Evolution and Worldview (07/06/07 - 11 Comments)
A recent article at Psychology Today is getting a lot of attention. I noticed it at a couple of blogs and then saw it come across the wire at Digg, so it is being widely read. The article offers "Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature." In the preamble the authors, Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, say: Human behavior is a product both of our innate human nature and of our individual experience and...
Don't You Know Who I Am? (07/04/07 - 19 Comments)
Last night in the news I caught a headline titled something like "Eltron Rocks Royal Tantrum." It seems that Elton John, having just arrived at a concert venue where he was scheduled to sing before a live audience of tens of thousands and a televised audience in the millions, had his car stopped about fifty yards short of his dressing room. Because Princes William and Harry were at the conference (which was, I believe, in...
Canada Day 2007 (07/02/07 - 9 Comments)
While July 1 is Canada Day, the nation actually seems to take July 2 to remember the birth of our nation. All the stores were open yesterday and are closed today. So today seemed like a good time to thinking about the day. I do not have a lot of customs on this site, but Canada Day is customarily a time I pause to reflect on this nation and form some thoughts about what has...
An Almighty Flop (06/30/07 - 40 Comments)
It looks like Evan Almighty is sinking. Thought by some to be a sure-thing summer blockbuster, it garnered some glowing reviews in the Christian media but only lukewarm reviews in the mainstream. With other, better family fare now on the big screen (think Ratatouille which has opened to rave reviews), Evan Almighty is going to be lucky to recover the estimated $176 million it cost to make it. The question is: why? At FoxNews author...
Intelligent Design (06/27/07 - 33 Comments)
This isn't a book review. Though I often refer to a particular book, I mean this more as a series of statements on intelligent design. The concept of intelligent design has undeniable appeal. Forming a kind of middle ground between creationism and evolution, it claims to reconcile the claims of modern science with what seems so obvious to so many--that there is an intelligent force or being in the universe that has guided the design...
What Proceeds from the Heart (06/25/07 - 10 Comments)
As mentioned in an earlier post, I read through Lou Priolo's book Pleasing People last week. This was a book that just showed up in my mailbox. It is not one I would have chosen and even after I pulled it out of the box and set it in my "to read" bookcase I didn't think I'd actually care to read it. I've got a billion other books to choose from and this one didn't...
Pictures Aren't Words (06/22/07 - 36 Comments)
Yesterday the Resurgence blog posted an article by Greg Wright, a writer and film critic. The article was titled "Movies, Morality, and Ratings: A Hard Look at Our Opinion of Films." He begins like this: Consider this graphic Hollywood plotline: A man travels to Las Vegas to retrieve his cheating wife. On the way back to Los Angeles, the two stop at a rundown motel in Death Valley. During the night, a mob of sexual...
True Forgiveness (06/21/07 - 16 Comments)
I've been working my way through Lou Priolo's new book Pleasing People and it has given me a lot to think about. I don't know that any of us are readily willing to admit that we are eager to be people pleasers but Priolo shows in this book just how prone we are all to slipping into the sin of esteeming the opinion of others higher than the opinion of God. Like so many other...
Summer Reading (06/20/07 - 22 Comments)
Every year, when summer approaches, we begin to hear about summer reading lists. I am uncertain if this is a throwback to days gone by or if people really do try to set aside a few books to read over the course of a summer. Or perhaps it is only students who do this as they take a brief break from their studies. Certainly I always have great plans when I head away on a...
The Appeal of Roman Catholicism (06/18/07 - 122 Comments)
Over the weekend a member of a mailing list I subscribe to asked an interesting question. Reflecting both on some of the highly-publicized "defections" of former Protestants to Roman Catholicism and some he has witnessed personally he asked "What is the appeal of Roman Catholicism?" I have sometimes wondered the same. Why is it that many Protestants eventually convert to Catholicism? To put things in context, my experience shows that a far greater number of...
Evan Almighty (06/15/07 - 110 Comments)
A week from today, the movie Evan Almighty will hit theaters across the continent. A projected summer blockbuster, it is the sequel to 2003's hit comedy Bruce Almighty which starred Jim Carrey and pulled in over $200,000,000 at the box office. Evan Almighty is, I believe, the most expensive comedy ever made with a budget said to exceed $175,000,000. Clearly the studios are expecting it to be as successful as its predecessor. I did...
The Beautiful Letdown (06/12/07 - 6 Comments)
Road hockey is a long-standing Canadian tradition--so much so that we invented the word "shinny" to describe the informal games that are played on driveways, roads and parking lots across the nation. It seems that today's youth generally prefers to play hockey on the Playstation and it is becoming more and more rare to see panting kids, huffing and puffing up the road with frozen cheeks, frozen noses and missing teeth. And the nation is...
Quotable Quotes (06/08/07 - 11 Comments)
I have done a lot of reading lately and am preparing a bunch of book reviews for the next couple of weeks. I thought it might prove an amusing distraction to select a brief quote from each, provide you the titles to the book, and see if you can match them up. Or even just read the quotes. It's Friday--do whatever you want! #1 The earth turns on its orbit for You. The oceans ebb...
More Tips for Better Blog Writing (06/08/07 - 20 Comments)
At this rate no one is ever going to take the blogosphere seriously. And it's all Justin Taylor and Abraham Piper's fault.* Well, I guess it's not really their fault, but I think they've got some things wrong. Yesterday Abraham, guest-posting on Justin's site, wrote an article entitled "Tips for Better Blog Writing." Earlier this year Abraham was thrust into the role of being Desiring God's primary blogger and in this post he reflects on...
The Boxing of God (V) (05/30/07 - 1 Comments)
In four previous articles, I have discussed the tendency of Christians to put God in a box of our own imaginations. Since it has been a few days since the last article, let me just review each of them really briefly before moving forward in this discussion (and before concluding this discussion). In the introduction we looked at the apparent conflict between God's revelation of Himself and our tendency to put Him in a box....
The Boxing of God (IV) (05/25/07 - 2 Comments)
This is the fourth installment in a series of articles discussing the Christian tendency to put God in a box. In the first article we saw that we tend to feel insecure about God unless we have contained Him within a box in our minds and then saw that God has revealed Himself to us in a way that is incomplete, but which we can understand. God’s revelation of Himself provides a framework within which...
The Boxing of God (III) (05/24/07 - 4 Comments)
This is the third article in a series that discusses that tendency Christians have to put God in a box. In the first article (link) we saw that we tend to feel insecure about God unless we have contained Him within a box in our minds and then saw that God has revealed Himself to us in a way that is incomplete, but which we can understand. God's revelation of Himself provides a framework within...
The Boxing of God (II) (05/23/07 - 13 Comments)
This is the second article in a short series dealing with the tendency Christians have to put God in a box (click here for the first article). Several people, commenting on this first article, remarked that this is a topic usually reserved for people attacked Reformed theology rather than defending it. Bear with me and I think you'll have to agree that we, even as Bible-loving Christians, can put God in a box. We can...
The Boxing of God (05/22/07 - 11 Comments)
A couple of years ago I got thinking about the idea of putting God in a box. This is a charge people often level at conservative Christians and Reformed folk in particular. It is not unusual for us to hear that we seem to feel that we have got God figured out, stuffed and mounted on the wall. And to some extent this may be true. I began to write about this and soon came...
Publisher Crawling (05/18/07 - 5 Comments)
I am working on a new feature for Discerning Reader. Every week I'll troll through a long list of publishers and bestsellers lists to try to find new or upcoming books that look like they will be of particular interest. Since Discerning Reader isn't quite ready to handle the column yet, I thought I'd post it here. This is a sample of what the column will look like. The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her...
