John Walton, words worth careful and constant reading: It is too easy for an individual, a local church or a denomination to decide that they have a corner on the market of interpretation and truth and that anyone who disagrees with them is wrong. This attitude exists despite the fact that the New Testament shows us a number of situations when people in the early church had disagreements about issues that were decided by allowing a range of possibilities (e.g.,... Read more
WaPo, by Gail Sullivan: After these messages, Saturday morning cartoons will not be right back. At least not the way some of you remember them. “The Smurfs,” “Scooby Doo,” “The Jetsons,” “Ghostbusters,” “Animaniacs,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and other cartoons of Gen X childhoods aren’t gone, but their dedicated time slot is. So what? kids these days might say. But the nostalgic among us remember a time when cartoons weren’t a la carte — and Saturday mornings were sacred. This past Saturday, the... Read more
Gotta love the (Bohemian?) Waxwing grabbing some breakfast. Wine as a source of good bacteria and probiotics by Agata Blaszczak Boxe (Source): There are bacteria in wine that may be beneficial for people’s health, new research finds. In the study, researchers in Spain isolated 11 strains of bacteria from wine, including strains of Lactobacillus, which are also found in yogurt, as well as Oenococcus and Pediococcus bacteria, which are associated with the wine-making process. “Up to now, many studies have reported that the best [foods]... Read more
A very important read from Margaret Feinberg (and please go to her site to read her wisdom about what to do): The pink ribbon reminds us of the pain. The suffering. The losses. The trauma. The horror. The unspeakable. People like to glom onto phrases like the “great improvements in treatment” and all those “medical advances.” And there are some. Just far too few. People like that sweet momma I described are dying every day. In fact, hospitals are seeing... Read more
Joel Miller, fine author, probes into the expression “personal relationship” and, rather alarmingly, discovers this is largely unknown until the 1970s. But when we speak of personal faith, or resort to labeling our faith as such in the face of a disagreement over what is or is not true, we run the risk of reducing our creed to caprice, opinion, and fancy. Well, that’s what it means to me. This is particularly a problem today in our consumeristic, me-centered, self-indulgent culture. And that’s where... Read more
The Severe Parable, by John Frye. (John asked me if he could write a series on my The Sermon on the Mount, no doubt in part because he needed margin to read such a book and in part because he could do double-duty for this blog, and I’ve greatly appreciated his fair summaries and his taking some of the conclusions into the world of church life.) Scot McKnight summarizes Matthew’s presentation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “Either do what he... Read more
Modern theology is the attempt to accommodate the great tradition of the church with modernity and so to make Christianity more appealing to modern/postmoderns. A very typical example of modern theology, in a liberal mode, is Schleiermacher who focused the Christian tradition on the experience (of God). Responses to modernity’s theology included robust defenses of the tradition — and sometimes these defenses were strident, but not always and it is a mistake to think defense of the tradition means defensive... Read more
Dietrich Bonhoeffer says some authors are marked by hilaritas (see below), while one might also say other authors are marked by gravitas and others by conservitas (I made that one up) or by liberalitas (that one too). But I’d like to record Bonhoeffer’s understanding of hilaritas because he points to examples like Luther and Karl Barth: … as optimism about one’s own work, as boldness, willingness to defy the world and popular opinion, as the firm conviction that they are doing the world good with... Read more
Christopher Ingraham: Liberals and conservatives prioritize very different values when it comes to educating their kids: Liberals are much more likely to preach the value of tolerance, while conservatives emphasize religious faith. Among all political types, liberals stand out for their general indifference toward teaching obedience. On the other hand, they place a higher value on curiosity, creativity and empathy, as the chart below shows. Read more
Jesus Creed
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