What Should I Be Learning Again?

Grade-Fixing Scandal Rocks Vacation Bible School

[via The Wittenburg Door Insider Newsletter]

Vacation Bible Schools Your Child Should Skip

[via Loud Time, HT: ThinkChristian.Net]

35:

The second number in the 30s that contain digits that have a difference of two.

Same with the prime factorization of 35.

I turned 35 the other day, also known as 12783 days. (Whew! I made it!)

Yes, I like numbers sometimes, including this song (by Kraftwerk):

Faithful by Fantasy?

The latest Harry Potter book and movie have given a higher media profile to the Christian fantasy fiction book market.

Parents are looking for a "safe" alternative to the secular fantasy worlds that often include gore and witchcraft, moral grey areas, depth of character development and thought-provoking themes. The Christian "speculative fiction" niche was developed to meet this need. {continued...}

[via The Wittenburg Blog]

God of the Universe vs. God of the World

Prince of Peace - God of War

[via Bene Diction Blogs On]

When all the arguments for a failed war collapse, make God your argument.

[via Ethics Daily, HT: Mainstream Baptist]

With The Rest Of It...

This is magic. Work for what you want.

[via Hope Springs Intermittent]

Being positive is only meaningful in the context of being realistic.

[via satire and theology]

The ending of a story is inextricably tied up with the rest of it. It flows from what precedes it, but it also shapes and reshapes everything that precedes it. The ending of a story can tell us what the story means -- it can give meaning to all that precedes it.

[via slacktivist]

What's Your Strategy?



[via indexed]



[via Allan Tan's Blog]

Bringing Prosperity?

Interviews: Brian McLaren and Stephen Mansfield (author of The Faith Of George W. Bush). "Interview": John Hagee

Also includes: James Dobson Teaches Luke 14:26, Inelegant Design Developments, Failed Christian Board Games, The Emergent's Creed, Jesus' Bumper Stickers, Neo-Fundamentalists at Your Door, and Bob Larson's Latest: HELP SAVE ANNA NICOLE SMITH'S BABY!. Much more, of course.

Loser of the Month: W.W. Norton & Company and author David Wallis, Last Word: The New Jerusalem

And That Is Not Insignificant...

[via You saved my life from a colorless one]

The fact is, from a global perspective, you don't matter either.
{read the rest}

After A Universal Rapture

Imagine Earth without people

[via New Scientist, HT: Jordon Cooper]

Live Hard and Die Free?

Movies of these kinds, disaster movies, serve as cinematic apocalyptic warnings-- shouting 'what if.....'. But the questions they raise, are how could we better prepare for wickedness let loose on humankind? If this movie has a subliminal message it would seem to be that we need to listen to one another, to not remain arrogant and ignorant, and to take good advice and wisdom where ever it can be found-- even on the lips of a scruffy computer geek called Warlock who lives with a doomsday mentality and believes in governmental conspiracy theories on a grand scale ('Big Brother is out to get you').

Perhaps in the end this movie should have been entitled 'Live Hard, and Die Free'. In other words, be prepared to fight and kill for what you really most value. That is the ethic McClane actually embodies. Nowhere does anyone in films like this ever ask the question-- if I use the same weapons, the same tactics, the same brutality, the same 'I am above the law' attitude, and the same violence to achieve my ends and aims (however noble in principle), haven't I just become just like what I despise??? What is the real difference between McClane and Gabriel-- who both get off on violence? While the movie clearly intimates there is a good guy and a bad guy in this film, their respective modus operandi are notably the same and so it becomes hard to tell the difference at least when it comes to means, if not ends.

It has been said in our utilitarian age that 'the ends justify the means'. I disagree. Some ends are not ever best served by killing. Indeed killing violates the ends of God-- including truth, right, love, compassion, self-sacrifice, peace and various other Gospel principles. But then our culture has long been built on venerating the warrior not the saint, King David, not King Jesus.

Is it an accident that in the trailers for this movie we have the slogan'' In McClane we Trust"? I think not. Because the truth is, we do trust the warrior more than we trust the saint, we do trust our own military might and intelligence far more than we trust God.

After all what do we celebrate on the 4th of July?-- the founding of a nation on the basis of revolutionary actions taken against the established legitimate authorities from Britain. And how in the world does that comport with what Rom. 13 or 1 Peter has to say about respecting and honoring the governing authorities, even when the references in those texts are to Emperors who did not run democracies? Well, it doesn't comport with it, and those are the cold hard Biblical facts.

Think on these things.

[via Ben Witherington, emphasis mine]

Calling Yourself Exceptional Isn't

Just a quick Fourth of July note. Hope you set off lots of fireworks, and eat lots of hamburgers. But here's also hoping that you do it with a clear head.

This civil holiday celebrates resistance to tyranny. And of course, some of the most ardent participants at such events are those who want to justify contemporary tyranny, the kind who want to keep everybody well occupied over celebrations of resistance to yesteryear's tyrants....

Calling yourself exceptional isn't. Recognizing that we are mortal men just like other mortal men, and that we are vulnerable to all the same temptations, is rare. Boasting in American achievements barely manages to clear that Ozymandian low bar -- it is the kind of ordinary hubris nailed in a poem that was written before we defeated the Nazis, landed on the moon, built the space shuttle, and started selling iPhones that could serve as navigation systems for the space shuttle -- and when we invite mighty observers to look on our works and despair, we are acting like pretty much everybody else in the history of the world.

[via BlOG and MABLOG, emphasis mine]

[via indexed]

Like...the Riders?

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

John Kenneth Galbraith

[via From My Heart, Out of My Mind]