Archive for the ‘Neo-Calvinism’ Category
Best Links of the Week
Great fake travel posters made by artist Ali Xenos. There are some great ones of Rivendell, Tatooine, Dagobah, and Winterfell.
Kevin DeYoung on the New-Calvinism
‘Gravity’ Spinoff: Watch the Other Side of Sandra Bullock’s Distress Call – Jonas Cuaron’s seven-minute companion short, filmed in Greenland and featuring Bullock’s voice
Brutal personal piece on about one young man’s battle with our present culture of death – “I Lost My Daughter to the Culture of Death”
Modalimy – Co-parenting for those that want children but not a relationship or marriage. You really cannot make this stuff up.
“Nelson Mandela: A Candid Assessment” – from Catholic site Crisis Magazine
Interesting piece from personal finance blog Mr. Money Mustache entitled, “Get Rich With: The Position of Strength.” Makes some salient points.
Woofmaker.com – just click on it, especially if you are a Home Alone fan.
Interesting piece in the Atlantic dealing with Clickbait and UpWorthy’s game changing headlines
Love Wins and the Jabez Effect
I hesitate to even write this brief diatribe as it is probably self-defeating to my central thesis.
Eleven years ago a book swept through evangelicalism like wildfire, Bruce Wilkinson’s, “The Prayer of Jabez.” You probably have two or three copies of it somewhere in your home, perhaps on your D-List portion of your bookshelf or propping up the wobbly leg of your washing machine. Multnomah Publishers love targeting easily marketable groups within evangelicalism, usually parachurch ministries, who have members that are peppered across a large cross-section of evangelicalism. At that time, I recall tons of folks reading the book within Campus Crusade for Christ and my local church at the time. The book had reached and crossed several tipping points.
I have a half-baked thesis that the reason Jabez reached those tipping points was because a large subset of those reading the book, were reading it with the primary goal of dissecting it for content. In short, when a book gets a wide read, principally for people looking to respond or react to the text rather than for the enjoyment of the book itself, I call this the Jabez Effect. Some other books perhaps fall under this category – The Shack, and The Da Vinci Code (when read by those within evangelicalism).
I think reading/writing about some of these books can be a slippery slope at times. On the one hand, they need responded to but sometimes the unintended consequence of gaining traction and publicity results. Remember the old advertising mantra, “no publicity is bad publicity.”
Hence, I will not be reading Rob Bell’s new book “Love Wins.” I haven’t read any of his other books and I won’t be reading this one. Plenty of people way more thoughtful than I will weigh in on this and I just don’t have the time to read and respond to some rehashed and dumbed down Schleiermacher/Tillich. Reading such things makes me bored and angry (and yes, more angry than this diatribe).
I don’t know how to solve the potential paradox of responding/not-responding to books like this. I am not sure if I can really come up with a rubric for who needs to engage and when it is wise for them and/or myself to engage in these matters.
I wonder how many books Bell will sell on the merit of the negative reaction from the blogosphere, and neo-calvinist detractors.
(But hey, in case you do read it, make sure to click through my link so I can get my 3% or whatever from amazon)
Best Links of the Week
Kevin DeYoung has a brief writeup of Keswick Theology (from Andy Naselli). This is the “let go and let God” theology and the divorcing of salvation from Lordship (ie. I got saved when I was ______ old and I accepted God as Lord/re-dedicated when I was ________ old). This kind of language was par for the course in my Dispensational upbringing and its view of sanctification is quite problematic. The writeup has a nice brief history and summary of Keswick theology.
Avoiding Missional Idolatries. Some lucid and thoughtful analysis of some pitfalls of missional church thinking.
The problem of groundwood paper vs. archival quality paper in modern book publishing.
Technology is re-wiring our brains. I have felt the pinch of technology on myself. Compulsive e-mail checking and always being on the grid actually stinks. In the same vein is this article: “Does the Internet Make us Dumber?”
Some thoughtful analysis of Two Kingdom Theology and Neo-Calvinism.
The culture of narcissism among millennials.
Our National Debt is about to overtake our GDP.
Rahm Emmanuel and Joe Biden supersoaker fight on the White House lawn (you can’t make this stuff up).
If you don’t know what UVB-76 is, you may find this wikipedia article interesting. It ceased broadcasting this week.
Apparently the financier of the much-maligned Gaza bound Flotilla is also the same financier of the proposed Ground Zero Mosque.
Obama’s trifecta of policy failure.
What in the world does “Spiritual But Not Religious” mean?
Video of the expansion of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam over time. Its a bit reductionistic, but worth a watch.
Adidas World Cup Commercial = Star Wars Cantina Scene + David Beckham + Snoop Dogg + Lightsabre = Awesome
Two videos this week: Neat time lapse video, shot .1fps on motion track, and set to some Jonsi:
Modern Pensées 