When someone else looks at what you spend all your time looking at….and they see the same incredible, unthinkable, unexplainable, bizarre, sad, madhouse of a thing…you feel better.
Thanks, Amy. I feel better.
No….actually….I think I’m feeling worse. THANKS A LOT.
No riff necessary from me. Go read it. Then come back here and talk about it.
First, a letter from an IM reader, then some thoughts on humor.
Greetings.
First, let me say I have thoroughly enjoyed the last year or so since I came across your website. It has been a blessing for me. You’re probably thinking I’m setting you up for something. Not really. I do have an issue to kick around with your Why Do They Hate Us? article. And I will keep reading your blog and listening to the podcasts. They are a blessing.
The thing I wanted to kick around with regards to the moral issues that oftentimes put Christians in a bad light is the way sin is treated so casually. You say we should not get uptight about a funny song about divorce. Okay, that’s fair. But for the kid who is going (or has gone) through it may not find it so funny. You say, Continue reading “Can Christians Share in the Joke?”
Here in Kentucky, most of the Baptist Churches of a certain age have a particular approach to their names. Most choose to go the geographic route, so we have Three Forks of the Elkhorn, Muddy Gap, First Baptist Every-town-you-can-think-of, a couple of thousand “creeks” of various kinds and so on.
After that, Bible names come in second. Bethel. Emmanuel. Grace. Cana. Bethlehem. And finally, evangelical, emerging and missional names run last: The Journey. Friendship. Sojourners. Victory.
I’ve never put much stock in any theory that a church name has any actual influence on a church’s character. I’ve preached at Little Hope Baptist and everything seemed to be hopeful. We have a lot of “Memorial” churches- like my wife’s former church, which after a fire, renamed themselves Walnut Memorial- and everyone seems cheerfully engaged in the present rather than mourning over the past.
Occasionally, however, a name truly puzzles me. Why, I ask, would someone choose this name if they know anything about the actual meaning of the name? If it’s a Biblical name, I’m sometimes forced to conclude that someone hadn’t read very carefully.Continue reading “What’s In A Name?”
Will Hinton tagged me, but I wrote the response several years ago: Why Do They Hate Us?
When I published this several years ago, over 100 atheists wrote me saying “amen.”
Drought. Deleting old podcasts. Decisional methodology and the evangelical problem. New books.
Internet Monk Radio is on iTunes Podcasts for free. Search for Monk. I’ll appear right under monkeys.
My wife says I need to read more fiction, and she’s right as usual. So, of course, I find a way to read religious fiction. After finishing J.F. Powers Morte D’Urban, I wanted to share this wonderful book with you.
J.F. Powers passed away in 1999, and recent reissues of his novels and short stories have brought his name back into the light, at least for those interested in the intersection of literature and Christianity. In 1963, Morte D’Urban won the National Book Award, and it remains a wonderful example of contemporary literature, presaging the literary voice of a Garrison Keillor, with incredible attention to the mixture of pathos, tragedy, humor, boredom and wonder that is ordinary life. Powers’ gifts of recording mundane conversations, trains of thoughts and that most difficult of communal activities to capture, the business meeting, are truly amazing.Continue reading “Recommendation and Review: Morte D’Urban by J.F. Powers”
Podcast 23. This and that. Re-recommending Kreeft’s book on apologetics. Why debate if you believe in depravity? Brad Pitt’s objection to an egotistical God.
The Handbook of Christian Apologetics.
Coffee Cup Apologetics now has its own website: ccapologetics.wordpress.com
All the episodes of Coffee Cup Apologetics are now on iTunes. Go to iTunes and search for “Apologetics.†(iTunes is missing some podcasts. You can get them from the web sites.)
I’ve seen so many special edition Bibles the last ten years that I’ve gotten very cynical about anything new. When I see things like the Maxwell Leadership Bible or a newly released Apologetics Bible that features an endless list of “Big Names” on the front, it’s easy to get cynical. What are publishers thinking about beyond making money from niche markets?Continue reading “Recommendation and Review: Ten Reasons to Love The ESV Literary Study Bible”
UPDATE: Check out the 50 Top Selling Authors in Evangelical Publishing and you’ll see what’s wrong with us. (And sorry Reformed boys, but that is DON, not John.)
Time for an official apology. (WARNING: If you are ironically challenged, beware of this post.)
Roman Catholic friends, if you’ve ever been confronted by various Protestants over the tendency of your church to have a sacred tradition that exists in addition to Holy Scripture and those Protestants pretended to be above that sort of thing, I’d like to officially apologize. The same for any carping on our part about tending to believe legends and stories about the saints, Mary and so on. We all know that Protestants have their own traditions and canon of stories that exist outside of scripture and are only tangentially related to scripture, but, of course, that’s different.Continue reading “An Official Apology”
Here’s a great quote from a World Council of Churches statement in 2006.
“Each church is the church catholic and not simply a part of it. Each church is the church catholic, but not the whole of it. Each church fulfills its catholicity when it is in communion with the other churches.”
I’ve been reading a number of documents on the Ecumenical movement. Obviously there’s a big difference between unity that is uniformity in all visible and invisible ways, and unity that is visible in some, but not all ways.
Ultimately, unity and diversity exist within ourselves before they are expressed in communities.
The Internet Monk Archives