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<\/a>I looked through my Google Reader and observed that over half had not updated their blog this week; well, it\u2019s summertime and it\u2019s time to vacation, but the Jesus Creed blog\u2019s Weekly Meanderings (this is the #271 edition!) relentlessly keeps on, thanks to all you bloggers. Enjoy these links today, and I hope when you are the ballpark you get to do this (\u2013>).<\/p>\nOur prayers today are with Norway and Norwegians.<\/p>\n
The one stop blog, iMonk\u2019s site, has an exceptional post on Driscoll by Chaplain Mike<\/strong><\/a>. Karen\u2019s summer reads<\/strong><\/a>, and poke around her blog to see what else is going on in her life (yikes).<\/p>\n Guy Chmieleski<\/strong><\/a>\u2018s observations on the decline of youth participation in small groups. Dan Reid<\/strong><\/a> has a post for mountain climbers. Mark Roberts<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 a must-read post, setting up a series, on discerning the Spirit\u2019s guidance.<\/p>\n Hey, Tony,<\/strong><\/a> one summer I coached 85 games! Loved it. Many of us know the experience of coaching kids teams, but there\u2019s nothing like those summer baseball games.<\/p>\n My friend, Allan Bevere<\/strong><\/a>, has a great quotation from CS Lewis and he also notices his new book just out. Another friend :mic<\/strong><\/a> asks a good one: Does being missional mean being \u201cpost pastor\u201d? Speaking of missional, Skye is at it again wondering if we\u2019ve overdone \u201cmissional.\u201d Part one<\/strong><\/a>, part two<\/strong><\/a>. The final destiny of the people of God is to be indwellt by God \u2014 for God to be with us and we with God, as Rev 21-22 clearly reveals. Shouldn\u2019t being the dwelling place of God be the ultimate mission?<\/p>\n Good for Chicago<\/strong><\/a>. Ted<\/strong><\/a> ponders that culture war problem.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t want to give those Brits too many kudos but this post on Americanisms<\/strong><\/a>, which I found through the every-trusty Geeding (that\u2019s what HT means), is fun, and I\u2019m in agreement with that first one: Why do people, in ordering, ask \u201cCan I get\u2026\u201d [My response, \u201cI don\u2019t know if you can<\/em>, which speaks of your ability, but you sure may.\u201d And I\u2019d like to add, \u201cFriend, you\u2019ve got the money, I\u2019m at your service.\u201d] Which ones are your pet peeves? #10, awful. #16 reveals that person needs an English (or American) lesson. #24 ought just to stop, now. And if your day has some slack, read the comments, which were at 1295 when I read the post.<\/p>\n 2. On Monasterboice, Ireland, and those who look after the places<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cBut the majestic Round Tower at Monasterboice, rising well above 100ft \u2013 Ireland\u2019s unique architectural contribution to medieval Europe \u2013 proclaims this place to have once been of great importance. These \u2013 and so many other Irish medieval ruins \u2013 are known not only to specialist scholars, but to discerning tourists from across the world, as once having been key centres in the nurturing and development of that phenomenon we call European civilisation. To Irish people like me, and others of Irish descent around the globe, these places mean more. They are the ancient work of our forefathers\u2019 hands \u2013 a priceless inheritance that lend dignity and substance to our treasured Irish descent.\u201d<\/p>\n 3. Mark Twain\u2019s advice to little girls<\/strong><\/a>, by Vladimir Radunsky: \u201cIt is difficult for us to imagine what a strange impression Advice to Little Girls<\/em>, a children\u2019s story by Mark Twain, must have had on its audience when it was written in 1865 and eventually published as part of The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories<\/em>. American children\u2019s literature in those days was mostly didactic, addressed to some imaginary reader\u2014an ideal girl or boy, upon reading the story, would immediately adopt its heroes as role models. He did not squat down to be heard and understood by children, but asked them to stand on their tiptoes\u2014to absorb the kind of language and humor suitable for adults.\u201d<\/p>\n 4. Sarah Pulliam Bailey, on Harry Potter and Christians<\/strong><\/a>, and I\u2019m a bit late on this one: \u201cAfter praising the \u201cHarry Potter\u201d books in 2001, author Connie Neal said that she opened her inbox to see death threats scattered among the reactions from fellow Christians. The one time the California-based writer found her book, \u201cWhat\u2019s a Christian Got to Do with Harry Potter?,\u201d at a Christian bookstore, it was on the occult\/New Age shelf. In its early years, \u201cHarry Potter\u201d was a litmus test of orthodoxy for some conservative Christians, who expressed concern over its portrayal of witchcraft. A Christian lawyer sued a public library for encouraging young readers to check out the series. Texas Pastor John Hagee called the books a \u201cprecursor to witchcraft.\u201d In 2005 a Canadian website published a letter opposing the books written by Pope Benedict XVI when he was Cardinal Ratzinger. (In 2009, the Vatican\u2019s newspaper L\u2019Osservatore Romano published a favorable review, seeming to reverse course on the series.) The hysteria has largely died down, and not many religious leaders asked their flocks to avoid the final movie, which opens today. Potter observers cite a few possible reasons for the waning concern, including a natural desire to move on to other entertainment issues, but also an interest in the themes that unfolded.\u201d<\/p>\n 6. Sean Carroll<\/strong><\/a> on free will and cosmic variance. \u201cWe talk about the world using different levels of description, appropriate to the question of interest. Some levels might be thought of as \u201cfundamental\u201d and others as \u201cemergent,\u201d but they are all there. Does baseball exist? It\u2019s nowhere to be found in the Standard Model of particle physics. But any definition of \u201cexist\u201d that can\u2019t find room for baseball seems overly narrow to me. It\u2019s true that we could take any particular example of a baseball game and choose to describe it by listing the exact quantum state of each elementary particle contained in the players and the bat and ball and the field etc. But why in the world would anyone think that is a good idea? The concept of baseball is emergent rather than fundamental, but it\u2019s no less real for all of that. Likewise for free will. We can be perfectly orthodox materialists and yet believe in free will, if<\/em> what we mean by that is that there is a level of description that is useful in certain contexts and that includes \u201cautonomous agents with free will\u201d as crucial ingredients. That\u2019s the \u201cvariety of free will worth having,\u201d a Daniel Dennett<\/a> would put it. I\u2019m not saying anything original \u2014 this is a well-known position, probably the majority view among contemporary philosophers. It\u2019s a school of thought called compatibilism: see Wikipedia<\/a>, or (better) theStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy<\/a>. Free will as an emergent phenomenon can be perfectly compatible with an underlying materialist view of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n 7. The Shomrim of NYC<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cHasidic areas like Borough Park<\/a>, where a Shomrim-organized search party looked for little Leiby Kletzky, are worlds unto themselves. Their members are identifiable by their distinctive appearance \u2014 wigs and modest dresses for the women, beards and side curls for the men. Community members send their children to Jewish schools, speak Yiddish as a first language and shun modern distractions like television. Yet another distinction is the patrols, which residents turn to first because \u201cthey know the community, they speak the language, they have the trust of the entire community,\u201d said Isaac Abraham, a leader of the ultra-Orthodox in Brooklyn\u2019s Williamsburg section.\u201d<\/p>\n 8. George (No X.) Will<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cThe Republicans\u2019 2012 presidential nominee will run against Alibi Ike. Lardner, a Chicago sportswriter, created that character (\u201cHis right name was Frank X. Farrell, and I guess the X stood for \u2018Excuse me.\u2019\u2009\u201d), who resembles Chicagoan Barack Obama. After blaming his predecessor for this and that, and after firing all the arrows in liberalism\u2019s quiver \u2014 the stimulus, cash for clunkers, etc. \u2014 Obama seems poised to blame the recovery\u2019s anemia on Republican resistance to simultaneously raising the debt ceiling and taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n 9. And then comes Ross Douthat<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cFor months, Republican leaders used all the tools at their disposal \u2014 the anti-spending intensity of their base, the White House\u2019s desire for a deal, the specter of dire consequences if the debt ceiling wasn\u2019t raised \u2014 to leverage their way into a favorable position. Despite controlling just one house of Congress, they spent the spring and summer setting the agenda for the country: not whether to cut spending, but how deeply and how fast. But last week, the Republican offensive suddenly collapsed in disarray. In the space of a few days, a party that once looked capable of pressing the White House into a deal that would have left liberals fuming found itself falling back on two less-palatable options instead: either a procedural gimmick that would try to pin the responsibility for raising the ceiling on President Obama, or a stand on principle that would risk plunging the American economy back into recession. What went wrong? It turns out that Republicans didn\u2019t have a plan for transitioning from the early phase of a high-stakes political negotiation, when the goal is to draw stark lines and force the other side to move your way, to the late phase, in which the public relations battle becomes crucial and the goal is to make the other side seem unreasonable, intransigent and even a little bit insane.\u201d<\/p>\n And then this: \u201cTheir inability to make even symbolic concessions has turned a winning hand into a losing one. A majority of Americans want to close the deficit primarily with spending cuts \u2014 which is to say, they\u2019re primed to side with conservatives in the debt-ceiling debate. But in trying to turn that \u201cprimarily\u201d into a \u201ccompletely,\u201d the right has squandered this advantage. By 48 percent to 34 percent, a Quinnipiac poll found last week, Americans will blame Republicans if debt-ceiling gridlock precipitates an economic crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n 10. Juan Cole<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cI like bookstores. I savor being in a place with book-lined walls. I love the covers, the titles, the blurbs. Some bookstores have jazz playing in the background. Some have coffeeshops. I like reading some pages of a magazine I don\u2019t usually read, and deciding whether to buy it or even to subscribe. I like author signings and readings. I am therefore distressed at the closing of Borders Books.<\/a>. There are ironies in this story, since Borders (based in my home, Ann Arbor), pioneered the concept of the book superstore, putting many independent bookstores out of business. It in turn was driven into bankruptcy in part by the rise of the digital book, and its inability to adapt to the new technology in the way that Amazon and Barnes and Noble have.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanderings in Sports<\/p>\n<\/a> JR Briggs<\/strong><\/a>, if I don\u2019t say \u201cfriend\u201d someone will ask, so yes, he\u2019s a friend, on his biggest church planting regret. Speaking of books recently published, I see that Michael Kruse<\/strong><\/a> has posted about Brad Wright\u2019s newest book, and I\u2019m hoping the Kruse Kronicle will share it\u2019s review with our site.<\/p>\n
\nMeanderings in the News<\/p>\n<\/a>1. On grade inflation<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cA new Economix blog post by Catherine Rampell of the New York Times<\/em> discusses a recent study on grade inflation<\/a> at U.S. colleges since the 1940s. Apparently, college professors have been handing out A\u2019s and B\u2019s willy-nilly in recent decades, with a substantial increase in overly generous grading in the past decade. By the end of last decade, A\u2019s and B\u2019s accounted for 73% of all grades at public institutions, and 86% of all grades awarded at private institutions, a huge increase over past decades.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>5. This guy can stand in line<\/strong><\/a> with the many who\u2019ve said the same thing, and it\u2019s been going on for two centuries: \u201cThe reasons that churches lose ground in developed countries can be summarized in market terms. First, with better science, and with government safety nets, and smaller families, there is less fear and uncertainty in people\u2019s daily lives and hence less of a market for religion. At the same time many alternative products are being offered, such as psychotropic medicines and electronic entertainment that have fewer strings attached and that do not require slavish conformity<\/a> to unscientific beliefs.\u201d<\/p>\n