A Few Good Reads

“When Ball Becomes Baal”

Jim Elliff notes the increasing demands youth sports make on families, particularly pulling them away from needed family time and their weekly meeting with God’s people to worship. He offers clues to help us understand when sports have become too important to us and how we can approach it with greater wisdom. “You’ll hear, “But the team needs all the players. We can’t let the team down.” It never occurs to them that the church Body is being deprived of a necessary body part, or that God is marginalized and disobeyed. We are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, states God in Hebrews 10:25.”

“Screentime is Making Kids Moody, Crazy, Lazy”
This piece in Psychology Today is from last year, but it makes an incredible point- we are letting our kids have too much time with screens and it has negative effects on them. “Because light from screen devices mimics daytime, it suppresses melatonin, a sleep signal released by darkness. Just minutes of screen stimulation can delay melatonin release by several hours and desynchronize the body clock Once the body clock is disrupted, all sorts of other unhealthy reactions occur, such as hormone imbalance and brain inflammation. Plus, high arousal doesn’t permit deep sleep, and deep sleep is how we heal.”

“How to Fix Politics”
If you read these posts often you have probably noted my admiration of New York Times columnist David Brooks. His writing focuses on issues deeper than the merely political and points towards deep self-reflection. This piece on our politics shows how the issues which plague do not have answers that can only be answered on the national level. “Once politics becomes your ethnic and moral identity, it becomes impossible to compromise, because compromise becomes dishonor. If you put politics at the center of identity, you end up asking the state to eclipse every social authority but itself. Presidential campaigns become these gargantuan two-year national rituals that swallow everything else in national life.”

Why Trust the Bible
Christians face more questions about the truthfulness of the Bible than at any other point in our lifetimes. Greg Gilbert offers solid answers to crucial questions about the authorship, transmission, and trustworthiness of the Bible. Any Christian wanting to develop a greater facility with answering difficult questions about the Bible from skeptical friends would gain great benefit from his work. “The Bible stands at the heart of the Christian faith. But this leads to an inescapable question: why should we trust the Bible? Written to help non-Christians, longtime Christians, and everyone in between better understand why God’s Word is reliable, this short book explores the historical and theological arguments that have helped lead millions of believers through the centuries to trust the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.”