Jesus Creed
Chicago — Spring is coming!
Michael Hyatt knows a lot about blogging, and here’s a good introductory post for those who are thinking about setting up a blog. Speaking of Michael, Michael Mercer rants about the church worship wars: “The bottom line for me involves what it means to be the church, what it means to be a pastor, and what it means for God’s people to gather for worship. Through the years of skirmishes and battles, I have tried to approach the worship wars and guide churches through them from those three perspectives. And my conversation with the woman in my church on Sunday brought all these issues to the fore for me again. Her testimony shows me that many evangelicals have forgotten what it means to be a church for everybody. Many of their pastors have perverted their callings into something other than pastoral ministry. And many have no clue at all regarding worship, who and what it’s for. Lacking a rich Biblical, historical, and theological imagination, we have surrendered unwittingly to our culture and followed its lead in all three areas. I may be on the losing side of the worship wars, but it is the church that is truly losing, as well as a world that needs more than another place to entertain them and keep them busy.”
I missed this piece by Christine Scheller: “The stories of Johnson and Nathanson teach us that personal experience can be an incredibly powerful force in conversion. Nathanson was emotionally invested in abortion but came to see his position as intellectually untenable. Johnson was undone by the sight of a nun praying regularly outside her clinic, and by her participation in a sonogram-guided abortion. By comparison, the defunding bill in the Senate seems like a legislative stunt meant to generate more heat than light. And Live Action’s investigative work raises serious questions about deceit and lawbreaking. These recent victories seem to have served merely to entrench the opposition further.”
Bob Smietana: “(RNS) Sometimes being a pastor is a real pain. But few pastors want to admit it. J.R. Briggs in trying to change that.”
Speaking of pastors, I’m praying for you brother Mike. Speaking of pastors, this pastor is wearing a tie. Not sure I’ve seen him with a tie. Dude, what happened to your principles? This pastor experienced the transcendent — in an unlikely place. Wow, I really like this pastor’s observations about Jesus.
Michael Krahn reviews Tim Challies’ new book on technology and the Christian. Technology makes many of us think about work, and Patrick has an excellent reflection on work.
Value-based decisions by Bill Donahoooooo.
Wow, good post by Eugene Cho — and that “wow” doesn’t mean it surprised me.
Wow, another good post by Roger Olson.
Meanderings in the News
1. Softer non-Tiger moms with successful children, Gerry Smith: “How’d they do it? They gave their children freedom, offered them compromises, let them quit — but only under certain conditions — and accepted their best efforts, which as it turned out, placed them at the top of their class.”
2. Kathy Lally, Mary Beth Sheridan: “A high-powered delegation of U.S. officials visited Cairo last month to find ways to support the revolution. They, along with diplomatic and development officials, have been working quietly, meeting with residents, activists and the leadership, and asking how best to spend the $150 million that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said would soon be available to help shore up the economy and provide technical assistance in the move toward democracy. By the time the U.S. delegation departed, no Egyptian pro-democracy organizations had asked for assistance.” Maybe one lesson we’ll learn is that socio-economic conditions don’t emigrate well.
3. John Markoff, Lawyers replaced by computers: “But that was in 1978. Now, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, “e-discovery” software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. In January, for example, Blackstone Discovery of Palo Alto, Calif., helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000.” And: “David H. Autor, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says the United States economy is being “hollowed out.” New jobs, he says, are coming at the bottom of the economic pyramid, jobs in the middle are being lost to automation and outsourcing, and now job growth at the top is slowing because of automation.”
4. Probably no one more articulate for right-wing causes than Andrew McCarthy: “Nevertheless, for all their differences, what unites Islamists and leftists is stronger than what presently divides them. They both support totalitarian systems. They would both attempt to recreate mankind, intending to perfect us by indenturing us to their utopian schemes. Their general will cannot abide free will. They both abhor individual liberty, unfettered reason, freedom of conscience, equality of opportunity rather than result, and bourgeois values that inculcate a devotion to bedrock Western principles and traditions.”
5. That Charlie Sheen story… here’s a study of his rhetoric: “English professor. Sheen understands the limits of language. He refers to the two women in his life as “the goddesses,” but the word isn’t sufficient to describe them: “I don’t think the term is good enough,” he says. “But when you’re bound by these terrestrial descriptions, you must use the best term available.” He also urges his audience to do a little textual analysis when considering his plight and to think about authorial intent: “If people could just read behind the hieroglyphic, if they could put their freakin’ cryptology hat on, they’d realize this isn’t totally serious.” And my students, 10 years ago, would have said: “And you’re writing this story because…”
6. Scott Peterson: ” As change sweeps the Middle East, the difficulties of converting revolution into a stable and fulfilling democracy are now clearer – and more daunting. The Arab world’s so-called “pro-democracy” warriors that are toppling decrepit leaders every few weeks are faced with the same uncertainties that afflicted post-Soviet nations in eastern Europe in the 1990s, and the vibrant “color” revolutions of the following decade in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and beyond. Born in history’s crucible of high expectations and unexpected popular empowerment, those examples have had mixed results – and were less afflicted by the huge income and education gaps and sectarian differences that help fuel the Middle East turmoil. The instruments of civil society, such as political parties, are weak at best, and transitional authorities are battling to grasp legitimacy. The unprecedented demand for change here is further complicated by the lack of any previous narrative of Arab democracy.”
7. Charles J. Chaput, at First Things, believes in the freedoms and wants them to spread: “In his World Day of Peace message earlier this year, Pope Benedict XVI voiced his concern over the worldwide prevalence of “persecution, discrimination, terrible acts of violence and religious intolerance.” We now face a global crisis in religious liberty. Christian minorities in Africa and Asia bear the brunt of today’s religious discrimination and violence, but Christians are not the only victims. Nearly 70 percent of the world’s people now live in nations—regrettably, many of them Muslim-majority countries, as well as China and North Korea—where religious freedom is gravely restricted. Principles that Americans find self-evident—the dignity of the human person, the sanctity of conscience, the separation of political and sacred authority, the distinction between secular and religious law, the idea of a civil society pre-existing and distinct from the state—are not widely shared elsewhere. In fact, as Leszek Kolakowski once said, what seemed self-evident to the American Founders “would appear either patently false or meaningless and superstitious to most of the great men that keep shaping our political imagination.” We need to ask ourselves why this is the case. We also need to ask ourselves why we Americans seem to be so complacent about our own freedoms.”
8. Jessica Ravitz should have interviewed Karen Spears Zacharias on this one.
9. David Brooks on holistic education: “This growing, dispersed body of research reminds us of a few key insights. First, the unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind, where many of the most impressive feats of thinking take place. Second, emotion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to things and are the basis of reason. Finally, we are not individuals who form relationships. We are social animals, deeply interpenetrated with one another, who emerge out of relationships. This body of research suggests the French enlightenment view of human nature, which emphasized individualism and reason, was wrong. The British enlightenment, which emphasized social sentiments, was more accurate about who we are. It suggests we are not divided creatures. We don’t only progress as reason dominates the passions. We also thrive as we educate our emotions.”
10. Laurie Goodstein about Brigitte Gabriel: “As a child growing up a Maronite Christian in war-torn southern Lebanon in the 1970s, Ms. Gabriel said, she had been left lying injured in rubble after Muslims mercilessly bombed her village. She found refuge in Israel and then moved to the United States, only to find that the Islamic radicals who had terrorized her in Lebanon, she said, were now bent on taking over America. “America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America,” she said. “They have infiltrated us at the C.I.A., at the F.B.I., at the Pentagon, at the State Department. They are being radicalized in radical mosques in our cities and communities within the United States.”
11. I hope Indiana takes over the Feds.”WASHINGTON — The government ran the largest-ever budget deficit for a single month in February. The shortfall kept this year’s annual deficit on pace to end as the biggest in U.S. history.”
Meanderings in Sports
Just in case you haven’t seen the story about the BYU basketball player.
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