A La Carte (August 10)

Sales & Deals

Today’s Kindle deals include books for preachers and those who listen to their sermons.

Andrew Wilson’s new book on happiness is on sale at Westminster Books if you’re looking for something new to read!

Recommended Reading

A Cheap Knockoff of Paganism. Here’s Carl Trueman on the latest from within the PCUSA: “Progressive Christianity, always a day late and at least a dollar short in its attempts to baptize the values of the wider secular culture, has constantly hoped that it can gain the respect of the world around it and maintain some vague form of Christian idiom for doing so. This summer the Presbyterian Church (USA) has continued that tradition. Yes, there are no doubt faithful ministers in the PCUSA. But the people with their hands on the levers of power do not seem to belong to that category.”

‘Hate Speech’ Law Already Having a Chilling Effect in Canada. I suppose Jonathon Van Maren’s article at The Bridgehead is at least peripherally related to Trueman’s in that it shows what happens as immorality becomes accepted and then celebrated. “After a decade of Liberal government, the slow erosion of freedom of speech has escalated. The latest example of this comes from the Edmonton Police. An X post last week included a link urging people to ‘report online hate’ with the message: ‘You typed it. Someone lived it. Online hate isn’t ‘just a comment.’ It hurts real people and harms real communities. Hate has no home here.’”

Blades of Eternity and the Curse of the Black Saber In book two of the Blades of Eternity series, Prince Mel and his brave band of allies embark on a dangerous quest to thwart the evil plans of the King of Winter and restore order to the Realm. (Sponsored)

Mutant Virtues. And then there would also be a connection to Jacob Crouch’s article on what he calls “mutant virtues.” “These mutant virtues parade themselves out in the public square as though they are the real thing. So-called justice, instead of being the righteousness of God on display, has become a call to defend sin in all its ugliness. Humility has been stripped of its sword, and mercy has been divorced from true justice. The mutant virtues, since they share the same name of the real thing, have begun to be redefined in the consciousness of the culture. What pass as love and justice and mercy today would be unrecognizable to Christ and His church even 100 years ago.”

Fix Your Attention Span, Biblically. Reagan Rose laments the decline of attention spans and calls upon his readers to fix them, biblically. “We’re told our brains have been ‘rewired,’ that it’s all about dopamine regulation, reward loops, and the like. And there is truth to this. Living in a fallen and cursed world, it shouldn’t surprise us that physical limitations plague us even in our ability to focus. And where it makes sense, we should address those physical problems. But my point is that is not the whole story. You are more than a brain. Often in our naturalistic, medicalized world we can forget that the heart plays a part in our attention too.”

An Ode to Books Left Unwritten. I enjoyed Joshua Budimlic’s ode to books and tribute to the joy of reading. “Like all great art, the very best of literature cannot be rightly appreciated on a single pass. To best understand an author like Tolkien, for example, you would do well to not only read The Lord of the Rings, but to live in the rich world he spent many decades crafting—to tarry amid the pages of Middle-Earth year after year by walking the well-worn paths of the Shire alongside Bilbo, perhaps stopping to share a pint and an evening’s rest with the Fellowship in Bree under the sign of The Prancing Pony, before journeying on once again to Rivendell for a spell of food, music, and best of all, rest.”

Let’s Stop Imaging Jesus. It occurred to me as I read this well-reasoned defense of not imaging Jesus that I have never read a defense of imaging him. Lots of people do it, of course, but I’ve never read anyone’s defense of the practice. So there’s a challenge: Defend the practice of picturing Jesus in art, books, film, and so on.

Reader Recommendations

Once a week, I like to ask what you recommend. What books, products, videos, sites, or experiences do you recommend to others who read this blog/newsletter? Let me know, and I’ll share a collection on Saturday. (If you’re reading this via email, you’ll need to visit my site to fill out the form. Go here to read last week’s recommendations.)

Flashback

When God Took Away: His Goodness in My Grief. There is a deep mystery to suffering. While the Bible makes it plain that we must expect to encounter times of sorrow and loss, of trial and grief, we often don’t know why these times come.