The Consumerist brings us the latest in a wave of recent stories about a mystery benefactor bringing holiday cheer to strangers in need. Call it holiday cheer or call it the best bandwagon we’ve ever seen, but yet another kind-hearted consumer has plunked down cash to make the season a bit brighter for his fellow humans. A man in Laguna Beach, Calif., shelled out almost $16,000 of his own money to pay for layaway items of 1,000 Kmart shoppers. [The... Read more
Blessed Solstice, everyone. Read more
“MLK parade bomber sentenced to 32 years in prison” reports Nikolas K. Geranios of the Associated Press: SPOKANE, Wash. — A federal judge was not swayed by the last-ditch attempt from an Army veteran with extensive ties to white supremacists to change his guilty plea in a plot to bomb a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade. … “I am distressed that you appear not the least bit apologetic,” said [U.S. District Court Judge Justin] Quackenbush, as he sentenced Kevin... Read more
J.R. Daniel Kirk reminds me of a story. It’s a story I’ve told here before, years ago, but let me tell it again, briefly. It’s about my first marriage, which ended unhappily but began happily enough. This is a story from that happy beginning. It was 1991 and my then-fiancée did not have a birth certificate. She’d never had one. The small Tennessee hospital in which she’d been born had had a fire and its records had been destroyed. And... Read more
There may be a pattern here, but if there is, I don’t see it. My first-hand experience with mega-churches is pretty slim, so I’ve never seen a Singing Tree Christmas Spectacular. Wow. I’m watching this video — — and as the singer in the angel costume is being lifted up above the choir on a wire rigging, all I can think is how awesome it would have been if she’d suddenly intoned, “Greetings, Prophet! The great work begins!” The world... Read more
Just a small bit more here on that passage in Romans I’ve been referring to as Paul’s mini-Sermon on the Mount. I call it that because it closely follows many of the things that Jesus taught in that sermon in the Gospels. Paul wasn’t quoting the Gospels — he was writing years, maybe even decades earlier — but what he says very closely parallels those teachings of Jesus. At a couple of points, though, Paul is a bit more accommodating,... Read more
In the first epistle to Timothy, the author includes this challenge and encouragement: Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. It’s interesting there that the writer assumes that this will be advice that Timothy will need — that some will, in fact, “despise” his youth. And these despisers, the writer suggests, may well be among “the believers.” The writer was most likely not actually Paul,... Read more
The rule of three suggests that there ought to be a joke. It all but requires that there be a joke. “So Christopher Hitchens, Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong Il are standing at the Pearly Gates. And St. Peter says …” I’m afraid I can’t figure out how the rest of it goes. Part of my problem is that I don’t much care for the set-up. It’s a standard trope, and we should honor the classics, but the whole Pearly... Read more
Three sharp observations about words and language — Richard Beck quotes Scot McKnight: Evangelicalism is known for at least two words: gospel and (personal) salvation. Behind the word gospel is the Greek word euangelion and evangel, from which words we get evangelicalism and evangelism. Now to our second word. Behind salvation is the Greek word soteria. I want now to make a stinging accusation. In this book I will be contending firmly that we evangelicals (as a whole) are not... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 445-450 Stymied by traffic jams and nuclear war, our heroes will be forced to hike half a mile on foot to reach the just-bombed hospital where their friend Bruce Barnes was lying in a coma. “I’m going,” Rayford said. “Me too,” Buck said. “We’re all going,” Chloe insisted, but Rayford held up a hand. Silly little girl, this is a man’s job. “We’re not all going. It’s going to be hard enough for one of us to... Read more
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