Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Jesus Creed

Home
Evangelical
Weekly Meanderings, 7 February 2015

Weekly Meanderings, 7 February 2015

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:54 pm by Scot McKnight

Weekly Meanderings, 7 February 2015 2015-03-13T21:54:14-05:00 Scot McKnight

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

It is cold in many parts of the world today, but none as cold as the coldest town on earth, Oymyakon, and Amos Chapple’s photo piece tells the story. (Chapple’s a Kiwi, by the way.)

Meet Malcolm Butler.

Meet James Robertson, 21 mile per day commuter by foot:

But as he steps out into the cold, Robertson, 56, is steeled for an Olympic-sized commute. Getting to and from his factory job 23 miles away in Rochester Hills, he’ll take a bus partway there and partway home. And he’ll also walk an astounding 21 miles.

Five days a week. Monday through Friday.

It’s the life Robertson has led for the last decade, ever since his 1988 Honda Accord quit on him.

Every trip is an ordeal of mental and physical toughness for this soft-spoken man with a perfect attendance record at work. And every day is a tribute to how much he cares about his job, his boss and his coworkers. Robertson’s daunting walks and bus rides, in all kinds of weather, also reflect the challenges some metro Detroiters face in getting to work in a region of limited bus service, and where car ownership is priced beyond the reach of many.

But you won’t hear Robertson complain — nor his boss.

CNN updates the story to report funds have poured in to buy James a car.

Meet Rosa Parks.

Meet Bertrand Russell.

Iceland rebounding:

Hreinsdottir and her colleagues identified this change by examining 20 years of GPS data from more than five dozen points around the country. The height changes they identified, which are concentrated in central Iceland, correlate almost perfectly with the loss of ice documented by glaciologists, Hreinsdottir said. As Iceland’s glaciers continue to melt — the island loses about 11 billion tons of ice per year — the already-rapid rebounding process will accelerate. Relieved of their frozen burden, parts of the country could rise as fast as 1.6 inches per year by 2025 — growing at nearly the same rate as an elementary schooler.

This height change isn’t noticeable to the average human observer, but its consequences will be. Iceland sits atop one of the world’s most active volcanic hot spots, roiling with molten magma. The pressure reductions caused by the melting glaciers and rising land could create conditions that would cause mantle rocks to melt, further feeding Iceland’s already well-supplied volcanoes. Bárðarbunga, a volcano in the center of the island, has been spewing lava uninterrupted since August.

Caddies rebounding.

A group of professional caddies has reportedly banded together to file a $50 million federal lawsuit against the PGATour. The focus is on the bibs they wear during events, which generate revenue that isn’t shared by the Tour.

John Milton Moorhead:

John is a hero of mine and of many who was given a terminal diagnosis nine months ago: his cancer had returned with vigor, having spread into his lungs. He had already journeyed nine years with cancer, endured seven surgeries and multiple rounds of chemo, and at this juncture he felt the quiet, stirring invitation to choose quality of life over further medical intervention which, at best, could only delay his death. A physician himself, John said yes to living the fullness of life on behalf of those he loves, for however many more weeks and months he is granted.

The unilateral support of the Palestinians is an imbalance among so many Christians, and this essay by Laurie B. Regan might be a good jolt from the other side:

Last week, pro-Palestinian protestors disrupted a New York City Council meeting yelling slogans and brandishing a Palestinian flag. The demonstration was particularly offensive given that it occurred as council members were voting on a resolution commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz….

Greenfield’s point is critical. Those who attack and demonize Israel for its imperfections in the face of the atrocities committed by its Arab neighbors are not just hypocrites. There is only one explanation for their irrational condemnations: hatred of Jews. And there is no difference between protests by pro-Palestinians and protests that regularly emanate from the White House.

Incomprehensibly, while Israel is unquestionably our most strategic ally in the region, the administration is taking great strides to fundamentally transform the Middle East. By aligning itself with Iran in its undeclared war against Sunni jihadists, Obama has distanced America from traditional allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. Obama is empowering Iran under the auspices of shared interests and green lighting its development of military infrastructure on Israel’s borders — through which threats and attacks have already begun.

Pre-school, ONLINE, by Valerie Strauss!

It was only a matter of time. Online school classes for toddlers and preschoolers are here.

VINCI Education is offering what it calls a “groundbreaking virtual school” for youngsters, which was featured by by Dr. Gadget®, the nationally recognized TV and radio personality, on CBS’s “The Talk” late last month.

VINCI Education, according to its Web site,”is a pioneer in providing Blended Learning Curriculum, Assessment Tools and Data Analytics for the Early Childhood Education.” It operates preschools and day-care centers in Los Angeles, Ottawa and Beijing, which use technology and blended learning strategies to, the Web site says, “strengthen the main developmental areas of a child’s mind.” The company won the CODiE 2014 award (given by the software industry) for Best Game-Based Curriculum.

If you like grammar, you’ll like this by Keith Houston:

Finding the obelos to be necessary but not sufficient to the task at hand, Aristarchus took Zenodotus’s dash and created an array of additional symbols to aid his work. The obelos reprised its role of marking spurious lines, but Aristarchus allied it with a new symbol called the asteriskos, or “little star.” Alone, the dotted, star-like glyph (※) called out material that had been mistakenly duplicated; together with an obelos, it marked a line that belonged elsewhere in the text at hand. Lastly, Aristarchus placed diples alongside lines that contained noteworthy text, while the diple’s dolled-up sibling, the diple periestigmene (⸖), or “dotted diple,” was used to mark passages where he differed with the reading of other critics.

Deirdre McCloskey:

But wherever it came from historically, God appears to want it. He wants us to live and choose in his created world, though not since the Fall in the Edenic part. To put it economically, God wants us to face scarcity. He wants it not because he is a trickster who is amused by seeing us struggle with disease and the law of gravity in our pain-filled and finite lives. He so loves us that, after Eden, he wants us to have the dignity of choice. That is what free will means.

Denys Munby said to me once, “In Heaven there is no scarcity and in Hell there is no choice.” In the created world there are both. The dignity of free will would be meaningless if a choice of one good, such as apples, did not have what the economists call an “opportunity cost” in, say, oranges. If we could have all the apples and oranges we wanted, “living in idleness,” as Paul put it, with no “budget constraint,” no “scarcity,” we would live as overfed pet cats, not as human beings. If we have free will, and therefore necessarily face scarcity, we live truly in the image of God.

Scarcity is necessary for human virtues. Humility, said Aquinas, answers among the Christian virtues to the pagan virtue of great-souledness, or magnanimity, which Aristotle the pagan teacher of aristocrats admired so much. To be humble is to temper one’s passions in pursuing, as Aquinas put it, boni ardui – goods difficult of achievement. To be great-souled – which, in turn, is part of the cardinal virtue of courage – is to keep working towards such goods nonetheless. No one would need to be courageous or prudent or great-souled or humble if goods were faciles rather than ardui.

The virtue of temperance, again, is not about mortification of the flesh – not, at any rate, for Christian thinkers like Aquinas (there were others, descendants of the Desert Fathers, who had another idea). On the contrary, this side of Christianity says, we should admire the moderate yet relishing use of a world charged with the grandeur of God.

It is the message of the Aquinian side of Christian thought that we should not withdraw from the world. On the contrary, as Jesus was, we should be truly, and laboriously, and gloriously human.

Delaware would be the first in digital drivers licenses, by Mark Berman:

You can pay for groceries by scanning your phone. You can board a plane after scanning your phone. You can check your bank account balance and order dinner and show proof of insurance and buy pants and watch a movie and do essentially anything with your phone, because your phone is always there. Your phone is always in your hand, and even when it isn’t in your hand it is in your bag or your pocket, ready and waiting, secure in the knowledge that you won’t be able to wait long before compulsively checking it again and again.

So if the phone has replaced the credit card for many, and if the phone has replaced and consolidated so many other things, it stands to reason someone would ask: We’re always carrying around driver’s licenses, so is there a way our smartphone could replace that, too?

This idea is being considered in a few places across the country, states that could function as test subjects to see if such an idea can catch on with the broader populace. The Delaware legislature passed a bill last week asking the state’s Division of Motor Vehicles to “study and consider issuing” digital driver’s licenses that could replace the traditional plastic ones.

Shmuly Yanklowitz, explaining why halakhah is needed for morality in Judaism:

Why should private morality be any different from societal order? If we are serious about our personal moral and spiritual lives, then we need systems of law to protect the core values we hold most dear. There is too much at stake to violate our most cherished ethics.

Judaism, as a religion, contains one of the most powerful mechanisms to uphold these core values. Jewish life is not merely confined to specific moments such as holidays or particular life-cycle moments or spaces such as synagogues and community centers. Instead, Judaism contains an all-encompassing philosophical extension of the most relevant precepts that permeate our entire lives. This is what halakhah (Jewish religious law) is for. As Rabbi Soloveitchik explained: “The Halakhah is not hermetically enclosed within the confines of cult sanctuaries but penetrates into every nook and cranny of life. The marketplace, the street, the factory, the house, the meeting place, the banquet hall, all constitute the backdrop for the religious life” (Halakhic Man, 94).

Ben Myers on procrastination as a way of life:

Because I am an uncommonly lazy and disorganised person, I have made productive procrastination one of the rules of my life. Some members of the human race, I know it, are able to get things done simply by planning and discipline. I respect those people. I admire them from afar. I bless their creator for making them so well. Not that I blame God for making me into such a slovenly specimen of humanity. His ways are not our ways, and that is all right with me. But there came a point in my life when I saw that there were only two roads before me. Either I could achieve nothing for the rest of my days, or I could become a better procrastinator. A dismal crossroad, reader, but there you have it.

So I chose productive procrastination as my path in life. Don’t call it a bad habit; I prefer to think of it as a vocation. If you get really good at it, there is even a kind of poetry in it. That is what I’m striving for: procrastination as a work of art.

Ben, what happens when you procrastinate on your procrastination principle?

Jonathan O’Connell:

With shoppers, businesses and investments pouring into urban areas, many suburban malls are dying. Experts predict that as many as half of America’s malls will be torn down or reconfigured.

“My view on enclosed malls is that there are 100 malls in this country that will always be dominant shopping destinations,” said Don Wood, chief executive of Rockville-based Federal Realty Investment Trust, owner of 17 million square feet of open-air U.S. shopping centers. “It’s Tysons Corner and Pentagon City in our area. It’s heavily populated, affluent areas. But there are 1,000 other malls in this country, and the future for those is bleaker.”

NPR and Mormon apostasy:

John Dehlin started a popular podcast and website calledMormon Stories as a space for people to question Mormon teachings. Next Sunday, he’ll face a disciplinary hearing where he expects to be officially excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Dehlin is charged with apostasy for publicly supporting same-sex marriage, the ordination of women, and for questioning church doctrine.

Dehlin tells NPR’s Rachel Martin that 15 years ago, when he started studying the church’s history, he found what he learned about founding prophet Joseph Smith “deeply disturbing.”

Weekly Meanderings

Previous Post

February 6, 2015

My Kind of Greek (Tie-less) PM!

Next Post

February 7, 2015 Saturday Book Interview, with Karen Swallow Prior

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Acts of the Apostles Adam Advent Anabaptism Angels Anglican Apologetics Atonement Baptism BCP Prayers Bible Biblical Studies Birds Blogging Bloglossary Bonhoeffer Books Calvinism Christianity Church Church History Coffee Colossians Commentary Recs Conversion Creation Creeds Culture Death Ecclesiastes Economics Education Embracing Grace Emergent Emerging Movement Eschatology Essays Ethics Eucharist Evangelicalism Family Fasting Fathers Fellowship of Differents Footsteps Tour Fun and Whimsical Gospel Grace Happiness Heaven Hell Holy Spirit Irenaeus James Jesus Jesus Creed Job Justification Kingdom of God Law Lectures Lent Liberalism Love and Marriage Mabanteneni Manhood Mary Miracles Missio Alliance MissioLife Missional Missional Jesus Movies and Film New Perspective Northern Seminary OneLife Origins Project Orthodox Parables Pastor's Spouse Pastoring and Leading Pastoring and Preaching Patristics Paul Paul-John Tour Pharisees Pietism Political Theology Prayer and Formation Preaching Problems for Faith Psalm 119 Psalms Public Issues Purgatory Religions Resurrection Revelation Romans Rule of JCreed Science and Faith Sermon on the Mount Sports Ten Commandments Theology Third Way Top Ten Lists Translations Uncategorized Universalism University Ministry Way Out Weekly Meanderings Wisdom Women and Ministry Work Worship Writing & Blogging Youth Ministry

Select a Month July 2021 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 0000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who said, "I am the resurrection and the life"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Peter Paul Jesus Moses