I’ve been asked a dozen times or more, What’s new in the Blue Parakeet?

This is a book about reading the Bible, about bad reading habits — like making the Bible into a Rorschach inkblot where we see what we are looking for — and good reading habits — like knowing the story of the Bible so we can see how God spoke in Moses’ day in Moses’ way and see how God spoke in Jesus’ day in Jesus’ way.

While I had some back and forth with the editors and marketers at the publisher on the title — “what’s a blue parakeet got to do with Bible reading?”, by all accounts the book has become far more useful to churches and Christians than I or Zondervan expected. It’s nothing but fun when someone says “blue parakeet guy?” to me.

This book is mentioned more than any other book I have written, except for perhaps Jesus Creed. In particular, it has become helpful for college students and home Bible study groups, and for me a particular joy has been that so many women have been encouraged in their gifting by this book, which leads to this: the last third of the book is about women in ministry and how the Bible’s story shapes the empowerment of women.

So, please answer the question: What’s new?

I added more on reading the Bible as narrative. That is, I combine the story of the Eikon with the story of king Jesus.

I added a section on the Bible and slavery.

I added a section on the Bible and atonement.

I added a section on the Bible and justice.

I added a section on the Bible and science.

I added a section on the gospel itself.

I added enough that the new edition has more than 100 pages more than the original edition!

The Blue Parakeet has escaped the cage! This is the beautiful cover to the 2d edition of Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible.

Not a slight revision. There are whole new sections, and this much-revised edition is nearly 100 pages longer than the original.  New sections on reading the Bible as narrative, new material on slavery in the Bible, on science and faith, on the gospel … and more!

This 2d edition comes because of comments from readers, from professors who use this as introduction to Bible reading, from pastors asking questions, from my own classroom and from my own development in writing and study.

I cannot express my gratitude adequately to who over the years have offered encouraging words about what this book has done for them, and that alone was reason enough for me to improve the book with new material.

Ah, yes, and the long section on women in ministry has been a highlight.

Matthew Lunders and Becky Castle Miller serve on the pastoral staff of Damascus Road International Church in the Netherlands. They both worked as journalists before going into vocational ministry. They wrote this dialogue between two disciples dealing with the ascension aftermath as a script and performed it for the church to help them engage their imaginations in studying the Bible.

All three pics are by Ger van den Elzen <https://www.instagram.com/ger_van_den_elzen_photography/>

Damascus Road website
Damascus Road YouTube channel

Mary of Magdala stood in the corner, facing the open window. From up here, she could see the rooftops of smaller houses and the roads winding between them. Everything was the same shade of drab, the monochrome only broken by a few travelers in weird and wild colors, the earliest arrivals for the upcoming festival. She held her arms high and mouthed her prayers. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts—”

“Mary!”

The greeting shout interrupted her. She turned to see John ripping off his traveling cloak as he skidded into the room with a cloud of dust.

“Welcome…home?” She laughed at the awkwardness of playing hostess in a house that wasn’t hers. They had all been coming and going from this large home in Jerusalem since Peter and John had first borrowed the upstairs room for the night…well. That night. The last night. The kind man who owned the house had made it available to them as a sort of home base throughout the chaos—the grief and the joy—of the last month.

With one hand, Mary pulled her scarf back up over her black curls and with the other, she reached to take John’s cloak.

“How’s Mama Mary?” he asked, kicking off his sandals.

“Fine. She’s praying up on the roof, but she’ll be glad to see her favorite adopted son when she comes in.” She stood on tiptoes to look over his shoulder at the doorway. It was still empty. “Where’s our rabbi and the others?”

“Do you have to ask? I’ve already proven I can run faster.” He smirked.

She rolled her eyes.

“The others are coming, but Jesus is…” John crinkled his forehead and opened and closed his mouth, as if trying to find the right word. “Gone.”

The bright morning light dimmed around the edges of her vision, closing in on his face. She blinked but it didn’t clear, and she stumbled forward, dropping his cloak. Though he was right in front of her, his voice calling her name sounded muffled and far away. Her knees wobbled, and she dropped onto a wooden bench. “Gone?”

John slid onto a leather stool near her and lightly smacked her hand a few times. “Mary, are you okay? It’s okay!” He grabbed the clay pitcher from the low table nearby and poured water into a cup for her while his words poured out in an effort to explain. “It’s okay. He was there, we saw Him, and then He went up…on a cloud. I know it sounds crazy, but what hasn’t been crazy recently, right? But He told us to come back here and wait.”

Mary shook her head, confused. “He led you to Bethany just so He could…leave…and send you back to Jerusalem?”

“Well, I hadn’t thought about it that way. I mean, I suppose he took us to Bethany so Martha and her siblings could see Him too. I don’t know.” Now John was shaking his head too.

Mary gulped her drink. “Okay. Start from the beginning. What happened?”

“The beginning…where to begin the story? It’s all happened so fast. Jesus is dead. Jesus is alive. Jesus is here. Jesus is there. Jesus is up…there.” He waved at the ceiling. “He said we should wait…” He looked left and squinted. “He said we should wait for the promise from His Father. He said the Holy Spirit would come to give us power to be witnesses about what we’ve seen.”

“I still don’t understand. We just got Him back, and He’s gone again? What are we going to do now?”

He sucked in air and exhaled in a loud gust. “I don’t know. I don’t understand it either. But—but I do have hope.”

“How can you feel hope? I’ve barely recovered from losing Him the first time. If He’s really gone, I won’t survive mourning Him again.” Her eyes burned, and her throat felt tight.

“But he’s not gone gone. After he disappeared, these two guys in white showed up. They told us that He’s gonna to be coming back.”

She gritted her teeth. “Maybe you could have led with that information?”

John ducked his head. “Sorry. But that wasn’t at the beginning. I’m still processing it all myself. They didn’t say how long He’ll be gone, just that He will come back someday, in the same way we saw Him go.”

Mary remembered her friend on the roof, the woman who had stood like iron, watching her son tortured and killed. Who had received Him back from the dead with delight and was now suddenly bereaved again. “What are you going to tell his mom?”

He tipped his head to the side. “Don’t you think she knows? Even though we’ve been all over the place lately, He did make sure to spend time with her. I saw them the other day, sitting in the shade.” One side of his mouth turned up, and he softened his voice. “She was on a chair, and he was on the ground next to her with His head on her knee. I don’t think He left without saying goodbye to her.”

Mary stood and carried the pitcher to a bucket where she refilled it. She spoke with her back to him. “He didn’t say goodbye to me.” John either didn’t hear her or didn’t have a response.

She returned, poured a drink for him, and refilled her own cup. She asked again, “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know. But…even though I’m confused, I can’t shake this excitement. When Jesus went up, we were full of joy—me and all the others.”

The tense tangle in Mary’s gut started to loosen. Maybe Jesus wasn’t gone for good. Maybe He hadn’t abandoned them, or been taken away from them again. She’d get a more coherent story out of one of the older disciples when they arrived. James would know. She glanced out the window, but there was no sign of them yet.

She sat next to John and leaned toward him. “Before the others get here, I’ve been wanting to ask you…how is Peter? I’m worried about him. The angel at the tomb specifically said to ‘tell the disciples including Peter.’ I know there must have been a reason, but I didn’t want to ask Peter directly.”

John laced his fingers together and rubbed one thumb with the other. “I think I know. Don’t tell him I shared this, but the night Jesus was arrested, we both went to the High Priest’s. I could get in easier to see the questioning, but Peter at first wasn’t allowed in, so I talked to the woman at the gate and worked it out. But then…I don’t know what came over him. Someone asked him if he was a disciple of Jesus, and Peter said he didn’t even know Jesus!”

“What? Are you sure you heard correctly?”

John nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again. “I thought I heard wrong at first, but then it happened two more times! An hour earlier, he was swearing he would die with Jesus, and then he denied him three times. I don’t know what changed. He was yelling and calling down curses on himself—stuff even I wouldn’t say. Then he just ran out. Everything was loud, there was the trial and soldiers and roosters, but even outside I could him weeping. I’ll never forget that sound.”

Mary clasped her hands on her chest. “Oh, Peter. How horrible. Why didn’t you go to him?”

“Dunno. It just seemed better to stick with Jesus.”

“Of course.” She sighed. “He must have felt devastated afterward. I can’t imagine. They were so close. No wonder the angel made a point to tell Peter Jesus was alive. Do you know if Peter talked to Jesus about it later?”

“Well, Jesus knew. He looked right at Peter the last time as he was shouting and making a scene. I don’t know if they really talked about it after Jesus came back, but sort of.”

Mary raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“So…back when we went to Galilee because you told us to. We didn’t know what to do, so Peter recommended we go fishing while we waited. We didn’t catch anything all night. You’d think we had never been on a boat before. My dad would have been so mad.” John cringed.

Mary got up and went around the corner. “Keep talking, I’m listening.”

“In the morning, there was a man on the shore who told us to try the right side. Seemed impolite not to, so we did, and there were tons of fish, and then I knew, it was Him.”

Mary came back with a basket of bread and placed it on the table as she sat. “Because the same thing had happened to you before, right?”

“Yeah, when Jesus first called us! Funny, right? So it happened again, we went to shore, Jesus made this great breakfast. Oh…” He halted the flow of words. “I’m going to miss food with Him.”

Tears prickled the inside corners of Mary’s eyes. “Oh, yes. The way He delighted in the simplest meals!” She could picture Him as He had been at so many tables they had all shared together, hardly taller than her at His full height, grinning just the way His mom did, standing and giving thanks to God for the food. “He made bread into a feast.”

Even John sat contentedly silent for a moment.

Mary took the bread from her basket and tore it. She offered half to John and cleared her throat. “What happened next with Peter?”

“Um, Jesus took Peter on a walk down the shore, and Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him.”

“Wait. Were you eavesdropping on them? John!”

“Maybe.” He shrugged and grinned. “You know how sound travels across water?” He shoved a chunk of bread in his mouth.

Mary crossed her arms. “Uh-huh.”

“Aaaaaaaanyway. Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved Him.”

“Like the three times Peter denied him? Huh. How did Peter respond?”

“He said yes, of course,” he mumbled around the bread. “But it was more about what Jesus said after that. He said, ‘Take care of my sheep.’ It was like He gave Peter his job back. Gave him a second chance. And Peter seems so far like he’s taking that seriously. He’s been encouraging us, getting us to pray. Talking about the future. He thinks we should find someone to replace Judas, to be part of the team going out after we get this power Jesus talked about.”

“How could you possibly find someone to fill in for Judas? I know there are other followers who have been with us from the beginning, but Judas is—was—” she corrected herself. “Was one of the Twelve. There’s so much he got to see and learn that others missed.”

“I remember Judas talking about the first time he and Simon drove out a demon when Jesus sent us out and you’d think since Simon was a Zealot that he’s this manly guy, right, but he almost peed himself, he turned white and Andrew started laughing at him…” John’s mouth could run like his feet when he got into a story. His words tumbled on, oblivious to Mary’s pained expression.

Those dark days. She never thought about them when Jesus was around. The very light of His presence drove those memories far away. What would happen now that He was gone? No one else had had the ability to save her. Would the darkness come back?

John was still talking. She tried to interrupt him. “John. John!”

He didn’t hear her. “It was hilarious. Judas could tell the story so much better than I can. Man, that was a rush!”

She got louder. “Hey! Thunder-head! Demons are not a laughing matter. Speaking from experience here.”

“I know, right?” He took another big bite of bread. “The guys talked about that, too. You had it bad. We’re like, Jesus has gotta do this one, it’s too big for us. But then it was all, ‘Arrrghhhh!” His enthusiastic performance spluttered crumbs into the air.

Mary leapt up. “It’s not funny!”

He stopped talking and looked at her, wide-eyed. He swallowed.

She closed her eyes and took a slow breath. She reached out and patted his head, sending up dust that sparkled in the sunbeam. “You are still so young…and immature sometimes.”

***

John tossed his bread on the table. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

He sipped his water while Mary rearranged her veil, smoothed her skirt, and sat. He gave her time to fit in one more huff of annoyance before he spoke again.

“About Judas. You want to know how we choose someone else? To be honest, we weren’t sure why Jesus picked the Twelve of us to begin with. What did He see in us? What did He see in Judas?”

“After all that Jesus taught Judas, how could he betray Him?” she asked.

“The weirdest part is that Jesus predicted it.” He reached for the table and ran his hand over the wood, remembering that night in this same spot. He had reclined there, right by Jesus. “Earlier in the night, before Jesus was arrested.” He stood and walked to the spot where Jesus had stood. “We were about to have dinner, and Jesus got up, wrapped a towel around Himself like He was a servant, and washed all of our feet. Even Judas’s. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but how hard can a heart be?”

She glanced over as though she could see the traitor there still. “And after that Judas just got up and went to get the soldiers?”

“He ate a bit with us first. That’s when Jesus told us someone would betray Him. We were all trying to find out who. My bet was Bartholomew. Peter thought I could get the secret out of Jesus. But Jesus just handed bread to Judas…then he left.”

She leaned closer and dropped her voice. “Do you think he did it for the money? I heard he got thirty pieces of silver for handing Jesus over.”

“It could be. I mean, it turns out he was stealing from the money bag.”

Mary looked down at her hands in her lap.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“I…had my suspicions near the end. I overheard what he said in Bethany a couple months ago when Martha’s sister Mary anointed Jesus with that expensive perfume. He was more obsessed with the price than with her beautiful act of worship!”

John breathed in. He could almost smell the ointment again. What honor their fellow disciple had shown to Jesus. What a contrast with Judas’s shame.

Mary asked, “How did you find out for sure that Judas had been stealing?”

“We finally let Matthew look over the accounting. Some of the guys don’t trust him because he was a tax collector, but he’s good with numbers. Judas had been the only one with the purse, and there was a lot missing.”

“A traitor and a thief.” Her nostrils flared. “And yet he was one of us.”

“And he did it all to Jesus’s face! After dinner, we went out to the garden, and when Judas showed up with the soldiers, he walked right up to Jesus and kissed him. Called him ‘Rabbi.’”

“How dare he?” Mary jumped up. She hissed through a clenched jaw, “It’s a good thing I wasn’t there that night. I would have—”

John cut in. “I know! I wanted to call down fire on him. Kinda surprised Peter didn’t try to take a stab at him while he was swinging that sword around. If Judas wasn’t dead, I’d be tempted to kill him myself.”

Mary’s shoulders sagged. “Don’t say that.”

John pursed his lip to hide his smile. He had known her compassion would catch up with her anger at some point, but he hadn’t thought it would be that quick. He was pretty sure she was reproaching herself inwardly as she corrected him outwardly.

She picked up John’s cloak from the floor and folded it over her arms, hugging it to herself. “Don’t. It’s horrible enough. The way he died…his intestines bursting out everywhere.”

“What?” John’s eyebrows shot up. “Matthew just told me Judas hanged himself.”

“Everyone in Jerusalem is saying he fell headlong in a field and just burst.”

John had flayed and gutted plenty of fish, and he couldn’t help imagining the innards of fish extrapolated up to human size. He shivered and wanted to drop the whole subject. He felt twitchy in the silence but held himself still while Mary stood quiet. He watched her facial expression change several times.

“I’m not glad he’s dead,” she said finally. “I wish I could talk to him. He gave the blood money back to the priests out of guilt. He knew what he did was wrong. I think if Judas were alive, Jesus would give him a second chance, too. Jesus would be faithful and just and would purify him from his sin.”

“I’m sure you’re right. But I don’t know how I feel. I’m angry that Judas betrayed all of us, but I am sad that he’s gone.”

Mary mused for a moment. “I wonder what made the difference between Peter and Judas.” She held out one hand with her palm up. “Peter betrayed Jesus. Called down curses on himself. But then, he held on to life long enough to be forgiven and have purpose, a mission.” Now she raised her other hand, as though mimicking a set of scales. “Judas betrayed Jesus. Admitted his sin. But then threw his life away. It’s like, after all that teaching, he still didn’t understand who Jesus was, what He was like. I don’t think Judas had any hope that Jesus could forgive him.”

John joined in the flow of thought. “You know, there’s another similarity. I had forgotten until now. At dinner that night, after He washed our feet, Jesus also predicted Peter’s failure. He warned Peter he would deny Him.”

“Whoa. That must have made Peter feel even worse when it actually happened. What do you think eventually gave him hope?”

He looked through his mind for an answer. “Maybe it’s not what you do, but who you love. Peter—for all his faults—he was honest that he really does love Jesus. Judas? Maybe he tried to love God and the world at the same time. Maybe he tried to have two masters.”

She snorted. “The world is not a good master. What did it ever do for him? Certainly nothing worth loving. But I feel like I can love God because God first loved me.” She paced to the open part of the room as she talked. “I know who Jesus is. And I know that He loves me. And I’m starting to feel that excitement you talked about. I have no idea what’s next for any of us, but I’m not afraid. If Jesus taught me anything, it’s that there is no fear in love.”

“Wow. That’s beautiful.” John was glad to see the change in Mary’s demeanor.

“You know He loved you, too, right? All of us could see it.” She looked sideways at him. “Some of the other women were calling you ‘the Beloved One.’”

He ignored her sarcastic tone because he liked the sound of that nickname. “That’s a good name. I hope I live up to it. I want to love others the way He loved me.”

She reassured him. “You will! You’ll get to tell so many about His love. But don’t just tell them. Don’t just love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth.”

“That’s a good line. I might use that someday.” His response came out half-joking because he had half-intended it to be that way.

“Always kidding. I was trying to be serious.” She threw his cloak at him.

He shielded himself. “What, I was being serious!”

“Okay, ‘Beloved One.’ Since the others are on their way and you are the fastest disciple alive, why don’t you run out and get us some food?”

Another busy week, but this one — somebody’s gotta do it — in Malibu at Pepperdine University for their well-attended Bible lectures. Now called Harbor. I call it Malibu. I’m so grateful for Mike Cope’s leadership and for all the friends I’ve made in the Churches of Christ including especially Randy and Lorree Johns.

Libertyville’s Finest, Dale Eggert:

Dale Eggert (Libertyville High School, ’74) is a lifelong Libertyville resident known not only for his outstanding wrestling achievements while at Libertyville High School, in college and post-college, but also for his longtime dedication to LHS and his impact as a coach for Wildcat wrestling.

Eggert began wrestling as a freshman at LHS and was a two-time state qualifier. He placed second in state as a senior in 1974. Eggert was named the school’s Outstanding Senior Athlete while competing in football, wrestling and baseball, being named to the All-Conference baseball team twice as a third baseman.

Eggert was active in Greco-Roman and freestyle outside of the high school season, placing in three Junior State Greco-Roman Tournaments and two Junior State Freestyle Tournaments. He earned Greco-Roman all-American honors in 1974 by placing third in the junior nationals.

He continued his wrestling career at Southern Illinois University — Carbondale and was named the team’s Most Valuable Wrestler his senior year in 1978. He graduated with a degree in health education and returned to LHS as a teacher and coach, serving as an assistant wrestling coach for nine years. In 1987 he was named the IWCOA Assistant Coach of the Year. He began his head coaching tenure at Libertyville High School in 1988.

He taught health education, driver education, and physical education at LHS for 33 years and, in 2007, was named the LHS Teacher of the Year.

In the 2017-18 school year, coach Eggert began his 40th year coaching in the LHS wrestling program and his 31st year as the head coach.

Great for Jasmine!

GREENSBORO, N.C.— A Greensboro teen’s hard work paid off in a big way. Jasmine Harrison, 17, was accepted to 113 colleges and universities and awarded more than $4.5 million in merit-based scholarships.

Harrison will graduate from The Academy at Smith on May 24th with an expected 4.0 GPA.

With help from her school’s faculty and her mother, she was able to apply to all those schools for just $135.

Harrison was awarded full rides to three schools: Ed Waters College in Jacksonville, FL, Mississippi Valley State University in Itta Bena, MS, and Bennett College in Greensboro, NC.

All three are Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). In fact, she was able to apply to 53 HBCUs with just one Common Black College Application and got into 26 that way.

“When I got the first couple in the mail, I was like, ‘Okay, this is really happening.’ I didn’t really think I’d be able to do that,” Harrison said.

Harrison also took advantage of the College Foundation of North Carolina (CFNC) College Application Week, where she was apple to apply to a number of North Carolina schools for free.

Then on top of that, the Common Application allowed her to apply to 20 more at once.

Harrison spent hours pouring over each entry making sure it was perfect and called on her faith when she wanted to quit.

I always read Kara Powell, always:

Churches that are “growing young” instead of growing old are the ones that look after parents, according to a Fuller Theological Seminary professor who specializes in family ministry.

Kara Powell, who also serves as executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute, told those gathered at the Orange Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on Friday that churches thrive when they make an extra effort to help parents.

Powell explained that she and other researchers at the Fuller Youth Institute examined the traits of churches in the United States that were neither declining in numbers nor seeing a graying of their congregation.

“We looked for hundreds of churches around the country that aren’t getting older and getting smaller, instead they’re growing and their engaging young people or they are what we call churches that are ‘growing young,'” said Powell.

“And one of our early surprises in our four years of research was how important it was for parents to be prioritized in these churches. That’s one of the things that set these churches apart from a typical church that was aging and/or shrinking.”

“When these churches gave a disproportionate amount of energy and emphasis and empathy to parents, the church thrived. The church flourished.”

Powell called on attendees to make sure that their congregations make sure that they are not simply asking parents to help the church, but that the church is helping parents.

Mike McRae:

Beyond the Biblical legend of David versus Goliath, historical records concerning a far reaching Israelite kingdom in the 10th century BCE have left plenty of room for debate.

A new archaeological study has found evidence supporting the belief that a monarchy just might have united the lands during this important period, while also serving as a reminder of how biases in archaeology can change how we view the past.

Archaeologists Avraham Faust and Yair Sapir from Bar Ilan University in Israel recently published their radiocarbon dating findings on a dig site at Tel ‘Eton that pushed the date of the site’s establishment to between the 11th and 10th century BCE.

Previous estimates on an elite building known as the governor’s residency had it being built centuries later, only to be destroyed by the end of the 8th century by an Assyrian invasion.

Not only does the evidence suggest an Israeli governor was ruling in a Judean town at a crucial period, it serves as a reminder of the challenges archaeologists face in accurately dating ancient sites.

Are you cutting the cord?

By DAVID Z. MORRIS

April 29, 2018

“Cord cutting” has been a kind of ghost story for cable providers for much of the past decade—a tale that, while foreboding, didn’t seem entirely real. But consumers are abandoning traditional cable for streaming services faster than ever, turning what had been an ominous prediction into a clear and present danger.

Three major pay-TV providers last week reported dramatic declines in subscribers to traditional cable and satellite television packages. Some of the losses were more than double what Wall Street analysts expected, and stocks in major TV providers have fallen off a cliff. Those dismal results followed reports of huge subscriber growth at streaming services like Netflix, leaving would-be defenders of legacy TV with nowhere to stand.

The numbers tell the story in no uncertain terms. Charter Communications, which offers cable service under the Spectrum brand, announced on Friday that it lost 122,000 TV customers in the first quarter of 2018. That massively exceeded Wall Street projections, which the Wall Street Journal said averaged about 40,000 lost subscribersahead of the earnings report. Charter’s stock dropped as much as 15% Friday.

That collapse followed similarly grim reports from other legacy providers. Comcastannounced Wednesday that it had lost 96,000 customers for the quarter, its fourth straight quarter of subscriber losses, and slightly worse than analyst projections. AT&T’s DirecTV satellite service lost 188,000 customers in the same period, driving down video revenue by $660 million despite growth of its own online streaming service. AT&T stock tanked as much as 7% the day after its report. Comcast notched healthy earnings from its increasingly diverse business, but even it couldn’t fight the headwinds, with its stock draining more than 7% by the end of the week.

The reports continue a strong trend away from traditional cable services—total cable subscriber numbers declined 3.4% over the course of 2017, a faster decline than in 2015 and 2016. The fact that the latest numbers so dramatically underperformed even grim Wall Street expectations suggests the dropoff is continuing to accelerate.

At the same time, streaming services, also known as “over the top” or OTT services, are showing gains that are even more dramatic. Netflix, the 800-pound gorilla in the sector, reported earlier this month that it had added a net 1.96 million subscribers in the first quarter. Perhaps even more worrisome for cable providers are services like HBO Now, which deliver what had been exclusive cable content directly to subscribers, and whose growth is also accelerating.

USA Today:

Young people are far more likely than senior citizens to report being lonely and in poor health, a surprising survey of 20,000 Americans released Tuesday shows.

The overall national loneliness score was alarmingly high at 44 on a 20-to-80 scale, but the prevalence of social isolation among those ages 18 to 22 raises even more concern. The younger people, part of Generation Z, had loneliness scores of about 48 compared with nearly 39 for those 72 and older.

The study was sponsored by the global insurer and health services company Cigna, which is concerned about loneliness as a societal problem but also because it’s not just making us sad: It can literally make us sick.

Loneliness actually has the same effect  on mortality as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, which makes it even more dangerous than obesity, says Cigna, citing a 2010 report. And while the new findings don’t draw any direct links to increased rates of suicide among teens or the opioid epidemic, Cigna CEO David Cordani says it’s clear addressing loneliness will help solve other problems.

“If their sense of health and well-being is more positive, then less destructive activities transpire,” Cordani says.

The market research firm Ipsos posed questions online between Feb. 21 to March 6 to more than 20,000 people 18 and older in the U.S. The questions were based on UCLA’s Loneliness Scale and used to create the Cigna Loneliness Index.

Claude Mariottini’s retirement, and I miss Claude every day I’m on campus:

As many of you know, I officially retired from Northern Baptist Seminary at the end of June 2018. I taught at Northern Seminary for 28 years. During my tenure at the seminary, I worked with a group of dedicated Christians who love the Lord and are committed to prepare leaders for the church.

The members of the faculty of Northern Seminary are a special group of people. They are scholars, educators, and ministers of Christ who care for their students and make a profound impact in the life of the church through their writings, conferences, preaching, teaching, and mentoring of pastors and students. Any person who chooses to attend Northern Seminary will be blessed by learning and growing with these amazing scholars.

As I transition into retirement, I want to express my appreciation to Dr. Bill Shiell, Northern’s president, and the faculty of the seminary for honoring my years of service to the seminary by appointing me Professor Emeritus. This is a great honor that has been given to me and I will be eternally grateful. This honor will also allow me to continue my relationship with Northern Seminary for years to come.

I want to express a special word of gratitude to my friend and colleague Scot McKnight for announcing at my retirement program that he was dedicating his commentary on Colossians to me. In his dedication, Scot wrote: “To my friend and colleague Claude Mariottini, who reminds me of what Paul said of Epaphras: Ἐπαφρᾶς ὁ ἐξ ὑμῶν, δοῦλος χριστοῦ [Ἰησοῦ], πάντοτε ἀγωνιζόμενος ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν ἐν ταῖς προσευχαῖς, ἵνα στῆτε τέλειοι καὶ πεπληρωμένοι ἐν παντὶ θελήματι τοῦ θεοῦ.” [Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God.]

Scot also wrote: “The commentary is dedicated to my friend and colleague Claude Mariottini upon his retirement after a full career of teaching Old Testament at Northern Seminary. Claude is not just a good friend and wise counselor but a careful scholar, sensitive to theology and church life, and one whose door is always open for conversation. To him and his good wife Donna, Northern will be eternally grateful, but I will sorely miss his kind presence in my life.”

I was greatly touched by Scott’s words and generosity. Scot and I used to sit either in his office or mine and talk about theological issues related to our fields of study. I reviewed his commentary on Philemon in a previous post and soon will review his commentary on Colossians. I have learned much from Scot. His concern for pastors and seminary students is evident to anyone who reads these two commentaries.

I also need to mention the people who work at the seminary. The whole staff are there to serve the students. The staff of Northern Seminary are women and men who are involved in ministry, who serve in their local congregations, and who understand the needs of seminary students. My work at Northern was very satisfying because of their hard work and their willingness to help the faculty in their work. Northern’s staff make the work of the faculty much easier.

One thing that my retirement has affected is the work on my blog. It has been months since I last posted to the blog. During this time I have received dozens of emails from people who are encouraging me to post again. I have also talked to former students who miss reading my posts.

Because my blog has helped so many people, I have decided to post again. I will try to post as often as I can. Since I retired, Donna and I have been traveling, visiting family and friends, and will continue to do so in the coming months. I will try to be regular in writing posts, even though I will probably not be able to post every day.

Since my blog has been dormant for months, I have also been behind in responding to your comments. I am grateful for your comments and I will begin responding to the many comments waiting a response.

Later this week I will begin a series of studies on the golden calf. The narrative of Exodus 32-34 is very familiar to people who read the Bible regularly. However, there are some important issues that need to be emphasized as we study these three great chapters in Exodus. I hope you will enjoy these studies.

Finally, I want to thank you, the reader of my blog, for your support over the years. I hope that you and I will continue our adventure together as we study and learn more about the Old Testament.

Claude F. Mariottini
Emeritus Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Bibliography:

Scot McKnight, The Letter to the Colossians. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2018.

The rule has been no celibacy, no priestly ordination. Apart from the historic exceptions — e.g., to name but one, Anglican married priest who converts to Catholicism can become a married Catholic priest — there are no exceptions.

We are back to David Steinmetz, Taking the Long View, and he opens his response to the celibacy of priests by reminding his readers of the ways of Rome, and it’s important to grasp this to see what happens with Christianity’s understanding of sexual relations and how they understood clergy and marriage:

The ancient Romans did not much care with whom they mated—men, women, or children—though some disgruntled critics thought the pedophilia of the dour emperor Tiberius unworthy of his exalted office. Still, an elite Roman male who had sex with a slave girl in the morning, a young male in the afternoon, and his wife at night would not have been thought unusually perverse—not even by his wife.

All of this changed when the Roman Empire was Christianized. Christians banned nonreproducrive sex (whether with a same-sex partner or a child), limited sexual activity to a potentially reproductive relationship between husband and wife, severely restricted the possibility of divorce (usually limited to separation from bed and board), and extolled the virtues of sexual abstinence. The change would have startled Julius Caesar.

The new Christian ideal of marriage embraced at least three elements: an openness in all sexual activity to the procreation, nurture, and education of children; (2) a covenant of mutual fidelity in which husband and wife, “forsaking all others,” pledge to care for each other through thick and thin; and (3) a recognition that the bond between husband and wife is as indissoluble as the bond between Christ and the church.

This Christian culture exported its good to Europe and the West and thus it exported two things: the virtue of marriage and the even higher virtue of celibacy as a sign of spiritual ardor. Commands were for all, counsels for the few, and the counsels including celibacy. Augustine, it will be remembered, found no middle ground between celibacy and sexual license. Women were a threat to the clergy and the clergy a threat to the stability of the home — in some cases and for diverse reasons (p. 107). Concubinage was not always banned even if it carried with it a number of serious problems.

The Reformation saw celibacy and marriage in different terms altogether.

The Protestant Reformation constituted a sustained attack on the celibate ethic and a reemphasis on the dignity of the institution of marriage. Protestants did not deny that some men and women are called to a celibate life, though they regarded all claims to a celibate vocation with considerable suspicion, but they rejected the contention that celibacy should be made a law binding on all clergy. … Celibacy may be a charism; it may never be a law.

Protestants and Anabaptists alike rejected the commands-counsels categories. What was for one was for all.

Together with the rejection of celibacy as a law, the dissolution of the distinction between commands and counsels, and the stress on the functional character of the pastor’s office, Protestants emphasized the interdependence of men and women in a joint task of creating a Christian society. Marriage stood at the center of a God-given order. Matthew Zell, a Protestant preacher at the cathedral in Strasbourg, argued in a famous sermon that, since woman was made from man, her origin proved not that women are subordinate to men but that men can only attain their full perfection in marriage. As Christ loved the church, so men and women are to love one another and to seek their perfection in an interdependent relationship.

The downside of all this was that the new emphasis on the home and family was not an unmixed blessing for women, who over the course of the sixteenth century lost many of the rights and privileges they had enjoyed in the fifteenth: the right to work outside the home, to buy and sell property, to own businesses in their own name, and so on. The dissolution of religious houses for women also reduced women’s opportunities to exercise control over their own societies with minimal interference from men—though the lively debate between Marie Dentiere and Jeanne de Jussy over the positive and negative effects of the cloistered life for women indicates that women were themselves deeply divided over this issue.

Protestants also backed the possibility of real divorce with the right of the “innocent party” to remarry, though divorce was not easy to obtain and very grudgingly granted.

It may be difficult for women who are currently seeking ordination to regard the creation of the pastor’s wife as a step forward in the liberation of women from unjust restrictions, but for the women involved in unofficial clerical “families” the Reformation was a profoundly liberating event.

So now to Americans and the institution of marriage and women in ministry according to Steinmetz.

1. It is at least arguable that the Protestant churches were not entirely wrongheaded to accept celibacy as a gift and resist it as a law. … The Protestant churches are in error, therefore, when they reject celibacy and make marriage a law for all clergy.

2. The Protestant emphasis on the interdependence of men and women in marriage and the common calling of men and women to seek the will of God in mutual relationship is an important corrective to theologies that subordinate women to men, on the one hand, or that dispense with the relationship between male and female as trivial, on the other.

3. The Reformation did not sanction the ordination of women to the public ministry of Word and sacrament. Nevertheless, the fundamental arguments that sanction that act are already articulated in the Reformation era.

4. That a Christian is a female is no bar to valid ordination in the church. But neither is it the basis on which ordination may be granted. Only those persons—whether male or female—may be ordained for the public ministry of Word and sacrament who have been called to the ministry of God and who have demonstrated to the church that they have, in the happy Wesleyan phrase, ‘gifts, grace and the promise of usefulness.”

This is about one of the most important books anyone who teaches or preaches the Bible should read.

We Protestants teach everyone this: You must read the Bible for yourself. Of course, we don’t want those “you”s to get too clever and start saying things that aren’t there, but there is a lot in this teaching we hold so dear. And that is why everyone who reads and teaches the Bible needs to read Mark Allan Powell’s What Do They Hear? I think this book is solid gold.

Why? Because Mark seriously asks what it is like for preachers to address an audience and know (1) that what they “hear” is not always what the preacher “said” and (2) that what Christians “read” is shaped by their “social location.” This book is HermeneuticsLite in the best and every sense of the word. Wait until you see what Mark has discovered because it reveals plenty about you and me.

Before we get too far, let me ask you this: When you have read the Parable of the Prodigal Son did you hear the part about the famine? Does it matter to how you read the Parable? Is the younger son “wicked” or “foolish”? Was he personally saved or was he drawn back to his family? How do you hear the gospel? It is not that one must make a choice between these options — it is only that we do.

What can each of us do to expand our “seeings” and our “hearings” and our “readings” of the Bible? No one should deny us the right to hear what we hear; no one should claim that hearing to be the only hearing until one has listened to all the hearings. (I’m not going pluralist here, either; I’m not suggesting “your reading is as good as my reading because mine is mine and yours is yours.”) I’m suggesting that we need to realize we have readings, that our readings are shaped by our social location, and that is desirable to hear the readings of other social locations. And, what can we do to get more readings? To hear how others are hearing?

He tells the story of his mom saying she liked one of Marks’ songs when he was in high school, listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival. Mark is an expert on music (and I’ve heard of this group but not listened to them that I know of). She heard “There’s a bathroom on the right!” when they were singing “There’s a bad moon on the rise.” The focus of the 1st chp is on this very thing: People hear things we don’t intend because they absorb what we say into their social location. And, he admits, “We want to be taken out of context — but only when that is a good thing.”

Chp 2 is delightful. Mark examines how some of his American students, how some of his Russian students, and how some of his Tanzanian students all hear the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Here’s a result:

Americans 100% of them heard the part about the son squandering his money.
Americans 6% observed that there was a famine.
Russians 34% mentioned the squandering while 84% heard the part about the famine.

Eastern commentaries on the parable focus on the son’s being enamored with luxury and splendor, that the boy wasted his money living luxuriously, that he pursued a life of entertainment and amusement, and that he was trouble-free. Western commentaries say he wasted his money on sexual misconduct, he went the whole route in sinful indulgence, he wasted his money on wine,women and song, and he went abroad to live a sinful life. Westerners see the point in reform; Russians see it in recovery. Americans see moral waste; Russians see opulence.
His Tanzanian students saw a major issue in the lack of help that the foreigners gave (the help they did not give) to the “immigrant” and they saw the father’s house as the kingdom where the young man was taken care of. The parable contrasts the far country and the father’s house; it contrasts a kingdom with a non-kingdom society.

Mark Powell’s book assumes a significant distinction between clergy and laity and, if you are in a reasonably traditional church, the assumption is a good one. Most importantly, Mark asks this question: How do clergy read a text when compared to how laity read the same text? The answer boggles.

Here’s the text. You read it. Then we’ll have a conversation.

1 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and 2 saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were “unclean,” thais, unwashed. 3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4 When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.*) 5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with ‘unclean’ hands?” 6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “ ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.7 They worship me in vain;their teachings are but rules taught by men.’ 8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.”

Question: When you read this text, with which character did you empathize? With Jesus? With the disciples? With the Pharisees? With “other”?

Here’s the result of Mark’s own study; get ready to be shocked. 50 clergy; 50 laity.

Empathy Choice (first number: Clergy; second number: Laity). Thus, 40 clergy identified with Jesus; 0 laity did.

1. Jesus 40 0
2. Disciples 0 24
3. Pharisees 4 18
4. Other 6 8

Which is a nice way of saying that by and large, from this sample (and all nuances aside), clergy empathize with Jesus and laity do not; clergy do not empathize with disciples but laity do; clergy do not empathize with Pharisees but laity do.

Mark makes suggestions for pastors when preaching:

1. Cast the Scriptures: “cast” means as in a play. Preachers can play the roles of each character in their own reading of the Scriptures and notice the differences.
2. In preaching you might choose to identify with one character or another.
3. Allow for multiple responses to the text.

What is your response to this? I’ll be honest: I’m disappointed preachers don’t identify with being a disciple more; I’m concerned laity don’t empathize with the character of Jesus. What I’m shocked by is the absolute difference.

Mark Allan Powell’s book, What Do They Hear?, opens up for pastors and laity the differences between how they read the Bible and what they hear when they read it — especially when they are not together. Chp 4 concerns “meaning” and “effect.” This chp presents a very important difference in reading the Bible between clergy and laity.

First, many see “meaning” as “message” and focus on the theological, propositional content. Others see “meaning” as “effect” — what the text does to the person or how it “affects” them.

He had readers look at Luke 3:3-17, Luke’s description of John Baptist’s ministry and message. He asked clergy and laity to answer this question: “what does this story mean?” Here are some conclusions:

1. Clergy consider authorial intent (they say “Luke’s intention”), historical situations, the synthetic message, and find relevance in contextual analogies.
2. Laity consider reader response (affect/effect), contemporary and personal significance, meaning is impact, and relevance is found in unmediated application.

I found this interesting, and I find it interesting because (1) I teach students and laity how to read the Bible and (2) I’ve struggled with the transition of trying to get students and laity to learn how to “objectify” the text so they are speaking about “Luke’s intention.” Now the question arises — sure, that is a struggle. Is that the necessary struggle in order to acquire the skill of learning to read the Bible? Are we sufficiently aware of how “untrained readers of the Bible” read the Bible? Do we too easily skip over the reader response stuff to get to the history, to the analogous, to the original intent?

By Michelle Van Loon

www.michellevanloon.com

www.MomentsAndDays.org

I’ve been writing about faith at midlife since…well, since I hit that life stage more than a decade ago. I discovered that when I sought support and encouragement from my local church as I was facing a string of disorienting changes and losses directly tied to this stage of my life, the answer I received (and I’m paraphrasing a bit here) was: “Just keep doing what you’ve always done. Serve your way out of that funk. We always need help in the nursery!”

I recognized that while serving is an essential component of a healthy spiritual and emotional life, my fragile health and family responsibilities combined to mean that working in the nursery was no longer a good fit for me.

But that was about all the church had to offer. I discovered that suburban church was pretty typical in that most of the focus of community life was on families with children under 18. About this time, I started noticing stats that reported that Millennials weren’t the only ones leaving the church; people in my age demographic were, too. The statistics proved what I already knew: many committed Boomer and older Gen X believers were quietly slipping out the doors of their church, never to return. I began asking a lot of questions about the way in which we think about discipleship through every stage of life. I’ve blogged on the topic of midlife spirituality on my own website, on Christianity Today’s blog for women, and now at a website a friend and I launched a year ago, and occasionally, here in this space.

Over the years, many people have talked to me about the challenges and changes they’re facing in their faith journey at midlife – things including ministry burnout (say, from years of serving in the nursery), unhealed wounds from bad congregational politics, health issues, financial worries, sandwich generation caregiving responsibilities, and being neglected or marginalized by their local churches. There are good, if heartbreaking, reasons many are drifting away from congregational life.

During this decade, I’ve sought examples of congregations doing meaningful work to support and challenge those in the second half of their lives. While being involved in church leadership and mentoring younger believers are both tried-and-true ways older members can serve the body, certainly not all are called to these roles. There are many other ways to re-engage and strengthen those at midlife and beyond, though they come with this caveat: Older members chafe at being treated as a project or problem to be fixed. And really, isn’t that true for all of us? People can tell the difference between a church offering that comes from a whole-life discipleship orientation versus being a slot to be filled on someone’s org chart, creating more church-y busywork for everyone.

That said, you may find some inspiration from one or more of the ideas below if you’re a church leader wondering if you’ve neglected outreach to some of your older-but-not-yet-old members.

• Resource your congregation with names of trained spiritual directors. While spiritual direction has become more mainstream, for some conservative churches, the notion of a spiritual director may be outside their tradition or experience. (If this is you, I commend to you Sharon Garlough Brown’s Sensible Shoes series; her hybrid of fiction and instruction in these books helps de-mystify what a spiritual director does.) Older members may especially benefit from time spent with a trained, trusted spiritual director who can journey with them as individuals or even in some small-group experiences.
• Create book groups, conversation groups, movie-watching + discussion groups – These offer options for congregants and community members alike to engage ideas. They each require a sensitive leader who is better at asking questions than delivering conclusions (or sermons!); each of these can also be a great intergenerational activity among adults of varying ages.
• Form groups committed to serving the community outside the church. One church was involved through a local ministry with gathering and delivering fresh food to needy families in a lower-income suburb about 45 minutes away. An older man led the group, and together they worked hard to build mutual friendships with a couple of people living in an apartment complex. Over time, that food delivery came to include a small weekly Bible study led by a couple of members from the church. They worked to connect Bible study members (and others) with a nearby church located nearby, and the kingdom of God grew both numerically and relationally – all because the sending church encouraged this group of older adults to serve beyond its own four walls. Integral to their success was the fact that their home church frequently celebrated the work of this group, soliciting both prayer and funding from the congregation for this ministry. Many older adults who serve ministries outside of their church do so without much attention or prayer from the congregation. This church embraced the work of this group, and the entire congregation benefitted from their example and testimony.
• Develop instruction that addresses the unique challenges of second-half-of-life faith and experience. Kim Post Watson wrote her master’s thesis on midlife faith formation. That thesis was the foundation for a group she convened last fall at her church. The group is discussing issues of vocation and self-knowledge, learning about classic spiritual disciplines, and will end in a time of retreat and pilgrimage next summer. She wrote a bit about her plans here. When I checked in with her recently, she said the group is going very well. Other congregations are being proactive in helping their members face and plan for end-of-life issues.

I’d love to hear from you if you know of a church caring for its second-half-of-life members well. I’m always searching for thoughtful, pastorally-sound, real-world examples.

A week that draws many of us to prayer, to fasting, to yearning, to striving to make things right. I am wearied by the many who ridicule “prayers and thoughts,” as if prayer doesn’t matter, while seemingly suggesting that action without prayer is what we need. We need both prayer and action, and there’s no reason to ridicule one at the expense of the other.

A big thanks/HT to JS and Kris for links this week.

Seven things learned too late:

1. IF YOU WANT TO ‘DO WHAT YOU LOVE,’ YOU HAVE TO WORK THREE TIMES AS HARD AS EVERYONE ELSE

2. BENEATH ANGER IS ALWAYS FEAR

3. OUR EVERYDAY HABITS FORM OUR FUTURE SELVES

4. YOUR EMOTIONS TAKE PRACTICE

5. EVERYONE HAS HIS OR HER OWN AGENDA

6. ACHIEVEMENT WILL NEVER BE AS FULFILLING AS THE JOURNEY

So much was written about Billy Graham this week, but Randall Balmer’s was one of the best:

Billy Graham, by any measure the most famous religious figure of the twentieth century, died today at his home in Montreat, North Carolina. He was ninety-nine years old.

In a career that extended well over half a century, Graham took a simple evangelical message—give your heart to Jesus, and you will be “born again”—to millions around the world. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the organization he founded to facilitate his ministry, boasted that Graham preached to more people than anyone else in history, a claim that probably cannot be verified but is almost certainly true. …

Graham briefly became pastor of small congregation in Western Springs, Illinois, and, at the invitation of Torrey Johnson, hosted a weekly radio program, Songs in the Night. Shortly thereafter, Johnson recruited Graham to preach at Saturday-night rallies in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, part of the outreach for a new organization called Youth for Christ. In 1946, Graham joined the staff of Youth for Christ, where he met and befriended Charles Templeton, another itinerant evangelist for Youth for Christ.

Templeton and Graham became known as the Gold-Dust Twins, and many contemporaries regarded Graham as the lesser preacher. Templeton’s intellectual restlessness prompted him to apply for admission to Princeton Theological Seminary, where he was admitted despite the fact that he had never graduated from college. Then, meeting Graham at the Taft Hotel in New York City, Templeton challenged his friend to attend seminary with him in order to deepen his theological understanding.

Graham pondered the possibility at length, troubled by Templeton’s intimations that elements of the Christian faith were not intellectually defensible. For Graham, a turning point in his life—and in the entire revival enterprise of the twentieth century—occurred shortly thereafter while he was staying at the Forest Home Conference Center in Southern California. While hiking and praying there in the San Bernardino Mountains, Graham decided to set aside Templeton’s challenge, to banish his own intellectual doubts, and simply to “preach the gospel.”

He did just that, descending the mountain to conduct his famous Los Angeles revival campaign of 1949. Abetted by prodigious advance work, which would become the hallmark of Graham’s evangelistic efforts, Graham, billed as “America’s Sensational Young Evangelist,” conducted services beneath a circus tent, dubbed the “Canvas Cathedral,” at the corner of Washington and Hill Streets. Graham’s enormously successful Los Angeles crusade in 1949 brought him national attention, in no small measure because newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, impressed with the young evangelist’s preaching and his anti-communist rhetoric, instructed his papers to “puff Graham.” From Los Angeles, Graham took his evangelistic crusades around the country and the world, thereby providing him with international renown.

George Will’s was the worst and heartless.

Pete Blackburn:

The last 12 months have been a roller coaster ride for the United States women’s national hockey team, but on Thursday in Pyeongchang, that ride reached its ultimate peak — an Olympic gold medal.

Team USA defeated Canada, 3-2, in a thrilling shootout win in South Korea to earn their first gold medal in 20 years. It was the third consecutive Olympics in which the American and Canadian women faced off in the final, and this one came 38 years to the day of the “Miracle On Ice.”

For the American women, there was no miracle necessary. Thursday’s gold medal game was earned on the strength of skill, execution, perseverance, heart and fearlessness. It was a perfectly fitting way to wrap up what has been an incredible last year for the Team USA women, who have earned major victories both on and off the ice.

Last March, just weeks before the 2017 Women’s World Championships were set to get underway in Michigan, members of the U.S. team announced that they planned on boycotting the tournament over a fight for fair wages and equitable support from USA Hockey.

The two sides had privately been in negotiations for over a year and made little progress on a new deal. With Worlds on the horizon, the women saw an opportunity to make a bold statement, and they pounced. …

Just prior to the tournament, the two sides reached a four-year deal that would provide the women with annual salaries around $70,000, with a chance to earn close to $100,000 with added medal bonuses. In addition, USA Hockey agreed to provide accommodations and insurance on par with what the men received, plus more funding and support to the women’s development program.

It was a landmark victory for current and future American women’s players. …

Watching the women celebrate in South Korea, it was hard not to get the feeling that the win was the perfect storybook ending to what has been an amazing and, quite frankly, a badass year for the USA women.

This group was able to put their frustrating past to the side and create a new future through fierce willpower and an ability to capitalize on what was in front of them. They had an unwavering resolve, even in the face of pressure and resistance from their opponent, and they didn’t blink.

As a result, they found a way to become champions in the sport, both in and out of uniform.

Andy Staples, SI, and the NCAA athlete problem:

What might that new system look like? The most sensible answer is the Olympic model. You can read about it in more detail here, but these are the basics: Schools would continue to only pay full cost-of-attendance scholarships. Anyone else who wanted to pay the athletes could pay them. This would eliminate any Title IX concerns because every athlete would have exactly the same opportunity to get paid. The market would decide who got how much. Does that mean boosters would pay the players? Yep. (But they already pay them under the table now.) Does that mean agents would pay football and basketball players? It sure would. (They also pay them under the table now.) Would the players have to pay taxes on anything they make? Of course. Would this increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots? Nope. Alabama, Ohio State and the like would still sign the highest rated football recruits. Duke, Kentucky and the like would still sign the highest rated basketball recruits. (But maybe SMU, which thrived when it was paying big under the table, could become good at football again.)

Brueggemann and the Mennonite Option:

The Second Amendment enshrines a distinctly American – and, some would say, sacred – freedom: the right to bear arms. How to reconcile that with the need to curb gun violence? Michael Martin, a young Mennonite from Colorado Springs, decided the best way to approach this emotionally charged issue was to tell a different story – to counter the debilitating stream of tragic news with an alternative narrative of transformation and restoration, one tool at a time.

Martin won’t take away your rights, but if you happen to have a gun you want to be rid of, he’ll be happy to forge it into a garden tool for you.

The idea hatched back in 2009 as Martin watched news coverage of the christening of the USS New York, a battleship with a bow stem made of steel from the fallen World Trade Center. (“Notice how they bring Christ into it.”) Someone needed to counteract this rhetoric and symbolism of revenge, Martin felt. A big fan of Walter Brueggemann’s approach to the Old Testament, he latched onto Isaiah’s words, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” The prophet Micah repeats this refrain and adds, “They shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” So, repurposing weapons to grow food as a way to drive out fear. “That’s our end goal: to get to the point where we’re not afraid of each other anymore.”

ILYBYGTH:

Al-Gharbi reviews some of the literature on the futility of culture-war shouting matches. We might think a reasoned, sensible argument will convince anyone who isn’t absurdly prejudiced. It seems the opposite can be true. Studies have found that stubbornness and intractability can increase when people are more “intelligent, educated, or rhetorically skilled.”

Why? Intelligent, informed, sophisticated people are more likely to be committed to ideas and ideologies. They are more experienced at the kinds of mental gymnastics that can help justify and rationalize seemingly illogical positions.

What can be done? Al-Gharbi suggests three general suggestions for improving real communication:

#1: LOWER THE PERCEIVED STAKES OF THE DISAGREEMENT OR CONFLICT

#2: APPEAL TO YOUR INTERLOCUTOR’S OWN IDENTITY, VALUES, NARRATIVES, FRAMES OF REFERENCE WHEN POSSIBLE

#3 LEAD BY EXAMPLE. MODEL CIVILITY, FLEXIBILITY, INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY, GOOD FAITH IF YOU WANT OTHERS TO DO THE SAME

Could these suggestions help creationists and non-creationists talk to each other more productively?

Evangelicals observing Lent?

Digging a bit, I think it’s more accurate to say that American evangelicals have been conflicted about Lent for some time now. Here’s how Christianity Today started a March 1960 editorial on the subject: (republished online forty years later)

Lent constitutes both a challenge and an embarrassment to Protestantism. Each year as the season approaches it brings with it the temptation to equivocate. We do not know where we stand because our feet seem to be stuck in both camps.

What’s more evangelical, after all, than to be drawn to a time of intentional repentance and renewal — and simultaneously to recoil from the merest hint of formalism?

While “a sense of indignation stirs within the Protestant breast, even to the pitch of revolt, at what the Church has done with Lent in the past,” those forty days remained “the most sacred season in the Christian calendar… For the minister to ignore Lent… would seem to be almost as wrong as for the minister to ignore Christmas.” In the end, CT (Carl Henry?) hoped that Lent would again “become a time when material things are put again in their proper secondary position” — so long as “the form support, not obstruct, the way of the Holy Spirit of God who brings life to ritual and free worship alike, and who turns ashes into new men.”……..

However it’s marked, I do think there can be significant spiritual value in observing this season. So if you’re among the 72% of evangelicals who don’t keep Lent in any way, consider Webber’s argument from Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year (2004):

For most people coming from my background, an Ash Wednesday service and Lent are quite foreign and somewhat threatening… Lent appears to be dark and foreboding. It reminds Protestants of the Roman Catholic practices—ritualism, works, fasting, vigils, and the like. Haven’t we been saved from all of that? Didn’t the Reformers free us from having to do works and pilgrimages and such things? …Preparing for Easter for seven weeks was unthinkable, ludicrous, even pagan. But now I am constrained to ask: Who is the pagan? Yes, it is wrong to go through the motions of Ash Wednesday and Lent in a mechanical, uninvolved way. But it is also wrong to ignore any kind of preparation for the Easter event. Happily there is an alternative for both Catholics and Protestants: Recover the true spiritual intent of Ash Wednesday and the Lenten spiritual pilgrimage.

Our prayers for the families of Parkland, for the friends, for the country and state and nation.

Their names, and a brief description.

Hands Free Mama on school tragedies in a family context.

Wesley J. Smith:

Each year, Gerber, the baby food manufacturer, holds a “cute baby” photo contest, the winner of which receives a $50,000 cash prize and may appear as a “spokesbaby” to advertise the company’s products. Media coverage of the contest is usually limited to sweet human-interest pieces. Not this year. The contest made huge news when Lucas Warren, a child with Down syndrome, was named the Gerber Baby of 2018.

Notably, the news about Lucas was received with virtually unanimous praise. With a few exceptions—such as the Special Olympics and Tim Tebow’s “Night to Shine” prom dance celebrating people with developmental disabilities—positive depictions of people with Down are all too rare. Those with Down syndrome are more often the victims of what can fairly be described as a “cleansing”—a concerted international effort to see them wiped off the face of the earth through eugenic abortion.

If that seems harsh, consider these facts. Iceland brags—yes, that is the proper verb—that no babies with Down are born there because of prenatal testing and subsequent termination. Denmark has been accused of establishing a zero Down syndrome birthrate as a national public policy goal, though this is denied by its government; but what can’t be denied is that only four such babies were born there in 2016. Here in the United States, about 90 percent of fetuses diagnosed with Down are aborted. Parents of these unborn babies have reported that genetic counselors often push the abortion option. The problem was so pronounced that back in 2008, politically opposed senators Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Sam Brownback (R-KS, now the State Department’s ambassador for religious freedom) joined together to push a law through Congress requiring neutrality in genetic counseling.

Good move for dog poo:

Good dog parents might think they’re doing their part by using biodegradable baggies to pick up after their pooches. But after Fido’s feces go in the trash can and to a landfill, they release methane gas, a significant contributor to the greenhouse effect. A dog park in Cambridge, Mass., has a solution: Add in a methane digester, and let your dog waste power the streetlights, tea cart and popcorn machine.

The Park Spark methane digester, unveiled this week, only powers a streetlight for now — no poop-powered popcorn yet. But it’s a neat concept: Replace trash cans with a public methane digester, and you demonstrate how simple it can be to turn waste into fuel.

“As long as people own pets in the city and throw away dog waste, the production of energy will be continuous and unlimited,” the project’s Web site says.

The project involves three basic steps: Throw your dog’s waste into the digester, where anaerobic bacteria are ready to break it down. Stir the mixture to help methane rise to the top, and burn the methane to generate light or electricity.

Olympics to Nun:

There’s no shortage of Olympic-athletes-and-their-faith stories coming out these days and for the most part, they’re decent stories.

There’s Gina Dalfonzo’s wrap-up of Christian athletes at the event for Christianity Today; a piece on Jewish athletes from the Jewish News of Northern California; Al Jazeera’s article on the lack of an Islamic prayer room for Olympians and so on.

But USA Today’spiece on the former speed skater who became a nun isn’t one of those well-written stories. Although datelined South Korea, the locale is in northern England, which throws off most readers at the start.

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – At a community ice rink in the northern English city of Bradford, the security attendant had a bit of a dilemma. She had already remonstrated with a group of teenage boys for larking about, skating too quickly and endangering other visitors, and now there was another speedster hurtling around the rink, even faster.

Except that this time the customer powering around the ice, executing gliding turns and weaving in and out of human traffic wasn’t joking around and carried a focused look of remembrance.

And she was wearing a nun’s habit.

Eventually Kirstin Holum, or Sr. Catherine of the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal, was stopped by the guard and asked to slow down, which she did without complaint.

The story doesn’t say any more about this New York-based order, founded 30 years ago this year, that has attracted quite a youthful following and is growing while many other religious orders are not. That might be worth a sentence.

In 1998 at Nagano, American long track speedskating was excited about the emergence of a potential new star. Holum, whose mother Dianne won Olympic gold in 1972 and coached Eric Heiden to five golds in 1980, not only came from skating royalty but, at 17, had already shown remarkable prowess in the 3,000 and 5,000-meter events, disciplines that typically favor older performers who are fully matured. She would place an impressive sixth in the 3,000 and seventh in the 5,000, but would never lace up another Olympic skate.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t go into much detail after that, only saying that many people didn’t realize she was a former speed skater and that she hasn’t watched much in the way of speed skating in many years. One learns that the reporter gathered the facts of the story during a phone interview while the nun was recently in the United States. The two didn’t even meet face to face.

If you wish to learn more about this nun, turn to instead this ABC-TV feature or this blog post. And this story, which says a trip to the Catholic shrine of Fatima in Portugal is what made Holum decided to take the veil. And a story in Free Republic that says it was meeting women from the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal at a World Youth Day in Toronto that drew her to that order.

Great way to begin your Saturday:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A local 21-year-old wanting to provide for his young daughter would walk 11 miles a day for work.

The UPS employee’s co-workers came together to surprise him with his first car.

The employee says nearly everyday he would get up in the middle of the night and walk about five and a half miles to work. He would have to be there at 4 a.m.

Sometimes he would get rides, but most of the time he would walk. That was until his co-workers gave him four wheels.

On his two feet, Trenton Lewis walks to the UPS center in Little Rock.

“I don’t want to miss work at all,” Trenton said.

While he didn’t have a car, he had a new job.

“I wanted to be with my daughter, to be able to support her. I wanted to be a father,” Trenton said .

For about the last seven months, he would wake up at midnight and walk.

He would leave his house on Ringo, walk down Roosevelt Rd. to get to the UPS center. That’s about five and a half miles away. All this, to clock in on time.

“I made it to work. I was never late,” Trenton said. “Doing this for my daughter, that’s all.”

“If someone has that type of determination, I’d be willing to help them,”  UPS clerk Kenneth Bryant said. “We just wanted to lend somebody a helping hand.”

Trenton didn’t tell many people how he got to the office, but Kenneth Bryant found out.

“That’s a young man that wants to work and will do what ever it takes to be successful,” Kenneth said.

Kenneth started asking around to see if coworkers would pitch in and buy Trenton a car.

The myth of modern romantic love, from First Things [HT: JS]:

A collection of Einstein’s letters auctioned off in 1996 contains a list of marital expectations for his wife, Maliva Maric. The list includes daily laundry “kept in good order,” “three meals regularly in my room,” a desk maintained neatly “for my use only,” and the demand that she quit talking or leave the room “if I request it.” The marriage ended in divorce, but the list lives on as an illustration not only of Einstein’s darker domestic side, but also of assumptions commonly held about marriage in 1914.

Compared with Einstein’s requirements, modern marital expectations have surely evolved for the better. Or have they? An insightful study by Sarah K. Balstrup theorizes that as people abandon religious institutions, they start expecting romantic relationships to satisfy a host of needs that formerly were satisfied through religion. If you think clean laundry and regular meals require effort, try meeting the demands of relationship-worship circa 2018 by providing transcendence, unconditional love, wholeness, meaning, worth, and communion.

The Western fixation on romantic love creates a crushing burden for mere mortals. It engenders a powerful myth regarding love, courtship, and marriage: that a fallible human partner can not only share our passions but sate our existential yearnings. Contemporary couples expect much more from marriage than it can realistically deliver, a phenomenon noted by social psychologists. As Eli Finkel of Northwestern University observes, “most of us will be kind of shocked by how many expectations and needs we’ve piled on top of this one relationship.”