1. William Lindsey quotes John Corvino’s What’s Wrong With Homosexuality?:
When all that [i.e., the interpretive maneuvers some people use to deny that the bible endorses slavery] fails, believers will make a plea for looking at the larger message of the Bible, especially the Gospels, and not drawing conclusions about slavery based on a handful of texts yanked out of their historical context. To which I respond . . . Amen. Precisely. But if it’s wrong to do that with the slavery passages, why is it okay to do that with the homosexuality passages?
Yes, this. The clobber-text crowd rejects their own supposed hermeneutic when it comes to slavery. And to usury. And to debt. That’s how they treat almost any biblical text having to do with money. But ask them to apply the same interpretation to any text involving sex and they freak out as though you’re burning Bibles.
2. The guys at Two Friars and a Fool are about halfway to their Kickstarter goal for Never Pray Again: The Coloring Book. You can follow that link to go support the project. Or, just to annoy them by confirming their thesis, you can instead just pray that their project succeeds.
3. Christianity Today updates an old cover story on con-artist-turned-pastor Barry Minkow. Turns out the original headline was missing a comma. Instead of “The Fraudbuster” it should have read “The Fraud, buster.”
4. “If George R.R. Martin Were a Science Reporter”
5. I’ve been following the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act because it’s important, and because it provides such a clear measure of the integrity and sincerity of the so-called “pro-life” movement. Quite simply, if pro-lifers actually value the things they claim to value, then they would be supporting the PWFA. They are not supporting the PWFA. Ergo …
Anyway, the good news is that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed the Garden State’s version of this measure into law earlier this month. So New Jersey joins seven other states where pregnant workers are guaranteed they won’t have to choose between their pregnancy and their job.
6. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, on preferring the company of the non-religious:
Religious people speak of God when human knowledge (perhaps simply because they are too lazy to think) has come to an end, or when human resources fail — in fact it is always the deus ex machina that they bring on to the scene, either for the apparent solution of insoluble problems, or as strength in human failure — always, that is to say, exploiting human weakness or human boundaries. Of necessity, that can go on only till people can by their own strength push these boundaries somewhat further out, so that God becomes superfluous as a deus ex machina. I’ve come to be doubtful of talking about any human boundaries (is even death, which people now hardly fear, and is sin, which they now hardly understand, still a genuine boundary today?). It always seems to me that we are trying anxiously in this way to reserve some space for God; I should like to speak of God not on the boundaries but at the center, not in weaknesses but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in man’s life and goodness.
7. Thank you, Holly Richmond, for introducing me to the Real Fake Johnny Cash:
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