Number One Obstacle

Last updated on: November 13, 2012 at 9:51 am By Scot McKnight

Adam and Christine Jeske, at IVP’s blog, asked college students… well, here are his words but you can go to the link for his explanations: Three weeks ago, I asked several hundred college students a question: What is your biggest obstacle today to giving your whole life for God’s global mission? Let me be clear, as I was that day—I wasn’t asking about dropping out of society, selling everything, and moving to Turkmenistan (although that was fair game). Rather, I explained that giving your... Read more

Education: West vs. East

Last updated on: November 13, 2012 at 9:45 am By Scot McKnight

From NPR, on a difference between East and West when it comes to “struggle”: Stigler is now a professor of psychology at UCLA who studies teaching and learning around the world, and he says it was this small experience that first got him thinking about how differently East and West approach the experience of intellectual struggle. “I think that from very early ages we [in America] see struggle as an indicator that you’re just not very smart,” Stigler says. “It’s a... Read more

Complementarianism and Darwinism

Last updated on: August 1, 2017 at 6:07 pm By Scot McKnight

How has a knowledge of history, church history, theological history, ecclesial history shaped your thinking about males and females? Re-shaped? Read more

The Unchanging Church

Last updated on: November 14, 2012 at 6:44 am By Scot McKnight

At the heart of so much discussion of the church, in particular missional church or seeker-sensitive church, is change and adaptation and relevant and listening to the audience and serving the sorts who need our service. One church that is absolutely and resolutely against the adaptation theme is the Eastern Orthodox Church, and it is “meet and right” for us to give EO a glance to remind us both where we were and what longterm tradition looks like. What have you “picked... Read more

Is Addiction a Brain Disease?

Last updated on: November 13, 2012 at 9:41 am By Scot McKnight

Mark Lewis says No. What say you? Addiction to substances (e.g., booze, drugs, cigarettes) and behaviors (e.g., eating, sex, gambling) is an enormous problem, seriously affecting something like 40% of individuals in the Western world. Attempts to define addiction in concrete scientific terms have been highly controversial and are becoming increasingly politicized. What IS addiction? We as scientists need to know what it is, if we are to have any hope of helping to alleviate it. There are three main... Read more

Hacked or to be Hacked

Last updated on: November 13, 2012 at 9:59 am By Scot McKnight

Nicole Perlroth: Chances are, most people will get hacked at some point in their lifetime. The best they can do is delay the inevitable by avoiding suspicious links, even from friends, and manage their passwords. Unfortunately, good password hygiene is like flossing — you know it’s important, but it takes effort. How do you possibly come up with different, hard-to-crack passwords for every single news, social network, e-commerce, banking, corporate and e-mail account and still remember them all? To answer... Read more

Job is Innocent – And He Proves Faithful (RJS)

Last updated on: November 12, 2012 at 9:51 pm By RJS

The prose prologue to the book of Job, found in chapters 1 and 2, introduces a number of issues that challenge standard Christian presuppositions. The commentaries by John Walton (Job (The NIV Application Commentary)) and Tremper Longman III (Job (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms)), both their agreements and their differences, help us explore the ways that the book of Job challenges our comfortable presuppositions. I started the post last week putting out three major points from... Read more

Old Testament, Militarism, and Idolatry

Last updated on: November 13, 2012 at 6:07 am By Scot McKnight

This post is by Preston Sprinkle. While it’s true that the Old Testament sanctions violence and warfare in some cases, it condemns militarism. Again, militarism is: [T]he belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests. Most Evangelicals who endorse militarism will turn to the Old Testament to prove that God sanctions military might. “It is a good thing,” writes... Read more

Coffee’s Good for Words

Last updated on: November 8, 2012 at 9:11 am By Scot McKnight

From The Smithsonian: A cup or two of coffee doesn’t just give you energy—it might make you a think a little more quickly. That’s not exactly a shocker, but for coffee drinkers, a new study showing that caffeine can improve verbal processing speed should put a nice perk in your day. Despite conventional wisdom that caffeine is a harmful drug, a growing body of research is demonstrating that it can confer a wide range of benefits when consumed in moderation.... Read more

Friendly, but less-than-patient, Fire from within Evangelicalism

Last updated on: November 11, 2012 at 10:23 pm By Scot McKnight

I got a note the other day from a friend who had read Peter Leithart’s piece at First Things, with the following words embedded in the letter. This must be said to evangelicalism, at least to the sort of evangelicalism who isn’t seeing what is happening. I also don’t think this should be about big government/small government and individual rights. Not as far as the church is concerned anyway. Either form could be argued positively. It needs to be –... Read more