My gratitude goes to The Good Book Company for sponsoring the blog this week. They wanted to make sure you know about their new book for parents whose children walk away from Jesus.
Today’s Kindle deals include some newer books along with some classics.
(Yesterday on the blog: Power Dynamics within Marriage)
How Far Does an Elder’s Authority Go?
This is a very important question, and I think Jeramie Rinne answers it very well. “Scripture never portrays elders wielding absolute authority. Jesus alone reigns as head of the body, monarch of the kingdom, and chief shepherd of the flock. Yes, believers must obey their leaders and submit to them, but leaders must give an account.”
Take It From Me, Don’t Use AI to Cheat in School
Zachariah John tells about his brush with cheating at school and then confessing to it. He explains why students need to be careful not to use AI to cheat. “The virus is widespread. Students in every academic setting face the temptation of sidestepping the mundanity of learning. As a result, schooling becomes less about embracing failure and growth and more about how well you can prompt Claude. Perhaps worst of all, students’ seared consciences accept academic cheating as the new normal. Everyone’s doing it, we say to ourselves, so why feel bad?“
Against the Algorithm: In Praise of the Parish
I’ve been linking to a fair bit of Michael Jensen’s writing lately, but for good reason. This article on the parish (and/or local church) is excellent. “The parish church offers a quiet but profound act of resistance against the great machines that want to seize our humanity from us. It operates at human scale. It is real, not virtual; organic, not mechanistic; familial, not individualistic. You are not curated by algorithms but shaped by neighbours. You are not known as a profile but as a person.”
Sober-Minded in an Age of Outrage
David Prince explains why sober-mindedness is a necessary virtue in an age of outrage.
What’s Weird?
This is a good question to ask when reading the Bible: What’s weird? “This is a good pedagogic question—for all it doesn’t look like it and can sound flippant—because it exposes where the group doesn’t understand. Rather than making people repeat things they do understand we start instead with discovering what we aren’t clear on.”
The Good News About Bad Work Days
Elizabeth Stice: “Work can be a place where we find great fulfillment and meaning, but work can also be a source of great disappointment and frustration. We distinguish between work and toil, but even if the work we do is more than toil, we are not guaranteed good bosses or ideal circumstances.”
Flashback: Would It Be Okay For Me To Be Angry With God?
Comfort comes when we align our will with the will of God. Peace flows when we bless him in our grief as we did in our joys. For his love is as constant, his character is as perfect, his actions are as irreproachable in the taking as they were in the giving.
Suffering is not an obstacle to God’s purpose but a means to achieving it.
—Sinclair Ferguson
