If your computer crashes today, and you pick up your phone to call tech support, the chances are good you’ll hear an Indian voice on the other end. The computer was likely designed by a team of engineers in America, perhaps with collaboration in Europe, Japan, or Korea. The majority of its parts were probably manufactured in factories in China, Taiwan. It may have been assembled anywhere from Brazil to Biloxi.
The world is flat. Read on, intrepid explorer →
I’m currently reading The Book of the Dun Cow, by Walter Wangerin Jr. This is an amazing book so far.
Incidentally, I just finished Friedman’s The World Is Flat, and I’m hoping to have a review up by later in the week.
I cannot help but think that if one cannot discern your view of the Godhead from your preaching, perhaps you are not preaching enough about God.
—Trevin Wax, “Grace and Truth Beyond the Elephant Room”, Kingdom People
Jaimie Dawn writes well (as always) – and piercingly, too.
If you know me, you know how works-oriented I am, constantly thinking that I need to meet my Christian quota in order to earn or maintain God’s love. You’d think I would want someone to debunk that myth for me. Many loved ones and mentors have tried. I always thought I wasn’t getting over my works-guilt-complex because of some personal inability to do so, but on reading the aforementioned quote, I suddenly realized that I didn’t want to get over the complex. I didn’t want to pray for God to provide my needs and let him answer. I didn’t want to glorify God, because I want to do it myself.
Skye Jethani argues that part of the problem the church is having with retaining young adults is that there is precious little teaching on vocation – despite our rich Reformation heritage of teaching on precisely that topic.
For the last few decades the church has readily accepted the centrality of marriage and family. In fact, most churches have organized their entire philosophy of ministry around the nuclear family with age-segmented learning, marriage enrichment courses and retreats, and biblical instruction geared toward healthy household relationships. The evangelical church has learned to indeed “focus on the family.” And while there are problems with the way this is sometimes executed, which I will not address in this post, for the most part it makes sense if you are married with children.
And that is the problem.
ChristianMingle.com’s advertising… ugh. This, along with a smiling couple, was the entirety of the content of one of their ads:
Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. —Psalm 37:4.
There are so many things wrong with this. So many that I don’t even have words for it, at least at the moment. (That, and I need to get out the door if I’m going to finish my 13-mile run before dinner.) But there will be words on this one. Oh, yes.
Sometimes, the questions we ask indicate as much about us as our response to the answers we receive. For example, I was discussing a controversial theological point with someone recently, and at one point in the conversation, she quite innocuously asked a question starting, “But do you feel that…”
The phrasing caught my attention. It is common enough, at least in the circles I run in. People often speak of what they feel to be true in a given area. In one sense, the phrase is harmless enough: people really mean, “This is what I believe.” In another sense, though, it should give us pause Read on, intrepid explorer →