Good Reads

• Fathers, Stop Stealing from Your Children: There’s a crime wave going on in your neighborhood—possibly even in your own home. It’s a crime wave that won’t make it to the nightly news, but not because it isn’t serious, for it scars generations and teaches them to commit the same crime.

• Religious Groups Vie for Internet Domain Names: Religious groups have long vied for prime parcels of land, planting churches on town squares and monasteries amid remote mountains. But now they’re targeting real estate in a less tangible sphere: cyberspace.

• How Cereal Transformed American Culture: More than a century ago, Christian fundamentalists invented cereal to promote a healthy lifestyle free of sin. Little did they know, their creation would eventually be used to promote everything from radio and cartoons to Mr. T and tooth decay.

• Grief and the Gospel: we often live as though our theology has nothing to say about what to do with this groaning (which we might call grief). This is strange given the breadth of human experience and emotion portrayed in the pages of scripture. Sackcloth and ashes and weeping and tearing one’s garments were among the many ways that humans historically expressed grief. Groaning took on many forms. In western culture, death seems to be the only valid reason for grieving, and pop psychologists have led the way in helping people navigate those difficult waters.

Continue Reading…

More proof that cats are evil

Good Reads

• The Final Battles of Pope Benedict XVI: The mood at the Vatican is apocalyptic. Pope Benedict XVI seems tired, and both unable and unwilling to seize the reins amid fierce infighting and scandal. While Vatican insiders jockey for power and speculate on his successor, Joseph Ratzinger has withdrawn to focus on his still-ambiguous legacy.

• As Baptists Prepare to Meet, Calvinism Debate Shifts to Heresy Accusation: Hundreds, including seminary presidents, have signed a statement on salvation criticized by both Reformed and Arminian theologians.

• James K.A. Smith: Tradition for Innovation: In short, we cannot hope to restore the world if we are constantly reinventing the church; the hard work of innovation requires grounding in a tradition.

• How to Get Senior Leaders to Change: Most executives don’t see themselves as “part of the problem.” Therefore, deep down, they do not believe that it is they who need to change, even though in principle they agree that leaders must model the desired changes.

Continue Reading…

Good Reads

• Why Smart People Are Stupid: Although we assume that intelligence is a buffer against bias—that’s why those with higher S.A.T. scores think they are less prone to these universal thinking mistakes—it can actually be a subtle curse.

• How Your View of God Shapes Your View of the Economy: In fact, for many white evangelicals, religious and economic spheres are conceptualized as two sides of the same coin. They describe their worldview as one in which the spiritual and the material are mutually dependent and interactive. And the popularity of this worldview cuts across social class.

• Tuning the Preacher’s Ear: How Good Reading Helps Good Preaching:  Maybe an even more basic reason for the preacher to read fine writers (or listen to fine speakers) is that they will tune the preacher’s ear for language, which is his first tool. From the masters of language the preacher can learn conciseness, rhythm, euphony, and rhetorical devices such as consonance. He can learn to change up his sentence length and sentence functions.

• How Can You Help Relieve Theological Famine Around the World?:And yet, while we in the West often walk out of conferences with huge stacks of free and inexpensive books, much of the rest of the world suffers from a theological famine. In many regions, particularly in the Global South, the cultural, language, economic, and infrastructure barriers mount up. This leaves much of the church vulnerable to false teaching and weakness. God is calling us to address this need.

Continue Reading…

Good Reads

• Becoming Well-Spoken: How to Minimize Your Uh’s and Um’s: Using uh and um too often takes away from the forcefulness and eloquence of your remarks. So while it’s not as big of a deal when used in conversations with friends, when meeting people for the first time and during job interviews, business presentations, formal speeches, and the like, you want to minimize your use of fillers as much as possible. If curbing your ummm-ing is something you struggle with, read on to learn why we all “um” and “uh” and what we can do to curb this tendency.

• Who’s In Charge Here? The Illusions of Church Infallibility: The following theses summarize some of the issues that people should wrestle with before embracing a Roman Catholic perspective on authority. (This one is pretty technical. But it’s well worth reading.)

• I’m a Mormon, Not a Christian: This is the so-called Mormon Moment: a strange convergence of developments offering Mormons hope that the Christian nation that persecuted, banished or killed them in the 19th century will finally love them as fellow Christians. I want to be on record about this. I’m about as genuine a Mormon as you’ll find — a templegoer with a Utah pedigree and an administrative position in a congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am also emphatically not a Christian.

• Hopeless without the Spirit: The early church was alive and active because of the Holy Spirit. There is no verse—not even one—that relegates the importance and vitality of the Spirit only to the New Testament church. That’s the key: We have to believe the Holy Spirit is present for us today.

Continue Reading…