Roy Baumeister: Virtue ethics are in; research like this shows why. (Go to the link for the full article.) I contend Jesus was not a virtue ethicist. What say you? Two decades’ worth of lab research has established that willpower is limited, and exerting self-control to resist impulses or change your actions depletes it. Like all living things, humans naturally seek to conserve their energy, and so exerting self-control to resist temptation or take the path of virtue encounters a... Read more
Adrian F. Ward, weighing on some recent important research on how men and women relate as friends, and how they perceive that relationship: What do you think? Friends or not? Any guidelines? These results suggest that men, relative to women, have a particularly hard time being “just friends.” What makes these results particularly interesting is that they were found within particular friendships (remember, each participant was only asked about the specific, platonic, friend with whom they entered the lab). This is not... Read more
Beginning a New Year, by John Frye Facing a new year always generates conflicting feelings within me. I hope that this is not unusual for pastors. Of course, anticipating ministry creates a sense of eager enthusiasm as Fellowship Covenant and I wonder what the Lord has in store for us in 2013. Yet, along with the anticipation, I sense a wispy cloud of melancholy. The older I get, the more I surrender to the reality that much more of life... Read more
I begin with this claim: the church, the local church as well as the church universal, is a politic. Instead of supporting a political party, which confuses the church into serving two masters, the church strives to be a politic. These are my words, not David Fitch’s, but I think they get to the heart of David’s section on how the church is to recover the core of our politics for mission. The problem is the Christian Nation vision, but... Read more
Yesterday a mysterious package landed at our front door. It came from Paraclete Press, my publisher of several books (including the Jesus Creed project). I hadn’t ordered anything and it didn’t feel like a box of books. I brought it in, grabbed my little Swiss Army knife, opened the blade, and cut ever so gently along the creases of the box to discover… … a beautiful loaf of cinnamon nut bread with a jar of the most amazing Apple Pie... Read more
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In the last few years a number of churches, from a variety of denominations, have used our 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed for Lent. So let me encourage you, if you are looking for ideas, to consider using Lent as a time to reflect on and pray about and practice loving God and loving others — with a view to God’s love in the cross and resurrection. We tend to think of Lent as a time of sorrow and repentance and... Read more
Here’s some fun, and there’s more here: Read more
The Bible has always played an unimpeachable role in Christianity … It is not, however, the central focus of Christian faith. That position belongs to God, and Christians are called to trust him. … Coming to the realization that the Gospel is not at stake with every interpretive challenge will encourage a fruitful dialog between religious and critical readings of Scripture. – Peter Enns, (p. 159-160) The final essay in the new book by Marc Zvi Brettler (Brandeis University), Peter... Read more
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