Weekly Meanderings

It’s been a dreary week in Chicago,
my home town:

Kris and I want to thank you the many readers of these Weekly Meanderings. Many tell us they drink their Saturday morning cup of coffee over these links … and if you have some links for us during the week, send them our way. We can’t use them all, but we are always grateful for your participation and for the opportunity to find new links we wouldn’t otherwise have found.

Like this one from Mel Lawrenz, an incurable Packers fan who reflects on preaching and the Packers: “Maybe the principle is this: when everybody in your community or in your nation is looking in the same direction, go ahead and stand in front of their eyeballs and say something meaningful. And we shouldn’t speak condescendingly. Championship games are a lot of fun. So take the energy and the fun and use it to add a higher perspective. If you’re interested, the sermon outline is here. (Use if you want.)”

Mel, I have two problems here: first, it’s the Packers; second, it’s the Packers. (Do I have a witness!)

I wandered across DetroitDerek’s pictures of Detroit — abandoned buildings. Beautiful and depressing.

I have been reading Bonhoeffer since the 70s, read many of his early works in German as the definitive edition appeared, and when I began to read Metaxas I recognized quickly that Bonhoeffer is not quite what Metaxas wants him to be. So I appreciate Tim Challies’ honest and candid cautions: “And yet I find it quite easy to believe that an author, either deliberately or inadvertently, could create a character who was appealing, even if less than accurate. I don’t think we would need to look too far into the biography section of a bookstore to find just that kind of character. Sometimes the truth just doesn’t sell as well as a half-truth. And I’m afraid that we evangelicals may just prefer a safe and friendly character over an accurate one.” Let me put it as I have here before: Bonhoeffer was not an American evangelical; he was a German Lutheran devout intellectual theologian. I love him for who he was, whether he agrees with me or not.

Karen on how beauty evokes God.

This could be a wonderful resource — and I hope it takes off.

John Fea’s excellent piece on John Woodbridge, TEDS’ famous church historian and my former colleague.

Words in the KJV that now don’t make much sense. Justin Topp finds a piece in HuffPo on science and religion that makes no sense.

Talk about not making much sense… Ed Stetzer asks, Why are there so many women missionaries and so few women missiologists? [I’d want to know if the percentages are disproportionate in other academic fields in theology.]

Meanderings in the News

1. Meredith Melnick: “It isn’t just dog trainers and the occasional finicky spouse who want you to keep your pets off the bed. A new report in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases found that of the 250 known zoonotic diseases, which are transmitted between humans and animals, more than 100 are derived from domestic pets — yes, even from your precious Sparkles or Daisy.”

2. Rachel Toor, who finds lessons for writers in Ben Franklin: “If we were to use Ben as a model, to learn to sharpen our prose by imitating writers we admire, paying close attention to style, and making arguments knowing the limitations and quirks of our own personalities, we might be more likely to have an influence on the real world. Me, I want to be like Ben. Plus, he’s funny as all get-out. He concludes his list of virtues with the following: “In reality there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history. For, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”

3. In Annie Murphy Paul’s sketch of Peggy Orenstein’s part in the “princess phase” there’s a quotation that deserves some conversation: “Orenstein finds one such enlightening explanation in developmental psychology research showing that until as late as age 7, children are convinced that external signs — clothing, hairstyle, favorite color, choice of toys — determine one’s sex. “It makes sense, then, that to ensure you will stay the sex you were born you’d adhere rigidly to the rules as you see them and hope for the best,” she writes. “That’s why 4-year-olds, who are in what is called ‘the inflexible stage,’ become the self-­appointed chiefs of the gender police. Suddenly the magnetic lure of the Disney Princesses became more clear to me: developmentally speaking, they were genius, dovetailing with the precise moment that girls need to provethey are girls, when they will latch on to the most exaggerated images their culture offers in order to stridently shore up their femininity.” For a preschool girl, a Cinderella dress is nothing less than an existential insurance policy, a crinolined bulwark to fortify a still-shaky sense of identity.”

4. Chris Cillizza says it will be Obama: “When Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, it was widely regarded as a landslide victory over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Two years later, though, many analysts and observers have forgotten the breadth of Obama’s victory in the wake of the devastating and across-the-board (not to mention down-the-ballot) losses the Democratic Party suffered in the 2010 midterms. And yet, a detailed examination of the national map heading into 2012 suggests that the president still sits in a strong position for reelection – able to lose half a dozen (or more) swing states he carried in 2008 and still win the 270 electoral votes he needs for a second term.”

5. Victor Davis Hanson deconstructs the “age of civility”: “So I predict that 18 months from now the president himself will still be calling for a new civility in the manner of his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention — and will once again adopt the sorts of over-the-top metaphors, similes, allusions, and rough-stuff politics that got him elected senator in 2004 and president in 2008, and pushed his health-care legislation through in 2009. If anything, the language of division will be shriller even than in 2010, as  the administration grasps that loaded language, coupled with calls for an end to rancor, must now do what a record of unpopular governance cannot.”

6. With President Hu in the USA there was some discussion about whether or not Obama should raise the issue of religious freedom. Chris Seiple: “Regarding the first question, there are several reasons why religious freedom/human rights should be treated on par with other U.S. foreign policy issues. Foremost, religious freedom and human rights are at the core of American identity. It has taken us almost 235 years to reach this state of imperfection, but we have relentlessly, if incrementally, made our union more perfect.  American foreign policy is not American if religious freedom is not a priority. Religious freedom is not a geo-political issue, nor is it Republican or Democrat: it is simply a function of who we are as a people. As a senior Vietnamese official said to me once: “Whether we like it or not, we recognize religious freedom as a permanent U.S. national interest.”

7. A suggestive set of images of Lady Justice.

8. Kaetlyn Beaty on John Sowers and The Mentoring Project: “After discovering God’s father-heart at a Billy Graham crusade and through several male mentors, Sowers wrote his thesis at Gordon-Conwell Seminary on reaching the fatherless. He focused on mentoring, seeing it has spiritual resonance that government programs and men’s ministries don’t: “Mentoring mirrors God’s heart … God is taking the initiative and choosing to invest our time and energy into the life of a child.” Then, at the invitation of TMP founder Donald Miller in 2009, Sowers created research toolkits for churches to develop mentors and reach youth (mostly boys) awaiting mentors in every major city. TMP focuses on faith-based equipping, delegating the matching work to cooperative nonprofits like Big Brother, Big Sister. ”

9. Jeff Pearlman: “The stories of past NFL players-turned-walking (or not walking) wounded are heartbreaking and endless. The great Earl Campbell can barely stand up. Neither can the great Wilber Marshall. Or the great Dave Pear. Or the great Wally Chambers. John Mackey, the legendary Colts tight end, suffers from frontotemporal dementia and lives in full-time assisted living. Ralph Wenzel, an NFL guard from 1966-73, also suffers from dementia and can no longer dress, bathe or feed himself. Ted Johnson, a former Patriots linebacker and only 38 years old, shows early signs of Alzheimer’s disease.”

10. On feeding birds — avoid during the breeding season: “But two new studies suggest that feeding birds at bird feeders in the spring can influence behavior in surprising ways. While experts agree that people should continue their beloved pastime of feeding birds at backyard feeders, they also suggest that bird lovers should take a hiatus in feeding birds during the breeding season. One of the studies looked at great tits and blue tits living in woods in England while the other considered great tits living in a test site bordering suburban Oslo, Norway. Both studies fed some birds and left others to find their own food.  As with many other studies of bird feeding, the fed birds laid their eggs earlier than unfed birds and incubated them for less time before they hatched. However, to the researchers’ surprise, compared with the unsupplemented birds, birds fed at feeders had significantly reduced clutch sizes. One of the two types of birds studied, the blue tits, also had a reduced percentage of eggs hatch. Taken together, the supplemented birds had significantly reduced brood sizes.” (HT: HL)

Meanderings in Sports

The Bears far outstripped my expectations for them this season. At one point I was convinced that they could win no more than five games — and there they were fighting to get into the Super Bowl. Good on you Bears.

The best news about the Bears? It’s now officially Cubs season in this house.

Gil Meche, thinking he could not fufill his contract with the KC Royals, retired and walked away from big bucks: “But the case of Gil Meche is rare for an entirely different reason. Meche, a 32-year-old right-handed pitcher, had a contract that called for a $12 million salary in 2011. Yet he will not report to Surprise, Ariz., with the rest of the Kansas City Royals for spring training next month. He will not have surgery to repair his chronically aching right shoulder. He will not pitch in relief, which involves a lighter workload.

Meche retired last week, which means he will not be paid at all.”