Worship that Builds
Peter Kirk has a post on one of my favorite topics, order in worship, titled God is not a God of disorder but of peace. I want to call attention to a couple of points in his post. First, on the context of the passage from which his title was taken, he says: It seems…
Design, Direction, and Evolution
Over on The Panda’s Thumb a number of writers are reviewing the new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. I haven’t read the book. I should, but I probably won’t get to it for two or three months. In the meantime, you can always read the book itself and the Panda’s…
Goals in Bible Study
Very frequently in life, once you find out the right question to ask, the answer becomes obvious. You can waste a great deal of your time trying to find the answer to the wrong question. In Bible study, this is even more true. The question(s) you take into your study will frequently determine the answers…
Christian Carnival #137
Christian Carnival #137 has been posted at Brain Cramps for God. Though I’ve never submitted anything to this carnival I started following it a few weeks ago and it’s an excellent place to track what’s going on in the Christian blogosphere. Have fun!
More on Walmart
I’ve written a few posts that reference Walmart (here, here, and here) and the various accusations and calls for boycotts that have come out about it. This is one area where my free market bias comes into play. I think that low prices are a good thing, and I don’t believe that Walmart wages and…
Moderate Thinking
Since starting the Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator, I’ve gotten a few comments on what it means to be moderate. One very reasonable question is how I can combine the words “moderate” and “passionate,” as in “passionate moderate.” It seems like a contradiction in terms. And I do do intend the two words to convey a…
Reacting to a Gay Candidate
One of the many things that annoys me about sports broadcasters is their tendency to create a trend out of every slight turn of the game. My stepson is a professional pitcher, and if he throws a strike the announcer is sure to start talking about the strong performance and how if he just keeps…
Religious Freedom and the Schools
The Christian Alliance for Progress has been reporting a particularly egregious case of religious intolerance in the school system. There is now a petition drive, and you can get involved here. To be honest, I’m not terribly optimistic about the value of this type of petition campaign, but I would imagine it can’t hurt.
Jesus is God and the Bible Is Not
This is one that seems fairly obvious to me for anyone who partakes of orthodox Christian theology. If you believe that Jesus was God incarnate, God in the flesh, the Word become flesh, then Jesus must be the center of Christian faith and Christian theology. If you believe that Jesus was merely a prophet or…
Comic Sues Jews for Jesus
Today CNN.com reports (an AP story) that Jackie Mason is suing Jews for Jesus over the use of his image and name in one of their pamphlets. (See the Jews for Jesus press release in response here.) I haven’t seen the pamphlet itself, but this action seems over the line to me. The only thing…
Uninformed Opinions
Duane Smith has an excellent post over on Abnormal Interests called Evidence, Who Needs Any Evidence. I think this relates closely to my earlier post, A Poll Too Far, in which I discussed people providing opinions on topics concerning which they simply cannot be well-informed. The further question is why does the media buy into…
New Appearance and Co.mments
I’ve changed to a three column appearance which I adapted from the existing default WordPress theme. Please let me know if you experience any problems looking at various parts of the blog. In addition, I’ve added my Co.mments tracking list to the left sidebar. I’m doing this as a test. One of the things I…
Unright Christian Blogs
Threads from Henry’s Web is now being aggregated in the Unright Christian Blogs aggregator. I appreciate this service. To quote its purpose: Sometimes you come across the assumption that “Christian”, by definition, means “conservative”. This blog aggregator is an attempt to show that this assumption is far from true. This will not draw away from…
More on Gender Accuracy
Suzanne has returned and is carrying on the debate about the approiate use of language for gender in Bible translation. Her response comes in three parts. I’m going to comment briefly on each, and then make some further comments on this controversy. (You can follow Suzanne’s links to Adrian’s posts.) First, in Response to Adrian:…
Server Change (Mostly) Complete
If you’re seeing this, the server change is complete at least from your point of view. The nameservers may play their games for a little while, but that shouldn’t make too much difference once you’re here. I’ll get to some more post soon.
Blog Downtime
Yesterday I changed physical servers for this blog. My plan included posting a message before it went down and then posting another when it returned, but somehow that slipped my mind in all the fun of transferring databases and correcting for a slightly different version of PHP in some of my scripts. (WordPress transferred completely…
An Incarnational View of Translation
In several previous posts I’ve talked about the incaration and how it is central to Christianity. This post is not a continuation of that series, but rather a very brief detour to look at one of my favorite topics: Bible translation. I had been thinking about this post for a few days, but I was…
More Gender Accuracy Fun
Adrian Warnock has continued his series with Cows, Dogs, and Political Correctness parts 2 and 3. I’m quite certain that the folks over at Better Bibles will answer some of the major points, and indeed they already have in some comments. I want to simply point out that it appears to me that those supporting…
Free Christian Apologetics Books to Selected Bloggers
Chris Eyre has started a series of comments (What Price Apologetics? and Christian Apologetics) on the Consider Christianity Series by Elgin L. Hushbeck, Jr.. Chris is somewhat critical of the series, and I thought he would provide a good starting point for discussion of it. Note that I own the publishing comany (Energion Publications) and…
Christian Apologetics
I think that after my start, I should say that I enjoyed reading Elgins first two Consider Christianity
An Individual in Unity with Himself
An individual identifying himself as yes2truth left a comment with reference to my new moderate Christian blogroll. I don’t usually do this, but the comment is so ironic that I just had to call attention to it. I must warn you that the irony level is off the scale. yes2truth said: My full question is…
Comparing Scripture with Scripture
One element of what I call the central loop (programming background comes out!) is “compare.” To review, the central loop involves: Meditate, Question, Research, Compare (Repeat as needed) This involves a very common principle, that scripture is its own best interpreter. It’s also called “comparing scripture with scripture.” But this process of comparison can be…
Skepticism and Scholarship
Ben Witherington comments on an attitude of skepticism on his blog in an entry titled Justification by Doubt. Dr. Witherington makes a number of good points, but I think the topic at a minimum needs more comment. I’d like to suggest you read his entire post before you read mine. I’m going to quote his…
Welcome Chris Eyre
Chris will be posting a series of entries here dealing with the Consider Christianity series. One of the purposes of my publishing company, Energion Publications is to publish materials that start conversations. As a small publisher, I think it’s useful for me to help start the conversations. Chris has been reading the books, and he…