January 2011
53 posts
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Quote of the Day
“Outside the museum, the real litmus test, if I may be so bold, is to manage to be accused simultaneously of antinomianism and legalism. When you have gotten to the point where any stick is good enough to beat you with, then you really have something. This is like what one Puritan called the bracing experience of ‘living in the high mountain air of public calumny. The legalists...
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WatchNEW FLEET FOXES.
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Uncommon Question to Assess Your Church's Health
My small group is currently going through Tim Keller’s The Gospel in Life. Part of what makes this study so good is that it requires you complete lengthly, enlightening and challenging home studies pre-small group. Last week we hit up the home study on the intersection of gospel and work. Near the end of study Keller has you assess your own work life with a series of questions. Now my...
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Will My Children Remember Me a Hypocrite?
D.A. Carson, on the influence his parents had on him to become a disciplined worshiper of God, in A Call to Spiritual Formation, p 26:
In the ranks of ecclesiastical hierarchies, my father is not a great man. He has never served a large church, never written a book, never discharged the duties of high denominational office. Doubtless his praying, too, embraces idioms and stylistic idiosyncrasies...
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Is it Local?
From a new series called Portlandia, which looks to be awesome:
Here’s “Did You Read…?”
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Cautions for Mere Christianity →
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Quote of the Day (Link Fixed)
“What kind of a guy would I be if I walked out when she needed me most?”
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How Porn Users Promote Prostitution
From a document called “Porn in the Pews: Teaching Your Church about the Dangers of Pornography”:
A variety of personal factors might contribute to a woman’s involvement in the industry, but consumers also bear responsibility. To intentionally consume pornography is to consume prostitution—to endorse the exploitation of another human being.
Preaching about pornography...
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Start the Day off Right...For 90 Minutes →
“For nearly a decade now, I’ve begun my workdays by focusing for 90 minutes, uninterrupted, on the task I decide the night before is the most important one I’ll face the following day. After 90 minutes, I take a break.
“To make this possible, I turn off my email while I’m working, close all windows on my computer, and let the phone go to voicemail if it rings.
...
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Colbert Interviews the "Tiger Mother"
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On the Consistency of Abortion Logic →
“The question for Furedi, Berer, Yanow, Herold, and anyone else who asserts an indefinite right to choose is whether this part of the indictment should be dropped. You can argue that what Gosnell did wasn’t conventional abortion—he routinely delivered the babies before slitting their necks—but the 33 proposed charges involving the Abortion Control Act have nothing to do with that....
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WatchPoor Joel.
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Cool. →
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The Gospel Changes the Way You Look at the Poor
Tim Keller, in Generous Justice, Kindle location 1235:
To the degree that the gospel shapes your self-image, you will identify with those in need. You will see their tattered clothes and think: ‘All my righteousness is a filthy rag, but in Christ we can be clothed in his robes of righteousness.’ When you come upon those who are economically poor, you cannot say to them, ‘Pull...
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Quote of the Day
“Ours is a nation, as Lincoln said, ‘conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’ Our country has never perfectly lived up to its high ideals, but our ideals are the right ideals and they are worth struggling to live up to. Our history shows that we are a people who can live with grave injustices for only so long. Just as we abolished...
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Quote of the Day
“The abortion of the twin boys precipitated an international outcry, with headlines carrying the news around the world. But, even as millions were morally troubled by the account, many were unable to muster a moral argument against the abortions. Why? Because the logic of abortion has been so widely accepted in the larger society.
“The very idea of gender-selection abortions is...
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WatchDesiring God Interviews Tim Keller, Part Two.
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WatchDesiring God Interviews Tim Keller, Part One.
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For You To Come Forth, God Had to Go to Work
Tony Evans (via Challies):
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Quotes of the Day
“But Haggard himself has done much to make sure no one forgets. He and his wife, Gayle, have worked this crisis, getting their story out on everything from ‘Good Morning America’ and ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ to ‘The Divorce Court’ as well as being the subject of the 2009 HBO documentary ‘The Trials of Ted Haggard.’ Just last year, Gayle came...
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Fifteen Talking Points on Abortion
John Piper (via Jared Wilson):
Existing fetal homicide laws make a man guilty of manslaughter if he kills the baby in a mother’s womb (except in the case of abortion).
Fetal surgery is performed on babies in the womb to save them while another child the same age is being legally destroyed.
Babies can sometimes survive on their own at 23 or 24 weeks, but abortion is legal beyond this...
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Uh Oh. →
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Breaking News: McNuggets Made With Chicken →
“So what are Chicken Mc-Nuggets really made of ? Chicken! Pollan provocatively implies that the nuggets are 56 per cent corn. Where does that number come from? Well, chickens are reared on corn, and Pollan calculates the amount of corn that is converted into chicken flesh, and adds to this the weight of other ingredients that are made from corn, such as the dextrose used in the batter,...
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China is Still an Evil Place →
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Seeds Family Worship
I bought a few albums from Seeds Family Worship for my wife and kids for Christmas but wasn’t actually interested in them myself. That is until I came home yesterday and heard my two-year-old singing, “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, it is the gift of God!” I nearly burst into tears.
The Seeds albums...
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Injustice Makes More Sense Because of the Cross
Tim Keller, in Generous Justice, Kindle location 2101:
Many people say, “I can’t believe in God when I see all the injustice in the world.” But here is Jesus, the Son of God, who knows what it’s like to be the victim of injustice, to stand up to power, to face a corrupt system and be killed for it. He knows what it is like to be lynched. I’m not sure how you believe in a God remote from...
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Summarizing the Bible in One Sentence →
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Atheists Are Angry At God, So Be Compassionate To...
Joe Carter, on the study that a large portion of atheists are angry at God:
While I firmly believe all forms of atheism are instances of both vincible ignorance and an obstinacy of will, I’ve sometimes mistakenly assumed it to be a purely intellectual failing—a matter of the head, not the heart. Only recently have I begun to appreciate how much the emotional response to pain and suffering...
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The State of Christianity? →
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Loughner Was Evil →
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Marshawn Lynch's Amazing Run Against the Saints
As I walked out of the bathroom on Saturday night at a local restaurant, I looked up to see on of the bar TV’s Marshawn Lynch make one of the best runs in NFL history. I must have looked like a total idiot, jumping up and down and screaming in a New England joint like that. Here’s the video with the local radio call:
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That About Says It →
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Quote of the Day
“As we walked out, she looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘This is the best I’ve felt in a long time.’ While we waited for the bus, she called her boyfriend, who instantly told her that she sounded happy. ‘Of course I’m happy!’ she replied.
“We caught the bus and got gelato together before heading back to campus for the rest of our classes.
“I went back...
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Watch41% of Pregnancies in NYC End in Abortion.
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Stat of the Day
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Do Tummy Aches Disprove God? →
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The Paradox of Infertility and Abortion
Ross Douthat in a particularly moving piece on the odd realities of abortion and infertility in America:
[I]t was a heartbreaking spectacle, whatever your perspective. Durham and her boyfriend are the kind of young people our culture sets adrift — working-class and undereducated, with weak support networks, few authority figures, and no script for sexual maturity beyond the easily neglected...
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Bad Exegesis In Support of Teetotalism Example... →
“His final hurdle is the story in the Gospel of John about the wedding feast in Cana where Jesus turns water into wine. Lumpkins says the Greek and Hebrew words translated ‘wine’ don’t distinguish between fresh and fermented grape juice, and he doubts the Son of God would ‘manifest forth his glory’ by sprucing up a party that had run out of alcohol.”
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Quote of the Day
“The paradigm case of interpersonal forgiveness is the one in which all of the conditions we would wish to see fulfilled are in fact met by both offender and victim. When they are met, forgiveness will not collapse into either excuse or condonation — and on any account it is essential to avoid conflating these concepts. One of the several sub-paradigmatic or imperfect forms of forgiveness...
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