Sometimes its the evident arbitrariness of an Old Testament law or, to use the words in this book by Paul Copan, the “weirdness” of a law, that calls into question the divine source of such a law or the wisdom of the law. Copan, in Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God, examines such questions over a few chapters. Take this whole thing with purity, or the clean and unclean issues. Our next post will... Read more
In the last three or four days a half dozen or more folks have written me to ask if there is a Study Guide for One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow. Yes, there is. But it’s already in the book, but it’s organic to the book and not an add-on. In fact, it’s a “new kind of study guide.” Instead of the normal Study Guide that either comes at the end of the book or that comes as a separate booklet,... Read more
Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook genius, has been named Time person of the year. How has Facebook changed your life? Or how is it impacting your life? What do you do now on FB that, if FB disappeared, you’d have to do differently? Do you e-mail almost exclusively though FB? Is the place your family shares photos? By the way, Jesse Rice wrote a good book about the impact of Facebook on the church: The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected... Read more
Just in case you’re like me and are always looking for clues for Christmas presents, and I know how much I like it when folks make suggestions like this, I want to recommend the best little coffee maker in the world. For the money you can’t beat the AeroPress. For the money you also can’t beat the quality of the taste. Here’s the link: Aerobie 80R08 AeroPress Coffee and Espresso Maker Some of you may have followed my story that... Read more
We’ve been working through Denis O. Lamoureux’s book Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution – a book that describes a way to move beyond the creation and evolutions debates. Chapter 4 of this book describes the role that ancient science plays in the text of scripture. The post on Tuesday looked at the general topic and specifically at the presence of an ancient view of astronomy, geology, and cosmology in the text. The ancient understanding of biology and reproduction... Read more
Brad Lomenick is one of America’s young Christian leaders, and he’s the point person of the very successful Catalyst conferences. I admire Brad and think the world of what he’s doing. On his blog he’s been doing some stuff on age groups and advice about leadership. Thus, here’s one and here’s another. His series of three posts is worth your reading, but I’d like to post what he said for 55+ and then I’d like to go at this topic... Read more
In One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow I am making a case for an alternative politics. The book is now available in bookstores and online, and I hope you can read it and get a group to study it — and being to live out the One.Life challenge. Instead of American and Western Christians anchoring their hope in the political process, instead of waging war in the public forum for platform issues, and instead of the ups and downs of hope and... Read more
Not a few critics of the Bible have called into question not just the religion, but the deity connected to the religion. Not the least of the issues raised concerns the quality of morality in the Old Testament. Paul Copan, in Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God, examines this issue in a general way in chp 6, and so today we want to discuss — notice the topic — the general approach to dealing... Read more
From Barna: Do you agree with these six themes? What do you think? What can we do? Change usually happens slowly in the Church. But a review of the past year’s research conducted by the Barna Group provides a time-lapse portrayal of how the religious environment in the U.S. is morphing into something new. Analyzing insights drawn from more than 5,000 non-proprietary interviews conducted over the past 11 months, George Barna indicated that the following patterns were evident in the... Read more
For our Blue Parakeet Giveaway, the winners are: Alejandro, for Hermeneia, Cheryl, for Atticus/Scout, and Gordon for Junia. Definite runners up were Santo and Cubbie and “DA what’s his name?” We’ll have another contest soon. Read more
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