Weekly Meanderings

We’re back in action with the Meanderings.

The controversy around Rob Bell’s book has calmed enough for us to begin a series on his book, and we will begin that series this Friday. We will patiently examine the major ideas/chps of his book.

But we are glad to resume Weekly Meanderings…  back in action is the word: “Monday was a nasty cold day.  Clouds, heavy as a cow’s teat, hung overhead, threatening to drench anyone at any moment. I put on some sweats and thought about going to the club to workout but then figured,  why bother? This is the sort of day Jesus would pick to bust the sky wide open and come on back. So I stripped the sheets from the bed because Mama taught me that if you are expecting company you’d better have clean linens. I’m not at all sure what Emily Post would say on this matter, but being southern and all, I think it’s only hospitable to ask Jesus to stay the night whenever he gets here. The distance between heaven and earth can seem so very great some days, I expect Jesus might be worn out when he arrives. Even if he can’t stay the night, he might appreciate a clean bed and a nap.”

A must-read from Mike Cope.

Adjustment Burea fan? Thomas Oord sees The Adjustment Bureau in terms of open theism: “There is so much more to this movie than what I’ve described here. And this description comes after my seeing Adjustment Bureau one time. I plan to see it several more. I’m sure that not everyone will like the conclusion of this movie. But for open theists, this flick comes as close as any in describing God’s flexible plans and creaturely freedom. No movie can do full justice to all of my views of God, of course. I mean, how does a filmmaker depict an omnipresent being!?! But The Adjustment Bureau goes a long way toward sorting out the complex issues of love, freedom, God, and the future.”

From Roger Olson: “Those who accused Bell of teaching universalism based on promotion of Love Wins jumped the gun and owe him an apology.  I won’t hold my breath.”

Vince Bacote, on pride and ambition: “What is it about the pursuit of our ambition, our legitimate and godly desires for success in vocation, that can become poisonous when it meets that admiration and recognition of others? I’m reminded of a conversation that I had with the late Stan Grenz at a conference in Nashville nearly a decade ago. I told Stan about my desire for an increase in public speaking opportunities as part of my vocational goals, and the first words out of his mouth were, “It’s seductive.” I was a bit stunned by this, because I thought he would give me some tips about how to accomplish my goals, yet the first words were a warning. As someone who did a lot of traveling and speaking, Stan was keenly aware of the pitfalls that ride along with those who travel the road of success. Stan never explicitly named the siren song with the sweetly dangerous tune, but my guess would be that he and John Piper had the same thing in mind: pride that can take root unnoticed and grow into a ravenous beast.”

Our friend, JR Woodward, did a series on Rob Bell. Rachel Held Evans, a 20something, ponders what’s becoming of evangelicalism.

Jim Martin has a wonderful post about 5 questions to ask before you quit, and before you move on, read the story of how he learned not to quit. Mike Glenn has a post we need to consider before we die. (Nice little serious subject on a Saturday AM.)

Nothing like a young professor’s enthusiasm about a course the first time teaching it. And nothing quite like a young pastor’s enthusiasm either, and an older pastor decided to offer some wisdom — and it’s good wisdom. Here an older — but not very old — professor comments on his new book.

Announcement:

Meanderings in the News

1. Great feel-good story: “In the opening match of the night, Arizona State’s Anthony Robles took a 7-1 decision from Iowa sophomore Matt McDonough. Robles, who was born without a right leg, got the only takedown in the first period of the match and worked a pair of tilts to secure five back points. “I had a lot of butterflies going out there.,” said Robles, who admitted he’s most likely done as a competitive wrestler but wants to remain involved in one facet or another. “This year I think that was the biggest difference in my wrestling, was my mental game. Going into every match I was real relaxed, real calm. But before that, before this match, it was nothing but butterflies. I felt like I was going throw up, I was so scared I almost started crying. “But it’s just the atmosphere. It’s the true athletes that are able to just overcome that.”

2. This is not the first, nor is it the last: “Nearly half the city workers in Costa Mesa received layoff notices last week. Street sweepers. Firefighters. Mechanics. Payroll clerks. Animal control workers. In all, about 210 of the city’s 472 employees, many of whom have worked there for decades. On Thursday, as the notices were being handed out, one maintenance worker committed suicide by jumping from the city hall roof. “It’s like they decided to blow up the city,” said Billy Folsom, 58, a mechanic who got a pink slip. “It’s devastating.” The cutbacks are necessary because the escalating costs of providing pensions for police, firefighters and other unionized employees are draining the city’s revenue, city leaders say. Within three years, city projections show, more than one of every five tax dollars will be spent on employees’ retirement benefits, which were made far more generous in the years before the stock market crashed in 2008.“Just do the math — this is unsustainable,” said Jim Righeimer, the city’s recently elected mayor pro tem. He campaigned on the pension issue, eliciting anger and a counter-campaign from the city’s police and firefighters. “Under these kinds of burdens, we can’t do everything the city needs to do.”

3. Kate Zernike: “CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — When the Massachusetts Institute of Technology acknowledged 12 years ago that it had discriminated against female professors in “subtle but pervasive” ways, it became a national model for addressing gender inequity. Now, an evaluation of those efforts shows substantial progress — and unintended consequences. Among other concerns, many female professors say that M.I.T.’s aggressive push to hire more women has created the sense that they are given an unfair advantage. Those who once bemoaned M.I.T.’s lag in recruiting women now worry about what one called “too much effort to recruit women.” Much as a report accompanying M.I.T.’s acknowledgment more than a decade ago offered a rare window on an institution tackling gender discrimination, the new study, being released Monday, shows how thorny the problem is — and not just at M.I.T. “It’s almost as though the baseline has changed, because things are so much better now,” said Hazel L. Sive, associate dean of the School of Science, who led one of the committees writing the report. “Because things are so much better now, we can see an entirely new set of issues.”

4. Robert Pozen: “Liberals should not be fighting Social Security reform — they ought to be leading the charge for change, for a simple reason: The program is no longer progressive. Contrary to popular opinion, the structure of federal retirement programs today favors middle and high earners over less well-off retirees.”

5. Andrew McCarthy: “That’s why I argue that, although President Obama’s unilateral commencement of a war against Libya is constitutionally wrong, he clearly has the power to do what he has done, for there are no legal remedies. This is a political dispute, not a legal one. Congress, if it is so disposed, will have to flex its competing constitutional muscles to rein the executive branch in. The courts should not, and almost certainly will not, intervene.”

6. Jerry Markon: “BERKELEY, Ill. — Safoorah Khan had taught middle school math for only nine months in this tiny Chicago suburb when she made an unusual request. She wanted three weeks off for a pilgrimage to Mecca. The school district, faced with losing its only math lab instructor during the critical end-of-semester marking period, said no. Khan, a devout Muslim, resigned and made the trip anyway. Justice Department lawyers examined the same set of facts and reached a different conclusion: that the school district’s decision amounted to outright discrimination against Khan. They filed an unusual lawsuit, accusing the district of violating her civil rights by forcing her to choose between her job and her faith. As the case moves forward in federal court in Chicago, it has triggered debate over whether the Justice Department was following a purely legal path or whether suing on Khan’s behalf was part of a broader Obama administration campaign to reach out to Muslims. The decision to take on a small-town school board has drawn criticism from conservatives and Berkeley officials, who say the government should not be standing behind a teacher who wanted to leave her students.”

7. Farhad Manjoo on e-books: “As convenient as they are, I’ve long worried about the many ways in which e-book purveyors restrict readers’ rights. You can’t resell the books you purchase for the Amazon Kindle, and you can’t read them on most other e-readers. We also don’t really own e-books in the same way we own paperbacks—Amazon has gone as far as remotely deleting titles from users’ devices.”

8. Matt Soerens on ministry to the undocumented: “The church’s Great Commission is to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19), and immigrants—regardless of their legal status—present a mission field at our doorstep. Churches should welcome immigrants, recognizing a divinely appointed mission opportunity. Welcoming immigrants who are here unlawfully, of course, raises new questions for many churches. First and foremost for many is, Are we breaking the law by helping? In general, the legal answer is no. In most states, it is entirely lawful to preach the gospel to undocumented immigrants as well as compassionately meet their tangible needs. We can minister effectively and still be fully in submission to God-ordained governing authorities. As laws change, though, Christians in some states may need to wrestle with whether their mandate to love immigrant neighbors requires civil disobedience.”

9. My friend Gerry McDermott got a kerfuffle going at First Things: “Evangelical theology has long been divided between those who emphasize human freedom to choose salvation (Arminians) and those who stress God’s sovereignty in the history of salvation (the Reformed). Now this old division has been overshadowed by a larger division between new opposing camps we may call the Meliorists and the Traditionists. The former think we must improve and sometimes change substantially the tradition of historic orthodoxy. The latter think that while we might sometimes need to adjust our approaches to the tradition, generally we ought to learn from it rather than change it. Most of the Meliorists are Arminian, and most of the Traditionists are Reformed, though there are exceptions on both sides.”

10. Ten fastest growing cities in the USA.

Meanderings in Sports

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