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<\/a><\/p>\nJim Martin<\/strong> <\/a>provides a question all pastors need to ask. A good one, Jim. And Bill Donahue<\/a><\/strong> asks a good question, too. Good one, Bill. And while we\u2019re at it, read this one by Kurt Fredrickson<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Speaking of pastors, this series by Mike Cope<\/a><\/strong> is among the finest sets of posts any pastor can read. Thanks Mike. (When a child dies\u2026)<\/p>\n Brad Wright <\/a><\/strong>on a world without grace \u2014 thanks Brad. Patrick Mitchel<\/a><\/strong> on where the world\u2019s headed, and he had a real nice series <\/a><\/strong>that complements our Junia is not alone theme.<\/p>\n Tim Dalrymple blogs about blogging about controversies<\/a><\/strong>, and offers good suggestions. Speaking of which\u2026\u00a0Ben Witherington on John Piper<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cJohn Piper is concerned, as are other Reformed writers and thinkers, for instance some in the Gospel Coalition, with what is perceived to be the stripping of male dignity and honor in our culture. He seeks to rub some healing balm in the wounds of men who have been assailed about their male chauvinism and macho approaches to women and life in general, especially in this case, men who are ministers. But as I have mentioned before on this blog, the problem with the church is not strong women, but weak men who can\u2019t handle strong women, much less tolerate women in ministry. So, they have to provide rationales for these views. And to do so requires all sorts of exegetical gymnastics, ignoring of contexts, and even dubious theology and anthropology\u2026 \u00a0I decided to let this percolate for a while before I reacted. Let me be clear that this sounds like a classic over-reaction to what is perceived to be the malaise of our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m excited about the potential of this network: the Ancient-Future Faith Network<\/a><\/strong>. And I\u2019m glad my friend Fr Rob reviews Lauren Winner\u2019s new book<\/a><\/strong>, a book I encourage you to digest.<\/p>\n Dave Strunk <\/a><\/strong>on the \u201cconfessional\u201d evangelicalism and Al Mohler: \u201cIn essence, Mohler\u2019s defense of confessional evangelicalism is indistinct from a more generic yet still orthodox version of evangelicalism. Mohler does an excellent job, as always, of defending evangelicalism against its foes on the left and right. What Mohler fails to do, though, is to offer a compelling\u00a0apologia<\/em> for the benefits found in confessional evangelicalism.\u201d<\/p>\n Good set of ideas from Proverbs by JR Briggs<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n This is why the Churches of Christ have struggled,<\/a><\/strong> and this is what we all need because we are all in one family: \u201cThis group, the XCMA (X County Ministerial Alliance), always begins by discussing the week\u2019s lectionary passage (don\u2019t know what a\u00a0lectionary<\/a> is? Look it up \u2026 and think about getting out of your denominational house once in a while), which this week happened to be from\u00a0John 17<\/a>. Jesus\u2019 prayer that \u201cthey may all be one.\u201d Each of us got to share a few thoughts about this passage. When it was my turn\u2026I repented. I apologized on behalf of all the members of the Churches of Christ who had been hateful and divisive and exclusive and mean. I upheld these ministers\u2019 identity as believers and Christians and expressed a desire to be unified with them, lest the world not recognize that Jesus was sent from God. And guess what\u2026I got a standing ovation\u2026in fact the only ovation of any kind, along with many handshakes and hugs.\u00a0Then an older Baptist minister was asked to close us in prayer. He prayed for our group, our churches\u2026and for the \u201cdear brother who has joined us today to take a stand for unity,\u201d and continued to pray for me and the Churches of Christ and since I thought I heard his voice break, I glanced up at him to see tears rolling down his cheeks. He finished and came and embraced me and told me stories of how many times he\u2019d been told that he wasn\u2019t a Christian, how often he\u2019d been excluded and shunned by my brethren. And as a final tear fell from his chin, he thanked me for my simple act of participation.\u00a0And so I learned that we have done wrong, that we\u2019ve damaged our own reputation, that we\u2019ve failed to earn respect. This IS important\u2026we can\u2019t afford to be arrogant\u2026we just need to be Christians only\u2026not the only Christians.\u201d And this was at the bottom of that very post: \u201c<\/em>He has since removed the post from that blog. You see, for this and other views deemed too ecumenical, he was relieved of his position and now ministers in sales to support his family. He tells me that he has not preached or written in five years, but is starting to want to again.\u201d<\/p>\n Why do you love U2<\/a><\/strong>? (Ireland.)<\/p>\n Meanderings in the News<\/p>\n Some cool thank you letters<\/a><\/strong> here.<\/p>\n Hilary Rosen<\/a><\/strong>\u2018s telling lines on Whitney Houston: \u201cLike Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Elvis and others before her, that inner voice of doubt that we all feel sometimes just could never keep up with the public adulation.\u00a0And so the only answer in the moment that makes sense is to drown out the external praise and dull the doubt with drugs and alcohol. By many accounts from those close to her, she understood the dangers even as she was too often powerless to change\u2026.\u00a0Whitney Houston\u2019s music legacy will be an inspiration to young artists for years to come. Without taking one thing away from her amazing talent and my total and complete admiration for her career, I hope her troubled life in the spotlight will also serve as the right warning as well.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s the economy<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cIn August 2010, Robin Marantz Henig observed in\u00a0New York Times<\/em> Magazine<\/a> that Generation Y (the Millennials) has pushed back each of the five milestones of adulthood: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying, and having a kid.\u00a0Why won\u2019t Millennials grow up?<\/em> she wondered. \u00a0The biggest reason is they can\u2019t, according to the Pew Research Center\u2019s fantastic new survey\u00a0\u201cYoung, Underemployed, and Optimistic.\u201d<\/a> It begins with school. \u00a0The good news is that more young adults are enrolled in school than ever. The share of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled has increased by 50% since 1990. That\u2019s awesome. Less awesome is that the cost of college is rising, too. Average debt for public college students\u00a0doubled<\/a> between 1996 and 2006. It\u2019s less advisable to invest in marriage with $30,000 in student debt as a couple. \u201cMore than one-in-five young adults ages 18 to 34 (22%) say they have postponed having a baby because of the bad economy,\u201d Pew reported. \u201cRoughly the same proportion say they have postponed getting married.\u201d<\/p>\n Rebecca J. Rosen<\/a><\/strong>: the problem isn\u2019t technology, it is time itself (or its perception): \u201cWhen we experience time-deepening we don\u2019t merely feel that we are doing more in a day; we feel that time is actually moving faster.\u00a0Research into how people perceive time<\/a> suggests that when people are distracted \u2014 when their focus is divided or elsewhere \u2014 they mis-estimate the passage of time, thinking that less time has passed than actually has \u2014 that time has flown. It\u2019s perhaps because of this perception that when Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery described the changes in work-life patterns\u00a0in a recent issue of\u00a0Mother Jones<\/em><\/a>, they called them the \u201cgreat speed-up.\u201d The Digital Sabbath isn\u2019t the only strategy for dealing with this speed up: The\u00a0related set of\u00a0\u201cslow\u201d movements<\/a> \u2014 slow food, slow travel, even\u00a0slow science<\/a> \u2014 have proliferated in recent years.\u201d<\/p>\n Juan Cole lists ten items taught by the RCC Santorum doesn\u2019t support<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cThe right wing Republican politicians who have been denouncing the requirement that female employees have access to birth control as part of their health benefits as an attack on religious freedom completely ignore the church teachings they don\u2019t agree with. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are both Catholics, and wear their faith on their sleeves, but they are hypocritical in picking and choosing when they wish to listen to the bishops.\u201d<\/p>\n From the Loom<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cIf not for a virus, none of us would ever be born.\u00a0In 2000, a team of Boston scientists\u00a0discovered<\/a> a peculiar gene in the human genome. It encoded a protein made only by cells in the placenta. They called it syncytin.\u00a0The cells that made syncytin were located only where the placenta made contact with the uterus. They fuse together to create a single cellular layer, called the syncytiotrophoblast, which is essential to a fetus for drawing nutrients from its mother. The scientists discovered that in order to fuse together, the cells must first make syncytin.\u00a0What made syncytin peculiar was that it was not a human gene. It bore all the hallmarks of a gene from a virus.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanderings in Sports<\/p>\n Helen Lee, on Jeremy Lin<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cJust a little over a week ago, Lin was sleeping on his brother\u2019s couch and wondering if the Knicks were going to keep him on the team. But as injuries whittled down the Knicks\u2019 roster, Lin\u2019s number was called against the New Jersey Nets on February 4th. He scored an improbable 25 points, started in the next four games, and repeated the seemingly impossible by scoring in double digits each time, including 38 points in a prime-time, nationally-televised performance against Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant.\u201d<\/p>\n Hope you saw this about Gary Carter: \u201cEven as the world watched the Grade 4 brain cancer wither his body,\u00a0Gary Carter<\/a> was still, and is always, Kid. It is a testament to Carter\u2019s passion for the game, and for life, that the nickname that at times was applied derisively by crusty veterans ended up on his Hall of Fame plaque.<\/p>\n<\/a>You know you\u2019re a scientist if you\u2026 do this!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>Bath in Books<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cThis bath is made entirely out of books which Vanessa cut and fitted together over a metal frame to form a bath of books, which is suspended by four antique bath tub, lion-shaped feet. She intends to later cover it in layers of resin and has already applied proper taps and drain, so that it will be a utilizable, functional bath at all effects.\u00a0The idea is of immersing oneself in knowledge, books, truths, and \u2018cleaning\u2019 or \u2018purifying\u2019 one\u2019s mind with from external, every day life bombarding from media, by reading ad reflecting on books,- \u2018pure sources\u2019, which is of course, metaphorical, implying we can become polluted by ideas of truths and knowledge, which we can only \u2018clean\u2019 by reading our way through to our own ideas and reflections.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>Least informed statement of the week, in Will Oremus<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cThe issue resurfaced following the industrial revolution, when the advent of rubber condoms, coupled with urbanization and other social forces, spurred a resurgence of birth control. But as late as the turn of the 20th<\/sup> century, the Catholic Church worried that denouncing contraception would have the unintended consequence of informing people of what it was. Better, the thinking went, to leave them ignorant.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>What Europeans don\u2019t get about America (USA), by Richard Florida<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cAmericans at this political moment are significantly more likely to identify as conservative than as liberal: conservatives outnumber liberals by nearly two to one. Forty percent identify as conservative, 36 percent as moderate, and 21 percent liberal.\u201d<\/p>\n