http://youtu.be/IhrRTQdW-UU This is a truly incredible story; I got it from my buddy Doug Hankins. An Australian woman was told by doctors that one of the two twins she had just prematurely birthed at 27 weeks was dead after they tried for 20 minutes to help him breathe, to no avail. Instead of letting tiny Jamie go, the woman–Kate Ogg–took her son, placed him on her chest “skin-to-skin” (called “kangaroo care” by the Aussies) and hugged and talked to him... Read more
It seems to be Tim Tebow week here at the blog, though without any prior planning toward this goal on my part. I wrote a piece on the Sunday night comments of NBC sportscaster Bob Costas that suggested that God does not “take a hand in the outcome of [football] games.” Readers of this blog will know that I like sports but do not practice Sportianity and even have some concerns about the violence of football. Nevertheless, I thought that Costas’s... Read more
I found this excerpt, from one of the 1,000 Tim Tebow journalism pieces on the web at present, quite powerful. I’m not a Tebow zealot, nor am I a big fan of the unnecessary violence of football, but there’s no arguing with character like this: Mr. Tebow’s acts of goodwill have often been more intimate. In December 2009, he attended a college-football awards ceremony in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The night before, at another gala at Walt Disney World Resort,... Read more
This snippet from the NYT Well blog should encourage you to get whatever exercise you can in these winter months: To learn more about how exercise affects the brain, scientists in Ireland recently asked a group of sedentary male college students to take part in a memory test followed by strenuous exercise. First, the young men watched a rapid-fire lineup of photos with the faces and names of strangers. After a break, they tried to recall the names they had... Read more
Ah, the rich merits of the Ivy League education, the plush learning it affords. Like this Yale University class in the American Studies department: “Dance Music and Nightlife Culture in New York City.” Behold the rich harvest of learning that will accrue to the student who signs up (from the Yale Daily News): A junior seminar called “Dance Music and Nightlife Culture in New York City,” has drawn attention from global hotspots like London, Toronto and New York. According to... Read more
The pastor-theologian is a subject of great interest to me, as my introduction to the book The Pastor as Scholar, the Scholar as Pastor: Reflections on Life and Ministry (Crossway, 2011) by John Piper and D. A. Carson shows. Because of this, my ears perked when, in the recent debate over the mission of the church, missiologist Ed Stetzer suggested that pastors Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert were not adequately prepared to do “careful theological thinking” on the topic du... Read more
Some of you took note of the “Dad Mom” post I ran a couple of weeks back in reference to a commercial by Tide detergent. The ad showed a man folding laundry and avowing that he loved “being awesome” and working at home while his wife brought home the bacon. I wrote a short response to the commercial which drew an intense response on the part of evangelical egalitarians. Christianity Today took note of the conflagration on Twitter and elsewhere... Read more
For the small but vibrant community of people known as “evangelical theologians” or “theology aficianados” or “those zealous about the extracalvinisticum,” the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society is a big deal. I love ETS. This year’s meeting, centered around the theme “No Other Name,” will be held this week in San Francisco, California from Wednesday, November 16-Friday, November 18. There are a number of fascinating topics on the docket this year, as there always are. Andy Naselli has... Read more
Many have now seen the announcement about systematic theologian Kevin J. Vanhoozer returning to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School as research professor of systematic theology. He has served as Blanchard Professor of Theology at Wheaton Graduate School from 2009-11. Prior to that, Vanhoozer taught at TEDS from 1998-2009. Here is the announcement from TEDS: At the divinity school faculty meeting on Wednesday, November 9, Dr. Tite Tiénou, dean of TEDS, and Dr. John S. Feinberg, chair of the biblical and systematic... Read more
If you chanced across this little piece of virtual real estate last week, you might have seen that I blogged about a Tide commercial featuring a self-identified “dad mom.” I suggested, based on my read of Scripture, that this was a “man fail.” To use an excruciating economy of words, I received a good deal of feedback on these matters. [Update: I will be writing an essay for the Journal of Biblical Manhood & Womanhood on this topic and will... Read more
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