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A La Carte (1/19)
- 01/19/11
- 12
I realized something yesterday when a friend of ours from church turned 13 and on that very day opened a Facebook account. This is a new rite-of-passage, isn’t it? You turn 13 and you can get onto the world of Facebook. I wish I had thought of that when I was writing my book, because I think there’s a lot of significance to this simple fact.
Bonhoeffer and Anonymous Evangelicals - Carl Trueman read my thoughts on Bonhoeffer yesterday and in this brief article he improves upon them.
Goodbye - This is a heartbreaking letter from a mother who had to say goodbye to her daughter.
A World Without Jobs - Andy Crouch has a fantastic article about Steve Jobs and his recently-announced leave of absence. It may sound dry, but give it a read. “As remarkable as Steve Jobs is in countless ways--as a designer, an innovator, a (ruthless and demanding) leader--his most singular quality has been his ability to articulate a perfectly secular form of hope. Nothing exemplifies that ability more than Apple's early logo, which slapped a rainbow on the very archetype of human fallenness and failure--the bitten fruit--and made it a sign of promise and progress.”
Living Life of Documenting Insignificance - Randy Alcorn writes about Twitter and other social media. “The problem isn't just what we are doing with our time; it's what we are NOT doing with it. Where does all the time spent on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube and television and radio actually come from? Try keeping track of the time spent on all of these for a week.”
Tree of Life - Some interesting pictures of Bahrain’s “Tree of Life.”
Where Did All the Readers Go? - That’s the question asked in this article. It’s a bit slow to start, but picks up in the middle.
God Didn’t Create a Mistake - I enjoyed this little clip from Tony Evans (HT:Z).
The Bible is the sceptre by which the heavenly King rules his church. —John Calvin
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
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Comments (12)
Psssst - 2nd edition :-)
This line in the “Readers Go?” piece blows my mind:
“Do you know any 10-year-olds who received an iPad for Christmas and lots of iTunes gift cards, but not a single book? Me too.”
Seriously? Who are these parents who give their 10-year-old a $400 device? For now, never mind not reading; what about breeding a generation of self-centered materialists?
Does ANYONE say no to techno-gadgets anymore? Call me a neo-Luddite geezer, but the whole thing with buying expensive electronics has just gotten out of control. We end up owned by these things.
Really, I’m starting to think the Amish are the wisest people on the planet.
Amazing how we benefit from being reminded of some of the most basic stuff. Thanks for the Evans clip.
On Bonhoeffer and Evangelicals:
The reason Evangelicals today appropriate new theological heroes so easily is that modern Evangelicalism is devoid of them. There’s a dearth of genuinely extraordinary people populating North American Evangelicalism, so much so, that Evangelicals have to latch onto anyone they can find who seems exemplary in some way and still gives a nod in favor of Christianity.
Mark Noll touched on some of the phenomenon in his The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, a book I scoffed at when it first came out in 1994. But time is rapidly showing me that Evangelicalism has a built-in mechanism that seeks to purge the most extraordinary from among us. And all that does is leave a remarkable blandness that in no way enhances the aroma of Christ in a world dying for the extraordinary.
Carl has it all tied up for me…”How can I learn from him how better to be a Christian?”
DLE,
Maybe for modern Arminian Evangelicalism I would agree with you. But the reformed Evangelicals in North America have many contemporary theological heroes. At least I do. Many of these extraordinary men are often mentioned on this blog.
I think a portion of our effort to massage every church hero into the ‘evangelical’ box is because we’ve spent a lot of time and energy building that box and running away from anything not in it. So, there’s almost a knee-jerk reaction that someone must fit in the box to be helpful. If Bonhoeffer is helpful, then he must fit in the box.
This is rather than acknowledging that a liberal Lutheran might perhaps still have something to say that contemporary Evangelicals need to hear.
If we can stop making people need to be perfect to be worth respecting, I think we’ll be better off.
Doug
The time made available comes from the allocation previously made to TV which is now simply not worth watching. Once they used to screen decent programs. Not any more. If the programs were decent, Facebook wouldn’t have a prayer.
What would it look like for evangelicals to be helped by non-evangelicals such as C.S. Lewis and Bonhoeffer and Augustine? It would look like people saying, ‘Well, I don’t agree with everything he says, but as to this ….,” and, you know, this is exactly what I often read and hear people doing. It seems to me that evangelicals citing non-evangelicals approvingly as they do, does not necessarily mean they don’t understand there are differences.
Trueman: “`How can I learn from him how better to be a Christian?’”
Would it be possible to read Mother Terresa, Nelson Mandella, Bishop Spong etc in the same way?
Would it be possible to read Mother Terresa, Nelson Mandella, Bishop Spong etc in the same way?
I can’t answer for Trueman, but I think you can read any biography (or any book, at that) and ask yourself this question. Trueman can read his biographies of Lawrence of Arabia and learn things about that man’s life that he can immediately apply to his own—even (and maybe especially) in those areas that have no overt connection to faith. I think that is one of the real joys of reading biography.
I cried so much reading “Goodbye” and then watching the video. It is so heart breaking.
But their faith is what gets me the most. We truly serve a good God. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I am continually blown away by his grace.