Jesus Creed
Our nation mourns…
Especially nice reflection by Mike Glenn on the sounds of forgiveness. That sound could be heard among the Amish.
Insightful, if a little testy, sketch about “deacons” in Acts by Daniel Kirk. Speaking of leaders, David Fitch is a bit testy about “leaders.”
Ted sketches a most important reminder: forgiveness. Brad Boydston’s sermon on Jesus vs. Superman.
A good reminder from Jim.
Chris Armstrong on the KJV in African American churches. Allan on the “dark ages.”
Thabiti — a complementarian who believes women should teach. I agree with much of what he says; I disagree at points.
Preacher Mike had a post (way back) on women in ministry and it got over 250 comments. Speaking of Preacher Mike, his post on winter vs. summer Christians is a good read.
Meanderings in the News
1. David Brooks, but not that David Brooks, on what’s like to ready oneself for PhD exams.
2. David Brooks, yes that David Brooks, on the irresponsibility of the news media: ” Mainstream news organizations linked the attack to an offensive target map issued by Sarah Palin’s political action committee. The Huffington Post erupted, with former Senator Gary Hart flatly stating that the killings were the result of angry political rhetoric. Keith Olbermann demanded a Palin repudiation and the founder of the Daily Kos wrote on Twitter: “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin.” Others argued that the killing was fostered by a political climate of hate. These accusations — that political actors contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl — are extremely grave. They were made despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that Loughner was part of these movements or a consumer of their literature. They were made despite the fact that the link between political rhetoric and actual violence is extremely murky. They were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness. Yet such is the state of things. We have a news media that is psychologically ill informed but politically inflamed, so it naturally leans toward political explanations. We have a news media with a strong distaste for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, and this seemed like a golden opportunity to tarnish them. We have a segmented news media, so there is nobody in most newsrooms to stand apart from the prevailing assumptions. We have a news media market in which the rewards go to anybody who can stroke the audience’s pleasure buttons. I have no love for Sarah Palin, and I like to think I’m committed to civil discourse. But the political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.”
3. George Will: “A characteristic of many contemporary minds is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment. From which flows a political doctrine: Given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This supposedly is the path to progress. It actually is the crux of progressivism. And it is why there is a reflex to blame conservatives first.”
4. America’s most literate cities. (Hint: Chicago not in the list, but that’s OK because Green Bay didn’t make it.)
5. James Lang on making classrooms more experiential.
6. Jim Angle: “Lawmakers will look back on 2011 as the year the U.S. started down into a financial Grand Canyon, because the first baby boomers turn 65 this year — the front edge of a tidal wave of baby boomer retirements. “Over the next 20 years, around 10,000 baby boomers will be retiring each day,” says Andrew Biggs, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “That means more people collecting social security, more people collecting Medicare, more people collecting Medicaid as well.” And…..
“There is an implicit bipartisan consensus,” Blahous says, “that we’re not going to suddenly cut benefits of people once they’re receiving them. So we’re not going to pay that 85 year-old widow $2,000 in January and then jerk her back to $1,800 in February. We’re just not gonna do that.”So every year that passes puts more seniors on the rolls, making their benefits politically untouchable — meaning more and more of the solution has to come from tax increases.”
7. CT on the Crystal Cathedral: “This past October, the megachurch prototype of the late 20th century filed for bankruptcy. A 24 percent drop in donations and a $50-$100 million debt owed to more than 550 creditors forced the Crystal Cathedral to file. It was a poignant moment in the history of modern evangelicalism.” And this:
“Some are tempted to hit the man while he is down, but this is unwise. Robert Schuller is not the problem—contemporary evangelicalism is. Schuller was only leading the parade of those who believe they are responsible for making the gospel relevant. The lesson is not that Schuller got it wrong or that his theology is out-of-date; it is not that we just need to find a better, more current point of cultural contact. The lesson is that our attempts to find and exploit a point of cultural contact inevitably end in bankruptcy.”
8. GOP Latina Governor ignored: “New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez made history when she was sworn in New Year’s Day as the nation’s first Latina governor. But the rising GOP star’s momentous victory for the Hispanic community earned her little recognition in the national media.” And… “Some media analysts note that coverage of Martinez’s victory pales in comparison to other history-making Hispanics, like Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, whose confirmation to the high court dominated the headlines for months. “I think it’s quite obvious that first Latino Democrats are celebrated but first Latino Republicans are the objects of scorn,” said Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the conservative Media Research Center. “The media wants the public to think of the Republican Party as an old white guy party and they’ll downplay anything that contradicts with that image.”
9. John Haldane, First Things: “Philosophy, Étienne Gilson observed, “always buries its undertakers.” “Philosophy,” according to Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, in their new book The Grand Design, “is dead.” It has “not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics, [and] scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” Not only, according to Hawking and Mlodinow, has philosophy passed away; so, too, has natural theology. At any rate, the traditional argument from the order apparent in the structure and operations of the universe to a transcendent cause of these, namely God, is wholly redundant—or so they claim: “[Just] as Darwin and Wallace explained how the apparently miraculous design of living forms could appear without intervention by a supreme being, the multiverse concept can explain the fine tuning of physical law without the need for a benevolent creator who made the Universe for our benefit. Because there is a law of gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”
10. Let it snow.
Meanderings in Sports
For football fans, this is perhaps the highlight weekend of the year — or maybe next weekend. The funnel starts getting tighter and the best teams win and the winners begin to focus on the Super Bowl. I’m assuming you will all be supporting the Bears, a team 8 games into the season I thought was just awful — and, hey, there they are. Standing tall.
For Duke fans, I want to pass on my deepest sorrow that you lost a game. It’s such a pity. What was worse was that we had to listen to Dicky V talk like the game was on the precipice of the end of the world. Congrats to Florida State — that was a great performance (what I saw of it when we got home).
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