Tag: Links

A good start for blogging on my return after a few days out is to link to a few of the entries from the Christian Carnival CXLI that caught my attention. As always, I’d love to read and comment on more of these entries, but I don’t have time to essentially redo the carnival. Go check it out yourself.

Here are some entries that particularly caught my attention:

• Revelation Introduction
  Michele of Life Under the Sun began a series on the book of Revelation. Based on the thoroughness of her introduction (I have a tendency to tell people to grab a commentary for this sort of thing) I suspect we will get some interesting and substantial material as she works her way through. I’m planning to follow this. I’ve been thinking in terms of doing some blogging on prophecy, so there may be a connection.
• The First Fantasy of the Bible
  Here Adam Graham talks about the Parable of the Trees (Judges 9) and makes some interesting and helpful comments on the value of this genre of literature. This entry is a definite highlight in my blog reading.
• Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Not Political Parties
  OK, this is the third time in a row I’ve highlighted a post from Laura on Pursing Holiness, but how could I possibly resist this excellent post? I think some of my views would make her wish to “crush [my] argument into oblivion” and vice versa. But it is a good idea to remember that “brother and sister” thing that goes with the “love” thing!
• Collins – A Believer Looks at the Human Genome – Epilogue
  This is the conclusion of a series, and it’s worthwhile reading the whole thing. I would simply comment here that I think the effort to find evolution in the Bible is not a constructive one, though the effort at seeing how it might be possible is really well done. I think that the Bible comments on God’s place in creation and the fact of creation. Evolution is derived from the physical evidence and comments on the “how.” Nonetheless, this is good reading and will challenge your thinking no matter what position you start from.
• Faith and Conversion
  This little article discusses the problem of attempting conversion by force. It is good to remember that Christians have tried to do this in the past. Some Muslims would like to do it in the present, and in neither case was it right. This post addresses this issue from the Chrsitian perspective.

As you can see if you look back through my posts, these “links” entries are pretty irregular, and that will probably continue. Some things I link immediately, but to avoid many short posts I post collections like this one.

Let me start with things I’ve collected, in categories.

Bible Translations

There was an excellent, dispassionate review of the TNIV on This Lamp, titled Today’s New International Version (Top Ten Bible Versions #2). If you are still considering the TNIV, this is a good review to read.

Suzanne McCarthy, producer of many excellent posts over at Better Bibles Blog, has a new entry titled Apology to my pastor’s wife, which deals with some of the sheer ignorance that can characterize the controversy about gender language in Bible translation. (“Sheer ignorance” is my term, not hers; she’s more polite than that.) This is the only post I’m going to link from Better Bibles, but just note that I subscribe to their RSS feed, and I read pretty much everything over there. If you’re interested in Bible translations, I think it’s a “must read” site.

Faith and Theology

I would like to commend a series of posts on Rad’s Methodist Blog on his Faith Journey. I don’t see this series as earth shattering, but I think there is a great value in personal testimony, and I appreciate his commentary on the various phases of his spiritual life.

Relieved and Hopeful from connexions started an interesting discussion on the killing of al Zarqawi. The discussion definitely looks like fun.

After Shane Raynor posted on worship, and I posted about his post, considerable discussion followed. I’d like to add Youth When the Church was Young (hat tip Locusts and Honey post on the topic), which talks about youth taking on real Christianity. I would like to challenge the concept that worship must be either entertaining or filled with content. I think worship can be enjoyable, educational, and really be about God, all at the same time. Perhaps I’ll have to write some more on this topic. In the meantime, reading about youth in the early church may challenge some preconceptions!

Creation and Evolution

Out of many excellent posts, I just want to highlight Laudan, demarcation and the vacuity of Intelligent design, which discusses the boundaries between science and not-science, but more importantly the boundaries between good science and bad.

My own Blogging

Other than the entry on worship that I noted above, I also continued blogging through the book of Hebrews on the Participatory Bible Study blog, with entries on Hebrews 11, and Hebrews 1:5-14.

On the <a href="http://hneufeld.com/jevlir"Jevlir Caravansary, I wrote short notes on three science fiction/fantasy books.

I really need to keep better track of all the things I read so I can point out the best, but this gives you some idea.

I often run across things I’d like to mention on this blog just to call folks’ attention to them, but I hate numerous, short blog entries in which my only contribution is to say, “Hey! Look at this!”

So I think that every so often I’ll provide a series of links to things that I find exceptionally interesting for some reason or another. I’ll try to keep these short and group them by topic so you can find anything you might be interested in quickly. I’m not sure how regularly I’ll do this, but we’ll see. This will also give me an opportunity to link to some of my own material on the more specialized blogs I contribute to without cluttering this one up with excessive numbers of posts.

Theology

Since I so regularly find things to dislike about William Dembski and his blog (Uncommon Descent), I should mention that I really enjoyed his recent article on theodicy, Christian Theodicy in the Light of Genesis and Modern Science. I disagree with him quite profoundly, but I found the article well-written. I hope to have time to write a response sometime soon. (I started with the first version, and my link is to a revision, but you might as well go to the most recent version.)

Methodism

Head on over to Locusts and Honey and get into the discussion on Changes to the UMC Candidacy Process. How important is doctrinal orthodoxy in your choice of pastor?

Nate Loucks has an interesting entry on Funding for the Poor which I found via the Wesley Daily.

Chris Morgan’s post Just Wondering, also found via Wesley Daily (whatever would I do without Shane Raynor?), set me to wondering why we don’t set about cleaning up the act on our own side of the political spectrum instead of complaining about the other side. But then Chris continued with a nice post along that very line, titled Bipartisan Corruption.

Bible Translation

Wayne Leman has started a new series over on the Better Bibles Blog, discussing some material by Wayne Grudem and Jerry Thacker, titled Key Issues Re: Bible Translation: critique #1. I enjoyed the first entry. Wayne is always very careful, and gentle but thorough in his critiques.

From My Specialized Blogs

On the Participatory Bible Study Blog, I’ve been discussing the priesthood as taught in the book of Hebrews, starting with What is a Priest?. The series is interrupted by some discussion of 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, Baptized Foolishness. I will be continuing my series there on the book of Hebrews, but interspersing it with a few comments on other scriptures.

On the Pacesetters Bible School Newsletter, I am doing a series on designing personal continuing education for pastors, starting here. Too frequently, continuing education is a matter of checking off the appropriate boxes on a form. What do you need to study?

I also just started The Jevlir Caravansary, a place to play with poetry and fiction. You won’t see any more posts here about my fiction reading. That will allow me to stick to religion and society issues with my focus on the religion side here, and have fun there.

Just Plain Funny

DaveScot’s posting of a known hoax over on Uncommon XXXX, and the great fun had by all in trashing him for it. It was the sort of fascination that keeps you watching a multi-car pileup on the interstated. You really don’t want to see another car crash, but you just can’t stop watching! Start with Ed Brayton over on Dispatches from the Culture Wars. I do have to add my two cents worth here. I’m a Christian who teaches on prayer and advocates prayer in your home and in your church. People can pray in the military. It’s fine, and they should pray, but you do nothing for prayer or the kingdom of God by perpetuating a well-known hoax. I would add that real spirituality isn’t helped by putting the force of the state behind it, which is why I am strongly in favor of separation of church and state.

Well, that’s it for the moment. I make no effort to produce a comprehensive list of anything. These are just things that caught my eye.