Today’s Kindle deals include just one book (though it’s a good one, at least). It has been rather a slow week for deals, hasn’t it?
(Yesterday on the blog: How To Pray for your Brothers and Sisters in Korea)
Is Jordan Peterson the Hero We’ve Been Looking For?
Reformed Perspective weighs in.
Is Church Membership Exclusive?
“It bears saying that the church should, indeed, welcome everybody. There shouldn’t be anyone who is unwelcome at church meetings. Nobody should be stopped from coming under the sound of the gospel. In the sense that everyone is welcome to hear the Bible taught and the gospel proclaimed, all are certainly welcome.” However…
That Pesky Biological Reality
“Reality has a way of making itself known. So the evidence mounts up that the most progressive societies are also those in which occupation is most closely linked to sex; and two men are not actually capable of becoming parents without hiring a womb; and biological sex is determinative for all manner of things.”
Why We Should Use the Language of Brokenness
“It’s an opinion that pops up in my social media feeds every now and again from well-meaning believers critical of the therapeutic influence on Christian preaching and teaching. ‘Stop saying people are broken. They’re sinful. That’s the problem.’ Or some variation of the same. At a speaking engagement recently a fellow in a Q&A time asked for my thoughts on the language of ‘brokenness’ in preaching. Is it okay to say people are broken? Or that the world suffers from brokenness? It’s obviously on people’s minds.”
The Long Drive Home
“She was the kind of girl who always said the wrong thing. She tried to claw her way into the popular crowd, in her de-clawed, shy kitten sort of way. It was high school in the early nineties, and we were all just doing the best we could with the very little that we knew about being teenagers. It felt like none of us really had a clue as to what kind of reaction we would get when we opened our mouths to speak, and we continually tested out all of the different ways to be, a petri dish of social experimentation in small town America.”
Isaiah’s Signature
These kinds of discoveries are always interesting. Of course, it takes time to verify them, and so on. Still…
The Delicate Art of Cobweb Paintings
I find things like this fascinating: “Who could have thought that the delicate, fine, silky threads of a spider’s cobweb could be woven into a canvas strong enough to withstand the abrasive strokes of an artist’s brush? But the hundred or so paintings that survive today in museums and in the hands of private collectors bear testimony to this incredibly ingenious, painstaking and time-consuming craft that the Austrian monks of the Tyrolean Alps practiced in the 16th century.”
Flashback: When I Glory in My Shame
When I look for what makes me feel good about myself, I inevitably find my idols. The thing that validates me is the thing I worship, the thing that momentarily takes the place of God in my life.
God’s thoughts of you are many, let not yours be few in return.
—Charles Spurgeon
