Archive by Author

J. I. Packer’s Advice to Aspiring Writers

August 22, 2012 in Writing with 0 Comments

Desiring God has been posting some video interviews with J. I. Packer. As usual, he offers plenty of great insight. And I thought this video was particularly good for those of us interested in writing.

The video is less than ten minutes long, so it’s worth watching all the way through. But here are Packer’s three main pieces of advice:

1. Go deep in your grasp of God, and his will, and his ways, and the spirit of worship. Because you must constantly be expressing those things in every bit of writing that you do.

2. Understand, as preachers also have to understand, that it’s as important that you communicate with people as it is that you set before them truth and wisdom from the word of God.

3. Don’t attempt to be a writer unless you have got things to say which you feel must be put on paper and I am being called to do it. Writing, in other words, is as vocational an exercise as becoming a preacher.

And one quote in particular jumped out at me:

There are writers who think that simply by crisp, orthodox formulations of Bible truth and wisdom, without any searching application to the reader, they are fulfilling the full role of a Christian writer and that nothing more is required of them. That I do not believe to be so. There are enough people around already who can verbalize orthodoxy on paper. What we haven’t got is writers who can blend, or join, truth and wisdom about God from the Scriptures with personal communication, that is, communication that hits the heart, that makes you realize that this writer is a person talking to other persons, that this writer is trying to search me in order to help me, and I must let him do it. There is a certain art, or shall I say a certain craft, or perhaps I should use both words, there is a certain art and craft in writing in such a way that it gets to the reader’s heart. I think sometimes God has enabled me to do that in things that I have written. It isn’t accident, I means it’s something that I’ve been trying to do, and shall go on trying to do. So I would say to my budding writer, now this is a craft you must learn.

Here’s the video. Enjoy.

Flotsam and jetsam (8/20)

August 20, 2012 in Flotsam and jetsam with 0 Comments

Good Reads

  • 30 Suggestions for Theological Students and Young Theologians: Remember that the fundamental work of theology is to understand the Bible, God’s Word, and apply it to the needs of people. Everything else—historical and linguistic expertise, exegetical acuteness and subtlety, knowledge of contemporary culture, and philosophical sophistication—must be subordinated to that fundamental goal. If it is not, you may be acclaimed as a historian, linguist, philosopher, or critic of culture, but you will not be a theologian.
  • The Anti-Ecclesial Rhetoric of Emerging Church Movements: One of the things I have grown weary of in the last decade or so, is anti-ecclesial rhetoric. What I mean by this is the pitting of the ‘church’ over against Jesus, or ‘the established church’ over against more ‘organic’ models of Christianity (e.g. house churches, and the like).
  • Foreshadowing: Why Literature Helps Us Understand the Scriptures: Foreshadowing is the way that writers hint about upcoming events or twists in a story.  For the careful reader, foreshadowing creates a particularly effective form of engagement, ultimately moving into the territory of dramatic irony, where the reader knows more than the characters in the story.
  • Americans Increasingly Super-Sizing Their Churches: The researchers also found a new trend of people reporting that they regularly attend not only a megachurch, but another church as well. It’s not yet clear why people double up on their churches, but it’s likely that they’re getting something different from each church

Continue Reading…

A Prayer for Sunday (Blaise Pascal)

August 19, 2012 in Prayers with 0 Comments

Blaise Pascal, the 17th century mathematician, philosopher, and theologian, died on this date in 1662. Probably best known for Pascal’s Wager regarding the existence of God, Pascal also left writings on quite a wide range of subjects. So, in his honor, this morning’s prayer comes from his pen.

O God, before whom I must render an exact account of all my actions at the end of my life and at the end of the world!

O God, who lettest the world and all the things of the world subsist but to train thy elect or to punish sinners!

O God, who allowest sinners hardened in the pleasurable and criminal use of the world!

O God, who makest our bodies to die, and who at the hour of death separatest our soul from all that it loved in the world!

O God, who wilt snatch me, at this last moment of my life, from all the things to which I am attached and on which I have set my heart!

O God, who wilt consume at the last day the heavens and the earth with all the creatures they contain, to show to all mankind that nothing subsists save thee, and that thus nothing is worthy of love save thee, since nothing is durable save thee!

O God, who wilt destroy all these vain idols and all these fatal objects of our passions! I praise thee, my God, and I will bless thee all the days of my life, that it has pleased thee to anticipate in my favor this terrible day, by destroying all things in respect to me through the weakness to which thou hast reduced me. I praise thee, my God, and I will bless thee all the days of my life, that it has pleased thee to reduce me to the incapacity of enjoying the sweets of health and the pleasures of the world, and that thou hast destroyed in some sort, for my advantage, the deceitful idols that thou wilt destroy effectively, for the confusion of the wicked, in the day of thy wrath. Grant, Lord, that I may judge myself, after the destruction that thou hast made with respect to me, that thou mayest not judge me thyself, after the entire destruction that thou wilt make of my life and of the world. For, Lord, as at the instant of my death I shall find myself separated from the world, stripped of all things, alone in thy presence, to answer to thy justice for all the emotions of my heart, grant that I may consider myself in this sickness as in a species of death, separated from the world, stripped of all the objects of my attachment, alone in thy presence, to implore of thy mercy the conversion of my heart; and that thus I may have extreme consolation in knowing that thou sendest me now a partial death in order to exercise thy mercy, before thou sendest me death effectively in order to exercise thy judgment. Grant then, O my God, that as thou hast anticipated my death, I may anticipate the rigor of thy sentence, and that I may examine myself before thy judgment, so that I may find mercy in thy presence.

Saturday Morning Fun….Quick and Simple Life Hacks

August 18, 2012 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

Flotsam and jetsam (8/17)

August 17, 2012 in Flotsam and jetsam with 0 Comments

via Imgur

Good Reads

  • Why You Shouldn’t Build a House on Your Next Mission Trip: The solution is more about creating opportunities for the local communities to own these projects. The jobs, the education, and the responsibility are all essential elements to helping developing nations break the cycle of poverty. This doesn’t mean that we need to stop showing up, but it does mean that we need to rethink what we do when we get there.
  • Are We All Braggarts Now? Boasting isn’t just a problem on the Internet. In a society of unrelenting competition—where reality-show contestants duke it out for the approval of aging celebrities and pastors have publicists—is it any wonder we market ourselves relentlessly? (This one goes well with yesterday’s infographic on The Psychology of Social Networking.)
  • Get Fired in the Interview: If there’s a deal-breaker between you and the church, it’s better for that to come out in the interview stage than after they’ve already hired you. Lay all your cards out on the table, and let the chips fall where they may.

Continue Reading…

The Psychology of Social Networking (infographic)

August 16, 2012 in Culture with 16 Comments

Neal Postman warned that we were Amusing Ourselves to Death. Maybe today the fear is that we publicize ourselves to death. That’s the concern represented on this infographic.

social networking

Just consider some of these statistics:

  • 9 out of 10 internet users are on a social network
  • Every minute we produce 694,980 status updates
  • 80% of social media posts are about the poster

But the best stat of all: “9 out of 10 Americans think people share too much.” Stop and think about that for a minute. 9 out of 10 of us are doing it. And we’re doing it a lot. But we think everyone else should be doing it less. That makes sense.

And why do we do it? To serve the greater good, advance public discourse, or develop larger networks of meaningful relationships? The infographic suggests a different reason: “Talking about ourselves activates the regions of the brain associated with the sense of satisfaction from food, money, or sex.”

Um.

Here’s the infographic. Check it out for yourself.

Continue Reading…

Flotsam and jetsam (8/15)

August 15, 2012 in Flotsam and jetsam with 0 Comments

best escalator ever

Good Reads

  • Will You Follow Jesus Even If Your Life Doesn’t Get Any Better?: C.S. Lewis halted a generation of would-be converts in their tracks when he famously said, “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
  • What’s Wrong with Patriarchy?: Complementarians “have been known to preface their remarks with the insistence that complementarianism is not to be confused with either patriarchalism or with mere traditionalism in men/women relationships. To some observers, however, all three expressions are roughly synonymous. So why do we insist on the difference?”
  • 5 Corrosives to Faith: For most believers, the greatest danger to faith is not some cataclysmic event that dramatically pushes them away from God. Rather, it’s the slow, gradual dulling of their hearts toward Him. They lose all ability to “see” God, to perceive His activity on earth.
  • Celebrate the City: What’s being questioned is this vision that where you live doesn’t matter; it’s what you do. There’s a new generation that’s not so sure that’s the best life. If you ask younger Americans where they want to be, they want to be in cities.

Continue Reading…

Sex Is Natural, Sex Is Good: The Image of God as “Relational”

August 14, 2012 in Biblical Studies, Theology with 6 Comments

It’s a boy! I could be wrong, but I imagine that’s the first the the doctor said to my parents when I was born. And I’m sure my parents didn’t find this at all unusual – especially since I am, in fact, a boy. But if you think about it for a moment, why is this always the first thing we think about when a new baby is born? Surely, my sexual genitalia were not my most notable features. The doctor could have made equally objective observations about the size of my head or the tone of my skin. Why does gender get so much attention?

image of god, gender, sexuality, male and femaleAnd the same is true for non-doctors. Tell someone you’re pregnant, and just count the seconds until they ask if it’s going to be a boy or a girl. Look at the baby shower presents and notice how the anticipated gender shaped everyone’s purchases. Dress your new baby in green and watch all the frustrated people try to figure out which gender category to put it in. Before we have even opened our eyes to see the strange new world that lies beyond the safety of our mothers’ wombs, our sexuality has already started to shape who we are and how we relate to the people around us.

Sex matters.

As Robert Jewett said,

Sexuality permeates one’s individual being to its very depth; it conditions every facet of one’s life as a person….Our self-knowledge is indissolubly bound up not simply with our human being but with our sexual being.

So, as we continue our discussion of the image of God, it should come as no surprise that some have considered the possibility that sexuality lies at the heart of the image of God just as the image of God lies at the heart of what it means to be human. But they mean more than just the fact that we were born with certain biological features. For these thinkers, sexuality is really about being in relationship. “Male” and “female” are essentially relational terms–i.e. you can’t really have one without the other. So, by creating humans as gendered creatures, God established us as those who identity is always constituted in relationship to someone else. And it is through these relationships that we we reflect God’s being in the world. The imago is relational.

Continue Reading…

Flotsam and jetsam (8/13)

August 13, 2012 in Flotsam and jetsam with 0 Comments

Good Reads

  • German Austerity’s Lutheran Core: We should read much deeper into Germany’s incomparably rich history, and in particular the indelible mark left by Martin Luther and the “mighty fortress” he built with his strain of Protestantism. Even today Germany, though religiously diverse and politically secular, defines itself and its mission through the writings and actions of the 16th century reformer.

Continue Reading…

Why You Should Sleep on the Job: The Science of Power Naps

August 11, 2012 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

Page 30 of 217« First...1020«2829303132»405060...Last »