I’m in Texas this weekend speaking to the leaders of Irving Bible Church and Kris is in the State of New York at a wedding shower for our niece, Kari Arnet. See you Sunday evening, Kris. To the right is our grandson, Aksel, hanging with his mom and dad in Florida. Kris thinks he’s the cutest kid ever … just sayin’. The man who is one of Aksel’s great grandpa, Kris’ dad, had a man’s room just like this one.... Read more
Did you see this? A student sent this link to me, I read the article, was amazed. Here’s a clip of the article… Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found. The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights,... Read more
This morning I had a friend write and say she was offended by what I said about divorce, and it took me off guard because I wasn’t sure what I had said. So she pointed me to a post … and I read the post … and for the life of me couldn’t figure out what “I” was saying. Instead, as I told her, I was summarizing what an author had written and not really giving my point of view... Read more
Red State, Blue State, Law and Mission My “law” post for this week will diverge a bit from the topic of “law” per se to discuss why I believe a missional approach to “law” is vital. The springboard for this post is an essay from “Q Ideas” by Ken Wilson, “Science and the Evangelical Mission in America.” (Now on the website.) Wilson’s essay is specifically about the relation between faith and science, but I think the missional principles he discusses apply equally to the relation between... Read more
In this last post on Smith and Snell’s book, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults I want to draw attention to a major, major suggestion. What do you think we can do about the conclusions below? The issue pertains to the presence and influence of adults on the faith of emerging adults as they transition from teenage years to adult years. “Emerging adulthood tends to both raise the stakes on and remove social support for being seriously... Read more
I grew up baptist, and that meant we were big on baptism and it also meant we did not baptize infants. Baptism was for those who consciously believed. The oddest thing about baptism for us was that baptism as an act did nothing to us or for us but was instead understood to be an act of obedience to the command of Jesus. Not so always with the Church. Chris Hall, in Worshiping With the Church Fathers , examines in his... Read more
From the NYTimes: Why is Haiti so poor? Is it because Haitians are dimwitted or incapable of getting their act together? Haiti isn’t impoverished because the devil got his due; it’s impoverished partly because of debts due. France imposed a huge debt that strangled Haiti. And when foreigners weren’t looting Haiti, its own rulers were. The greatest predation was the deforestation of Haiti, so that only 2 percent of the country is forested today. Some trees have been — and... Read more
Here is the fourth part of David Brooks’ piece in NYTimes. Fourth, it’s time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism. These programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the... Read more
Paul’s commitment to Jerusalem and the Torah never wavers, as Luke will make clear next. Paul wants to cross the waters and visit Macedonia and Greece and then go back to Jerusalem and then after that get the gospel to Rome. Missional work involves planning and dreaming and imagining and, frankly, finding crucial centers of missional work. 19:21 Now after all these things had taken place, Paul resolved [in the Spirit] to go to Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. He... Read more
Stephen C. Meyer has published a (very long, but readable) book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, outlining his argument in favor of intelligent design. This book essentially argues that life is very complex, the origin of life is a puzzle, and the information content in DNA cannot be explained by natural means. The central chapters in Meyer’s book discuss the issues in origin of life research. He takes a somewhat meandering path – but... Read more
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