture, and specifically the life of Jesus, I would prefer to come down on the side of being a friend of sinners. How do we do that, though, in a way that is faithful to his word, and honors God all the while? Consider these principles, and weigh your own life against them.”

3. The Intercollegiate Review discusses the decline in religious identification and the rise of intolerance in the public square:

“The question of secularization—or how it is that societies once markedly religious become less so, particularly the societies of what’s known as Western civilization—has been much studied in modern times. Urbanization, rationalism, higher education, industrialization, feminism: these are just some of the possible causal agents debated by sociologists when they try to figure out why some people stop going to church.

Yet one highly significant social fact that rather obviously bears on the question of secularization has gone unnoticed. That is the relationship between the well-documented decline in Western churchgoing, especially among Millennials, and the simultaneous rise of a toxic public force on campuses across the Western world: the new intolerance.”

4. People must love the "pictures of amazing libraries" posts, because they keep showing up. As a bibliophile, I like them, too. So.....here is a link to a gallery of beautify libraries:

Worth Reading - 3/5

1. An opinion piece from the New York Times explaining why many children don't think there are moral facts. According to the author it has more to do with lazy thinking than evil intent:

“Our schools do amazing things with our children. And they are, in a way, teaching moral standards when they ask students to treat one another humanely and to do their schoolwork with academic integrity. But at the same time, the curriculum sets our children up for doublethink. They are told that there are no moral facts in one breath even as the next tells them how they ought to behave.

We can do better. Our children deserve a consistent intellectual foundation. Facts are things that are true. Opinions are things we believe. Some of our beliefs are true. Others are not. Some of our beliefs are backed by evidence. Others are not. Value claims are like any other claims: either true or false, evidenced or not. The hard work lies not in recognizing that at least some moral claims are true but in carefully thinking through our evidence for which of the many competing moral claims is correct. That’s a hard thing to do. But we can’t sidestep the responsibilities that come with being human just because it’s hard.

That would be wrong.”

2. The history of "knock knock" jokes, from NPR:

“The knock-knock joke has been a staple of American humor since the early 20th century. With its repetitive set-up and wordplay punchline, the form has been invoked — and understood — by people of all ages and sensibilities.

But knock-knock jokes have not always been universally appreciated. In fact, in the heyday of the knock-knock’s popularity, certain critics railed against it.

Somehow — knock on wood — it has endured.”

3. Jonathan Parnell places resistance from Satan among the difficulties of parenting. As we live in a world that often neglect the supernatural (even the Christian world sometimes forgets about the reality of Satan), Parnell's post makes a case for not neglecting the enemy's fight against us:

“Whether we look back over the pages of world history, or just around us today, the point bears true. Children are so often caught in the crossfire, so often hurt, so often the victims of a larger conflict in which they have no say, no influence, no responsibility. It happened back when primitive peoples thought slaying their children would appease the gods, and when war meant burning homes and sacking villages. And it happens still today when deranged citizens carry guns into elementary schools, and when abortion clinics welcome terrified teenagers with open arms, or when Boko Haram pillages another Nigerian village, or a young couple decides Down syndrome will disrupt their life plans. Moore writes,

The demonic powers hate babies because they hate Jesus. When they destroy “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40, 45), the most vulnerable among us, they’re destroying a picture of Jesus himself. . . . (63–64)

There is a war on children, and we are all, in one way or another, playing some role in it. Every time we move forward as faithful parents (or care for kids in any capacity, including advocating for the voiceless not yet born, and volunteering for nursery duty on Sundays), we are wrestling demons — because there is little the demons hate more than little children.”

Worth Reading - 3/4

1. Aaron Earls writes about how a progressive writer's recent conversion has received a mixed response from Christians. Some who seem to expect sanctification to be instantaneous:

“Our relationship with Jesus should govern our political views, but the inverse is not true. Our political views do not govern or define our relationship with Jesus.

I understand that most of the people using her profession of faith as a means to attack Cox are not pastors or church leaders, but they’ve learned to value their political allegiances over their faith family from somewhere.

With our rhetoric, perhaps we have inadvertently taught the average Christian sitting in the pew that it is acceptable to mistreat someone from a different political perspective. The way many react to politics, they do, in fact, place their trust in the princes of our day—the political leaders and commentators.

Church leaders can (and should) make clear where they stand on social and political issues. But even more than that, we should leave no doubt as to where our ultimate allegiance lies and with whom we will spend eternity. We follow Christ and will forever worship Him with others who have done the same, not necessarily those who share our party affiliation.

As with anyone else, we should rejoice that Ana Marie Cox has professed faith in Christ and a desire to follow Him with her life. And as with anyone else, we should pray that God would bring those into her life who can help her grow into the likeness of Christ. We also should trust the Holy Spirit to do His job in the heart of Cox, primarily using His word and a local body of believers who know and love her.”

2. Carl Trueman's reaction to a recent P.C. scandal at Georgetown University. As is often the case, Trueman's reaction is somewhat stronger than it may need to be, but his point freaking out about every perceived slight and its power to kill moral discourse is right on:

“In fact, those who deploy language of extreme outrage for any apparent slight, fumble or misstep, are complicit in the linguistic and moral manipulation of society. In effect, they deprive themselves and indeed the rest of us of the language we need to articulate appropriately calibrated responses to real acts of oppression. As a result, we who oppose the kind of political righteousness which the Georgetown incident embodies need to be careful that we do not fall into the same pattern.

It is tempting to reply to the Georgetown nonsense by making a more or less univocal connection between the public humiliation and penitential obeisance of the enemies of the people and the carefully-scripted confessions of the victims of Stalin’s show trials. And the very title ‘Free Speech and Expression Committee’ is so rhetorically close to the ‘Committee of Public Safety’ that some reference to the likeness is irresistible. But to keep our own moral compass we need to make such comparisons with a certain irony. After all, I assume that nobody at Georgetown is going to be shot in an underground cell or enjoy the favor of Mme. Guillotine. That the hard left lacks irony is perhaps one of its most egregious—and most dangerous—traits.”

Here is the original Forbes.com article that covers the story Trueman is talking about.

3. Aside from the overreaction over a cartoon at  Georgetown, there has also been a recent call for more honesty in public debate over GMO foods in the UK, as it has become apparent that much of the resistance to GMO is ideological, not scientific. This is not to promote or denigrate their potential benefits, but a call for realistic and honest dialogue instead of a concern about "winning" the debate no matter what happens to truth.

“The committee makes several points in its conclusion, but I want to focus on just a couple. GMOs won’t necessarily solve any and all global food problems, but rather “a diversity of approaches–technological, social, economic, and political–will be required to meet the challenge of delivering sustainable and secure global food production. However, advanced genetic approaches do have a role to play.” It accuses the EU and U.K. government of misleading the public by consistently “framing genetic modification alongside other novel, controversial, or potentially harmful technologies…shut[ing] down opportunities for wider debate.”

Genetically modified organisms may help developing nations improve their crop yields thereby greatly reducing world hunger; they could help farmers devastated by natural disasters to quickly get back on their feet; they could cause significantly less damage to the environment than other technologies and methods of growing crops, and more. There may real risks with GMOs, but until the debate is open and honest we may never really understand what the actual risks are and what GMOS contribute to the global food economy.This technological innovation has the potential to greatly improve the prosperity of millions of people and yet the debate has been hijacked by emotions and fears.”

4. David Platt discusses part of his intention in writing Counter Cultural, which is to help people to overcome the paralysis that comes from being overwhelmed by the gospel needs in culture: