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<\/a><\/p>\nYep, this is some stuff Christians like<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Matthew Milliner<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cConsequently a modern feminist such as Elizabeth Johnson does\u00a0not<\/em> argue for Christ\u2019s androgyny.\u00a0 \u201cLet us be very clear: the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was a male human being is not in question.\u00a0 His sex was a constitutive element of his historical person along with other particularities such as his Jewish racial identity\u2026\u201d\u00a0 And yet, by investigating Scripture, Johnson discovers that Christ\u2019s totality indisputably includes the feminine. \u00a0When, for example, Christ says, \u201cI am Jesus, whom you are persecuting\u201d (Acts 9:5<\/a>), the women referred to just beforehand (Acts 9:2<\/a>) are explicitly included in Christ\u2019s self-identification.\u00a0 \u201cThe heart of the problem is not that Jesus was male,\u201d concludes Johnson, \u201cbut that more males have not been like Jesus\u201d (311<\/a>). \u00a0There is much to criticize in certain strands of feminist theology \u2013 but can one really take issue with that?\u201d<\/p>\n Tim Spivey<\/strong><\/a> on why church planting is all the rage today.<\/p>\n Jim Martin interview Trevor Hudson<\/strong><\/a> \u2026 very nice.<\/p>\n I have read and read stuff about John Stott, and what I keep reading about was his commitment to social justice. Well, yes, that\u2019s very true and he caught some heat from the right-wingers for it. But let me speak as one who listened to him, who read him, and who followed him closely. What we knew Stott for was biblical exposition. Yes, he was committed to justice, and at Lausanne he had a famous point to make about the importance of justice, but if you ask folks who paid attention to Stott in the 60s, 70s and 80s, we knew him for his faithful biblical expositions and for his balanced approach to all things evangelical: he gave former fundamentalists a way to be evangelical without being fundamentalist. That, my friends, is why pockets of contemporary evangelicals have stopped appealing to Stott: he was third way. John Stott stood for charitable evangelicalism.<\/p>\n On religion and education<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cThe old wisdom: The more educated you are, the less likely you will be religious. But a new study says education doesn\u2019t drive people away from God \u2014 it gives them a more liberal attitude about who\u2019s going to heaven\u2026 For each additional year of education beyond seventh grade, Americans are: \u202215% more likely to have attended religious services in the past week. \u202214% more likely to say they believe in a \u201chigher power\u201d than in a personal God. \u201cMore than 90% believe in some sort of divinity,\u201d Schwadel says. \u202213% more likely to switch to a mainline Protestant denomination that is \u201cless strict, less likely to impose rules of behavior on your daily life\u201d than their childhood religion. \u202213% less likely to say the Bible is the \u201cactual word of God.\u201d The educated, like most folks in general, tend to say the Bible is the \u201cinspired word\u201d of God, Schwadel says.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanderings in the News<\/p>\n 1. Andrea Kuszewski<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cNot so many years ago, I was told by a professor of mine that you didn\u2019t have much control over your intelligence. It was genetic\u2014determined at birth. He explained that efforts made to raise the intelligence of children (through programs like\u00a0Head Start<\/a>, for example) had limited success while they were in practice, and furthermore, once the \u201ctraining\u201d stopped, they went right back to their previously low cognitive levels. Indeed,\u00a0the data did show that<\/a> [pdf], and he (along with many other intelligence researchers) concluded that intelligence could not be improved\u2014at least not to create a lasting change. Well, I disagreed. \u2026 Now, while working memory is not synonymous with intelligence, working memory\u00a0correlates<\/em> with intelligence to a large degree. In order to generate successfully intelligent output, a good working memory is pretty important. So to make the most of your intelligence, improving your working memory will help this significantly\u2014like using the very best and latest parts to help a machine to perform at its peak.<\/p>\n The take-home points from this research? This study is relevant because they discovered: 1. Fluid intelligence is\u00a0trainable<\/strong>. 2. The training and subsequent gains are dose-dependent\u2014meaning,\u00a0the more you train, the more you gain<\/strong>. 3.\u00a0Anyone can increase their cognitive ability<\/strong>, no matter what your starting point is. 4. The effect can be gained by training on\u00a0tasks that don\u2019t resemble the test questions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n These five primary principles are: 1. Seek Novelty <\/strong>2. Challenge Yourself <\/strong>3. Think Creatively <\/strong>4. Do Things The Hard Way <\/strong>5. Network.\u201d<\/p>\n 2. H. Allen Orr pushes David Brooks<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cScience has a lot of uses. It can uncover laws of nature, cure disease, inspire awe, make bombs, and help bridges to stand up. Indeed science is so good at what it does that there\u2019s a perpetual temptation to drag it into problems where it may add little or even distract from the real issues. David Brooks appears to be the latest in a long line of writers who, enamored of science, are bound and determined to import the stuff into their thinking\u2026.One certainly can\u2019t fault Brooks\u2019s attempt to master the science that he reports.The Social Animal<\/em> canvases an enormous technical literature\u2014indeed several literatures\u2014and Brooks has plowed through a good amount of it. Despite this, Brooks never seems fully comfortable with all this science. He often appears ill at ease in a world of technical journals, disagreements among experts, and statistical measures of uncertainty. A working scientist knows, for example, that some findings are more secure than others, often because the former derive from studies that involved many subjects and the latter from studies that involved few. Brooks doesn\u2019t seem to grasp this difference. To Brooks, science is science. It\u2019s all equally sound and can be taken at face value. His lack of expertise also presumably accounts for his occasional reliance on popular scientific journalism. Thus we\u2019re treated to conclusions from Malcolm Gladwell\u2019s\u00a0Outliers<\/em> and Jonah Lehrer\u2019s\u00a0Proust Was a Neuroscientist<\/em>, among others. Since these writers are also nonscientists, Brooks\u2019s analysis sometimes leaves us two steps removed from the actual scientist and his facts, facts that are often accompanied in the scientific literature by caveats or exceptions.\u201d<\/p>\n 3. Flat-out weird<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n 4. Kosher Pork brouhaha in NYC<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cCongress is a catastrophe, the nation is on the brink of a self-induced default, the jobless recovery turns out to be all joblessness and no recovery, your retirement funds are circling the drain, our enemies in Afghanistan are on the attack, the Libyan rebel leaders we just recognized as their country\u2019s only legitimate government appear to be assassinating each other, and right here in New York City, where it\u2019s hotter than July and twice as humid, they\u2019ve closed the beaches because they\u2019re awash in raw sewage. So this is a week when we needed a miracle, and what we got was kosher pork.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n 5. Seth Godin<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cNow that everyone, every brand, every organization and just about every person is in a race to build trust or an online following or a reputation, the question of working for free in exchange for exposure confronts us all. Should you art direct a new ad for the local zoo, merely to build your cred? Should you give that speech for free, because people who pay speakers will be in the audience? Should you contribute code to the new kernel because people will see what you\u2019ve done? Appear on a talk show, do a signing, call in to a radio show? Perhaps.<\/em> Unsatisfying, but true. Exposure, the right kind of exposure, is good practice, an honest contribution and yes, a chance to build credibility. Make it a habit, though, and instead of exposure, you\u2019ve set yourself up a new standard\u2013 that you work for free.\u201d<\/p>\n 6. So what does this say about you or us or them<\/strong><\/a>?<\/p>\n 7. A good story of forgiveness<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cTehran, Iran (CNN)<\/strong> \u2014 A man convicted of blinding a woman in an acid attack was spared an eye-for-an-eye punishment Sunday, minutes before the sentence was to be carried out, Iranian state media reported. The Fars News Agency reported that the victim had a sudden change of heart and decided to stop the punishment. A physician was to drop acid \u2014 under legal supervision \u2014 into the eyes of Majid Movahedi on Sunday, according to Fars News Agency, to punish him for throwing acid in the face of Ameneh Bahrami seven years ago. The act disfigured her face and blinded her. Bahrami had previously insisted on the vengeful punishment after her attacker\u2019s conviction in 2008. \u201cHowever in the last minute, Ameneh changed her mind and asked the proceeding to be halted,\u201d the Islamic republic\u2019s Fars state news agency reported. This week marks the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan in the Islamic world, and pardons and commuted sentences commonly occur as a show of compassion leading into the holiday.\u201d<\/p>\n 8. Mr Rogers will make a come back, kind of<\/strong><\/a> .<\/p>\n