We’ve had an amazing week here in Honolulu teaching at Pacific Rim Christian University, with a huge big thanks to Stephen Stinton for being my TA while we are here, and here’s a picture Kris took when we had lunch in Waikiki at Rum Fire with Daniel Pak. We are looking forward to our second week with the class — we’ve had some important conversations in class.

Is the Reformation over? Christopher Howse:

It is surely true that “the great majority of Catholics have lived their whole lives never having directly heard preaching on the free gift of justification by faith without too many ‘buts’ and ‘howevers’.” Indeed many might say they don’t believe in justification by faith.

I was struck by the remark about justification because it came in a meditation by Father Raniero Cantalamesa, a Franciscan, preached to the papal household in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. So it was not made in a Lutheran spirit hostile to Catholic orthodoxy.

Fr Cantalamesa notes that the Council of Trent, responding to the reformers, outlined a doctrine “in which there was a place for both faith and good works, each of course, in its right place. One is not saved by good works, but one is not saved without good works”. How is it then that even well-informed Catholics do not think much about salvation by faith?

“From the moment the Protestants unilaterally emphasised faith, Catholic preaching and spirituality ended up taking on, almost alone, the thankless task of recalling the necessity of good works and of a human being’s personal contribution to salvation.”

Jockey Victor Espinoza will no doubt garner fame and a lifetime of opportunities after guiding American Pharoah to the Triple Crown, but he is not necessarily seeing an immediate fortune. That’s because the jockey decided to donate his Belmont Stakes winnings to charity.

In an article for the Louisville Courier-Journal, Steve Myrick says that American Pharoah trainer Bob Baffert and wife Jill donated $150,000 spread equally over three racing-related charities after winning the Belmont Stakes. Myrick reports that Espinoza did likewise with his Belmont winnings.

“At the wire I was like, ‘I cannot believe I did it,’” Espinoza said, according to Myrick. “I (won) the Triple Crown race now, but I didn’t make any money, because I donated my money to the City of Hope (a California cancer treatment facility).”

Say her name.

Say it out loud: DaJerria Becton. A beautiful name, let your voice say it out loud.

Scripture tells us that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God – Jesus gives us ears to hear and then faith comes. I think there’s something powerful about our own voices speaking the truth out ahead of ourselves. Our words matter. Our voices matter. What we speak aloud often sinks its way into our soul and our memory and then into our actions.

So here is what we could say today: DaJerria Becton.

I believe that today the crucified and resurrected Christ is saying her name with us: DaJerria Becton.

You are made in the image of God, DaJerria, you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are valuable. You are beloved.

She is not “Bikini Girl.”

Not “that black girl in the bikini in that video.”

Not “the McKinney girl.”

Not whatever terrible name she was called that day or in the days since as people cast judgment on her and her friends for the way the day ended: a white man’s knees pressed into her young back, forcing her face into the grass while she cried out for someone to call her mama.

“Someone call my mama!”

Her name is DaJerria Becton. 

In our year of much travel… Kris and I on our way to Honolulu where I will be teaching “voyagers” the next weeks at Pacific Rim Christian University.

Bless her heart! By Peter Holley:

A vintage Apple I computer, one of only about 200 first-generation desktop computers built by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne in 1976, can fetch six figures.

Assuming, that is, you know you have one in your possession.

A Silicon Valley recycling firm that specializes in computers, lab equipment, test equipment and semiconductors suspects a local woman was unaware that she had a valuable piece of tech history in her possession when she dropped off two boxes of old electronics that she’d gathered while cleaning out her garage in April.

“She said, ‘I want to get rid of this stuff and clean up my garage,’ ” Victor Gichun, vice president of Clean Bay Area, told the San Jose Mercury News. “I said, ‘Do you need a tax receipt?’ and she said, ‘No, I don’t need anything.’ ”

Gichun told the Mercury News that the woman said her husband had died several months earlier, prompting her to clean out her home. In hopes of helping her through a hard time, there’s something he’d like to give her, but he has no way of contacting the mystery donor.

Story worth telling:

I Went to Church with Bruce Jenner and Here’s what Caitlyn Taught Me About Jesus.

When I was a budding twenty-one year old I took a job at a church in Calabasas. It was a brand new church meeting in a movie theater, and as I relocated to Los Angeles for my first service I learned the Kardashian family were major supporters of the church from its infancy. At the time I had to Google their names to figure out who this celebrity family was. They had previously attended another church and met a very charismatic and prolific pastor there. He ended up leaving that church believing he wouldn’t go back to ministry.

It was Bruce Jenner that found this pastor three years later, was working at Starbucks.

Bruce searched this pastor out and told him that his wife, Kris, had been trying to find him and would love to talk with him. The Pastor kindly received the request, and upon meeting, Kris Jenner told the pastor that they wanted to start a new church in their hometown of Calabasas with him as the pastor.

If you’re surprised by this..so was I.

It’s a long story that doesn’t fully connect with the purpose of this post, and so I’ll keep it short. He accepted.

BW3, back by popular demand: counters to arguments against women in ministry:

Most of you who know me, know that I did my doctoral thesis on women in the NT with C.K. Barrett at the University of Durham in England. My first three published scholarly books were on this very subject. One of the reasons I did that thirty some years ago was because of the controversy that raged then over the issue of women in ministry, and more particularly women as pulpit ministers and senior pastors. Never mind that the Bible does not have categories like ‘senior pastor’ or ‘pulpit minister’, the NT has been used over and over again to justify the suppression of women in ministry— and as I was to discover through years of research and study, without Biblical justification. Now of course equally sincere Christians may disagree on this matter, but the disagreements should be on the basis of sound exegesis of Biblical texts, not emotions, rhetoric, mere church polity, dubious hermeneutics and the like.

So in this post I am going to deal with the usual objections to women in ministry, one by one. Some of these objections come out of a high church tradition, some tend to come from low church traditions, some are Catholic/Orthodox some are Protestant, but we will take on a sampling of them all without trying to be exhaustive or exhausting.

Doctoring — the old fashioned way — house calls!

May 26, 2015 11:29 am Sheri Porter – It’s Oct. 18, 1993, and Thomas Cornwell, M.D., a family physician not too many years out of residency, is on call at an urgent care clinic in Chicago. Unbeknownst to his colleagues, he’s also agreed to help launch a home-based primary care model in the Chicago area.

The clinic phone is ringing and, against all odds (and clinic protocol), Cornwell takes the call. After listening to the caller complain about abdominal pain, he tells her to go the ER. He still remembers her response: “Doesn’t anyone make house calls?”

Cornwell tells AAFP News he went to see the patient after he finished his shift. “She was my first patient; she averted a hospitalization.” Now, more than two decades later, Cornwell’s house call count has reached nearly 32,000 visits to more than 4,000 patients.

Defining Home-Based Primary Care

Cornwell describes house call medicine as “bringing primary care to a mostly elderly population with multiple chronic problems.”

The average age of his patients is 80, and one-third are older than 85. “About 8 percent of our patients are under the age of 65,” says Cornwell, and most of them suffer from neuromuscular diseases.

Pitiful.

Thomas Sowell:

Baltimore is now paying the price for irresponsible words and actions, not only by young thugs in the streets, but also by its mayor and the state prosecutor, both of whom threw the police to the wolves, in order to curry favor with local voters. Now murders in Baltimore in May have been more than double what they were in May last year, and higher than in any May in the past 15 years. Meanwhile, the number of arrests is down by more than 50 percent.

Various other communities across the country are experiencing very similar explosions of crime and reductions of arrests, in the wake of anti-police mob rampages from coast to coast that the media sanitize as “protests.”

None of this should be surprising. In her carefully researched 2010 book, Are Cops Racist? Heather Mac Donald pointed out that, after anti-police campaigns, cops tended to do less policing and criminals tended to commit more crimes.

Obesity growing in causes of cancer:

A middle-aged cancer epidemic is being blamed on Britain’s poor diet and overly generous portions.

Leading specialists convened on Friday to issue a stark warning that obesity will soon overtake smoking as the principal cause of cancer.

Doctors said Westerners had replaced one bad habit with another, with too many people eating their way towards an early death.

They said spiralling rates of obesity meant that cancer – once seen as a disease of old age – was now increasingly being diagnosed up to two decades earlier than in the past. Their figures suggest one in five cancer deaths in Britain is caused by excess weight.

Speaking at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual conference in Chicago, experts said “staggering” rates of obesity were responsible for the growth of 10 common cancers. Dr Clifford Hudis, a New York breast cancer specialist, said the trends meant that young people were increasingly presenting with diseases usually seen in old age. “Being lean doesn’t mean you won’t get these diseases, necessarily, but being obese might mean you get them earlier in life,” said the former ASCO president.

“So you might get colon cancer at 60 instead of 80.” The figures suggest that around 32,000 UK deaths from cancer a year are related to excess weight.

Arrivederci Assisi!

Good students:

BETHLEHEM, N.H. —The graduating class at Profile Junior-Senior High School in Bethlehem made a heartfelt decision to give the money raised for their senior class trip to the school’s principal, who was recently diagnosed with cancer.

Principal Courtney Vashaw said they work hard to teach the students about caring for others and being compassionate, but not in her wildest dreams did she think that lesson would directly affect her.

“We decided to not go on our senior class trip this year and donate all of our funds to your cause,” said Ian Baker, a senior.

The class was scheduled to leave for Rydin’ Hi Ranch in New York on Sunday and spend four days there.

The gift comes less than a week after Vashaw told them she had been diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of cancer. After four years of hard work, the senior class gave her nearly $8,000 for medical care.

“It is very hard for me to accept help, and I have no idea what to say to you,” said Vashaw.

“She’s just very caring, very selfless, and we wanted to be selfless, too,” said Baker.

Patsy McGarry, on the Irish same-sex marriage vote:

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin is of course correct. The Catholic Church does indeed need a reality check in the wake of the same-sex marriage referendum.

As the unequivocal result of the referendum became clear he said: “I think really that the church needs to do a reality check, a reality check right across the board, to look at the things it’s doing well, to look at the areas where we really have to start and say, ‘Look, have we drifted away completely from young people’?”

It’s not just young people. The people who voted for this referendum included tens of thousands of practicing older Catholics in the cities, towns and countryside of Ireland. People who will continue to practice their faith but who no longer accept that their gay sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, grandchildren, even their gay parents, are “objectively disordered” with a tendency to evil, as their Church teaches.

CS Lewis vs. D Bonhoeffer as now evangelical saints, by Carl Trueman:

There are likely to be three things which have contributed to the phenomenon Mills describes. First, there is a subordination of doctrinal confession to aesthetics. Particularly in American evangelicalism, there is a tendency to treat doctrinal difference with chosen heroes as something to be ignored or wished away rather than addressed. Thus, C. S. Lewis and Dietrich Bonhoeffer have become American evangelicals as a result of posthumous virtual baptisms into the faith, the brash boldness of which would surely have made even Brigham Young blush.

Now, Lewis and Bonhoeffer both said nice things about Jesus. One wrote exceptionally well. The other died opposing Hitler. They were decent, admirable Christian fellows from whom we should all learn. But they were most definitely not conservative American evangelicals. That they have been made into such indicates how significant doctrinal differences have given way to a desire to recruit them to the chosen cause. It is a triumph of aesthetics and consumer taste over doctrinal confession.

Speaking of which (kinda), see this about the value of looking at green space and nature for our brains?

But the psychological benefits of green roofs to busy office workers may also be substantial, according to new research. In a study published in the journal Environmental Psychology, the University of Melbourne’s Kate Lee and a group of colleagues found that interrupting a tedious, attention-demanding task with a 40-second “microbreak” — in which one simply looks at a computerized image of a green roof — improved focus as well as subsequent performance on the task.

The research adds to a growing scientific literature on the health advantages— psychological and otherwise — of being exposed to views of nature in urban settings, for instance through the presence of parks or trees. Research in this area is so far along, in fact, that researchers are considering whether it might be possible to identify the right “dose” of nature that people need to receive in order to actually reap significant health benefits.

Other psychological benefits of nature views have also been captured in recent literature. In one study, research subjects who viewed a 12-minute nature documentary before playing a game that involved managing a fishery resource engaged in more sustainable behavior.

Back to Italy, and the problem of Africa’s migrants:

But Italy must do its part first. It can and should accept a reasonable share of migrants.

Above all it’s a moral issue: you cannot let migrants drown in the Mediterranean or send them back to the countries in crisis from where they’ve escaped, often risking their lives.

But there’s also a practical reason: migrant labor can help revamp Italy’s sluggish economy after a triple-dip recession and contribute to boosting the appeal of neglected territories.

This does not mean that Italy should be left to deal with the migrant emergency on its own. The request forwarded to Europe is indeed a reasonable one, and soon a European scheme of quotas will kick in, but first Italy needs to do its homework as we seem to have no sense of national solidarity….

Yet there could be an easier solution, once Europe makes a ruling on migrant quotas.

A good way for Italy to deal with the crisis would be to host its share of migrants in the thousands of ghost towns that dot the boot, a bit like many U.S. towns on the verge of dying out did with Latinos.

It’s hard to believe yet the peninsula has 6,000 ghost towns that have been partly or totally abandoned across time, while communities are shrinking in another 15,000 that have lost over 90% of their population.

These villages — many dating from pre-Roman times — have been abandoned due to a mix of factors: pirate sacks, natural disasters such as quakes and floods, war bombings, harsh conditions and emigration to larger cities or the U.S. in search of a better life.

Yes, Chris Collins’ contract is extended:

Chris Collins didn’t even raise a glass with wife Kim the night he agreed to a contract extension to remain at Northwestern.

“Maybe we gave each other a hug,” Collins told the Tribune. “I was never worried about it. I want to be here for the long haul and build a program.”

The extension, yet to be announced by the school, resulted from Collins’ end-of-season meeting with Jim Phillips, NU’s athletic director.

The Anglican Communion’s Church of Ireland issued this statement following the recent vote to legalize same-sex marriage in Ireland:

The archbishops and bishops of the Church of Ireland wish to affirm that the people of the Republic of Ireland, in deciding by referendum to alter the State’s legal definition of marriage, have of course acted fully within their rights.

The Church of Ireland, however, defines marriage as between a man and a woman, and the result of this referendum does not alter this.

The church has often existed, in history, with different views from those adopted by the state, and has sought to live with both conviction and good relationships with the civil authorities and communities in which it is set. Marriage services taking place in a Church of Ireland church, or conducted by a minister of the Church of Ireland may – in compliance with church teaching, liturgy and canon law – continue to celebrate only marriage between a man and a woman.

We would now sincerely urge a spirit of public generosity, both from those for whom the result of the referendum represents triumph, and from those for whom it signifies disaster.

Dave Chase and the healthcare tax — what is costing Americans:

It’s been reported that 80% of employer payroll increases have gone to pay healthcare costs over last 20+ years so employer costs have increased with little going in the pockets of workers (not to mention no meaningful improvement in overall healthoutcomes). Over the last 50 years, the cost of consumer goods and services have gone up eight-fold with one exception — healthcare. Healthcare costs have increased 274-fold.

The average American household would have ~$1,000,000 in their retirement account

I did some very rough, back-of-envelope calculations on what could be put into people’s retirement plans if there wasn’t healthcare’s rampant overtreatment and hyperinflation. I used historical rates of inflation, S&P growth and healthcare premiums. Over 30 years, if we didn’t pay the “healthcare hyperinflation tax” the average American household would have ~$1,000,000 in their retirement account (assuming growth in a S&P index fund and reinvestment of dividends). Instead, the statistics on retirement savings for the average American are horribly low. With the status quo we are stealing our future both financially as well as what we do in how we overtreat (and thus harm) people.

Many people also don’t know that the average couple will have $300,000 of healthcare expense not covered by Medicare. The point of the open source Health Rosetta project is to not sit idly by  (Disclosure: The Rosetta concept is an idea that I have conceived of and is in its early days. The objective is to openly share what is working). Proactive purchasers of health and wellness services at employers can address this today. No new legislation is needed. Having said that, local, state and federal governments should also leverage the proven insights/models outlined in the Health Rosetta. Some cities are also taking action that I’ll write about later.

Not only are there huge direct costs to the “tax” the healthcare system has placed on us. There are a number of indirect costs we are all facing.

Invitation to Christians for Biblical Equality

“Becoming New: Man and Woman Together in Christ”: Christians for Biblical Equality international conference in LA, July 24-26

CBE is pleased to announce that its 2015 international conference, “Becoming New: Man and Woman Together in Christ” will be held on July 24–26, 2015 at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport Hotel. The conference theme verse is 2 Cor. 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (NIV).

Scholarships are available for individuals with financial need but deadline is approaching. http://www.cbeinternational.org/content/scholarships-discounts

Dr. Mimi Haddad, president of CBE, says that this year’s conference features “some of the most gifted group of speakers in CBE’s history,” with plenary speakers:

• Pastor Eugene Cho, founder of One Day’s Wages, “a grassroots movement of people, stories, and actions to alleviate extreme global poverty”; founder of the Q Café, a community café; and lead pastor of Quest Church in Seattle
• Pastor Ken Fong, senior pastor at EvergreenLA, the “first English-only multi-Asian American, multiethnic, multigenerational church” and executive director of the Asian American Initiative of Fuller Theological Seminary, where he is assistant professor of Asian American Church Studies
• Pastor Adelita Garza, church planter and lead pastor of Puente de Vida/Bridge of Life Church in Santa Paula, CA, and president of the Police Clergy Council and president of the Light of the City Ministry
• Professor John Stackhouse, the Samuel J. Mikolaski Chair of Religious Studies at Crandall University in Moncton, Canada, and author of 8 books, including Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender
• Professor Anne Zaki, assistant professor of Practical Theology at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, Egypt, and is the resource development specialist for the Middle East for the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship

Anyone interested in learning more about evangelical biblical equality is invited to attend, learn from dynamic, multi-ethnic and diverse aged speakers, and connect with others passionate about making room for the gifts of both women and men in the church.

CBE has invited a diverse group of speakers from our community: African American, Arab American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and international speakers, speakers under 30 and older than 60, speakers who are students and moms, tenured professors and writers, single and married. CBE especially wishes to invite persons of color and young people to attend this year’s conference.

Why should you come?

As plenary speaker Anne Zaki says, “I have not yet been ordained and the process has continued on for these past six and a half years since I first applied. The reason I am able to write the word “yet” here is partly due to the work of groups like CBE, who have offered me companionship in my understanding of Scripture, freedom to follow my call to pastoral ministry, and courage to make room for the full extent of women’s ministry in the Presbyterian Church in Egypt.”

John Stackhouse explains: “CBE has long been the primary resource for Christians interested in seriously argued, Biblically grounded discussion of gender. It has helped me immensely, and I am honoured to partner with CBE in its vital work.”

Other workshop speakers include:

• Gail and Kate Wallace, co-founders of The Junia Project
• Lisa L. Thompson, director of Anti-Trafficking for World Hope International
• W. Tali Hairston, director of the John M. Perkins Center at Seattle Pacific University, dedicated to reconciliation and global urban leadership and Christian community development
• Rev. Dr. Young Lee Hertig, an Asian-American women’s clergy leader and mentor, professor at Azusa Pacific, and executive director of the Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity
• Austin Channing Brown, multicultural liaison at Calvin College (and speaker at the Why Christian? Conference organized by Rachel Held Evans and Nadia Bolz-Weber)
• Professors Karen Longman (Azusa Pacific University), Jeff Miller (Milligan College), Sandra Morgan (Vanguard University), Ron Pierce (Biola University), James Smith III (Bethel Seminary), Marianne Meye Thompson and John L. Thompson (Fuller Theological Seminary), Allen Yeh (Biola University)
• Dr. Mimi Haddad, president of CBE
• And more!

Info about the conference is here: http://www.cbeinternational.org/content/2015-los-angeles-conference

Link to scholarship info: http://www.cbeinternational.org/content/scholarships-discounts

Line up of speakers here: http://www.cbeinternational.org/content/speakers and

http://www.cbeinternational.org/content/workshops

(Written by Emily Zimbrick-Rogers, CBE research intern)

One of my favorite places to get to teach: Pepperdine Bible lectures. Awesome location and even greater people.

For all the bearded folks, a funny story about beard hygiene:

(NEWSER) – Beard hygiene is important unless you want to have the equivalent of a dirty toilet seat growing out of your face, according to a microbiologist who swabbed a bunch of beards and was shocked by the results. “I’m usually not surprised and I was surprised by this,” Quest Diagnostics expert John Golobic tells KOAT, explaining that some samples yielded the “types of things you’d find in” fecal matter, signaling a “degree of uncleanliness that would be somewhat disturbing” even if the beard matter probably won’t make people sick. Golobic says that similar results in a public water system would close it for disinfecting. He urges the bearded to keep their beards—and hands—clean, and “to keep your hands away from your face, as much as possible.”

[In defense of the bearded ones, be glad they’re not checking shoes.]

Mel Robbins on Tom Brady and the deflated football case:

The Wells Report is wrong because it didn’t go far enough. It should have said: We have irrefutable evidence, detailed in a 68 page scientific exhibit with two appendixes, that proves the Patriots deflated the balls and cheated on purpose. ​

This is no cream puff report, this is a relentless and detailed indictment of the conduct of Patriots locker room attendant Jim McNally, equipment assistant John Jastremski and Brady. McNally refers to himself as the “deflator,” for crying out loud. Jastremski is clearly the fixer — supplying the needles to McNally, as well as shoes, signed game balls and other “big autograph day” items as a reward.

Will Brady come clean or put his A-Rod on?

Neighbor-love in the Spirit:

If you see your neighbor in harm’s way or lacking something you could not bear to lack, what do you do? We show love by offering a kind word, a gift, a service, compassion, empathy, a listening ear. Hillel stated the negative principle, “Don’t do to others what is hateful.” Yeshua stated the positive, “Do for others what you would have them do for you.”

It all sounds so simple, but it is hard to live life this way. In our best moments we human beings give to charity, we take time from our day to serve other people, we spend some of our own money to help others have what they need, we give and perform deeds of kindness. But we are inconsistent.

The same person who volunteers tutoring children in the inner city might ignore his or her own children. The donor who sacrificially supports cancer research might live with broken relationships, hurting and being hurt by others. In moments of inspiration, all of us do something good at various times.

But we know the reality is we also hurt others, ignore them, disrespect them, resent them at times, get revenge, spread gossip, make jokes, avoid people, nurse grudges, and so on. The commandment “love your neighbor” is beautiful. But the commandment has no power to make us keep it.

We need more than a command. We need empowerment and transformation inside. God offers this through the Holy Spirit. The way to have your life changed and filled with love is not something automatic. It is a matter of realizing truth, changing your thinking, and allowing yourself to follow guidance. The truth we realize is that God loves us unconditionally and has made a place for us forever with him.

Thanks Jack!

Andy Rowell on 3DM and Mike Breen:

There has been much upheaval in the last year but 3DM and TOM should continue to clarify (1) their financial accountability, (2) relationship between 3DM and TOM, (3) board of trustees/visitors of both organizations, and (4) partnerships. Then local church boards and pastors can better discern whether to work with these organizations.  

Colbert news:

For nearly a decade, Stephen Colbert sat at a desk to dish out his own brand of “truthiness.” Now, he’s using the money raised from auctioning that desk to help fulfill every grant request made by South Carolina public school teachers on the crowd-funding site DonorsChoose.org.

The donation of $800,000 will fund nearly 1,000 projects in more than 375 schools. More than 800 teachers from the state have projects on the site.

“Enjoy the learnin’, South Carolina!” Colbert said Thursday to teachers and students assembled at Alexander Elementary School in Greenville, S.C. His remarks — made from New York via a live video feed — were captured by the Greenville News.

A most unusual Saturday morning topic: eunuchs.

What is a “eunuch” in the Bible passage? Is Jesus talking literally about castration—or just metaphorically about celibacy? Stephen J. Patterson, the George H. Atkinson Chair of Religious and Ethical Studies at Willamette University, addresses this question about eunuchs in the Bible in his Biblical Views column “Punch Thy Neighbor” in the May/June 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. He believes that the passage should be taken literally—that Jesus is talking about castration:

Scholars squeamish at the thought of Christian castrati have sometimes insisted that this passage must be referring metaphorically to celibacy. But that is nonsense. If Matthew’s author had meant to speak of celibates (parthenoi), he knew perfectly well how to do that. In a religious context, eunuchhad to mean eunuch, else he would simply have confused his audience. In the Book of Matthew, Jesus advises men (who can) to emasculate themselves!

This interpretation is as controversial and countercultural today as it would have been in the days of Jesus—a time saturated with masculine dominance and power. In the Roman world of “phallo-dominance,” castration would have set anyone apart. Stephen J. Patterson explains that Matthew’s eunuchs “remov[ed] the thing that ancients most associated with male power and dominance. This is how they chose to embody the kingdom of heaven on earth.”

Melissa Rivers on Joan Rivers:

 * Joan, who according to Melissa had 348 plastic surgeries, was never happy with the way she looked, “which fed into her sense of being ‘less than.’ ” She loved fat jokes because she was a fat child.

• Joan was a terrible driver who refused to go over 40 mph, even on the highway. “The five scariest words that ever came out of my mother’s mouth were ‘Melissa, get in the car.’ ”

• She knew how to get her way. “The woman was a professional, grade-A, top-of-the-line, best-of-the-best manipulator.”

Thomas Sowell:

You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.

Chris Mooney and dishwashing by hand:

Nonetheless, it is still common practice in many households to — after dinner — wash the dishes by hand to get all the grimy food off of them, and then put them in the dishwasher and run a cycle. For many of us, it just feels cleaner. And that can be a very personal feeling, hard to let go of.

The problem is, a diverse group of experts — including from Consumer Reports, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star Program, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy — suggests that in most cases we should just “let the dishwasher do its job,” as Consumer Reports puts it.

The basic line is that from an environmental perspective, these machines have grown so energy- and water-efficient — especially Energy Star-certified models — that it is very hard to beat them through hand-washing (though, of course, you should first scrape off any food before putting dishes in the dishwasher, and you should run only full dishwasher loads).

The reasons for this are multiple, but they include the fact that dishwashers just keep needing less and less water (and energy) because of improving appliance standards, even as they get better and better at using it.

Men vs. women on friends or one friend, by A. Pawlowski:

When things get tough, do you turn to your BFF or a coalition of buddies for emotional support?

Making friends is a crucial part of the human experience, but just like many aspects of life, it turns out men and women have distinct preferences when it comes to friendship.

A recent study found “striking gender differences” in the way we choose non-romantic companions: Women seek a few one-on-one, very close female friends, while men prefer large all-male cliques or clubs….

Right away, there were some big differences between the sexes.

Whenever profile photos showed a large group of people, the group members tended to be predominantly male. In general, men liked to be surrounded by lots of peers. Within those groups of friends, competition is suppressed, while bonding is reinforced — often through rituals such as eating and drinking together or competing with another male group, David-Barrett said….

When women chose a profile photo showing more than one person, they were surrounded by far fewer people — in fact, pictures of large female-only groups were almost non-existent. Women appeared to “focus their social capital on only one person at a time,” according to the study.

David Gergen on religion and the White House and politics, by Paul Massari:

Gergen said that Christian Evangelicals, disenchanted by prohibitions on prayer in schools and the success of the abortion rights movement, came off of the political sidelines in 1976 to vote for Jimmy Carter, who spoke openly about his faith. When Carter disappointed them with his stance on social issues, however, conservative Christians flocked to Reagan. Gergen pointed to current events to demonstrate their continuing place in the base of the Republican Party.

“I wasn’t surprised when Ted Cruz went to Liberty University,” Gergen said of the recent launch of the Texas U.S. senator’s presidential bid. “Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson’s influence on the party is still very strong.”

At the same time, Gergen said that social issues are less dominant in U.S. politics than they were even 10 years ago. He noted that Americans have made tremendous shifts in their acceptance of gay and lesbian rights.

“I think it’s terrific,” he said. “But it’s shrunk the influence of the social conservatives and Evangelicals. Republican candidates for president need to get to the middle now. The politics of religion are changing rapidly.”

HT: LEMB

An excellent interview with Stephen Barr about science and faith has this clip:

IgnatiusInsight.com: Stephen Hawking, in A Brief History of Time, talks about God and the mind of God. Yet he also seems to question whether there really is the need for a Creator in order to explain the existence of the cosmos. How do you see the matter? Is God a “necessary hypothesis”? Does science have anything to say about the question?

Dr. Barr: Hawking asked the right question when he wondered why there is a universe at all, but somehow he cannot accept the answer. The old question is, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Science cannot answer that question, as Hawking (at least sometimes) realizes. I think his problem is that he doesn’t see how the existence of God answers that question either. Part of the reason that many scientists are atheists is that they don’t really understand what is meant by “God”. 

Anything whose existence is contingent (i.e. which could exist or not exist) cannot be the explanation of its own existence. It cannot, as it were, pull itself into being by its own bootstraps. As St. Augustine says in his Confessions, all created things cry out to us, “We did not make ourselves.” Only God is uncreated, because God is a necessary being: He cannot not exist. It is of His very nature to exist. He said to Moses, “I AM WHO AM. … Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: ‘I AM hath sent me unto you.'”

I think scientists like Hawking would be helped if they could imagine God as an infinite Mind that understands and knows all things and Who, indeed, “thought the world up”. If all of reality is “intelligible” (an idea that would appeal to scientists), then it follows really that there is some Intellect capable of understanding it fully. If no such Intellect exists or could exist, in what sense is reality fully intelligible? We need to recover the idea of God as the Logos, i.e. God as Reason itself. I note that Pope Benedict has stressed this in his recent addresses about science and in his speech at Regensburg. It is an idea of God that people who devote their lives to rational inquiry can appreciate.

Very good set of observations by Ted: bake the cake.

But hopefully needless to say we need to be marked by love as well. We should be known as those who roundly love each other in sacrificial ways. And we should be known as those who love sinners. We are sinners too, forgiven and being made holy, but nevertheless broken in ourselves. So that we all stand on the same level at the foot of the cross. We need to find creative ways of expressing that love across the board. And maybe all the more so to those who believe they are being relegated to a special status of sinners, treated worse than all the rest. Maybe it’s especially those people who we need to search out and befriend. To show them the love of Jesus, and simply to befriend them and enjoy them as human beings, made in God’s image as we are, all of us broken.

So yes, bake the cake. Attend the wedding. Take the pictures. At least think of creative ways you can share the love of Christ, even if you find that you have to draw lines. We may not be able to see it as a normal wedding. But they do. And we have to accept that. It is the gospel which is the power of God for salvation. We all need Jesus.

GAFCON leaders sustain connection to Church of England, by Paul Redfern:

In Summary

• In a statement released at the end of the meeting on Friday, April 17, the group known as Gafcon (Global Anglican Future Conference) said the group would not be “leaving the Anglican Communion.
• A parallel structure, the Anglican Church in North America, already exists in the US, but opponents of Gafcon  say the organisation lacks the funds to establish an “alternative” Anglican faith in the UK and moreover lacks the support to do so.
• Critics point out that while there are divisions within the Church of England over the issue of gay priests and gay marriage, the Anglican faith in the UK is overwhelmingly supportive of both women priests and female bishops.

But Nick Baines says GAFCON trades on misrepresentation:

You would never believe any of this from the communique issued following the meeting in England this week of the primates of what is known as Gafcon. According to this group – which, despite statements to the contrary and consistent with behaviour that is inexplicable – the Church of England has abandoned the gospel of Jesus Christ and is “unfaithful”. It is probably worth noting that the key words in the rhetoric of this conservative evangelical constituency are “gospel” and “faithful”. What is actually meant is that if you do not fit their narrow description of what the “gospel” is and who might be described as “faithful”, then you are fair game for being dismissed. (Assumptions about the meaning of key words matters here.)

For a long time I have wondered if the Church of England ought not to be a little more robust in countering the misrepresentation and manipulation (of reality) that emanates from Gafcon. I am not alone. But, I have bowed to the wisdom of those who (rightly) assert that we shouldn’t counter bad behaviour with bad behaviour, and that we should trust that one day the truth will out. I am no longer so sure about the efficacy of such an eirenic response. I think we owe it to Anglicans in England and around the Communion to fight the corner and challenge the misrepresentation that is fed to other parts of the Anglican Communion. (I was once asked in Central Africa why one has to be gay to be ordained in the Church of England. I was asked in another country why the Church of England no longer reads the Bible and denies Jesus Christ. I could go on. When asked where this stuff has come from, the answer is that this is what a bishop has told them.)…

I was once at a meeting of evangelical bishops in England when three English Gafcon men came to meet us. They had stated that this was the case and that bishops were giving their clergy a hard time. We asked for evidence so we could consider it before we met. Bishop Tom Wright and I were just two who were outraged at the misinformation, misrepresentation and selective re-writing of history presented to us. When we began to challenge this, we were told that we shouldn’t get bogged down in the detail and could we move on. And they got away with it. I am not making this up.

The truth is that while all this nonsense goes on, the rest of the Church of England will continue to focus on being faithful to its gospel vocation and mission. We are doing it every day. We will not be distracted by people who selectively report, regularly misrepresent, manipulate truth and plough their own furrow. God bless them in their commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ; and God bless the rest of us in our commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Makeover at Journey with Jesus.

Teen brains — boys and girls and tailoring education, by Lyndsey Layton:

Among the more thought-provoking discoveries in the emerging science regarding the teen brain is the fact that the pace of brain development differs in males and females.

In her best-selling book, “The Teenage Brain,” Frances Jensen discusses how the part of the brain that processes information grows during childhood and then starts to pare down, reaching a peak level of cognitive development when girls are between 12 and 13 years old and when boys are 15 to 16 years old, generally speaking.

Three good reasons to eat pistachios, which we are now mixing in our garden salads:

Need more persuasion about pistachios? Here are three reasons why pistachios can boost your health:

1. They have nutrients such as vitamin B6, which promotes blood flow by helping to carry oxygen through the bloodstream to cells. Vitamin B6 also promotes immune and nervous system health.
2. They have plant-based compounds that act as antioxidants, including vitamin E, polyphenols and the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin. Two of these antioxidants, not found in other nuts, have been linked to a decrease in the risk of developing macular degeneration.
3. They support healthy cholesterol levels. Pistachios have 13 grams of fat per serving, the majority of which (11.5 grams) comes from heart-healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Studies have shown that adding pistachios to a healthy diet may help to lower levels of oxidized-LDL (bad) cholesterol This is because of the nut’s high level of monounsaturated fat, which has been shown to reduce the levels of LDL cholesterol.

Peter Harrison, Gifford Lectures reduced, on science and faith.

Bilked by the milked?

JB: How did milk win its staple status in our food universe?

AH: We’ve had school milk programs and milk in schools since the beginning of the century. During World War II, we needed to boost milk production in order to make processed dairy products to send to soldiers overseas. But farmers weren’t producing enough to meet this demand because they weren’t getting paid enough. So the government decided, “Great, we’ll create demand for milk by giving milk to our kids, and that way we’ll have a demand for the fluid milk and we can make the processed products we need for soldiers.”

So war was part of it. Convenience is also part of it. As people moved to the city and women started working away from home, cow’s milk became seen as a convenient way to give babies nutrition if women weren’t able to be home breastfeeding all the time. And as the dairy industry grows, farmers have an incentive to try to boost demand with government subsidies of dairy.

I can’t say which one of these many different forces did it, but it’s just a combination that has led to this health halo around milk. I think what’s more troubling is how deeply ingrained the idea has become and how inaccurate many of our assumptions about milk are.

Folks,  I think this week marked 10 years of blogging at Jesus Creed! Woop, woop. Here was the first post, used without permission from the only one who can deny permission!

In the last three or so years I have been struck, through my reading of the most influential writers on Christian spiritual formation, by how many of them were committed to the “divine offices”. “Divine offices” refers to a rhythmical prayer life. These Christians prayed three times a day (in the monastic traditions even more often), but in so doing they didn’t just sit down to pray. Instead, they prayed “set” prayers and did so with a community committed to this form of praying.

This pattern of praying goes back to Judaism and the world of Jesus. Psalm 55:18 tells us that the psalmist complained and lamented three times a day, and we know this refers to “evening, morning, and midday” set times of prayer. Daniel 6:10 tells us that Daniel prayed three times and day. And Jesus was incensed with those who used “midday” prayers as an opportunity to demonstrate their piety by finding themselves, rather conveniently, at a public place at the hour of prayer. Acts 3:1 tells us that Peter and John went to the Temple at the “hour of prayer” (=midday prayers). And a first century document, called Didache, tells us that the early Christians prayed the Lord’s Prayer three times a day.

Now, the original Jewish practice included reciting the Shema (pronounced “sheMAH”) twice a day (morning and evening), and that at midday they may have said this same confession but also prayed a standard Jewish prayer of requests (called The Eighteen Benedictions). So, it is not hard for us to know that the early Christians used the “Lord’s Prayer” instead of the Eighteen Benedictions, or maybe some did both.

What struck me in reading the spiritual masters of the Christian tradition is that they carried on this ancient rhythm of praying.

So, my wife and I have adopted this practice and now say, as often as we can, the prayers that Phyllis Tickle has composed for us, in her book “The Divine Hours”. Her book combines the great prayer traditions of the Church and has become a source of comfort for us.

On top of this, we get the sense as we carry on this “sacred rhythm” that we are joined by millions throughout the world who pause, three times a day, to turn to God and orient their hearts and minds and affections toward God.

[This post became Praying with the Church!]

How to avoid the high-stakes standardized tests? Private schools, acc to Valerie Strauss:

Thousands of public school parents around the country are opting their children out of taking high-stakes standardized tests this spring, tired of the emphasis on high-stakes testing and concerned about the validity of the assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards or similar standards. A growing number of principals and superintendents are supporting parents in this decision, though pushback is getting strongerfrom others. But, says educator Alan Singer, there is another way to opt out your child from standardized testing — send them, if you can afford it, to a private school that doesn’t give them.

The Obamas, for example, send their two daughters to the elite Sidwell Friends School, a private Quaker preK-12 school with campuses in Washington D.C., and Bethesda, Md. Sidwell, like other independent schools, does not bombard its students with high-stakes standardized tests. (It also doesn’t evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students, a policy promoted by the Obama administration.)

Need a shed, a back studio? Kanga room, anyone?

The Death of Abraham Lincoln and the Jews of DC, by Meir Y. Soloveichik:

As America prepares to mark the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s death on April 15, fresh insight into the events that occurred a century and a half ago can be gleaned by seeing that entire week through the eyes of America’s Jews, and especially of those Jews who attended America’s oldest and most historically distinguished congregation….

Conveyed by telegraph, the news soon reached the rest of the country. Jews heard it from their fellow Americans on the day of the celebratory service held on the Sabbath during Passover. Bertram Korn, in his American Jewry and the Civil War, describes the scene:

Jews were on their way to synagogue or already worshipping when tidings of the assassination reached them. .  .  . Jews who had not planned on attending services hastened to join their brethren in the sanctuaries where they could find comfort in the hour of grief. The Rabbis put their sermon notes aside and spoke extemporaneously, haltingly, reaching out for the words to express their deep sorrow. .  .  . Samuel Adler of Temple Emmanuel in New York began to deliver a sermon but he was so overcome that he could not continue. Alfred T. Jones, Parnas of Beth El-emeth Congregation of Philadelphia, asked [the well-known Jewish scholar and writer] Isaac Leeser to say something to comfort the worshippers; he did, but it was so disconnected that he had to apologize: “the dreadful news and its suddenness have in a great measure overcome my usual composure, and my thoughts refuse to arrange themselves in their wonted order.”

Because the president died on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, the first utterances from the pulpit in response to the assassination were heard in synagogues, as Isaac Marken explains in Abraham Lincoln and the Jews. One of the most striking—and indeed, controversial—moments took place in Congregation Shearith Israel, in New York, the oldest Jewish congregation in America. There, Marken recounts, “the rabbi recited the Hashkabah (prayer for the dead) for Lincoln. This, according to theJewish Messenger, was the first time that this prayer had been said in a Jewish house of worship for any other than those professing the Jewish religion.” This seeming deviation from tradition in Shearith Israel—known to this day for its fierce devotion to preserving religious and liturgical tradition—was noted by many, and defended by the aforementioned Isaac Leeser, who also edited American Jewry’s most prominent newspaper:

Sad to read this about Tom Oord:

Academics at Christian colleges who believe in evolution (and who believe that doesn’t make them any less Christian) have become deeply concerned about the recent move by Northwest Nazarene University to eliminate the job of Thomas Jay Oord, a tenured theologian there.

Oord has written numerous books and articles that (sympathetically) examine the way Christians are able to embrace evolution while maintaining their faith. Oord has drawn attention to the views of many Nazarene scholars and rank-and-file believers who accept evolution, suggesting that there is much to be learned scientifically from sources other than the Bible.

These views appear to contradict Northwest Nazarene’s statement of faith, which states: “The Old and New Testament Scriptures, given by plenary inspiration, contain all truth necessary to faith and Christian living.” Traditionalist Nazarene blogs have also regularly criticized Oord’s work,accusing him of “false teachings” and urging the church’s universities to reject “evolution’s lies.”

The university would not confirm that Oord is losing his job, but did confirm that two theologians are having their positions eliminated. A spokeswoman for the university said that declining enrollments in theology made it necessary to eliminate two positions, even though Northwest Nazarene is, in her words, “financially strong.” Asked if Oord’s views on evolution had any role in the decision, she said via email: “The university made these decisions unrelated to performance. Declining student enrollment in the departments affected requires laying off two faculty and four staff members.”

What Bonhoeffer said.

We need “nature dose”, by Ariana Eunjung Cha:

Stop and smell the roses along the way, American singer-songwriter Mac Davis advised in a top 10 hit in the 1970s. In the more than three decades Davis imparted that wisdom, numerous studies have confirmed the link between exposure to nature and improved physical, psychological and social well-being. They have shown that greenery has been associated with reduced levels of asthma, improved healing times and even with making people more likely to exercise….

To address this demographic trend, a team of scientists has begun to study how to define a “nature dose” in an effort to develop recommendations for minimum levels of exposure in the same way doctors do for things like Vitamin D, vegetables or medicines. At a macro level, that information could be used by public health experts, ecologists, sociologists, and urban planners to help figure out how to plan and manage cities in a way that could boost health outcomes.

NT Wright on the meaning of the resurrection:

The church has often been content to do two things side by side: first, to “prove” the resurrection by a more or less rationalistic argument; second, to say that, therefore, “Jesus is alive today, and we can get to know him” or even, “Jesus is therefore the second person of the Trinity.” One also frequently hears, especially around Easter, “Jesus has been raised, therefore we too are going to heaven.”

Interestingly, however, we find that the New Testament does not make those connections in the same way. There is a real danger that we will simply short-circuit the process and force the resurrection to mean what we want it to mean, without paying close attention to what the first Christians actually said.

In the closing chapters of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and in the opening chapter of Acts, we do not find anyone saying that because Jesus is alive again we can now get to know him, or that he is the second person of the Trinity (though Thomas does say, “My Lord and my God!”). We do not, in particular, hear anyone in the gospels saying that because Jesus has been raised we are assured of our place in heaven. What we do hear, loud and clear in the resurrection narratives and in the early theology of Paul, is something like this.

The Arab Spring — not what we hoped, by Greg Bothelo:

(CNN)It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.

The Arab Spring was supposed to bring peace, democracy and stability to not only the nations where it took root, but also others around it in the Middle East and North Africa. It was supposed to usher in an end of violence and heavy-handed government tactics, just like it ushered out entrenched leaders. In short, it was supposed to mean a brighter future.

Not more instability, not more violence, not fewer freedoms.

But that’s what happened, even if the level of unrest hasn’t been even or universal. Some countries, such as Jordan, instituted reforms without really roiling their societies. Others, such as Iraq, never saw a popular uprising, but have seen burgeoning violence. And now, Yemen is on the brink of civil war as it battles a rebel group that has overthrown the government and seized parts of key cities.

The 100 best children’s books of all time.

Story of an immigrant.

Marie Wilson:

When Trisha Prabhu developed a computer program to help combat cyberbullying, she was hoping she might make a difference.

The Naperville teen never dreamed her idea would make her something of an international sensation and lead to speaking engagements in several countries, an appearance in a Super Bowl commercial and a prominent spot at the White House Science Fair.

Trisha, 14, was a global finalist in the 2014 Google Science Fair for her project called Rethink, a program that prompts Internet users to reconsider potentially offensive messages before posting them on social media.

Instead of attending a typical week of honors and AP classes at Neuqua Valley High School, Trisha spent March 23 at the White House Science Fair meeting national legislators. She then traveled to New York City for a global teen leadership summit with 29 others from around the world.

Keep your eye on this blog if you are involved with public worship.

National Black Churches Initiative breaks connection with PC USA:

The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI), a faith-based coalition of 34,000 churches comprised of 15 denominations and 15.7 million African-Americans, has broken its fellowship with Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) following its recent vote to approve same-sex marriage.

The Presbyterian General Assembly, the top legislative body of the PCUSA, voted last June to revise the constitutional language defining marriage. This arbitrary change of Holy Scripture is a flagrantly pretentious and illegitimate maneuver by a body that has no authority whatsoever to alter holy text.

Rev. Anthony Evans, NBCI President noted:

“NBCI and its membership base are simply standing on the Word of God within the mind of Christ. We urge our brother and sisters of the PCUSA to repent and be restored to fellowship.”

Nicholas Kristof:

ONE sign of a landmark shift in public attitudes: A poll last year found that Americans approved more of gays and lesbians (53 percent) than of evangelical Christians (42 percent).

That’s partly because some evangelical leaders were intolerant blowhards who give faith a bad name. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson famously blamed the 9/11 terror attacks in part on feminists, gays and lesbians, and doctors who perform abortions. After an outcry, both men backed off.

Today, among urban Americans and Europeans, “evangelical Christian” is sometimes a synonym for “rube.” In liberal circles, evangelicals constitute one of the few groups that it’s safe to mock openly.

Yet the liberal caricature of evangelicals is incomplete and unfair. I have little in common, politically or theologically, with evangelicals or, while I’m at it, conservative Roman Catholics. But I’ve been truly awed by those I’ve seen in so many remote places, combating illiteracy and warlords, famine and disease, humbly struggling to do the Lord’s work as they see it, and it is offensive to see good people derided.

Valerie Strauss:

One teacher said, “Kids are becoming more aggressive. When they play games like tag, they push with great force, often hurting the other child. We had to implement a ‘two-finger’ touch rule, so that kids couldn’t push so hard.” Another teacher that had been around for 30 years, saidshe had seen an increase in aggressive behavior as well. “They can’t seem to keep their hands off each other! Kids are always getting hurt.” A local principal stated that tag had become such a problem that they had to get creative. They gave the children foam noodles to “tag” the other children with and avoid actual contact with the hands.

The problem? Due to less time in active play these days, children are not developing the senses in their joints and muscles (proprioceptive sense) like they used to. In the past, it was more common for children to help with the outdoor chores. They would assist with raking leaves, shoveling the snow, and would even earn money by mowing lawns in their neighborhood. They’d also play for hours outside – moving heavy rocks to build a dam, scaling trees to new heights, and digging moats in the dirt. All of this “heavy work” helped children to develop a strong and healthy proprioceptive system.

Steve Wasserman, and I grab only the end… of a very good article: [HT: CRT]

The ideal of serious enjoyment of what isn’t instantly understood is rare in American life. It is under constant siege. It is the object of scorn from both the left and the right. The pleasures of critical thinking ought not to be seen as belonging to the province of an elite. They are the birthright of every citizen. For such pleasures are at the very heart of literacy, without which democracy itself is dulled. More than ever, we need a defense of the Eros of difficulty.

Sufjan!

While clearly an exaggeration, like almost everything on South Park, the episode underscores a stigma still surrounding Christian music 12 years later. The general consensus is that, when it comes to music, Christians tend to make, “devotional artifice” and “didactic crap,” at least in the words of the singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens, whose newest album Carrie & Lowell comes out March 31.

Stevens, both a Christian and musician, nevertheless stands in stark contrast to those in this category. Representing a different camp of “Christian art,” with completely different motives and characteristics, he’s distinct among other artists of faith, who tend to produce bad, kitschy work—whether heavy-handed films like Facing the Giantsand Fireproof, or the musical travesties on the Wow compilation albums. Instead of dealing directly with religious or biblical matters, Stevens’ music embodies what theologian Francis Schaeffer called the “totality of life,” as opposed some sort of “self-conscious evangelism”—an approach that turns the whole Christian-music stigma on its head.

Stanford!

Three links to articles about Indiana’s RFRA, all three formed in the crucible of culture wars — two supporting and one criticizing.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Religious liberty isn’t an absolute right. Religious liberty doesn’t always trump. Religious liberty is balanced with concerns for a compelling state interest that’s being pursued in the least-restrictive means possible.

But it isn’t clear that forcing every photographer and every baker and every florist to help celebrate same-sex weddings is advancing a compelling state interest in the least-restrictive way possible. Protecting religious liberty and the rights of conscience doesn’t infringe on anyone’s sexual freedoms.

No one has the right to have the government force a particular minister to marry them, or a certain photographer to capture the first kiss or a baker to bake the wedding cake. Declining to perform these services doesn’t violate anyone’s sexual freedoms. Some citizens may conclude that they cannot in good conscience participate in a same-sex ceremony, from priests and pastors to bakers and florists. The government should not force them to choose between their religious beliefs and their livelihood.

Rod Dreher:

Je suis le First Amendment. Indiana shows why for social and religious conservatives, 2016 is all about the Supreme Court and religious liberty. The past few days have made someone like me, a conservative independent who has little use for either party, realize that I cannot afford to be on the sidelines in 2016. Religious conservative voters must be focused like a laser on religious liberty, right now. It’s that important.

Garrett Epps:

So, let’s review the evidence: by the Weekly Standard’s definition, there’s “nothing significant” about this law that differs from the federal one, and other state ones—except that it has been carefully written to make clear that 1) businesses can use it against 2) civil-rights suits brought by individuals.

Of all the state “religious freedom” laws I have read, this new statute hints most strongly that it is there to be used as a means of excluding gays and same-sex couples from accessing employment, housing, and public accommodations on the same terms as other people. True, there is no actual language that says, All businesses wishing to discriminate in employment, housing, and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation, please check this “religious objection” box. But, as Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”  

So—is the fuss over the Indiana law overblown?  

No.

Make it four: Ross Douthat:

As I’ve said before, I don’t think the issues in the wedding industry deserve the label “persecution” that some religious conservatives have slapped on them, and I don’t think the view taken by these florists/bakers/photographers is necessarily mandated by orthodox Christian belief. But it is my very strong impression that if a religious conservative (or anyone on the right) had said, back in 2004 or even into President Obama’s first term, that they accepted that marriage should be redefined nationwide to include same-sex couples, that they further accepted that this would happen swiftly through the courts rather than state-by-state and legislatively, and that all they asked of liberals was that this redefinition proceed in a way that allowed people like Barronelle Stutzman some wiggle room about whether their businesses or facilities had to be involved in the wedding ceremonies themselves — with the mechanism for opting out being something like the (then-still-bipartisan) RFRA model – this would have been treated as a very reasonable compromise proposal by a lot of people on the center-left, gay as well as straight. I cannot prove this absolutely, and I concede that there are lots of people on the left who wouldn’t have liked the deal. But the world of liberal opinion is a pretty familiar one to me, the world of the past isn’t that far past, and I think my assessment is basically correct.

Today, though, as I said above, I think the consensus center-left position has basically shifted toward the argument offered by Garrett Epps for The Atlantic: It doesn’t matter if Stutzman or any other wedding vendor is a nice person with sincere religious beliefs, and it doesn’t matter if she or they would provide her services to gay clients in any other context; her religious anxiety about decorating a wedding chapel for a same-sex couple is no different from the objection to integration of a Southern store-owner whose preacher taught him the races should be separate, and needs to be dismissed with extreme prejudice lest anti-gay discrimination flourish and spread.

HT: KM

Adam Hadhazy:

Neuroscientists have long tried to measure our maximum mental volume. However, what scrambles any simple reckoning of memory capacity is the astounding cognitive feats achieved by dedicated individuals, and people with atypical brains.

Many of us struggle to commit a phone number to memory. How about 67,980 digits? That’s how many digits of pi that Chao Lu of China, a 24-year-old graduate student at the time, recited in 2005. Chao uttered the string of numbers during a 24-hour stretch without so much as a bathroom break, breaking the world record.

Savants have pulled off arguably even more amazing performances, capable of astounding feats of recall, from names and dates to the details of complex visual scenes. And in rare instances, injuries to previously healthy people have seemingly triggered “acquired savant syndrome.” When Orlando Serrell was 10-years-old, for example, he was struck by a baseball in the left side of his head. He suddenly found he could recall countless licence plates and compute complex calendrical items, such as what day of the week a date from decades ago fell.

How is it that these peoples’ noodles put the average brain’s memory to shame? And what do the abilities of pi reciters and savants say about the true capacity of the human brain?

Why do Catholics become Anglicans? Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith:

Here are a few reasons why Catholics become Anglicans, in my experience:

Firstly, marriage, and in recent times, civil partnerships: Because the Anglican church will often bless unions the Catholic Church does not recognise, some people have gone to the vicar for weddings or services of blessing and then stayed with the vicar’s community.

Secondly, aesthetic reasons: I know of some who have decided that their pretty village church with its warm-hearted community is the place where they want to be. Many of these people, in my experience, have not been particularly religious. While they may consider themselves parishioners, they would but infrequently go to the Anglican Church.

Thirdly, church politics: usually when people have a blazing row with the parish priest over the positioning of the hymn board or some other cutting edge matter, they vamoose to another parish. Sometimes, though I have heard of only one case, they storm off “to join the other lot”, as they put it.

Fourthly, female ordination: some Catholic women have left the Church to join the Anglicans so that they can be ordained. Some lay people may have joined the Anglicans because they support female ordination.

Michelle Robinson Obama, our First Lady.

And then there were the academics. She took a Greek mythology course as a freshman and struggled to keep up, receiving a C on the midterm: “The very first C I had ever gotten and I was devastated.” She felt punched in the stomach again during her senior year, when a professor assessed her work by telling her, “You’re not the hottest thing I’ve seen coming out of the gate.” She responded with the discipline and determination that was already her hallmark, demonstrated on high school mornings when she rose to study long before dawn.

“I decided that I was going to do everything in my power to make that man regret those words,” she said later. “I knew that it was my responsibility to show my professor how wrong he was about me.” Working as his research assistant, she poured herself into the effort. He noticed. When he offered to write an extra letter of recommendation to law school, she knew that she had “shown not just my professor, but myself, what I was capable of achieving.”

Why Lew Alcindor became a Muslim:

I was born Lew Alcindor. Now I’m Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The transition from Lew to Kareem was not merely a change in celebrity brand name — like Sean Combs to Puff Daddy to Diddy to P. Diddy — but a transformation of heart, mind and soul. I used to be Lew Alcindor, the pale reflection of what white America expected of me. Now I’m Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the manifestation of my African history, culture and beliefs.

For most people, converting from one religion to another is a private matter requiring intense scrutiny of one’s conscience. But when you’re famous, it becomes a public spectacle for one and all to debate. And when you convert to an unfamiliar or unpopular religion, it invites criticism of one’s intelligence, patriotism and sanity. I should know. Even though I became a Muslim more than 40 years ago, I’m still defending that choice.

Volunteers and reading improvement:

Public schools have long relied on volunteers to manage bake sales and to chaperone field trips. But what if schools could harness and organize volunteers to do something bigger and more difficult?

They can, according to new research that suggests that volunteers could be instrumental in helping millions of American children to read proficiently.

There have been plenty of studies on small volunteer tutoring programs that reach a few dozen children at a time in individual schools. But until now, there has not been evidence that such programs can make a difference on a much larger scale, across many schools and for thousands of students.

“Bringing volunteer programs to scale is often quite difficult, so that’s really the exciting thing about the research coming out now,” said Robin Jacob, a research scientist at the University of Michigan’s education school.

Fear and memory, by Leslie Evans Ogden:

The experience inspired McKinnon, now a clinical psychologist, to study what trauma does to the brain – how it changes what we remember and why some people experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In recent years, she and a number of other researchers have been trying to understand what makes fearful experiences seem to become imprinted so deeply in our brains. And if they can understand why trauma has such a profound and lasting effect on us, perhaps they can find ways to help people cope better with the aftermath.

Fearful imprint

The link between fear and memory has intrigued researchers and clinicians for decades. Yet the data is conflicting. “Some studies have found that during the recollection of traumatic events, recollection is enhanced. It’s very vivid, people recall many details, and people don’t seem to have difficulty remembering,” says McKinnon. Other studies have found that recollection of traumatic events can be very impoverished and fragmented, with “a detail here, a detail there, that don’t really fit together”, she explains.

Outrageous, by Chris Mooney:

Late last  year we learned that, thanks to human beings, the oceans are carrying at least 5 trillion pieces of floating plastic — or nearly 700 pieces per human alive on the planet. In weight, that’s some 250,000 tons of the stuff.

But new research suggests that even that haul is probably a serious underestimate. In a paper published this week in the journal Science, Jenna Jambeck of the University of Georgia and a group of colleagues tried to estimate the total amount of plastic going into the oceans annually from 192 coastal countries, whose total population is 6.4 billion. People in these countries within 50 kilometers of the coast, the study estimates, produced 99.5 million metric tons of plastic waste in 2010 — and 31.9 of those million tons, the study estimates, were in some way mismanaged.

Thus, the authors calculate, each year about 4.8 million to 12.7 million metric tons of plastic are entering the oceans — for a midpoint figure of around 8 million metric tons. This is vastly higher than the number cited above — and moreover, it’s an annual number.

Very good, very good word from Nancy Beach about Brian Williams:

I have been a fan and faithful viewer of NBC News Anchor Brian Williams for the last decade.  Throughout the recent controversy, I continue to hope that some new revelations will explain his actions and even exonerate him.  But I am also sobered by the tragic downfall that has resulted from Williams’ apparent violation of God’s commandment not to lie.  I think all pastors and teachers – all of us who traffic in a lot of words and story telling – should be shaking in our shoes.  

Good study of Marilynne Robinson’s fiction by Natasha Moore:

Enter Marilynne Robinson, stage left, several decades later. To be fair, this tentative post-Eliot resurrection of the religious element in Western literature is no one-woman show. From the mid-twentieth-century novels of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis or Flannery O’Connor to contemporary work by Donna Tartt, Tim Winton, or the poet Christian Wiman, Christian faith has for some time been stealing quietly back into the quasi-mainstream literary limelight. (Not exclusively the Christian variety, either; if the 2014 Booker-shortlisted To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, which turns upon the religious impulse generally and Judaism incidentally, may be taken as indicative of a broader shift, the experience of faith – having, not having, yearning for, being repelled by it – is back, not only in the twenty-first-century world, but in its literature.)

But Robinson’s hushed, hypnotic prose, her everyday world crammed with marvels and calamities, above all the utter nonchalance with which she sets forth her characters’ faith-fraught lives, have made this remarriage of the openly Christian with the incontrovertibly “literary” much harder to ignore.

For Robinson manifestly does not write something we could label “religious literature.” The life of John Ames, the kind old mid-western preacher who narrates Gilead (2004) and appears in Home (2008) and Lila (2014), is suffused with his faith. He does not scramble to explain or defend it; it’s simply who he is, the lens through which he sees and describes his world. His musings on mercy or baptism or death, it turns out, don’t need to make any concessions to the supposed gap between religious thought and experience and a secular reading public. For Robinson to make those concessions would be to falsify Ames’s experience, to grow self-conscious and clumsy.

Robinson’s fiction pays Christian faith the very basic compliment of treating it as within the purview of literature, as a phenomenon in the world and therefore worthy of the kind of turning over in the light that we accord to, well, everything else. Mind of a serial killer? Sure. The routines and rituals of middle-class marriage? The beauty of a barren landscape? You name it. The thoughtful, exuberant, workaday faith of a lifelong believer? That too.

From the Witherspoon Institute:

A new study published in the February 2015 issue of the British Journal of Education, Society, and Behavioural Science appears to be the largest yet on the matter of same-sex households and children’s emotional outcomes. It analyzed 512 children of same-sex parents, drawn from a pool of over 207,000 respondents who participated in the (US) National Health Interview Survey(NHIS) at some point between 1997 and 2013.

Results reveal that, on eight out of twelve psychometric measures, the risk of clinical emotional problems, developmental problems, or use of mental health treatment services is nearly double among those with same-sex parents when contrasted with children of opposite-sex parents. The estimate of serious child emotional problems in children with same-sex parents is 17 percent, compared with 7 percent among opposite-sex parents, after adjusting for age, race, gender, and parent’s education and income. Rates of ADHD were higher as well—15.5 compared to 7.1 percent. The same is true for learning disabilities: 14.1 vs. 8 percent.

Chaplain Mike has a good piece on how to read Genesis 1-2, with fairminded evaluation of Justin Taylor.

Dean Smith and Michael Jordan: If you haven’t heard the story or seen the image, go here.

“Other than my parents, no one had a bigger influence on my life than Coach Smith. He was more than a coach — he was my mentor, my teacher, my second father. Coach was always there for me whenever I needed him and I loved him for it. In teaching me the game of basketball, he taught me about life. My heart goes out to [Smith’s wife] Linnea and their kids. We’ve lost a great man who had an incredible impact on his players, his staff and the entire UNC family.”

Startups by Danielle Paquette:

Want to launch a start-up? Consider moving to Silicon Valley, near a university — and keep your company’s name under three syllables.

Those are the takeaways of a new study published recently in Science from M.I.T. business professor Scott Stern and doctoral candidate Jorge Guzman, who studied the growth of 1.5 million new firms in sunny, disruptive California.

The early indicators of start-up success, they found, are fairly obvious: Firms that formally register, seek capital investment, establish patents and attract media coverage early tend to have higher growth potential. Proximity to prominent research institutions — like Stanford, Caltech and the University of California Berkeley — also boosted favorable outcomes.

Hang out time decreasing, by Caitlin Dewey:

Generations of high-school seniors have dreamed of the glories college would bring: independence, parties, friends.

But it seems that the college dream looks, well, a little less social in 2015. According to a new national survey, today’s young adults — more than any cohort recorded before them — spend more time on their computers, and less time hanging out with friends.

The finding comes from UCLA’s annual national survey of incoming college freshmen, which the school’s Higher Education Research Institute has conducted every year since 1987. This year’s data comes from 153,015 rising freshmen at 227 four-year colleges — in other words, it’s pretty representative. And what it represents may, to some onlookers, seem rather bleak.

In 1987, when the survey began, nearly four in 10 students said they spent 16 hours or more each week chilling with their friends. Today that number has fallen by more than half: fewer than two in 10 kids spend that much time with their friends. (It’s common for today’s students to socialize five hours or fewer a week — that’s roughly 43 minutes a day.)

A nation of truck drivers?

Quoctrung Bui of NPR’s Planet Money has mapped the most common job in each state based on U.S. Census Bureau data. The results might surprise you: Beyond a few farmers, secretaries, customer service people and computer analysts, America basically looks like a nation of truck drivers.

Chris Mooney:

If your home has a smart meter, here’s an experiment: Log in to your power company’s Web site, and see how much electricity you use during the hour from 3 to 4 a.m. daily.

You were asleep (we hope), and surely nothing major was running. Maybe the heat (but it’s best to set the thermostat down at night). And the fridge — but if it’s a newer one, it’s probably very energy efficient.

And yet nonetheless, you’ll likely find a significant amount of power being gobbled up. “You can start spotting a time, depending on the home, where you can just see the minimum power consumption, and it’s really surprising how much gets consumed during that period,” says Alan Meier, an expert on energy technologies at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who recommends the 3 a.m. strategy.

Meet the problem that energy researchers call MEL — the “miscellaneous electrical load.” Its name says it all: It refers to all the power use from miscellaneous electronics and other objects in your home that are not major appliances, lighting, or heating and cooling.

Yes, probably ripping off the poor:

In order to offer the facade of affordability, manufacturers like Kraft are selling food in smaller packages. These granola bars, sauces, cereals, and prepared meals look like they cost less, but actually are far more expensive on a per ounce basis, according to Reuters.

Shrinking package sizes allows Kraft to reach higher profit margins on products, though it won’t sell as many as it would in a larger store. For instance, a 12-ounce package of Velveeta Shells & Cheese cost $2.50 at the a Dollar Tree store in New York City. Meanwhile, a 2.4 ounce cup cost $1.25. That’s 21 cents an ounce versus 52 cents an ounce.

European Jews on the decline, a piece by Adam Taylor (credit to Pew for image):

If French Jews end up leaving France, they may be forming a new part of a broader and older trend. A new report from Pew Research points out that the Jewish population in Europe has dropped “significantly” in Europe over the last few decades, while the global Jewish population has risen.

As Pew notes, estimating Jewish populations in Europe can be difficult – in part due to the small nature of these populations, their levels of assimilation, and legal problems (in France, the census is legally forbidden from asking about religion). However, the group has used data from Sergio DellaPergola of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that paints a picture of continually falling numbers.

Marie Wilson, on girly girls and STEM:

Some girls like STEM.

They build robots and mix it up with the boys. They choose a STEM major and become engineers.

STEM — the acronym for science, technology, engineering and math — intrigues some girls without any gimmicks. But others lose interest when they begin to think science is no longer “cool,” said Pettee Guerrero, a STEM Outreach associate for Northern Illinois University.

It’s those girls — the “girly-girls” — who are prime participants in a new program coming in April to NIU’s Naperville campus: STEM Divas.

“I created the program to target the girly-girls,” Guerrero said — girls who like makeup, jewelry and wearing pink.

STEM Divas has been popular since it launched last fall in DeKalb, giving girls a chance to don hot pink hard hats and tool belts for hands-on science with a feminine twist.

As STEM Divas, girls ages 7 to 10 will make earrings using a 3-D printer, craft a wooden jewelry box with saws and electric screwdrivers and combine ingredients using chemistry to make glittery soap or glossy lip balm.

It is cold in many parts of the world today, but none as cold as the coldest town on earth, Oymyakon, and Amos Chapple’s photo piece tells the story. (Chapple’s a Kiwi, by the way.)

Meet Malcolm Butler.

Meet James Robertson, 21 mile per day commuter by foot:

But as he steps out into the cold, Robertson, 56, is steeled for an Olympic-sized commute. Getting to and from his factory job 23 miles away in Rochester Hills, he’ll take a bus partway there and partway home. And he’ll also walk an astounding 21 miles.

Five days a week. Monday through Friday.

It’s the life Robertson has led for the last decade, ever since his 1988 Honda Accord quit on him.

Every trip is an ordeal of mental and physical toughness for this soft-spoken man with a perfect attendance record at work. And every day is a tribute to how much he cares about his job, his boss and his coworkers. Robertson’s daunting walks and bus rides, in all kinds of weather, also reflect the challenges some metro Detroiters face in getting to work in a region of limited bus service, and where car ownership is priced beyond the reach of many.

But you won’t hear Robertson complain — nor his boss.

CNN updates the story to report funds have poured in to buy James a car.

Meet Rosa Parks.

Meet Bertrand Russell.

Iceland rebounding:

Hreinsdottir and her colleagues identified this change by examining 20 years of GPS data from more than five dozen points around the country. The height changes they identified, which are concentrated in central Iceland, correlate almost perfectly with the loss of ice documented by glaciologists, Hreinsdottir said. As Iceland’s glaciers continue to melt — the island loses about 11 billion tons of ice per year — the already-rapid rebounding process will accelerate. Relieved of their frozen burden, parts of the country could rise as fast as 1.6 inches per year by 2025 — growing at nearly the same rate as an elementary schooler.

This height change isn’t noticeable to the average human observer, but its consequences will be. Iceland sits atop one of the world’s most active volcanic hot spots, roiling with molten magma. The pressure reductions caused by the melting glaciers and rising land could create conditions that would cause mantle rocks to melt, further feeding Iceland’s already well-supplied volcanoes. Bárðarbunga, a volcano in the center of the island, has been spewing lava uninterrupted since August.

Caddies rebounding.

A group of professional caddies has reportedly banded together to file a $50 million federal lawsuit against the PGATour. The focus is on the bibs they wear during events, which generate revenue that isn’t shared by the Tour.    

John Milton Moorhead:

John is a hero of mine and of many who was given a terminal diagnosis nine months ago: his cancer had returned with vigor, having spread into his lungs. He had already journeyed nine years with cancer, endured seven surgeries and multiple rounds of chemo, and at this juncture he felt the quiet, stirring invitation to choose quality of life over further medical intervention which, at best, could only delay his death. A physician himself, John said yes to living the fullness of life on behalf of those he loves, for however many more weeks and months he is granted.

The unilateral support of the Palestinians is an imbalance among so many Christians, and this essay by Laurie B. Regan might be a good jolt from the other side:

Last week, pro-Palestinian protestors disrupted a New York City Council meeting yelling slogans and brandishing a Palestinian flag. The demonstration was particularly offensive given that it occurred as council members were voting on a resolution commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz….

Greenfield’s point is critical.  Those who attack and demonize Israel for its imperfections in the face of the atrocities committed by its Arab neighbors are not just hypocrites.  There is only one explanation for their irrational condemnations: hatred of Jews. And there is no difference between protests by pro-Palestinians and protests that regularly emanate from the White House.

Incomprehensibly, while Israel is unquestionably our most strategic ally in the region, the administration is taking great strides to fundamentally transform the Middle East.  By aligning itself with Iran in its undeclared war against Sunni jihadists, Obama has distanced America from traditional allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. Obama is empowering Iran under the auspices of shared interests and green lighting its development of military infrastructure on Israel’s borders — through which threats and attacks have already begun.

Pre-school, ONLINE, by Valerie Strauss!

It was only a matter of time. Online school classes for toddlers and preschoolers are here.

VINCI Education is offering what it calls a “groundbreaking virtual school” for youngsters, which was featured by by Dr. Gadget®, the nationally recognized TV and radio personality, on CBS’s “The Talk” late last month.

VINCI Education, according to its Web site,”is a pioneer in providing Blended Learning Curriculum, Assessment Tools and Data Analytics for the Early Childhood Education.” It operates preschools and day-care centers in Los Angeles, Ottawa and Beijing, which use technology and blended learning strategies to, the Web site says, “strengthen the main developmental areas of a child’s mind.” The company won the CODiE 2014 award (given by the software industry) for Best Game-Based Curriculum.

If you like grammar, you’ll like this by Keith Houston:

Finding the obelos to be necessary but not sufficient to the task at hand, Aristarchus took Zenodotus’s dash and created an array of additional symbols to aid his work. The obelos reprised its role of marking spurious lines, but Aristarchus allied it with a new symbol called the asteriskos, or “little star.” Alone, the dotted, star-like glyph (※) called out material that had been mistakenly duplicated; together with an obelos, it marked a line that belonged elsewhere in the text at hand. Lastly, Aristarchus placed diples alongside lines that contained noteworthy text, while the diple’s dolled-up sibling, the diple periestigmene (⸖), or “dotted diple,” was used to mark passages where he differed with the reading of other critics.

Deirdre McCloskey:

But wherever it came from historically, God appears to want it. He wants us to live and choose in his created world, though not since the Fall in the Edenic part. To put it economically, God wants us to face scarcity. He wants it not because he is a trickster who is amused by seeing us struggle with disease and the law of gravity in our pain-filled and finite lives. He so loves us that, after Eden, he wants us to have the dignity of choice. That is what free will means.

Denys Munby said to me once, “In Heaven there is no scarcity and in Hell there is no choice.” In the created world there are both. The dignity of free will would be meaningless if a choice of one good, such as apples, did not have what the economists call an “opportunity cost” in, say, oranges. If we could have all the apples and oranges we wanted, “living in idleness,” as Paul put it, with no “budget constraint,” no “scarcity,” we would live as overfed pet cats, not as human beings. If we have free will, and therefore necessarily face scarcity, we live truly in the image of God.

Scarcity is necessary for human virtues. Humility, said Aquinas, answers among the Christian virtues to the pagan virtue of great-souledness, or magnanimity, which Aristotle the pagan teacher of aristocrats admired so much. To be humble is to temper one’s passions in pursuing, as Aquinas put it, boni ardui – goods difficult of achievement. To be great-souled – which, in turn, is part of the cardinal virtue of courage – is to keep working towards such goods nonetheless. No one would need to be courageous or prudent or great-souled or humble if goods were faciles rather than ardui.

The virtue of temperance, again, is not about mortification of the flesh – not, at any rate, for Christian thinkers like Aquinas (there were others, descendants of the Desert Fathers, who had another idea). On the contrary, this side of Christianity says, we should admire the moderate yet relishing use of a world charged with the grandeur of God.

It is the message of the Aquinian side of Christian thought that we should not withdraw from the world. On the contrary, as Jesus was, we should be truly, and laboriously, and gloriously human.

Delaware would be the first in digital drivers licenses, by Mark Berman:

You can pay for groceries by scanning your phone. You can board a plane after scanning your phone. You can check your bank account balance and order dinner and show proof of insurance and buy pants and watch a movie and do essentially anything with your phone, because your phone is always there. Your phone is always in your hand, and even when it isn’t in your hand it is in your bag or your pocket, ready and waiting, secure in the knowledge that you won’t be able to wait long before compulsively checking it again and again.

So if the phone has replaced the credit card for many, and if the phone has replaced and consolidated so many other things, it stands to reason someone would ask: We’re always carrying around driver’s licenses, so is there a way our smartphone could replace that, too?

This idea is being considered in a few places across the country, states that could function as test subjects to see if such an idea can catch on with the broader populace. The Delaware legislature passed a bill last week asking the state’s Division of Motor Vehicles to “study and consider issuing” digital driver’s licenses that could replace the traditional plastic ones.

Shmuly Yanklowitz, explaining why halakhah is needed for morality in Judaism:

Why should private morality be any different from societal order? If we are serious about our personal moral and spiritual lives, then we need systems of law to protect the core values we hold most dear. There is too much at stake to violate our most cherished ethics.

Judaism, as a religion, contains one of the most powerful mechanisms to uphold these core values. Jewish life is not merely confined to specific moments such as holidays or particular life-cycle moments or spaces such as synagogues and community centers. Instead, Judaism contains an all-encompassing philosophical extension of the most relevant precepts that permeate our entire lives. This is what halakhah (Jewish religious law) is for. As Rabbi Soloveitchik explained: “The Halakhah is not hermetically enclosed within the confines of cult sanctuaries but penetrates into every nook and cranny of life. The marketplace, the street, the factory, the house, the meeting place, the banquet hall, all constitute the backdrop for the religious life” (Halakhic Man, 94).

Ben Myers on procrastination as a way of life:

Because I am an uncommonly lazy and disorganised person, I have made productive procrastination one of the rules of my life. Some members of the human race, I know it, are able to get things done simply by planning and discipline. I respect those people. I admire them from afar. I bless their creator for making them so well. Not that I blame God for making me into such a slovenly specimen of humanity. His ways are not our ways, and that is all right with me. But there came a point in my life when I saw that there were only two roads before me. Either I could achieve nothing for the rest of my days, or I could become a better procrastinator. A dismal crossroad, reader, but there you have it.

So I chose productive procrastination as my path in life. Don’t call it a bad habit; I prefer to think of it as a vocation. If you get really good at it, there is even a kind of poetry in it. That is what I’m striving for: procrastination as a work of art.

Ben, what happens when you procrastinate on your procrastination principle?

Jonathan O’Connell:

With shoppers, businesses and investments pouring into urban areas, many suburban malls are dying. Experts predict that as many as half of America’s malls will be torn down or reconfigured.

“My view on enclosed malls is that there are 100 malls in this country that will always be dominant shopping destinations,” said Don Wood, chief executive of Rockville-based Federal Realty Investment Trust, owner of 17 million square feet of open-air U.S. shopping centers. “It’s Tysons Corner and Pentagon City in our area. It’s heavily populated, affluent areas. But there are 1,000 other malls in this country, and the future for those is bleaker.”

NPR and Mormon apostasy:

John Dehlin started a popular podcast and website calledMormon Stories as a space for people to question Mormon teachings. Next Sunday, he’ll face a disciplinary hearing where he expects to be officially excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Dehlin is charged with apostasy for publicly supporting same-sex marriage, the ordination of women, and for questioning church doctrine.

Dehlin tells NPR’s Rachel Martin that 15 years ago, when he started studying the church’s history, he found what he learned about founding prophet Joseph Smith “deeply disturbing.”