A La Carte (July 11)

The God of peace be with you today.

As always, you can check in the morning to see what the day’s Kindle deals include. For now we’ve got some C.S. Lewis classics and a couple of other choices. (Update: This morning I added a few new titles in both the Christian and general market sections.)

(Yesterday on the blog: Cognitive Decline and Common Faults)

Faith’s Review and Expectation

I think you’ll enjoy this examination of John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” as it was originally written. The version most people sing today is only a part of it with a new verse appended to the end. But when we look at the whole thing, we can understand what Newton meant for it to communicate and accomplish.

What’s the Earliest Record of Jesus’s Childhood?

Michael Kruger dives into history to find the earliest credible records of Jesus’s childhood. The context? “CBS News announced a new manuscript of this Gospel has been discovered that’s purportedly the ‘oldest written record of Jesus Christ’s childhood.’” But we know how accurate these claims tend to be.

The Disney Princess Whose Heart Isn’t Worth Following

We are accustomed to reading reviews of Disney movies that explain how they got the human heart completely wrong. But Samuel James shows how Inside Out 2 gets some of it right. “Taken together, Inside Out and Inside Out 2 are perhaps the most interesting things Disney has done in a couple decades. Both films, but especially the second, run against the grain of historic Disney worldview.”

Are We Careful to Speak Words of Mercy and Grace, Especially When We Disagree?

Randy Alcorn pleads for Christians to speak words of mercy and grace when disagreeing with one another. “I plead with the Christian community to respond to others with greater grace and humility. While ‘Judge not lest you be judged’ is perhaps the most misused statement from Scripture, it does have its proper application. So does, ‘Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall,’ and ‘Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.’”

Why Balance Is Bad for Pastors

Barnabas Piper: “Trying to balance ministry and family life is just another name for pitting the two against each other. It is a paradigm for unnecessary conflict. It puts them at opposite ends of a seesaw, which means one is nearly always up while the other is necessarily down. We need a new way of thinking about the relationship between family and ministry than ‘balance.’ Two foundational biblical realities can help us see a new paradigm.”