A La Carte (June 17)

There are just a few Kindle deals today, but they are some good ones, at least.

(Yesterday on the blog: How We Worshipped One Sunday in June)

Dad Jokes Never Go Out of Style

I can’t even tell how much I enjoy making my daughters roll their eyes through a great (which is to say, terrible) dad joke. “The first recorded use of the term can be found in a 1987 Gettysburg Times column by Jim Kalbaugh. On Father’s Day of that year, Kalbaugh not only introduced ‘dad joke’ to the public, but he also made an impassioned plea to keep the genre alive: ‘As we approach Father’s Day, I would like to propose that ‘Dad’ Jokes not be banned. They should be revered, preserved.’”

Blessing When Cursed

Carl Trueman offers his take on a much-discussed controversy. “A Church that has proved incapable of persuading most of its baptized membership (and even members of its own hierarchy) to take its Catechism seriously is scarcely on the brink of a theocratic coup.” But, lest we Protestants get cocky, “And Protestantism is no better…”

Stop Loving Your Spouse Too Much

Of course you can’t actually love your spouse too much. But you can definitely love the Lord too little and love your spouse wrongly. “Every marriage is either Christian or idolatrous. And two married Christians can be idolatrous, without even realizing it.”

The Bing of Maps

Here’s why Apple Maps is to mapping as Bing is to searching. “Seven years ago, Apple decided that it’d had enough of using Google’s mapping data. They realized that maps and mapping services were so strategic that they couldn’t really afford to depend on a smartphone rival. So, they began building their own, and in September 2012, the company launched Apple Maps. And if I am being honest, the program has always been akin to that baby face that only a mother can love.”

What Did I Ever Do to Deserve This Blue Passport?

It is good to consider the undeserved privileges God has given us. “We’ll get to the airport in Los Angeles with our bleary eyes and disheveled clothes because 20 hours of travel feels like eternity. But we’ll show our blue passports and no one will blink an eye. No one will ask me questions. No walls will block my way. My children won’t be separated from me. I can hear the immigration officer’s nonchalant stamp in our passports. And we’re in.”

The New Dating Requirement: Consuming All of Your Partner’s Content

There’s a little bit of bad language in this one, but it’s an interesting (and I’d say important) look at some new norms of dating and romance. “It’s now understood by many couples that, to be a truly engaged partner, you need to regularly consume your partner’s content, and most importantly, watch their Stories. As Alana Levinson wrote in Splinter, ‘A love interest consuming your content is now as perfunctory as opening a door for a woman once was.’”

You Had One Job

Anne Kennedy on the task of the preacher: “If you don’t know, don’t guess. Study a little harder until you do know. Because it’s not your book. It doesn’t belong to you and it isn’t about you. It is about a God who holds the human creature in the catastrophic place between holiness and love, who ‘probably’ ought to destroy the human creature for his rebellious and filthy evil, and yet who comes down off of the throne and stands in the place of that weak, ridiculous creature, taking on to himself the full weight, the full consequences of that creature’s failure to obey, and worse yet, refusal to worship the Creator, the Source, the fountainhead of goodness.”

Flashback: Setting Up My Kids for Salvation

I trust God with my soul, but for some reason have a much tougher time trusting him with the souls of my kids. I wonder if you can identify with the struggle.