My wife and I just got home from running around doing our morning chores. As we pulled into the driveway I noticed a group of well-dressed gentlemen clutching Bibles and briefcases just a few doors down. I heard them say, “No one’s around. Let’s try again tomorrow.” So I guess I have a visit to look forward to from the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses (can’t say I know which group these guys represented). Those visits are always fun. My wife dreads them as she knows that I may end up talking to them for quite a while. Of course these chats are always a dead end, but they are also good fun.
Moving on, I wanted to direct you to some good articles I read this week. I spent an unusually large amount of time reading other blogs this week and present to you some of the best of what I read. I realize that I do not do this often enough (direct readers to other blogs). It seems to be an expectation of bloggers that x% of all posts will be primarily outbound links. I continually forsake this rule, though not through lack of interest in other blogs. Today I seek to remedy this.
Dan Edelen has done two great posts. This morning he wrote about Demons and the importance of Christians being aware of their existence. He says, “Evangelicals simply do not take the issue of demons seriously enough. In a time that can be categorized by its unrelenting dereliction of truth, sources of deception and darkness must be exposed for what they are. Failure to shine the light on this infernal darkness means that it will necessarily increase in boldness.”
A couple of days earlier Dan stimulated some good discussion with an article entitled Let’s Play “Spot The Heretic”. He wrote about his preference towards older books. “If it comes down to a case of discernment, perhaps the best discernment that a Christian in the 21st century can achieve is to always assume something’s wrong unless it’s been tested by time.”
On Friday, Aaron asked Can Non-Denominationalism Be Cultish? “The problem, as I see it, isn’t that these [nondenominational] churches don’t have theology, it’s that they have a theology but are unwilling to commend it to others in open statements of the truth (confessions, etc).” Food for thought. Of course on the flip-side, many churches have wonderful confessions and statements of the truth, but choose to ignore them or write them off as outdated.
Tim Irvin has a six-part series about Church Membership. Tim always has good things to say. Unless he is reviewing movies.
I assume most people who read this site also browse through Jollyblogger’s posts. But if not, you should check out Miscellaneous Thoughts on N. T. Wright and Theological Encyclopedia. Subsequent discussion has turned to the tendency of Christians to write-off an author or theologian based on his “worst” theology. So a man like Wright, who can write so many good things, is considered unreliable because of his understandings of the atonement or justification. Is this right or wrong? I tend to “throw out the baby with the bathwater” in such cases. But perhaps I should be more careful to see the good through the bad.
And those are just a few of the highlights in my journey through the blogosphere. Next week I am going to be launching a new article series and will also have at least two book reviews. Stay tuned!
