Yikes, we’ll become bottom-lined: The Texas A&M University System is moving ahead with a controversial method of evaluating how much professors are worth, based on their salaries, how much research money they bring in, and how much money they generate from teaching, The Bryan-College Station Eagle reports. Under the proposal, officials will add the money generated by each professor and subtract that amount from his or her salary to get a bottom-line value for each, according to the article. Frank Ashley,... Read more
Gina Dalfonzo’s essay on love on TV: Consider some of your favorite shows, and you may recognize the pattern. Some modern unwritten rule decrees that couples mustn’t marry until the end, or nearly the end, of a TV series, because it would ruin the all-important sexual tension. Yet this doesn’t preclude sex. They are allowed and even expected to have plenty of that, with each other and with others. And that can warp a love story. Instead of being able... Read more
Yes, I SO agree. The significance of insignificance. Ordinary is OK. We should honor any generation that strives for significance, especially if it is a longing to make a difference in the world. Better this than striving to make money and live a comfortable life! But the human heart is desperately wicked and the human soul subject to self-deception, and this colors even our highest aspirations. Even the best of intentions mask the mysterious darkness within, which is why we... Read more
Joe Lunceford (PhD, Baylor University) is professor of New Testament at Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky. He has served as a pastor, as a military chaplain, and for twenty-seven years, as a teacher. He is also the author of Parody and Counterimaging in the Apocalypse and Biblical Women–submissive?. * * * * * You are probably among the masses of people who have never heard my name. It is mentioned in only one sentence in Holy Writ. There were only a... Read more
“… if God cares for so much for all creatures, why didn’t God create a world in which there would be no natural disasters?” One of the more significant passage in the Old Testament for shaping our understanding of God — or perhaps a passage that if we take it serious will shape our view of God — is the Flood Story. What do you think of his sketch of the God of the Flood Story? How do you explain... Read more
Well, not completely, but there’s an environment of adolescent social life and a gene… and it correlates with being a liberal. From WaPo. So here’s our question: You probably don’t know if you have the 7R version of the DRD4 gene, but (1) are you a liberal and (2) did you have lots of friends in high school (and a risk taker)? Is there a gene for liberals? Well, not quite, but scientists say they have found the first evidence... Read more
My most natural audiences intersect the academy and the church. So when professors are gathering not just to hear a paper about a specialized topic but to ponder, from their angle and the angle of others, what is going on in the church, then I feel like I am with “my people.” Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching and preaching in churches, but I’m a professor and I like to be with professors who like to consider what we... Read more
What kind of preaching is this? Got any good examples? Do you do this? Ever try it? Wow, quite the content in just a few paragraphs: The afternoon sun dappled through the palladium windows in Kirby Parlor at Perkins School of Theology one autumn afternoon a couple years ago. It lit up the rugged, handsome features of an athletic 60 year old man seated in a circle of about 30 young preaching students. He was John Irving, the novelist, author... Read more
We’ve been looking at the essays in a book Theology After Darwin centered around a simple question: What are the implications for Christian theology if Darwin was right? In conjunction with this we are also looking at three articles in the recent theme issue of the ASA Journal Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (v. 62 no. 3 2010) Reading Genesis: The Historicity of Adam and Eve, Genomics, and Evolutionary Science. Today I would like to look at the first... Read more
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