Gotta read of the week: Scott Holland.

Rachel’s question: “But what about men like my husband, or my pastor, or Scot, whose masculinity is simply not threatened by the intelligent, thoughtful contributions of women in leadership?  What about men who enjoy and appreciate partnerships with women and whose sense of calling and security is not dependent upon my subjugation? Why enforce these roles onto them? “

Our colleague at Northern, Greg Henson, asks three “What if?” questions about seminary education.

Margaret Feinberg, on reading the Bible in 40 Days: “I can’t believe The 40-Day Bible Reading Challenge is over. Don’t worry, you haven’t missed out. You can grab a FREE reading plan, here. We began around February 14 —a day of love and we concluded on the eve of Easter—another day of love. Some days the reading was easy and delightful. Other days it felt brutally hard. Some days the Word came alive, anew, afresh. Other days, it felt stale, dry, and distant. Some days the discipline boiled down to checking a box. Other days I didn’t want to stop reading. Along the way, I learned a few things about myself…”

Kevin DeYoung goes baseball on us: “I know the many knocks on baseball: The games are too slow. The season is too long. The contracts are too big. I know about steroids and strike-shortened seasons. I know the players chew and spit and adjust themselves too much. I know every pitcher except for Mark Buerhle takes too much time in between pitches. I know that purists hate the DH rule and almost everyone hates the Yankees. I understand if baseball is not your thing. You don’t have to like our national pastime. But you should.”

Lauren Brooks on Edith Schaeffer: “Her encouragement to live artistically, aesthetically, and creatively aided my transition from the working world to being a stay-at-home mother. I left a rewarding career to be at home with an infant, and I probably would’ve ended up frustrated without Edith Schaeffer’s wise words. She showed me how to redirect my creativity and passions toward reflecting Christ. Simple ideas like plating food to look like a still-life painting, reading aloud to my family, and putting a few flowers in the center of the table have enriched my life and helped my children grow up in an atmosphere where they feel treasured and see that beauty is an important part of daily life. The Hidden Art became my textbook, and I have reread it yearly by myself and with other women since.”

Melissa Steffan: “The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) may have thought it had the upper hand when it filed suit against a North Carolina county for opening its board meetings with explicitly Christian prayers. After all, the federal Establishment Clause of the Constitution prohibits the government from interfering with citizens’ religious exercise. But a new bill introduced in the North Carolina state legislature would protect the county’s right to prayer in an unconventional way: bynullifying any federal regulations or court rulings regarding religion. Eleven House lawmakers already have signed on to the bill, which “would [allow North Carolina to] refuse to acknowledge the force of any judicial ruling on prayer in North Carolina—or indeed on any Constitutional topic,” according to WRAL, a local news source. The bill asserts that each state has the right to determine how to apply the Constitution and “does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.”

Were Jesus and Paul philosophers? Rich Davis says Hasker hasn’t proven his conclusion. What say you?

Meanderings in the News

This Anglican church has become a fancy home: “Imagine an Anglican Church (built in 1892) transformed into a contemporary home, with gorgeous décor elements, an open space living room and a large terrace guarded by a crystal clear swimming pool. Now repeat after us: this used to be a church! Hard to believe, isn’t it?! Hudson St (Melbourne, Australia) is an exquisite home with an impressive structure, imposing and very luminous. The floor-to-ceiling sliding windows allow the natural light to sneak in and create a bright and vivid ambience.”

10 rules for healthy eating.

College athletes and professionalism, with Warren Zola: “For decades, the NCAA has artificially restricted compensation to a labor force generating billions of dollars in revenue—justifying itself by citing the self-imposed definition of “amateurism”—while redirecting profits to athletic departments and sending the free market compensation system underground. Unfortunately, NCAA amateurism is an illusion, and quite likely an antitrust violation. Former NCAA Executive Director Walter Byars declared, “Amateurism is not a moral issue; it is an economic camouflage for monopoly practice.” Now is the time to radically change intercollegiate athletics rather than passively wait for the courts or Congress to address the existing collusive wage fixing. I propose the following…”

Is Greenland melting: “A couple of particularly cloudy days and unseasonably warm temperatures likely caused the “astonishing” Greenland ice melt of 2012, in which 97 percent of the island’s ice sheet melted over the course of four days, atmospheric scientists said Wednesday.”

Will Amazon take over Dropbox? I’m a big Dropbox fan. How about you?

Connecticut and gun laws: “Connecticut lawmakers on Monday said they had reached an agreement on compromise gun control legislation that they said would be one of the toughest in the nation, 3½ months after 20 children and six other people were killed in a mass shooting at an elementary school. The bill includes a ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines like those Adam Lanza used to fire 154 shots in four 4 minutes Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, a new registry for existing high-capacity magazines and background checks for private gun sales, NBC Connecticut reported.

What students think of online courses.

Tax rates… starting with Denmark and moving down in percentage:

Meanderings in Sports:

Gino on Britney Griner in the NBA: “Then there was UConn coach Geno Auriemma who said Cuban shouldn’t waste his draft pick on June 27. “I think it would be a sham,” Auriemma said Wednesday. “The fact that a woman could actually play right now in the NBA and compete successfully against the level of play that they have is absolutely ludicrous.” “If Brittney Griner tries to make it to an NBA team, I think it would be a public relations thing,” Auriemma said on a Final Four teleconference with reporters. Cuban is a financial genius, Auriemma said, but “his genius would take a huge hit if he drafted Brittney Griner.”

This idea is chat-chat; she’s not athletically even remotely close to the 6-8 NBA players in speed, strength or skills. Not.even.close.

Vote for me at The American Jesus.

Carl Ruby: “G.K. Chesterton, a gifted English writer who died in 1936 observed, “We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws.” Chesterton’s statement is at least partially true of today’s debate over immigration reform. While I would contend that laws to protect us from criminals and felons are necessary, I think it is also true that this is the time for good people (of all political persuasions) to take a close look at the bad laws and policies that comprise our current broken immigration system.”

Andy Stanley gets it right: “Believers should remove every obstacle that hinders or distracts from the central question, “Who is Jesus?” said Stanley, adding that a scripture verse he hangs in his office is Acts 15:19: “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.”

Thom Rainer on eight questions by pastors about money.

Rachel Held Evans interviews Boz Tchvidjian on child abuse: “This afternoon, I am pleased to feature an interview with Basyle ‘Boz’ Tchividjian, a founding member and Executive Director of G.R.A.C.E (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment). Born in Vevey, Switzerland, Boz grew up in south Florida, where he served as Assistant State Attorney, Seventh Judicial Circuit (1994-2001). While in that position, he was chief Prosecutor, Sexual Crimes Division, where he gained much experience in cases involving sexual abuse and harassment. In 2003, Boz helped found G.R.A.C.E. to educate and equip the faith community to correctly respond to sexual abuse disclosures, while also providing practical guidance to churches on how to protect children. G.R.A.C.E provides confidential consultations to churches, schools, & other organizations which are struggling with issues involving sexual abuse. Boz and his family live near Lynchburg, Virginia where he serves as a law professor at Liberty University School of Law. He is blessed to be a grandson of Dr. Billy Graham and recently published his first book entitled, Invitation – Billy Graham and the Lives God Touched. I tried to incorporate some of your questions from the comment section into the interview. I hope you learn as much from Boz as I did. Please consider passing this along to the leadership of your church to ensure they are doing everything in their power to prevent and report abuse.

Tim Keller on the value of doctrine: “In short, the world tells you to get peace by not thinking too hard; Christianity tells you that you get peace by thinking very hard—learning, grasping, rejoicing, and resting in the truths of the Word of God. So learn biblical doctrine—for your health.”

Dan Wallace on the “new” New Testament: “Just released from the giant publishing firm, Houghton Miflin Harcourt: A New New Testament: A Bible for the 21^st Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts, edited by Hal Taussig. The advertisement from HMH distributed widely via email last week was not shy in its claims for the 600-page volume. The subject line read, “It is time for a new New Testament.” In the email blast are strong endorsements by Marcus Borg, Karen King, and Barbara Brown Taylor. Borg and King, like Taussig, were members of the Jesus Seminar (a group headed up by the late Robert W. Funk, which determined which words and deeds of Jesus recorded in the Gospels were authentic). King and Taylor are on the Council for A New New Testament. All of them share a viewpoint which seems to be decidedly outside that of the historic Christian faith, regardless of whether it is Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant.”

Kevin DeYoung’s good advice for pastors: don’t be afraid to ask for prayer: “Every Christian needs the care and compassion of the body of Christ. Pastors knows this better than anyone. But we can be slow to accept it for ourselves. Obviously, I’m not suggesting we embrace a martyr’s complex or take advantage of our people’s kindness. But there is something deeply biblical, fundamentally wise, and particularly powerful about the shepherd acknowledging he is first of all a sheep. Pastors are real people-real fallen, hurting, human beings-and we need the church like everyone else. When my elder suggested I ask the congregation to pray for me, he argued that a church learns to truly love her pastor by praying for him, comforting him, seeing him in need, and exercising their pent up desire to minister to him as he has ministered to them. If we aren’t careful as pastors, we can fall into the bad habit of thinking we must always be Christ to others and no one can ever be Christ to us. We get comfortable as the grace-dispensers, without recognizing our greater need to be grace-receivers. Such an attitude has the appearance of humility, but is actually the hardening of pride.”

Ed goes to the mat about radical discipleship.

Regenerate church membership among Baptists growing: “A commitment to a regenerate church membership organized around a written covenant also characterized most Baptist churches in America, especially by the turn of the eighteenth century. Though early on most churches adopted their own unique covenants, after the publication of J. Newton Brown’s Baptist Church Manual in 1853 (still in print today), the model covenant he included in his influential volume became the most widely used covenant among Baptist churches in America. This is the church covenant that Broadman Press reproduced in poster or plaque form that still adorns the sanctuaries and fellowship halls of thousands of Southern Baptist churches. Unfortunately, the very ease of adopting Brown’s standard covenant contributed to the downplaying of a covenantal ecclesiology among two or three generations of Southern Baptists.”

Meanderings in the News

On microsavings, Ylan Q. Mui: “The moral of Ligua’s story, told to a nonprofit group working with her bank, seems simple enough: Saving money, even if it’s only pennies at a time, is a guaranteed way to build wealth. But that idea is upending decades of popular wisdom about poverty and the best way to eradicate it. The “microsavings” concept is taking root in developing countries where nonprofit groups and financial institutions in the past preached that credit was the key to attaining a better life. But as impoverished borrowers began defaulting on debts at alarming rates in recent years — sometimes with fatal consequences — many organizations began questioning the power of credit. That led to some industry soul-searching and to the rediscovery of perhaps the most basic and universal instrument of personal finance: the piggy bank.”

A tip for iOS keyboard: “When you’re tapping away on the keyboard on your iPhone, there are bound to be times when you miss the right key. It happens, right? So, the options are to tap the delete button, and deal with all the auto-correct stuff, or just do this one little thing and make it all better. Instead of lifting your finger when you mis-hit a keyboard character, simply keep your thumb or finger down and slide it over to the character you *meant* to hit. For example, if you tap on the Y button instead of the T, hold your finger down and slide it over to the T. When you release, iOS will type a T. Cool, right?”

Bad at customer service, here’s the list.

Yellowstone Natl Park local activism: “Small communities around Yellowstone National Park are raising almost $200,000 in private donations to do what the park cannot this year because of budget cuts: Open on time for spring visitors. Businesses and local residents in Cody and Jackson, Wy., small towns that rely on spending by park visitors for their survival, have donated close to $170,000 to have the high mountain roads at two park entrances plowed.”

This would be super cool, though neither Kris nor I have broken an iPhone from dropping one.

Doctors praying for patients: “The story of the professor makes me wonder whether a similar sort of imbalance is affecting the way physicians discuss spirituality with their patients. Most physicians are so afraid of this topic that they avoid it, worrying that asking patients about their spiritual beliefs will cross an ethical line. Indeed, a group of bioethicists and palliative care specialists led by UCSF Professor Bernie Lo have written that physicians should avoid asking patients to pray with them.”Because physicians hold considerable power over them, it may be difficult for patients to decline a physician’s invitation to pray.” They list another reason doctors should be hesitant to invite such prayer sessions: “Physicians generally lack expertise in leading prayer, particularly if they do have not have chaplaincy training or formal religious training.”

Lifelong learning: “For the first twenty-two years or so of our lives, our main “job” is learning. The bulk of our time is spent in classrooms acquiring new knowledge. And then, once we graduate, we feel like the education phase of our lives is done and now it’s time to go out into the world. Have you ever thought about how odd that idea is? That only a quarter of our lives should be devoted to learning, and then we should simply rest on our laurels for the remaining three-quarters of it? It’s an erroneous idea – but one many have absorbed, at least subconsciously. But school need not be your exclusive provider of learning. Just because you’ve finished your formal education, doesn’t mean that your education is over! Many, perhaps most, of history’s greatest men were autodidacts – those who devote themselves to self-education, either in addition to or as a substitute to formal schooling. A fantastic example of this is author Louis L’Amour. L’Amour was one of America’s most prolific and manliest fiction writers. During his career he cranked out over 120 dime Western novels as well as several collections of short stories and poems. What makes Louis L’Amour’s story all the more remarkable is that he was almost entirely self-taught.”

Children and screen time.

Sports in the News

Move Wrigley to Rosemont? “Rosemont Mayor Bradley Stephens on Monday offered the Chicago Cubs a new home in the tiny suburb of roughly 4,000 residents, if the team’s negotiations with Chicago fall through. Stephens is offering up roughly 25 acres of village-owned property off the Tri-State Tollway and Balmoral Avenue where the Cubs could build a new ballpark to mirror the 99-year-old Wrigley Field, as well as parking and other facilities.”

Theo: “The boy grew up in a family of writers. His grandfather and great uncle wrote “Casablanca.” His father wrote novels and taught creative writing. His sister would someday write television scripts. The boy did a little writing himself, but it did not grip him. He often felt like he was drifting, like he did not really know himself. But the boy was smart. He went to Yale. He went to law school. And he went to work for a baseball team in San Diego….Yes, Theo Epstein is trying to save the world again. Before it was the Red Sox with their curse of the Bambino. Now it’s the Cubs with their Curse of the Billy Goat. Before it was an 86-year World Series drought. Now it’s a 105-year World Series drought. The man, it seems, cannot help himself.”

A pastor-friend, Mark Stevens, is leading his congregation for a year in living the Jesus Creed. This is the banner they are using.

Jonathan Storment: “A few years ago I was talking with a man who was a professional conflict mediator who had worked with Presidents and international government officials. He had helped nations resolve international conflicts bordering on war, but if you asked him who was the hardest assignment, he wouldn’t blink an eye before he told you, “That’s easy…Churches” There’s a bizarre little story in the book of Joshua where Joshua is leading the people of Israel into the land of Canaan, and he is suddenly visited by an Angel of the LORD, and Joshua has such tunnel vision that he immediately asks the angel, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” And the angel says, “No. I’m not on either, as the Commander for the LORD I have come.” I love this little story, because it’s exactly what we religious people do.”

A powerful FB post by Carl Ruby. “In towns all across America streets are not named after them.  School children do not learn about them.  No one waits in line to see the homes where they were born.  They are – “The Forgotten.” They weren’t necessarily bad men.  They weren’t unimportant men.  They were men of influence, men with a voice and the respect of their community.  Most would have agreed; they were good men, according to one, “men of genuine good will.”  While evil men are remembered and great men are enshrined, these men…. just forgotten. Forgotten for being on the wrong side of history.  Men forgotten for being silent when “a word fitly spoken” could have made a difference.  Men who are forgotten for valuing comfort and stability over justice and compassion.  Forgotten because they were unwilling to call out the status quo, and show it for it was… cruel and unjust.”

A mom and a daughter, and some 3d grade boys: “I recognize that third grade boys are bad mirrors for the self-esteem of a young girl. So I called in better mirrors to weed out the mean words meant to marginalize. I wanted her to be seen truly and, maybe more importantly, to see herself truly.”

Kate Blanchard, at RD, has a good post on the SBNR: “Having hung out with church folk for several decades, I have come to expect the words “spiritual but not religious” to be accompanied by air quotes and a tone of disdain. But lately, even non-religious folk have begun to hate on the SBNR.”

Brother Ivo (HT: DR): “If ‘Bible-Believing’ were an inoculation against false doctrine, there would be no creeds! So, if Brother Ivo cavils at being associated with ‘Bible-Believing’, based upon its history of conflict and known frequency of error, to what does he cling in dark times of dispute? The answer lies in the nature, person and love of Christ, which shines in the darkness as a beacon of hope. Jesus’ own teaching style was rabbinic. He told stories, pointed the way and set an example. He never weighed his followers down with complexity, and he simplified what is required of us in terms that even a child could understand. The whole picture can be expressed by relatively little, and that is offered in a human life accessible to everyone. All that is needed is available through a living example of humility and love. So what might this ‘Christianity-for-the-rest-of-us’ call itself? If we are not to limit ourselves to being only ‘Bible believing’, to what should we aspire? Brother Ivo has a suggestion: ‘Gospel Gracious’.”

If you think this sentence is fun, go here: “This exceeding trifling witling, considering ranting criticizing concerning adopting fitting wording being exhibiting transcending learning, was displaying, notwithstanding ridiculing, surpassing boasting swelling reasoning, respecting correcting erring writing, and touching detecting deceiving arguing during debating.”

Ten typically mispronounced foods.

Good story of the week: “He started crying, obviously distraught. The flight attendants brought napkins for his tears, said they would do what they could to help, and most importantly, got his connecting flight information to the captain, he told CNN. When he got off the airport train and was running toward the gate, “I was still like maybe 20 yards away when I heard the gate agent say, ‘Mr. Drake, we’ve been expecting you,'” he said.”

Meanderings in the News

Jeans on a 70s hitchhiker

Will they return the three I gave them?

Is your beer “skunky”? Read this. “I have a new beer rule. Avoid beer in green bottles. Just to be clear, this is a rule for myself. You can drink green bottled beer. In fact, you should always try to drink the beer that you like. For me, I will avoid the green bottles. Why? If you drink beer, you may know why. The the beer in these green bottles seem to have this extra taste that maybe is not so great. Someone (it was probably my biochemist beer brewing brother) told me that the green bottles don’t block ultraviolet light. It is a reaction with the ultraviolet light that causes this taste that I don’t like. Well, maybe I don’t always trust my brother (even though when it comes to beer, I should). You know what happens next, right? Experiment time.”

Pessimists, rejoice! “Worrying takes years off your life, right? Well, maybe not. Pessimists rejoice: happy-go-lucky, care-free peers of yours probably won’t live as long as you. New research suggests that the downers wind up outlasting the uppers. The American Psychological Association summarizes the research published in the journal Psychology and Aging, saying:

Older people who have low expectations for a satisfying future may be more likely to live longer, healthier lives than those who see brighter days ahead, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

“Our findings revealed that being overly optimistic in predicting a better future was associated with a greater risk of disability and death within the following decade,” said lead author Frieder R. Lang, PhD, of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. “Pessimism about the future may encourage people to live more carefully, taking health and safety precautions.”

From BBC News, on how to get along together — alone — for a long time: “The search is on for a couple to train as astronauts, for a privately funded mission to Mars. But wouldn’t any couple squabble if cooped up together for 18 months? Explorer Deborah Shapiro, who spent more than a year with her husband in the Antarctic, provides some marital survival tips. It never ceases to amaze us, but the most common question Rolf and I got after our winter-over, when we spent 15 months on the Antarctic Peninsula, nine of which were in total solitude, was: Why didn’t you two kill each other? We found the question odd and even comical at first, because the thought of killing each other had never crossed our minds. We’d answer glibly that because we relied on each other for survival, murder would be counter-productive.

Kids and antibiotics: “Take a cold, for example, or bronchitis. Our friends know on one level that these are usually caused by viruses, but after a week or two of yuck and snot they’ve had it — so they call the pediatrician for an antibiotic. The harried doctor knows it’s likely viral but doesn’t want to fight with yet another parent about antibiotics — so out comes a prescription. “Just in case this thing’s bacterial, let’s cover our bases,” the doctor says, and moves on to the next patient. The child takes the antibiotic, and around the same time the cold would run its course anyway, the child gets better. Everyone is happy, right? No harm done. Except there’s lots of harm done. In the short term, harm is admittedly uncommon. Antibiotics can give kids rashes, nausea, and in some cases a life-threatening antibiotic-related infection called C. diff. In the long run, though, the harm is huge, and partially hidden. As a society, we hand out antibiotics like candy, tossing one life preserver here, one there, assuming the supply is never ending. But it turns out we are, in fact, running out of antibiotics. This will in turn affect our son, who has never taken an antibiotic in his life.”

Caffeine news.

Big Bang out? Dick Pelletier: “The ‘Big Bang’ theory, widely regarded as the leading explanation for the origin of the universe, goes something like this: space and time instantly appeared about 14 billion years ago in a hot, expanding fireball of nearly infinite density. For several decades, scientists have bandied about explanations of how galaxies and stars first formed and why the expansion of the universe is accelerating.   However, so far, nobody has come up with an explanation of what caused the big bang in the first place – at least an explanation that all scientists can agree with. Now, theoretical physicists Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok, in their fascinating book, “Endless Universe,” dispute the widely-accepted ‘Big Bang’ theory.  Instead, they believe that our cosmos was created by a collision of two universes caused by gravity, possibly in the form of ‘dark matter,’ leaking from one universe into the other; and that the collisions repeat in a never-ending cycle; each time replacing old matter with new galaxies, stars, and planets. These forward-thinking researchers theorize that what we think of as the moment of creation was simply part of an infinite cycle of titanic collisions between our universe and a parallel world that lies just 10 to 32 meters away from ours.”

Eric Lichtbau: “THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe. What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust. The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945. The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.”

Moving from FB to Instagram? “To understand where teens like to spend their virtual time nowadays, just watch them on their smartphones. Their world revolves around Instagram, the application adults mistook for an elevated photography service, and other apps decidedly less old-fashioned than Mark Zuckerberg’s social network. And therein lies one of Facebook’s biggest challenges: With more than 1 billion users worldwide and an unstated mission to make more money, Facebook has become a social network that’s often too complicated, too risky, and, above all, too overrun by parents to give teens the type of digital freedom or release they crave. For tweens and teens, Instagram — and, more recently, SnapChat, an app for sending photos and videos that appear and then disappear — is the opposite of Facebook: simple, seemingly secret, and fun. Around schools, kids treat these apps like pot, enjoyed in low-lit corners, and all for the undeniable pleasure and temporary fulfillment of feeling cool. Facebook, meanwhile, with its Harvard dorm room roots, now finds itself scrambling to keep up with the tastes of the youngest trendsetters — even as it has its hooks in millions of them since it now owns Instagram.”

Daisy Yuhas and chocolate’s potential — but more than is healthy until they figure this out: “t’s news chocolate lovers have been craving: raw cocoa may be packed with brain-boosting compounds. Researchers at the University of L’Aquila in Italy, with scientists from Mars, Inc., and their colleagues, published findings last September that suggest cognitive function in the elderly is improved by ingesting high levels of natural compounds called flavanols found in cocoa. The study included 90 individuals with mild cognitive impairment, a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease. Subjects who drank a cocoa beverage containing either moderate or high levels of flavanols daily for eight weeks demonstrated greater cognitive function than those who consumed low levels of flavanols on three separate tests that measured factors that included verbal fluency, visual searching and attention.”

Megacommuting: 50 miles or 90 minutes? “WASHINGTON (Reuters) – About 600,000 Americans are megacommuters who work at least 50 miles from home and take at least 90 minutes to get there, with the biggest concentration in California, the U.S. Census Bureau said on Tuesday. The agency said the percentage of Americans who traveled at least 90 minutes to work daily has inched higher in the last two decades even as the number of people who work from home has soared by 45 percent. The average one-way daily U.S. commute is 25.5 minutes, and one in four commuters leave their home counties for work, the Census Bureau said, based on its annual American Community Survey.”

The Greatest Shooter ever

Image credit.

Adopting mom deals with the serious question: ““Why did their Mommy and Daddy not want them?”…  …was the question that was dropped into my lap as I was sitting on the floor, with an elementary-aged girl, in our Children’s Worship Room this past Sunday. This young girl had just recently immigrated to the US from China with her family….just shy of a few weeks ago. She had asked this question upon finding out that both Toby and Stella were adopted. To be absolutely clear, her question came from an innocent and sincere heart. This is one of the tougher moments for me in adoption. And yet, it is our reality as we raise these kids. As much as I’ve equipped myself to answer this with love, gentleness and confidence – it is still a question that is difficult to hear and take in. It’s loaded with so much brokenness, that often, it’s incredibly hard for my heart to handle.”

Our President (at Northern) is now posting a devotional week. Check out this one, and I’m thinking Mark Galli might get a chuckle out of this.

Pete Enns: “Glory and humiliation. Not a formula for getting saved from hell, but a pattern of life modeled by Jesus and destined for his followers. If it was good enough for Jesus, Paul says, it’s good enough for us. Experiencing in our daily journey the same power that raised Jesus–but, only if we are also willing to accept the other side of the coin, deep suffering. This is why suffering is a normal state of affairs for followers of Christ. If you feel like you can’t go on, you’re on the right track. Dying and rising. A sobering paradox.”

Shifts in the future of education, including especially seminary education — by Northern Seminary’s Greg Henson.

O my, that’s what you call a big ol’ bird nest.

Meanderings in the News

Gregg Frazer takes on David Barton about Jefferson’s theology and faith. “David Barton’s fundamental claim in chapter 7 of The Jefferson Lies is that Jefferson was orthodox for the first 70 years of his life and only rejected the fundamental doctrines of Christianity in the final 15 years of his life. In support of this claim, Barton said that in his 1776 Notes on Religion, Jefferson “affirmed that Jesus was the Savior, the Scriptures were inspired, and that the Apostles’ Creed ‘contain[ed] all things necessary to salvation’” (p. 168). That is simply not true.”

I like this picture of a gosling, reminding of the need to have good solid footings.

Jordan Weissmann and employment for PhDs: “Politicians and businessmen are fond of talking about America’s scientist shortage — the dearth of engineering and lab talent that will inevitably leave us sputtering in the global economy.  But perhaps it’s time they start talking about our scientist surplus instead.  I am by no means the first person to make this point. But I was compelled to try and illustrate it after readinga report from Inside Higher Education on this weekend’s gloomy gathering of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In short, job prospects for young science Ph.D.’s haven’t been looking so hot these last few years, not only in the life sciences, which have been weak for some time, but also in fields like engineering.”

Blaire Briody: “As the higher education system in the U.S. faces rising costs and reduced state funding, many are asking, What will colleges of the future look like? According to a recent cover story in The American Interest, some won’t look like anything at all, because they’ll cease to exist. Author Nathan Harden estimates that in 50 years, half of the approximately 4,500 colleges and universities in the U.S. will go belly-up.”

Adam Kirsch’s good piece about the new essayists.

Cocooning is rising: “McLEAN, Va. — Cocooning is undergoing a metamorphosis: Call it super-cocooning. Thanks to always-on wireless Internet connectivity and bigger, better TVs that reproduce pixel-perfect high-definition video, cocooning is entering a new evolutionary stage. Consumers are staying home more, watching movies delivered via cable, satellite, Internet or disc, eating in and transforming their apartments and houses into a shelter from the daily social storm. This new level of super-cocooning is affecting Hollywood, professional sports and restaurants across the U.S. “Everybody is nervous, really nervous,” says trend forecaster Faith Popcorn, who coined the term “cocooning” in 1981. “I think we are looking for protection. Almost like the Jetsons, we want to walk around in a little bubble. We are moving toward that.” Cocooning is not a new behavior. Born out of a mix of fear and fun, it became a trend identified with Cold War unease that led to stay-at-home entertainment such as the first home video game systems, rec rooms and the adoption of home swimming pools and trampolines.”

Fun article on words: “7. ALLIGATOR Alligator came to English from the Spanish explorers who first encountered “el lagarto” (lizard) in the New World. While the big lizards were for a time referred to as “lagartos,” the “el” accompanied often enough that it became an inseparable part of the English word.”

Happiest cities in the USA. “Is Disneyland really the happiest place on Earth?* How happy is the city you live in? We have already seen how the hedonometer can be used to find the happiest street corner in New York City, now it’s time to let it loose on the entire United States. We plotted over 10 million geotagged tweets from 2011 (all our results are in this paper), coloring each point by the average happiness of nearby words (detail on how we calculate happiness can be found in this article published in PLoS ONE)…”

Good news about curing blindness: “Researchers  at the Institute for Ophthalmic Research at the University of Tübingen have restored vision in blind patients using tiny retinal implants embedded in the eye. Nine patients were chosen because they had all suffered hereditary diseases where the retina had degenerated to the point of blindness, but left the remainder of the visual pathway intact. Eight of the nine could still detect some light, although could not locate its source. One was completely blind. Each was implanted with a tiny 3x3mm film square containing 1,500 photodiodes which send out electrical signals when they detect light.  The electrical signals are picked up by the nerve cells lying against the retina and passed to the brain. When the retina implant is switched on, the patients perceive a pixellated diamond in the centre of vision, 15 degrees  wide.”

Some more good news about coffee from Jean Tang: “Anything this good must be bad.  That’s the prevailing attitude when it comes to caffeine, isn’t it? We crave it. We guzzle it. Drinking coffeemakes us feel good — better able to handle an overbearing boss or an unruly pack of toddlers. But then… we feel guilty about it, suspecting that sooner or later, it’s going to do us in.  In reality, it’s not the guilty pleasure everyone makes it out to be — in fact, caffeine side effects can do you good. So feel free to grab a tall breakfast blend while we set the record straight.”

Lisa Sharon Harper: “On Saturday, Feb. 9, the world received the news that our dear brother, Dr. Richard Leo Twiss, Lakota, co-founder and President of Wiconi International, had passed from life to life. The news was devastating, but, for the circle of family and friends that held vigil in his hospital room over three days, it felt like God had prepared us.  On the evening of Wednesday, Feb. 6, Richard collapsed from a massive heart attack while attending activities surrounding the National Prayer Breakfast. His family arrived and held vigil with friends throughout the day on Thursday. That night we learned that Richard had suffered a heart attack, heart failure, lung failure, and brain injury. According to the doctors, we would know within the next 72 hours whether Richard’s body would be able to heal or not. On Friday afternoon, I received an email and call from Sue Martel, the editor of Richard’s forthcoming book,Rescuing Theology from the Cowboys: An Emerging Indigenous Expression of the Jesus Way in North America. As we finished the conversation, she shared that she had a vision of someone anointing Richard’s feet with oil. I shared that earlier in the day I felt called to do the same, but I didn’t know the meaning of the vision. On the way to the hospital, I read the story of Lazarus and the grave (John 11: 1-44) and felt called to read it over Richard. So, when I arrived at the hospital, I learned that during the day, Richard’s kidneys failed. I shared the conversation with Katherine Twiss, Richard’s wife and co-founder of Wiconi, and she blessed me to read and to anoint Richard’s feet. As I read, we all wept. I never noticed this before, but the scripture begins with an explanation that Lazarus was the brother of Mary — the one who anointed Jesus’ feet for burial. I anointed Richard’s feet and prayed.”

Wrigleyville vs. the Cubs, and the fear (for this Cubs fan) is that one day the Cubs will relocate to a more amenable neighborhood. “The Chicago Cubs’ push for more night games in the upcoming season could be in jeopardy, as Ald. Tom Tunney said he would not introduce legislation at today’s City Council meeting. The team has asked Tunney, whose 44^th ward encompasses Wrigley Field, to ease limits on night games, late Friday afternoon games, concerts and other non-game events that are part of a neighborhood protection ordinance. The Cubs want more flexibility in scheduling games and events to increase revenues as the owners of the team seek to embark on a $300 million renovation of Wrigley Field.”

Richard Beck: “So I went forward and when the ashes were imposed on my forehead the words I got where these: “Jesus loves you.” Good gravy. That’s a great sentiment, but I’m not coming forward on Ash Wednesday to hear “Jesus loves you.” I hear that message every Sunday. What I want to hear, what my Winter Christian heart was looking for, was the hard stuff. The undiluted full-of-death stuff. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust that you shall return.” But even on Ash Wednesday we struggle to get those words out. They are too scary, morbid, and depressing. But that’s exactly the point. And exactly why we need to stay on script. Otherwise our fears of death and brokenness cause us to rush past the ashes and into the happy place where all is cozy, sweet and comforting. We don’t need an over-realized eschatology on Ash Wednesday. Easter, sure. But it’s Ash Wednesday.”

What does this say about orangutans — or about us?

Marlena Graves, on looking down our noses: “Maybe this Lent we’ll have a conversion akin to Megan’s. Perhaps for the first time we’ll see and confess that there’s much more of Westboro in us than we care to admit, that we don’t have it all right and that we’ve done violence to our brothers and sisters while purporting to do good. Are there some we’ve driven away from home, some who have a hard time feeling at home with us and our congregations? Maybe we’ll realize that it’s not just Westboro, but us standing in the need of prayer.”

The penchant on the part of some to call themselves “progressive” but not “liberal” has not convinced all. Bo Sanders offers this shorthand summary difference: “Liberal simply mean that one’s experience is a valid location for doing theology. Progressives are folks that would be Liberal but who have learned from Feminist, Liberation and Post-Colonial critiques.”

I enjoyed this about Herod and archaeology.

Greg Boyd, Woodland Hills, Mennonite? “Christian writer and speaker Greg Boyd’s megachurch is weighing its affiliation options, part of a yearlong commitment to exploring Anabaptism. According to Mennonite World Review, Boyd said Woodland Hills Church has been “‘growing in this direction since the church started, without knowing what Anabaptism was.'” Now, its pastoral team is in talks with leaders of both the Mennonite Church USA and the Brethren in Christ denominations. Other Anabaptist denominations have also courted the church, even though Woodland Hills “‘brings a very kind of non-Mennonite culture,'” Boyd said. According to data from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, there is only one other Mennonite megachurch in America: Northwoods Community in Peoria, Illinois. (However, Canada has a few of its own.) The Brethren in Christ also only have a few megachurches in the U.S.”

Joshua Dubois’ plans.

Meanderings in the News

Didn’t know the history of ice was so interesting.

Dem Svedish gals is sure tuff: “Daniela Holmqvist, a Swedish rookie on the Ladies European Tour and former Cal golfer, was on the fourth hole in a pre-qualifier for the Women’s Australian Open in Yarralumla, Australia, yesterday when she felt a sharp pain in her ankle. She looked down, she told Golf Digest later—after not dying by virtue of being a badass—and “saw a large, furry, black creature with a red spot on its back just above her sock line.”Holmqvist, 24, reportedly “swatted” the spider away and then nearly fell over in pain, as she’d just been bitten by a black widow spider. “I had just turned and felt it was very painful, not like being stung by a wasp,” shetold Svensk Golf, “rather like being stabbed by a knife.” So then she decided to stab herself in the leg with a tee…”

Are the dissertation’s days over? Stacey Patton says Yes: “The dissertation is broken, many scholars agree. So now what? Rethinking the academic centerpiece of a graduate education is an obvious place to start if, as many people believe, Ph.D. programs are in a state of crisis. Universities face urgent calls to reduce the time it takes to complete degrees, reduce attrition, and do more to prepare doctoral candidates for nonacademic careers, as students face rising debt and increased competition for a shrinking number of tenure-track jobs. As a result, many faculty and administrators wonder if now may finally be the time for graduate programs to begin to modernize on a large scale and move beyond the traditional, book-length dissertation. That scholarly opus, some say, lingers on as a stubborn relic that has limited value to many scholars’ careers and, ultimately, might just be a big waste of time.” The dissertation measures or records a scholar’s capacity to think, write and explore and contribute at the highest academic levels. I would agree that a series of journal-length articles could do the same, but is there much difference?

Sumathi Reddy: “New laboratory technology is enabling scientists to see more clearly what is going on inside a baby’s brain and monitor how it interacts with its environment. The findings are helping to shed light on the earliest stages of learning. “The baby brain is a mystery, waiting to be unpeeled. It’s full of secrets waiting to be uncovered,” says Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, at the University of Washington in Seattle. Scientists at the institute are conducting some of the first experiments using magnetoencephalography, or MEG, brain-imaging machines on children. The technology allows researchers to measure magnetic-field changes around the brain while a baby sits under what looks like a beauty-salon hair dryer. Dr. Kuhl says the technology is noninvasive and silent, making it ideal for working with babies.

Sue Shellenbarger: “Nobody wants to be that hothead who flies off the handle in the face of some everyday annoyance, causing others to roll their eyes and wonder, “What’s wrong with him?” But people who experience extreme reactions to stress—from a racing heart to full-blown rage—may be hard-wired to do so, researchers are finding. It isn’t known how many people are highly reactive to stress, but the tendency can endure for years or a lifetime.”

Faux pas at Missouri State University by Robert Kessler: “Mistakes. We all make them, it’s understandable, forgivable, a part of human nature even. But when there’s a particular irony to said mistake, it makes it nearly impossible not to mock that mistake, and there’s nothing more ironic than an institution of higher learning misspelling its own d–n name. Missouri State University (er, Univeristy) in Springfield, Mo. handed out thousands of canvas bags to students last month, proudly bearing a typo that switched the “s” and second “i” in “university.” According to theSpringfield News-Leader, a total of 17,800 bags were ordered; the typo appears on nearly half (about 8,500) of the bags. MSU spent $70,844 on the bags and since the error was the school’s fault, none of the cost can be recouped.”

Jenn LeBow, gospel-shaped “submission”: “Dennis and I, a little more than fifteen years into our marriage, have disavowed extremes in many contexts: politics, religion, parenting. But one extreme we do cling to: we still treat each other more kindly than we treat anyone else. Some days, doing so requires more submission than any other task, but it’s always been a mutual submission for us. I see clearly how much patience it takes for Dennis to remain kind with me; my efforts with him don’t require nearly as much strength of will. Nevertheless, we believe it to be among the top three reasons our marriage remains strong.”

Zack Hunt is right: “It simply makes no sense when church leaders begin a conversation (which is the purpose of tweets, Facebook statuses, blog posts, etc.), for other Christians to respond to that conversation somewhere else. I don’t mean the conversation shouldn’t also continue offline. I mean the idea that seems to pop up whenever celebrity preachers like Mark Driscoll or John Piper or whoever say something outrageous, namely that Twitter, Facebook, or blogs are the wrong place to engage the conversation that started in those very same places, is utterly absurd. The world has changed. The internet is the new public square.”

Ed Moore, on sacred bundles… a post for all of us: “The pastor had insulted one of the principal relics in Granny Smith UMC’s “sacred bundle.” A sacred bundle is the collection of symbols, stories and artifacts that confers identity upon a community and establishes its social norms; every organization has one. The longer the organization has existed, the more layered and complex its sacred bundle is likely to be.” (HT: MR)

Rachel Held Evans and the scandal of the heart: “This is true to an extent. I’ve wrestled with a lot of questions related to science and faith, especially given my location a mere two miles from the famous Rhea County Courthouse where John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution in a public school.  While I no longer believe the earth is just 6,000 years old, I still live in the tension of unanswered questions about the universe, and death, and brains, and Neanderthals, and whatever Neil deGrasse Tyson’s got to say on public television about the earth getting burned up by the sun or our species going extinct after an asteroid hits.  I have questions too about history and Christianity’s emergence from it, questions about the Bible, questions about miracles. But the questions that have weighed most heavily on me these past ten years have been questions not of the mind but of the heart, questions of conscience and empathy. It was not the so-called “scandal of the evangelical mind” that rocked my faith; it was the scandal of the evangelical heart.” [Of course, the reason Mark Noll wrote about the scandal of the evangelical mind was because there was too much heart and passion and not enough mind.]

Charity Jill Erickson and the cake-eaters along 494 — at CPC!

Te’o and Catfishing: “When the show’s producers finally bring them together, Abigail turns out to be not willowy, blonde and Barbie Doll-cute. In fact, she is dark-haired, obese and deeply troubled, and her real name is Melissa. Explaining her deception to an obviously dejected Jarrod, she says she knew that if she showed herself as she really looked, she would never have attracted any man’s interest—her experience of rejection throughout her school years and young adulthood had demonstrated that. “Pretty much all of it was, you know, me—just not me,” she said. “Everything, all the emotions, you know—just a different face, I suppose.” Those words were kind of an eerie echo of Swarbrick’s description of Te’o. “Every single thing about this…was real to Manti,” Swarbrick said. “There was no suspicion that it wasn’t, no belief that it might not be. And so the pain was real. The grief was real. The affection was real. And that’s the nature of this sad, cruel game.” All this assumes, of course, that Te’o truly was a victim, and was not involved in creating the hoax of his “girlfriend.” The point is that it is not implausible to believe that he was a victim. The point is that this kind of hoax has been perpetrated many times already in the Internet age, sometimes with tragic consequences.” (HT: OY)

That Loon is priceless.

Michael Jensen, at Sydney Anglicans, observing a seeming consensus on women teaching: “Nevertheless, what is interesting to me is that there seems to be emerging an agreement from all sides in this discussion that the New Testament features women in speaking roles in front of mixed congregations to a far greater extent than is often now practiced in Sydney Anglican churches. Some of the implementation of complementarian thinking about ministry has been over-zealous, to the point that it ignores what is plainly the case in the Bible. In 1 Corinthians 11 (to take the obvious example) women prophesy in the church gathering, and there is no forbidding them from doing so. Why do we not see this more often in our church meetings? My colleague Jane Tooher from the Priscilla and Aquila Centre has been advocating and modeling this practice in the last couple of years.”

Akira Okrentand the Oxford Comma War: “The Oxford comma, so-called because the Oxford University Press style guidelines require it, is the comma before the conjunction at the end of a list. If your preferred style is to omit the second comma in “red, white, and blue,” you are aligned with the anti-Oxford comma faction. The pro-Oxford comma faction is more vocal and numerous in the US, while in the UK, anti-Oxford comma reigns. (Oxford University is an outsider, style-wise, in its own land.) In the US, book and magazine publishers are generally pro, while newspapers are anti, but both styles can be found in both media. The two main rationales for choosing one style over the other are clarity and economy. Each side has invoked both rationales in its favor. Here are some quotes that have served as shots exchanged in the Oxford comma wars.”

Dave Moore and Moore Engaging.

Mental Floss has some facts about coffee. “In 1674, the “Women’s Petition Against Coffee” said it was turning British men into “useless corpses” and proposed a ban for those under 60″ and “In 1932, Brazil couldn’t afford to send its athletes to the Olympics in Los Angeles. So they loaded their ship with coffee and sold it along the way.”

Frank Viola has  a “spiritual conversation style” map: charismatic, quoter and pragmatic styles.

Ecclesia and Ethics, an online webinar/conference with such folks as Michael Gorman, Mariam Kamell, N.T. Wright, and Shane Claiborne.

Meanderings in the News

Father Flannery doesn’t sound like a Catholic priest to me: “In the article, Father Flannery, a Redemptorist priest, wrote that he no longer believed that “the priesthood as we currently have it in the church originated with Jesus” or that he designated “a special group of his followers as priests.” Instead, he wrote, “It is more likely that some time after Jesus, a select and privileged group within the community who had abrogated power and authority to themselves, interpreted the occasion of the Last Supper in a manner that suited their own agenda.” Nor does Tom Brodie.

Worst picture of the Inaugural Day events — a door on our President’s car door so thick…

Quite the story from n+1.

Ken Jennings: “In China, for example, it’s widely believed that sitting on a seat recently warmed by someone else’s behind can give you hemorrhoids. The Brits, on the other hand, attribute hemorrhoids to sitting on cold surfaces. But sitting on that same cold concrete would lead to a different lecture from a Ukrainian mom: She’d be sure it would make you sterile. Some Peruvians are told that lingering too long in front of the fridge can cause cancer. In the Czech Republic, everyone knows that drinking water after eating fruit leads to painful bloating. Filipino kids can’t wear red when it’s stormy out, since that would attract lightning. Germans and Austrians live in mortal fear of drafts, which get blamed for everything from pneumonia to blocked arteries, so summertime commuters routinely swelter on 90-degree trains and buses rather than cracking a window through which a cooling—but lethal!—breeze might pass. In South Korea, however, the concern about ventilation is exactly the opposite. Koreans will only use electric fans if a window is cracked, because leaving a fan on in an enclosed room, it’s almost universally believed, can be fatal. The mechanism behind the threat is a little vague: Sometimes it’s said to be a lack of oxygen that kills you, sometimes it’s a chill. But either way, you won’t care. You’ll be dead.”

Mari-Jane Williams on what high schoolers need to know upon graduation.

Ireland and rural drinking and driving.

Can we bring back the Neanderthals? “SPIEGEL: Setting aside all ethical doubts, do you believe it is technically possible to reproduce the Neanderthal? Church: The first thing you have to do is to sequence the Neanderthal genome, and that has actually been done. The next step would be to chop this genome up into, say, 10,000 chunks and then synthesize these. Finally, you would introduce these chunks into a human stem cell. If we do that often enough, then we would generate a stem cell line that would get closer and closer to the corresponding sequence of the Neanderthal. We developed the semi-automated procedure required to do that in my lab. Finally, we assemble all the chunks in a human stem cell, which would enable you to finally create a Neanderthal clone. SPIEGEL: And the surrogates would be human, right? In your book you write that an “extremely adventurous female human” could serve as the surrogate mother. Church: Yes. However, the prerequisite would, of course, be that human cloning is acceptable to society. SPIEGEL: Could you also stop the procedure halfway through and build a 50-percent Neanderthal using this technology. Church: You could and you might. It could even be that you want just a few mutations from the Neanderthal genome. Suppose you were too realize: Wow, these five mutations might change the neuronal pathways, the skull size, a few key things. They could give us what we want in terms of neural diversity. I doubt that we are going to particularly care about their facial morphology, though (laughs).”

NPR and the Common Core reading curriculum.

Josh Wingrove sketches Oprah’s preparation and experience with the interview of Lance Armstrong: “Before Lance Armstrong arrived, Oprah Winfrey cleared the room, meditated and prayed. She didn’t want to pass judgment on the man soon to be before her, a 41-year-old fallen cycling legend about to deliver a staggering mea culpa. It didn’t matter if he was guilty, if he’d lied or if he’d leveraged it all to build a global brand. Ms. Winfrey had, instead, learned her lesson with James Frey, the disgraced author whose tailspin engulfed her book club.”

Meanderings in Sports

On the Cubs convention: “During a question-and-answer session with the Ricketts family, one elderly fan criticized the Cubs for having players with long hair, adding the “manager who is on TV every day looks like he slept on a park bench.” As the audience howled, Tom Ricketts replied: “I’ll put that one in the suggestion box.”