Around the Horn – 3.04.10

As you may have observered, every Thursday in “Around the Horn” I list a collection of links to the week’s most interesting articles, well, to me anyway.  They range from religon, to the arts, to sports, or simply to something that caught my eye.  Some I liked because I agreed with the writer.  Some I liked because I disagreed and needed to work through why I disagreed.  All made me think.  I find critical thinking to be a fading quality and so I offer these articles to serve as thoughtful grit that just may produce an oyster of an idea.

Where is Katie Spotz?
22 year-old Katie Spotz (Mentor, Ohio native) is trying to become the youngest person to row a boat across the ocean.  Learn more about her cause and track her location at her site.

Years Beyond the Rabbit Hole, Alice Looks Back
From NPR: Charles Dodgson, a shy and awkward mathematics teacher in Oxford, England, spent a good deal of his free time with the Liddells: a family with three sisters who lived just across the street. At the age of 10, Alice, the youngest of the Liddell girls, requested that Professor Dodgson write down one of many the stories he told her. A few years later, he sent over “Alice’s Adventures Underground,” a manuscript dedicated to the real little girl he spent so much time with . . . . Dodgson’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published shortly thereafter, under the pen name Lewis Carroll. In the back of the book was a photograph Dodgson had taken of Alice Liddell.

Uncle Jay Explains the News
Not heard of Uncle Jay?  Watch this clip of his weekly explanation of all things news.

McKnight on McLaren
Writing about McLaren’s new book, A New Kind of Christianity, friend and professor Scot McKnight writes: Unfortunately, this book lacks the “generosity” of genuine orthodoxy and, frankly, I find little space in it for orthodoxy itself. Orthodoxy for too many today means little more than the absence of denying what’s in the creeds. But a robust orthodoxy means that orthodoxy itself is the lens through which we see theology. One thing about this book is clear: Orthodoxy is not central.

What’s an Anacoluthon?
From Monday with Mounce: Whatever the historical reason, the biblical writers are human and God in his sovereignty worked through them, and that included not always finishing their sentences.  Statements of the doctrine of Inspiration should not be based on how we think God should have done it, but on what we can see of how he did.

Gore, the Greens and a Pimped-out Panic
From Sp!ked: Former US vice-president and Nobel laureate Al Gore, writing yesterday in the New York Times, is just the latest high-profile climate alarmist to have a bash at damage limitation in the wake of a series of gaffes and revelations that have undermined the credibility of the official view of global warming. In particular, a claim made in 2007’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – that half of humanity will be starved of water in 25 years time – was more than just a typo. It was a huge blunder that reveals much about the scaremongering and belligerent tactics of the environmentalist movement.

Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe
From Mark Driscoll at TheResurgence: To answer any significant question about where we come from, why we are here, what is right and wrong, who God is, and where we are going when we die requires doctrine. Subsequently, everyone has doctrine. The only question is whether it is truthful, biblical, and helpful.

Explanation, Implication and Application?
What is the role of the preacher?  What makes good preaching?  One of the best, John MacArthur, offers this response to the critique that he’s short on application: It’s not for me to do that.  Application belongs to the Spirit of God. All I’m interested in is explanation and its implications. And the power comes in the implication and the Spirit of God takes the implications of what I’ve said tonight, all these things I’ve said, I don’t need to say all kinds of little scenarios to you and paint all kinds of little individual circumstances. All I need you to know is this is what the Word of God says and the implications are powerfully brought to bear with authority on your life and I exhort you to respond to those implications, it is the Spirit’s work to drive those implications into direct and personal application.