Good morning. Today you’ll find a few Kindle deals, followed by some recommended reading and suggestions from readers like you. Enjoy! And come back tomorrow for another Works & Wonders collection.
Sales & Deals
Today’s Kindle deals include some good books, of course. Be sure to scroll back a day or two as well since there have been many good deals this week. Be sure to take a look at the excellent Strong to the End.
Recommended Reading
AI was a prominent theme (again) this week, not least because The Gospel Coalition shared its AI policy for writers. The organization took a hard line, calling it “our line in the sand.” Brett McCracken introduced the policy and pulled no punches: “It’s an offense to the word ‘writing’ to apply it to AI-arranged words and sentences. What AI produces is an impressively polished, usually helpful, sometimes cheeky string of words. But it’s just instantaneous pattern recognition and data organization. It’s soulless slop that can mimic and masquerade as brilliant writing. It’s aggressively efficient, speedily rendered, sycophantic information.” Essentially, those who write for TGC will be forbidden to use AI for anything more than the most basic functions.
Collin Hansen said that we have all reached a “day of reckoning” when it comes to AI. “You may not realize the day of reckoning for AI is already here. Talk to the teachers. Talk to the professors. Talk to the editors. If everyone else is writing with AI prompts, would you voluntarily accept a disadvantage on principle? To write slower? To write less effectively? To go to the library and look up sources yourself? To ask a friend to review your essay? To accept a B+ when everyone else you know is scoring an easy A? When Google is asking to help. When Microsoft Word is asking to help. When your teachers can’t do anything. When the tech staff showed you how to do it. When your parents do nothing more than shrug and say, ‘Back in my day we actually had to pay a friend to write our essays for us.’”
Not everyone was in full agreement with this policy. Neil Shenvi wrote about AI and homeschooling, which was an expansion of a viral post on X. He provided a helpful explanation of how AI functions, then listed what he considers valid uses. His list is much broader than TGC’s, but follows this guideline: “If it would be unethical or developmentally inappropriate to have a human do it for you, it’s unethical or developmentally inappropriate to use AI to do it for you.” But if not, it may be permissible. I find many people settling on something like this: If you’d pay an assistant to do it, then consider using AI instead.
Aaron Renn wrote The Digital Twin and the Line in the Sand to deal with AI naysayers and express his misgivings about TGC spiritualizing its stance against AI to too great a degree. “The important point for us to note here is the strongly AI-skeptical stance being taken. This general posture of techno-skepticism seems to be the default position of the evangelical group that I’ve labeled the ‘cultural engagers.’ These are highly educated evangelicals in the professional-managerial class who are often concentrated in the center of big cities, as well as evangelical colleges and media outlets.” He explained how he uses AI in his work as a writer.
Mere Orthodoxy responded to some of this in an article by Christopher Jones titled American Evangelicals Long for the Embrace of the Machine God which also took a hardline stance against AI. He offered three reasons evangelicals have embraced AI. “I believe evangelicals have embraced AI for three reasons, one political, one theological, and one psychological: They tend to strongly believe in free markets, they commonly hold certain theological positions that have left them without antibodies against AI, and AI promises a new source of certainty in an uncertain world.” While I appreciate the article, I don’t think those three reasons are all that compelling. They certainly don’t cover every user.
Anyway, I think this is a very helpful discussion as we all grapple with an incredible new technology and consider whether and how to use it. I appreciate the tone of the conversation and look forward to more of it. I think we should expect that in the final accounting, some will have been proven too skeptical and some will have been proven too beguiled when it comes to AI. We should have lots of patience for one another as we figure this out together.
Embracing Sundays
Joel Kurz wants you to make the most of your Sundays.
I want to offer ten suggestions to help make the Lord’s Day a day that you anticipate and enjoy, and a day that centers on gathering with God’s people for worship. To clarify, these suggestions are not meant to be burdensome or binding but to give us space to delight in this foretaste of heaven. Faithful Christians may disagree over what’s prudent or permissible on the Lord’s Day, but regardless of your view, there is great benefit in being intentional about how we approach this day.
It is good to be reminded that Sundays are special and good to be encouraged to use them well.
Read: Ten Ways to Savor Sundays.
Elders & Counselors
Reuben Bredenhof finished up a two-part series on the relationship of elders and counselors. He wants to protect the unique role of elders in the lives of church members, yet also to consider when and how professional counselors may be wise or necessary.
Imagine, for a moment, that the elders of your church are faced with a pastoral case that is complicated and demanding.
A marriage slowly crumbling, one that has been for several years. Or a twenty-something sister with a history of being sexually abused during her childhood. Or a 45-year-old man with anxiety that just doesn’t get better, and which prevents him from participating in church life.
The elders are struggling to know they should do: after years of trying to help this brother or this sister, they are making little progress. After yet another visit, they really feel like they’re in well above their heads.
This is when a question arises: Can they (may they) get outside help? Can they involve a counselor in this situation? If so, what would that help look like? And what would that mean for the elders’ care for this member? Is he or she still fully their responsibility? Or if they opt not to get help from a counselor, what will they do to keep working on this?
Read: Elders & Counselors – Part 1 and Part 2.
Read the Bible Slowly
Murray Campbell has been laid up with a serious illness, and this has given him the opportunity to read the Bible slowly. He has found it a useful practice and commends it to others.
During this forced period of rest, I am reading the Psalms (amongst other Scripture). Because of my condition, I’m forced to read slowly, much more slowly than I would otherwise. I’ve dropped down to third gear, much like I do when I’m exegeting a passage for a sermon. This different and slow pace helps to see and enjoy things in God’s word that I may otherwise have missed. It’s the difference between driving at 110km/hr or at 6km0. It’s not that one is wrong and the other right, but a slower pace helps you see more. It’s not that I’m not already familiar with Psalm 8 and Psalm 22. It’s not that I’ve never read them before or have no idea what their message is. And yet, like studying a musical score once again, or taking that fresh look at Rothko’s Green and Maroon, you notice something else. And even when nothing is new and no detail changes, you are giving yourself the time to be mesmerised, confronted or comforted.
Read: Read the Bible Slowly.
Reader Recommendations
As you know, I like to give readers of this site the opportunity to make their own recommendations. Here is what readers like you recommended this week.
Danielle recommends the Torchlighters video series, “an engaging and inspiring collection of animated videos focused on Christian missionaries and martyrs.” They are free on YouTube.
Adam has attended many weddings this summer and has “enjoyed the creative ways that these dear couples have sought to communicate the gospel message to their non-believing guests.” His recommendation is to be faithful and creative in sharing the gospel at weddings.
Jonathan and his family have benefited greatly from singing Psalm-based songs by My Soul Among Lions during family worship each evening. You can find the songs with lyrics at the link.
Steve commends Everything Is Never Enough by Bobby Jamieson, which is “a book (not a commentary) on Ecclesiastes, and is one of the best-written books I’ve ever read, period.”
Jordan says Updated Works “has an incredible library of free ebooks. It contains Puritan works, early Church Fathers, philosophy, and American historical texts, all updated into modern English and formatted nicely into an easy-to-read form.”
Responding to a comment I made about never having read a defense of pictures of Jesus, Laura and John recommend this article and this book.
Kirsten recommends reading to your children. “Some of my best memories are of my Dad reading to us in the evenings after dinner. My siblings and I grew up with a love of reading and I think it was because of the time he spent reading with us!”
Colleen has enjoyed the CSB Connecting Scripture New Testament, which “has been greatly expanding my understanding and appreciation of how the NT references the OT. So rich!”
Sean suggests you consider attending this year’s Getty Music Sing! conference, which will mark its tenth anniversary.
Pam “just finished reading the autobiography of the bestselling fiction writer of all time, Agatha Christie. It was a fascinating look into the era of Victorian England and its culture, and was one of the best biographies I’ve ever read!”
I apologize to all those whose recommendations I could not publish. I’ll look forward to sharing more next week. Stay tuned on Monday for the form you can fill out to submit one.
Flashback
Success Beyond What We Can Handle. Those who pray for no more than they can handle will find joy and comfort in even modest achievements, for they will know and trust that God has given them what is for their best and withheld from them what would be to their harm.
It must not content us to take our bodies to church if we leave our hearts at home.
—J.C. Ryle
