Good Read

• Homosexuality and the Quest to Be the New Normal: This is such an epidemic in evangelicalism; we aim to justify the church and sanctify the world. The world is not going to keep the Ten Commandments, walk in the Spirit, or glorify Christ…they can’t! They are unbelievers and they will act like it. This should not surprise us.

• Robust Christianity in a Post-Christendom World: The great project of our generation is to reclaim biblical Christianity as the Church.  (Please re-read the last sentence about three times before going on).  This will inevitably involve standing up and articulating with far more precision exactly what Christianity actually is.

• Is It Biblical To Ask Jesus into Your Heart?: A younger generation of pastors look out at the state of evangelicalism and are rightly concerned that many people with cultural Christianity in their background cling to assurance they are saved despite an overwhelming lack of evidence of genuine conversion. It’s no surprise that some pastors are blaming the methods and terms that became prevalent in the previous generation.

• A Divine Way to Resist Temptation (WSJ): Thinking of God helps people to assert self-control—even if they’re atheists.

Continue Reading…

Good Read

• Seven Things in the Church That Will Not Change: I can tell you seven things in the church that will not change. In the fast pace of change in local congregations, these seven constants are good reminders of what really matters.

• A Critical Mind vs. a Critical Spirit:I wonder at what point our appreciation for insightful analysis turns into a celebration of critique that leads to an unhealthy elevation of the critic.

• Should Cultural Expectations Shape Christian Views of Masculinity?: The point is that we have to live out our gender roles in the culture that we find ourselves in. The apostle Paul probably never wore trousers. But that doesn’t mean that he was less masculine for wearing something that would probably have looked more like a dress to us. His own culture informed the way he obeyed God, even though the creation norm remained an ever-fixed mark. He had an eye to his culture’s impressions about masculinity and femininity. I don’t think we can do any different.

• Seven Key Ideas from C.S. Lewis: I have heard it said that many well-known thinkers have only two or three key ideas that they develop from various angles throughout their lives. It might be asked: What are C.S. Lewis’s key ideas? I have chosen seven to summarize in this essay.

Continue Reading…

Good Reads

• Success That Exceeds Sanctification: And so I ask the Lord not to give me success that exceeds my sanctification. And then I ask that he will make me increasingly holy, that he will grow my Christian character, sanctify me in greater measure, that I may have more success and steward it wisely and for his glory.

• Evolution Is a Lousy Story: While admitting that human existence is bursting with plot and story, the grand scheme of scientific naturalism is plotless, or perhaps better the plot is anchored in futility. We exist as sentient beings constrained by the laws of physics and in some 7 or 8 billion years the earth will die as the sun dies.  More than this, the expansion of the universe will eventually reach a point where life anywhere will be completely impossible. Not only will each individual die along the way, but life itself will simply vanish – no more sentient beings to wonder about the plot.

• More Ways Social Issues Will Shape 2012 Election (Besides Same-Sex Marriage): here are five ways faith-based politics could shape this presidential contest, drawn up with help from religion reporter friends who gathered this week to talk about God (and godlessness) and politics.

• Desmund Tutu: ‘We need to be able to listen’: Because we live in a pluralistic, global world we need to be able to listen to other viewpoints, place ourselves in the shoes of others, and respond fairly, magnanimously and pragmatically.

Continue Reading…

Remarkably accurate graph of life's stresses over time

Good Reads

• Why Bible Study Doesn’t Transform Us: Much of what passes for Bible study in Christian bookstores and church resource libraries just isn’t: while it may educate us on a doctrine or a topic, it does little to further our Bible literacy. And left to our own devices, we pursue a host of unsavory (and un-transformative) self-constructed approaches to “spending time in the Word.” Here are several that I encounter on a regular basis.

• Do as I Do, Not as I Say: It’s election season, and once again Democrats are flummoxed by evangelical voters. They think that “those people” vote against their own self-interest. They cannot believe that same-sex marriage matters so much to so many people. They don’t get why Obamacare is controversial. To them, evangelicals don’t make sense.

• Feedback Is Scary – But You Need It: The worst person to be leading an organization is a person who is insecure. Yes, we’re all insecure to differing degrees, but there’s a type of leader who is deeply insecure and avoids all feedback in order to not be hurt, threatened, our found out. That is sin. That is pride. And that is incredibly dangerous for the leader and for the people being led.

• New Form of Christian Civic Engagement: Christian Millennials are now coming of age and recognizing the flawed strategies and broken agendas embraced by their forebears. They’ve seen how the religious right (and the religious left, for that matter) has used the Bible as a tool to gain political power and reduced the Christian community to little more than a voting bloc — and they are forging a different path.

Continue Reading…

The Cycle of Life

Good Reads

• Muscular Christianity: In the drive to make churches more guy-friendly, we risk confusing cultural (especially American) customs with biblical discipleship. One noted pastor has said that God gave Christianity a “masculine feel.” Another contrasted “latte-sipping Cabriolet drivers” with “real men.” Jesus and his buddies were “dudes: heterosexual, win-a-fight, punch-you-in-the-nose dudes.” Real Christian men like Jesus and Paul “are aggressive, assertive, and nonverbal.” Seriously?

• Fiction and Literature: I’ve found that most people who tell me that fiction is a waste of time are folks who seem to hold to a kind of sola cerebra vision of the Christian life that just doesn’t square with the Bible. The Bible doesn’t simply address man as a cognitive process but as a complex image-bearer who recognizes truth not only through categorizing syllogisms but through imagination, beauty, wonder, awe.

• It’s a Brain Puzzle: When we look at prayer through the lens of neuroscience, we can make an interesting observation: Talking to God is not really different from talking to one’s friends and neighbors.

• Were the Church Fathers Universalists? I’ve read more than once the claim that most early Christians were universalists. And this is occasionally supported by the further opinion that several early (first six centuries) theological schools were universalist in their teaching. This seems implausible to me. However, I’m certainly not someone who is a student of the history of the early church. So what am I to do? I’m to look for evidence.

Continue Reading…

Good Reads

• Is Megachurch the New Liberalism?: Once again, the megachurches are on the leading edge. We must pray that they will lead into faithfulness, and not into a new liberalism.

• Do Denominations Still Matter?: Denominations are, at their core, structures that help support and enable a diversity of Christians. They are not Christianity; they merely make space for different varieties of faith to flourish. If we can understand denominational labels as descriptors rather than terms of value—who is right and who is wrong—perhaps we can see beyond the walls that separate us and begin to see the beautiful diversity there is among Christians. This may not be easy, but here are some reasons it’s worth trying.

• The Gospel and Immigration: If you want to disrupt a beautifully harmonious dinner party, all you have to do is bring up the radioactive issue of immigration. There might not be a more heated political topic in contemporary American life.

• My Son Went to Heaven and All I Got Was a No. 1 Best Seller: Whichever side of this divide you sit on, you’re unlikely to seek rapprochement with the other. In our à la carte media world, most of us seek only to reinforce what we already think, and it’s zealots who drive the discourse.

Continue Reading…

Good Reads

• Why Fiction Is Good for You (Boston.com): Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to make us rubbery and easy to shape.

• Pastors: Keep Your ‘Gray” Areas Off the Stage: when you hold up “gray” areas as if they’re black-and-white, right-or-wrong issues, you needlessly alienate people.

• The Digital Gender Divide: Girls may not run the world, but they dominate on the web.

• Three Types of Christian Scholarship: While most of us will see ourselves as more of one than the others…, we need to be careful. Of course we need to recognize the dangers in our own leanings and listen to the critiques of the others, but more than that, we need to be continually committed to finding balance

Continue Reading…

via Imgur

Good Reads

• The Call and Agenda for Pastor-Theologians: The church wants education and needs theological leaders. In this day when many pastors lead non-theologically, and academics work in a way that is lost on the people of God, we need pastor-theologians who can minister the Word in ways that edify the saints and offer a winsome public witness to the goodness, truth, and beauty of the Lord and his will for us.

• The Failure of Christianity Is a Myth: The Enlightenment had to tell that story because it had to tell history with itself as the goal and the center, while Christianity had an entirely different eschatology — so the Enlightenment pushed religion into the private world and told it stay put.

• Make That Digital Elephant Disappear: There is an illusion—an act far more enchanting than having an elephant disappear before your eyes—that has spread far and wide across the world wide web. It’s an illusion that is captivating millions. The line of thinking goes something like this: if it’s online then it’s easy. If it’s digital then it’s inexpensive. If it’s composed of bits and bytes then it’s quick.

• What’s Wrong with Inerrancy?: It is not hard to see why non-evangelicals might object to the idea of an inerrant Bible. But why would someone who has already bothered to affirm that the Bible is true, and God-breathed, struggle with the idea that it does not contain mistakes? Come to think of it, what does it even mean to say that something contains mistakes but is nonetheless true?

Continue Reading…

Just Hangin' Out (via everywhere)

Good Reads

• Was John the First Baptist? Was John’s baptism the first baptism the world knew? Commentators are not quite agreed on the history of Christian baptism. Obviously Christians baptize, and obviously Jews don’t. But was John the Baptist the first to actually baptize? Or were the Jews doing baptisms in the inter-testamental period?

• Questions about Contextualization: Of course, contextualization is not merely a communications issue.  Proponents really offer contextualization as a necessary missiological strategy.  The intent is to find ways to faithfully communicate the gospel message to other cultures (though not all missiologists and practitioners hold to this principle or are successful at its application).  In the domestic context, doing missions where we live, I have a few questions and thoughts I’m trying to flesh out.

• Coaching Young Leaders Effectively: Seven Observations: Young, developing leaders are looking for relationship, and they will receive coaching and mentoring from those with whom they have relationship.

• America’s “Angriest” Theologian Faces Lynching Tree: When he was boy growing up in rural Arkansas, James Cone would often stand at his window at night, looking for a sign that his father was still alive. Cone had reason to worry. He lived in a small, segregated town in the age of Jim Crow. And his father, Charlie Cone, was a marked man.

Continue Reading…

Dublin Zoo

Good Reads

• Really Practical Theology: Pastors, teachers, parents, and employers are daily deluged with people’s problems. Oftentimes we resort to simplistic and formulaic practical counsel that has short-term benefits at best. Other times we are tempted to ignore the problems, to deny them, to run from them, or sometimes just to give up….Stop and study the attributes of God.

• Returning to the Sermon on the Mount (NYT): Read alone, the Sermon on the Mount will either confuse us or merely reinforce the moral prejudices we bring to it.  To profit from its wisdom we need to understand it through traditions of thought and practice within or informed by Christianity.  This does not require membership in any particular church, but it does require immersion in the culture and history of the Christian world.   In this sense, to forget the church is to forget Jesus.

• Learning to Delight in Scripture: When you read Bible verses in which the author talks about loving or delighting in Scripture itself, how do you usually respond? For me personally, I often feel guilty or anxious about the lack of these verbs in my life. I have even doubted my salvation on occasion when forced to admit that I do not love or delight in God’s word as much as I “should.”

• The Upside of Ignorance: The joy of not knowing, of learning by learning that you were wrong, is one of the chief joys—and one of the great benefits—of science, Stuart Firestein, author of Ignorance, explains in an interview with Casey Schwartz.

Continue Reading…