Today’s Kindle deals include several good titles from Crossway, plus a good one from Tim Keller.
The Jihadi Who Turned to Jesus
“Bashir Mohammad, 25, fought on the front lines of the Syrian civil war for Jabhat al-Nusra, an offshoot of Al Qaeda, less than four years ago.” And now he’s a Christian. Surprisingly enough, he’s written up in the New York Times.
Learning Math, Chinese Style
“More children in the West are being taught math using China’s fabled, slightly brutal ‘mastery’ method. It doesn’t sound to me like that’s a bad thing. And it also doesn’t sound so brutal.
Redefining Intimacy
This is an important article from Ed Shaw: “Our response to the sexual revolution going on outside our doors has sadly just been to promote sexual intimacy in the context of Christian marriage. And to encourage people to keep it there by promising this will then deliver all the intimacy they’ve ever wanted.”
Ye of Brittle Faith
Larry Alex Taunton addresses some of the feedback from his book about Christopher Hitchens. “I describe Christopher Hitchens, who remains a kind of deity for many atheists, as human, which is, of course, no more than what atheists have been saying about the Christian God for centuries.”
The Briefing
Al Mohler’s The Briefing is always worth listening to, but I especially enjoyed his analysis of Tim Keller’s recent un-invite from Princeton Seminary.
Young, Restless, and Reformed in China
“In August 2015, a Reformed pastor in China nailed 95 theses to his website. The pastor was Wang Yi, a former human-rights attorney and now leader of China’s arguably most prominent Reformed congregation. About 700 attend the Early Rain Reformed Church in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in southwestern China.”
Are We To Seek the Welfare of the City?
“It’s funny how certain passages capture the Christian zeitgeist at a particular time, for good or for ill. Right now among Reformed evangelicals, it is Jeremiah 29’s time. This is thanks largely to Tim Keller’s very well-known and generally amazing work in New York, and his appropriation of Jeremiah 29:7—“seek the welfare of the city”—as a mission statement for Christian engagement with the world.”
Flashback: Get to Know Yourself
Who am I? It is a question we have all asked at one time or another, at least in one of its variations. And every man has his own answer. Every philosophy and every religion has its own response. To know myself, I need to look outside of myself. My best assessment of self does not come from within but from without. It does not originate with me but with God.
Fear- based repentance makes us hate ourselves. Joy-based repentance makes us hate the sin.
—Tim Keller
