The Groothius library article has a touch of “you young kid’s get off my lawn!” attitude. A library is a great place to gather resources but it is no sacred domain. Many great books and articles are easier found online and why should it take a trip all the way to the school to do research? In addition, for the things (obscure books and such) that are not online but are still crucial to study, why should I sit in the library all day when I can check out those books and peruse at them my own hours at my own desk? That said, why should I then not take advantage of a school building’s great wifi to access videos that load too slowly on my home internet and annoy my roommates? (That last line is probably more a farce… most home internet is high speed and not being accessed by dozens of people at once, while most schools have only intermittent internet access points that are fast enough to get work done but not terribly fast).

I found it admirable that he bans electronics in his classroom though. I’m sure many of his students, and probably myself as well, would take issue with this, not being able to type up their notes real-time, but taking away distractions from a teacher-student environment is very much needed. Hopefully he takes advantage of that by fostering discussion among everyone in the class, and doesn’t just vainly expect everyone to pay attention to his rambling lectures for hours every day.

I thought the article about our attraction to the Amish was a little off. While I agree that in some ways their lifestyle is an antidote to our frantic lives and our evangelical silliness, the Amish lifestyle is not stress-free and idyllic. Our church supports and works with a ministry called Mission to the Amish People. They evangelize (through mailings and personal contact) and help former Amish who have been shunned. Go to the website and read some of the heartbreaking testimonies. They have left lives of spiritual bondage.

And the environmentalists are now fans of the Amish? Please. Do they know the government is constantly after them for dumping raw sewage and selling raw milk? And do they know that they ride in HUGE 15-passenger vans to shop at WALMART and buy all the same pre-packaged stuff the rest of us do? True story. Last week I was struck by the fact that there was an Amish woman and a covered Muslim woman shopping in same Walmart store. Both are in bondage to religions filled with man-made rules that (they think) determine their salvation. It was stunning to think about some of the similarities.