Good morning and happy Saturday! Scroll down to find some interesting think pieces followed by some recommendations from readers just like you.
Sales & Deals
Today’s Kindle deals include some newer books and some older ones as well.
Recommended Reading
Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that Buddhist-style meditation has been in vogue for quite some time. It is usually regarded as an innocuous and helpful means of promoting relaxation. Yet this article in The Atlantic shows that many people find it anything but. This shouldn’t surprise Christians since we know that people who engage in this form of meditation are engaging in a spiritual practice that undoubtedly invokes the demonic.
On a meditation retreat not long after this, she was chatting about her study with a meditation teacher when the teacher said, “I don’t know why all you psychologists try to make meditation into a relaxation technique. Everyone knows if you meditate enough, you stop sleeping.”
On some level, Britton must have known this. At that point, she had spent years both meditating and studying the brain. Because most kinds of meditation aim to enhance concentration, the practice can act like a stimulant. And just as chemical stimulants such as caffeine and Adderall can interfere with sleep, so, too, can excessive meditation.
Read: The Dark Side of Mindfulness.
Samuel James, one of the best Christian thinkers on modern technology, explains that we are now living in a world full of bots that imitate humans and replace real human interactions. This robot-like way of life has been growing for years and affects how we work, relate, and communicate. He believes that the real problem is not just AI taking jobs, but losing what it means to be truly human in everyday life. Like all he writes, it’s worth considering.
One of the curious dilemmas of the AI age is that AI bots sound like us because we sound like AI bots. The most intense form of this dilemma is happening right now in magazines, blogs, newspapers, and book publishers. In desperation, many organizations that want to prioritize human writing are turning to software that purports to detect AI generated text. Some software does this better than others. But none do it perfectly, and I’m not just talking about software’s mistaking AI generated text for human-generated. The reverse situation is happening too, wherein text that is genuinely human is being flagged as AI-generated. Why? Because the human-generated text sounds like AI, and the software’s only job is to use advanced algorithms to detect which clauses, phrases, and sentences sound like something an LLM would churn out.
Read: Planet of Bots.
A lot of parents will identify with this article about a modern phenomenon called “fambushing.” We all know that parents tend to track their children to keep tabs on them, but it turns out that children are tracking their parents even more.
About a third of parents track their children’s locations with an app or other program, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center. Teenagers are even more eagerly surveilled — about half of the parents in a study from Duke University reported using tracking technology to monitor their adolescents. What is less clear is how often kids turn the virtual tables, monitoring their parents’ locations.
“We call the trend ‘Fambushing,’” Sheldon Bachan, director of communications for Life360, said in an email. The portmanteau — family and ambushing — refers to children tracking their parents at restaurants and coffee shops, then showing up unannounced or requesting french fries and Frappuccinos. “We dug into the data and found that teens, especially those of driving age, check their family’s location on the app at higher rates than their parents/adults do,” Bachan said.
Read: It’s 10 p.m., and Your Kids Want to Know Where You Are.
Dr. Jonathan Corrado celebrates the beauty and complexity (or the beautiful complexity, if you prefer) of the human eye. He addresses those who insist the eye is fundamentally flawed by a process of evolution.
The human eye is brilliantly complicated, made up of a superb, interconnected system of approximately 40 individual subsystems. These include the iris, pupil, retina, cornea, lens, and optic nerve. By simultaneously detecting contrast while also capturing faint details, the human eye exhibits superiority over the most sophisticated camera today. Its design has been maximized for life in our environment.
Read: The Beautiful Complexity of the Human Eye.
You don’t have to attend a public school or even like a public school to see the benefit of extending love to it (or, more properly, to extend love to its teachers and students). That’s the theme of this article from Christianity Today.
Recent years have seen a large shift away from public education in America. Beyond private school options, charter schools are popping up across the country, and homeschool curriculum options are expanding. As a public school teacher and a Christian, I’ve empathized with friends as they pray and toil over the weighty, complex question of how to educate their kids.
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But it’s important to realize that our individual choices have communal consequences. As enrollment drops across public school districts, what students remain, and what happens to their education? How does our absence affect the most vulnerable within the neighborhood? Christians can and should support public schools even if we have kids enrolled elsewhere—or no kids at all.
Read: How to Love Your Local Public School.
Clint Humfrey has been writing about some pastoral hard cases and in this one writes about elders’ meetings that can be dominated by minor matters (which are often diaconal matters) and in that way fail to give sufficient attention to what matters most.
[This relatively minor] decision is a worthy one, but is it the right thing to be deliberating on for the elders in their role?
People have described this phenomenon as the Law of Triviality, Parkinson’s Law or “bikeshedding.” Jesus, in his wisdom had already pointed out the problem when he warned against tithing the mint and the cumin and ignoring “the weightier matters of the law” (Matthew 23.23).
The reason that folks end up spending lots of time on trivial things (coffee, logo fonts, the proverbial “color of the carpet”) is because trivial things are easier to deal with than hard things.
It’s easier to pontificate about the logistics of an espresso machine, than suggest a way forward for a couple who are not looking to Jesus, and are only seeing the worst in each other.
Read: Hard Cases: No Time to Talk.
What Readers Clicked Most This Week:
Reader Recommendations
Earlier in the week I asked what you are enjoying these days and therefore what you recommend. Here are some of the replies.
Michael is being blessed by listening to the Dating series on the podcast Counseling Talk (9Marks). Having friends and even children in that stage of life, it gives much to talk about and consider.
Philip recommends A New Apostolic Reformation? A Biblical Response to a Worldwide Movement by Douglas Geivett & Holly Pivec, which he describes as a “great book with a measured biblical critique of the NAR.”
Following my recommendation of Little House on the Prairie, Karl recommends the 2025 anime Anne Shirley. “While not the target audience, and only a reader after having viewed it, I found it quite enjoyable, and an easy recommendation.”
Billy decided to take a break from Strava and Goodreads, social apps that share exercise and reading habits. “This is not a condemnation of these apps, or anyone who uses them at all, but I’ve found a certain freedom in going for a run and reading a book, without the underlying motive of being able to display it to other people.”
Caroline recommends the DWELL Bible app. “I love being able to listen to different voices reading me the Bible in different translations. As a busy mom of 7 whose mind is often full with the day’s schedule and long to-do list it’s amazing to be able to listen to God’s Word while doing dishes or folding laundry or taking my child to piano lessons.”
Russ is enjoying The Daily Liturgy Reader from Mere Orthodoxy. “It’s similar to The Book of Common Prayer, but shorter. You have to get a free account on Mere Orthodoxy to receive the Liturgy.”
Rebecca has been listening to Church History and Theology by Dr. Timothy Easley on Spotify. “It’s really good! There are 58 episodes. I’m on episode 32 now. Highly recommend.”
Elizabeth thinks you should read this article by Jonathan Threlfall: I Gathered a Group of Dead Preachers to Discuss AI. They Told Me What They Thought.
Bill is “re-reading and loving John Grisham’s novel, The Testament. It contains a strong evangelical message set in a story exquisitely well crafted, and hard to put down.”
Joe enjoyed the latest NEEDTOBREATHE album, The Long Surrender. “The album and the current tour with Drew and Ellie Holcomb are highly recommended.”
Zack “really enjoyed listening to the audiobook To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson by Courtney Anderson. I listened to it through Spotify, and it really impacted me. Lives like Adoniram’s help us consider what we would do for Christ and, especially, what we would endure for Christ.”
Flashback
If Satan Wrote a Book on Parenting. If Satan wrote a book on parenting, he would want you to raise them in strict accordance with law rather than gospel, with strict rules rather than free grace.
If people threw away their money as thoughtlessly as they throw away their time, we would think them insane.
—Donald Whitney
