Treading Grain

The Presidential Wheel Turns
All this felt like an antidote to Obama—to the imperious I, to the inability to execute, to the endless interviews and the imperturbable drone, to the sense that he is trying to teach us, like an Ivy League instructor taken aback by the backwardness of his students. And there’s the unconscious superiority. One thing Mr. Bush didn’t think he was was superior. He thought he was luckily born, quick but not deep, and he famously trusted his gut but also his heart. He always seemed moved and grateful to be in the White House. Someone who met with Mr. Obama during his first year in office, an old hand who’d worked with many presidents, came away worried and confounded. Mr. Obama, he said, was the only one who didn’t seem awed by his surroundings, or by the presidency itself.

All In Good Fun
At an annual art school parade, a female student dressed up as the pope, and was naked from the waist down while she passed out condoms. Even more, witnesses say the woman had shaved her pubic hair in the shape of a cross.  “It’s all in good fun and it’s not meant to harm anyone,” Ivy Kristov told KDKA’s Andy Sheehan.

Playing Politics With The Sacraments?
The Eucharist is a gift, it is not an entitlement. There’s no right to the Eucharist. It has always been the food of the faithful, and there has never been an open invitation. In the ancient church the unbaptized were not even allowed to witness it. To hear of people demanding the sacrament violates the very spirit of it. It’s something received with thanksgiving, not seized like a union benefit.

’42′ And Us 
When the packed crowd in that Minneapolis theatre burst into applause at the end of the movie a few weeks ago, I didn’t read it as an endorsement of Methodist theology or piety.  Rather, it seemed to me welcome evidence that, amidst vast cultural and political confusions, Americans still believe in moral truths, moral absolutes, and moral courage—and yearn for opportunities to celebrate them. There’s an important lesson in that for the country’s religious and political leaders.

George Jones: Troubadour of the Christ-Haunted Bible Belt
I’m not sure whether Jones sought repentance with tears, but he certainly sang of the longing for it with a quavering voice. In that sense, Jones communicated exactly what Flannery O’Connor wrote of when she spoke of a “Christ-haunted South,” a region with a ubiquitous gospel, but without the ubiquity of gospel power.

The Socially Acceptable Sin
Most Christians today like to say that all sins are “equal” in the eyes of God, that there is no scale of less or worse sins, that a white lie or a homicide alike would have been enough to require Christ to die on the cross. We say this in theory, but in practice, we know that a white lie won’t get you kicked off the church leadership team. And a homicide likely will.

Is The News Making Us Dumb?
If you’ve been following the news the past few days you may believe that an Elvis impersonator from Mississippi is being held for mailing ricin-laced letters to President Obama, that more than 60 people died in a fertilizer plant explosion in Texas, and that two Eastern Orthodox bishops were kidnapped by terrorists and released the same day. But while each of those items contains a grain of truth, they are mostly false.

Reading The Tea Leaves: Married Priests and Women Deacons?
This essay will attempt to read the tea leaves for the ministry of Francis, Bishop of Rome, by pointing out some of those things which Francis cannot change; some of those things that probably will change; and finally some of those things that can change.

Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes
The main thesis of Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes is that those living in Western societies are frequently blind to the cultural nuances those living in other cultures take for granted. As a result, Westerners may often miss the point of a biblical passage, whether narrative or didactic.

I’m Just Not Wired That Way
I spend a lot of time alone. And I like it. Working on my laptop, reading a book, or just listening to the birds outside my window, I cherish any time I get to myself. As an introvert, I’m wired that way. I enjoy (some) people, but I need my time alone.

There Really Is A Reason – 12 Benefits of Affliction
In God’s plan, afflictions have great benefit to us, as painful as they are at times.  If we keep these benefits in mind when we suffer, they can help us endure joyfully.

The 100 Most Influential People In The World

What Is With All this Gospel Talk?
“Almost everyone uses the word “gospel” in both a religious and a secular way. In the religious world it is used often without any real consensus as to what is meant by the term. Even when the word “gospel” is proposed as a biblically based term, there are some significant differences among, say, a Christadelphian, an evangelical, and a liberal view of gospel.

An Untranslatable Word
From Mounce: Every once in a while we find a Greek word or expression that simply cannot come into English. We want to translate every word, but in some cases, no matter what you choose, you create the wrong impression of what was being said.“Woman” is one of those words.

Why O’Malley?
It’s a question a few people are asking, after Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley became the lone U.S. prelate appointed to Pope Francis’ new advisory panel.

Lessons from France on Defending Marriage
Unlikely characters, including gay men, are leading the French people in protest against redefining marriage. A repeating refrain is “the rights of children trump the right to children.” Americans should follow their example of mobilizing across party lines.

Gospel-Centered Manhood: Three Correctives
As a man entering my late 20s, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to grow in masculinity in a God-honoring way. Men my age hear a Babel of voices telling us what manhood looks like. I came to Christ in a college ministry where most of the leaders were extroverted, athletic, and aggressive. They they didn’t uphold these things as parts of true manhood, but I feared on some level that I wasn’t going to become much of a man (being introverted, bookish, and more laid-back).

The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens
From Scientific American: evidence from laboratory experiments, polls and consumer reports indicates that modern screens and e-readers fail to adequately recreate certain tactile experiences of reading on paper that many people miss and, more importantly, prevent people from navigating long texts in an intuitive and satisfying way. In turn, such navigational difficulties may subtly inhibit reading comprehension. Compared with paper, screens may also drain more of our mental resources while we are reading and make it a little harder to remember what we read when we are done. A parallel line of research focuses on people’s attitudes toward different kinds of media. Whether they realize it or not, many people approach computers and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than the one they bring to paper.

Love and the Inhumanity of Same-Sex Marriage
Whether or not same sex marriage is a political fait accompli, I don’t know. What concerns me in the present hour is the temptation among Christians to go with the flow. The assumption is that the nation no longer shares our morality, and that we must not impose our views on others and blur the line between church and state. Besides, we don’t want to let any political cantankerousness get in the way of sharing the gospel, right? So we might as well throw in our lot. So the thinking goes.

Death As Orgasm
From Bad Catholic: If we were one with our beloved we’d no more divorce her than kill ourselves. If we were one with our friends, to hate them would be suicide. If we loved our children as ourselves, then our abuse would only ever be a self-maiming — we’d avoid it like we avoid running cheese-graters across our foreheads.

Facebook Friends and Sin
If you are a Christian and you are on Facebook, eventually you will ask yourself this question: “how am I supposed to respond to my so-called friends who promote sin on their wall?”

Five Gay Marriage Myths
An excellent article drawing out implications for culture and society.

Bracketing Morality — The Marginalization of Moral Argument in the Same-Sex Marriage Debate
From Albert Mohler: What makes this moral revolution so vast in consequences and importance is this: the moral dimension has virtually disappeared from the cultural conversation. This is true, we must note, even among the defenders of heterosexual marriage.

Goodbye, Dear Edith
This thoughtful obituary was written by Udo Middleman for his mother-in-law, Edith Schaeffer, who died on March 30.

9 Things You Should Know About Edith Schaeffer
Edith Schaeffer, co-founder of L’Abri Fellowship and widow of theologian-philosopher Francis Schaeffer, died this past Friday at age 98. Here are 9 things you should know about Mrs. Schaeffer:

Man is Fallen and Will Destroy the Earth
This article comes from a universe far outside of the Christian universe, and this is exactly what caught my attention. The author, an environmentalist, realizes that secular humanism, which assumes the goodness of man, is contradicted by humanity’s treatment of the environment.

Gilead: A Novel View of Pastoral Ministry
I can’t remember who recommended Gilead to me, but I fell in love with the book right away. It was partly the writing, of course, because Marilynne Robinson is among the world’s most gifted authors. Gilead ”is so serenely beautiful,” wrote one reviewer, “and written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched by grace just to read it.”

Suburbianity
Suburbianity is the general conviction among professing evangelicals that the primary aim of Christ’s death was to provide us with a fulfilled life. We came to this perspective by persistently reading the mindset and aspirations of the suburbs into the biblical story. It relentlessly seeps into our Christianity. It comes through in nearly all forms of Christian media, including songs, books, movies, and sermons. God has big plans for you. You are important. You should not be discontented, There’s more out there for you. This is the suburban gospel. By it we’ve saved countless sinners from a poor self-image but not much else.

Why Christians Should Read Fiction
When I read Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Illych, I gain an imaginative sympathy with something I might avoid in the busyness of life: what it’s actually like to die. When I read Wendell Berry’s stories of Henry County, Kentucky, I can gain insight on what it would be like to face losing a family farm in the Great Depression. This fiction gives a richer, bigger vision of human life.

Children Should Be Allowed to Be Bored
Dr Teresa Belton told the BBC cultural expectations that children should be constantly active could hamper the development of their imagination.  She quizzed author Meera Syal and artist Grayson Perry about how boredom had aided their creativity as children.  Syal said boredom made her write, while Perry said it was a “creative state”.

His Beloved Son
I lay on that hospital bed with my precious little guy, his face covered in by-now-dried blood, his chubby hand tightly gripping my own, and even as my heart stayed with the son in my arms, my eyes filled and emptied as I thought of Another. I wouldn’t do it. Not a chance that I would do that, what He did. I wouldn’t sacrifice my little Joshua for anyone, not even someone I loved deeply.

The Rise of Liberal Religion
Liberal Protestants may have ultimately lost the battle for membership, but they won the larger cultural struggle. A trenchant quote from the sociologist Christian Smith: “Liberal Protestantism’s organizational decline has been accompanied by and is in part arguably the consequence of the fact that liberal Protestantism has won a decisive, larger cultural victory.”

Read the Fine Print
As the Supreme Court considers the merits of adopting or banning same-sex marriage, many politicians are voicing their support for changing the law.  But just as smart shoppers know to look beyond an advertisement to read the fine print, Americans should look beyond the surface issues to the surprising details no one is discussing.

The New Cultural Acceptance
So the new thing today is to publicly support same-sex marriage. Hillary Clinton just did; Rob Bell just did. I’m sorry to hear this for the sake of Bell’s soul. I hope that he repents and turns to the truth. With that said and meant, this shift is altogether unsurprising. The new mark of being culturally acceptable is affirming homosexuality as virtuous (not merely okay, but virtuous, even exemplary). This is the litmus test.

Vatican Files No. 18
The election of Cardinal Bergoglio to the papacy responds to three basic concerns that the conclave felt it necessary to address. These concerns helped to sketch the profile of the new Pope and Cardinal Bergoglio fitted it.

Taking God Seriously
Taking God Seriously: Vital Things We Need to Know is primarily intended for those people: sincere, everyday Christians who don’t know why they believe what they believe or how that belief, generally speaking, translates into God-honoring behavior.

We Need No Other Word: God Is Still Speaking
As I read this book I somehow knew it was God speaking, for it was unlike anything I’d ever handled. Here I found Jesus Christ—crucified, risen, reigning—and in him found life and light, hope, and joy. I was being transformed through this book, and I soon found power to walk away from old consuming habits—glad to be rid of them.

Reprise: The ‘Gospel’ According to Rome
With a new pope elected, the eyes of the world are on the Roman Catholic Church. No doubt many evangelicals find themselves confused as to the critical differences between the biblical gospel and the gospel according to Rome. Hence today’s post . . . .