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, 13 October 2018

Weekly Meanderings, 13 October 2018

Last updated on: October 13, 2018 at 9:18 am by Scot McKnight

Weekly Meanderings, 13 October 2018 2018-10-13T09:18:01-05:00 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.

One week comes to its end and a new week is about to begin: Tuesday Kris and I fly for the rest of the week to Dublin Ireland for a conference called Rubicon.

Creative sand art:

(CNN) — If you’ve been frequenting the sandy beaches along the rugged, Welsh Pembrokeshire Coast in Britain, you might have noticed some mysterious shapes appearing in the sand.

These intricate murals are beach-based works of art created by local sand muralist Marc Treanor.

Inspired by crop circles, the enigmatic formations that occasionally appear in corn and wheat fields, Treanor forges stunningly intricate patterns and pictures by raking wet sand.

When he’s done, Treanor watches as his hard work is consumed by the crashing waves, but he says that’s all part of the experience.

“It’s completely part of it, it’s totally integral to the work and the fact it is impermanent and it is temporary,” Treanor tells CNN Travel.

That said, he usually has chance to capture his creations on camera for posterity.

Plagiarism among Christians, including some big names — Christine Caine, Ann Voskamp, Andreas Köstenberger.

[Throckmorton comments:] I suspect that part of the reason plagiarism is a mild sin among Christian writers and publishers is that enforcing the rules would require Christian authors to write their own material. Thus, ghostwriters and researchers would be out of work. Pretend experts and Christian celebrities would have to develop actual skills and find something novel and interesting to say without the help of paid experts and researchers.As illustrated by the above situations, publishers aren’t regularly accountable to the public, nor do they require authors to be accountable. Scott had to go to court to get justice. She couldn’t count on Caine and her Christian publisher to do the right thing. Now that the situation is public, Caine isn’t talking. Although I don’t know what is in mind, her silence gives the appearance that she hopes her popularity will get her through this rough patch.

What has surprised me is that lack of response from Christians on social media to these cases.

Jakob Rodgers:

A nonprofit in southeast Colorado Springs is giving new meaning to the term “Extreme Makeover.”

In just 10 days, Dream Centers plans to transform the rubbled remains of two methamphetamine houses into a glitzy new community gathering space for Mary’s Home — a faith-based program helping homeless mothers and their children. In doing so, the nonprofit wants to house more mothers who have been living in their cars or on friends’ couches, while helping reinvigorate one of Colorado Springs’ roughest neighborhoods.

“We’re addressing poverty at its roots,” said Brenda Rogers, the program’s executive director.

The project isn’t part of any television show. But the nonprofit’s leaders say it will look no different from an episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

Build one and watch the children:

We’ve known for a while that home libraries are strongly linked to children’s academic achievement. What’s less certain is whether the benefits they bestow have a long-term impact.

A new large-scale study, featuring data from 31 countries, reports they do indeed. It finds the advantages of growing up in a book-filled home can be measured well into adulthood.

“Adolescent exposure to books is an integral part of social practices that foster long-term cognitive competencies,” writes a research team led by Joanna Sikora of Australian National University.

These reading-driven abilities not only “facilitate educational and occupational attainment,” the researchers write in the journal Social Science Research. “[They] also lay a foundation for lifelong routine activities that enhance literacy and numeracy.”

The researchers analyzed data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Competencies. Its surveys, taken between 2011 and 2015, featured adults (ages 25 to 65) in 31 nations, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Singapore, and Turkey.

All participants were asked how many books there were in their home when they were 16 years old. (One meter of shelving, they were told, holds about 40 books.) They chose from a series of options ranging from “10 or less” to “more than 500.”

Literacy was defined as “the ability to read effectively to participate in society and achieve personal goals.” Participants took tests that “captured a range of basic through advanced comprehension skills, from reading brief texts for a single piece of information to synthesizing information from complex texts.”

Numeracy tests measured the “ability to use mathematical concepts in everyday life,” while IT-related tests “assessed the ability to use digital technology to communicate with others, as well as to gather, analyze, and synthesize information.”

The results suggest those volumes made a long-term difference. “Growing up with home libraries boosts adult skills in these areas beyond the benefits accrued from parental education, or [one’s] own educational or occupational attainment,” the researchers report.

Not surprisingly, the biggest impact was on reading ability. “The total effects of home library size on literacy are large everywhere,” the researchers report.

Growing up with few books in the house was associated with below-average literacy rates, while he presence of around 80 books raised those rates to the mean. Literacy continued to increase with the number of reported books up to around 350, at which point it flattened out.

Do not warm urine in this microwave! Those with drug in their system are using some from others but need to warm it up to make it look fresh!

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Florida gas station owner says she is battling a bizarre problem – customers using the microwave to heat urine.

Parul Patel, who owns a BP gas station and convenience store in Jacksonville, told WTLV she’s “sick and tired” of “random people walking [in] and it’s happening every day.”

It’s gotten so bad, Patel says, that she had to post a sign on the microwave that reads, “Only for food use. Do not warm urine.”

It appears the problem isn’t entirely random, however – Patel’s On the Fly convenience store is located steps away from LabCorp, which offers drug testing services, according to the website.

“They become so aggressive with us,” Patel said.

The inspiration for the sign was an incident with a customer who Patel said started cussing at her and saying there was no sign telling her she couldn’t warm pee in the microwave.

LabCorp did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Bahati VanPelt:

As reported in the article above, the pay gap between those who complete their college degree as opposed to those who do not, is at an all-time-high. With more college players entering the draft early each year, and the average NFL career spanning less than four years, understanding the importance of having your college degree has never been more vital.

For active and former players, here are three reasons why you should consider going back to school and getting that degree, if you haven’t already:

The NFL is a job, not a career. 3.3 years! This is a short amount of time for a career, and most likely what you earned in the NFL won’t last for you and your family the rest of your life. On average, college grads earned 56% more than high school grads, according to a 2015 study. Having a successful second career after football is an extremely important part of your transition. Check out this Q&A with Ryan Mundy to see an example of a former player succeeding in his next chapter.

Continuing education can help you find your interests outside of being a professional athlete. After years of playing the sport you love, the job market, career trends and your own interests may have changed drastically since you were in college. Going back to school for your undergraduate or graduate degree may help you identify new paths you never considered. Continuing your education can also help you find your true passions off the field. Here is a great example of former NFL player Will Poole doing just that.

Build your skillset before embarking on your own path. We’ve all heard the cautionary tale of players who have launched their own businesses unsuccessfully after leaving the league. Not having the right skillset can be a recipe for failure but can be avoided with education and preparation. Going back to school can give you the tools, professional development and networking opportunities essential to entrepreneurship success.

At The Trust, we assist players in career transitioning and continuing their education. The Trust’s Scholarship Award Benefit is a great resource to help you finish your undergraduate degree or get a graduate degree. If you or a former player you know is interested in going back to school, please call us at 866-725-0063 or email us at [email protected] to learn more.

Sacred music in a secular age, by Randall Balmer:

If there’s a better antidote to the madness emanating from Washington than a choral festival in the medieval chapels of Oxford, England, I can’t imagine what it might be. For three days last week, pilgrims from around the English-speaking world descended for lectures, casual meanderings through streets and alleys and a series of concerts beneath the vaulted Gothic ceilings of Magdalen, Queen’s, Merton, New and Christ Church colleges.

Stephen Darlington, tutor in music at Christ Church, provided an overview of choral music in Oxford over the centuries, with special attention to the English Reformation of the 16th century, when Henry VIII broke with Rome. Reformers in England, led by Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, demanded that church music be written and performed in English rather than Latin for the edification of common people. Cranmer also sought to rein in polyphony, stipulating “for every syllable a note.”

Fortunately, the English composers of the age — John Taverner, Thomas Tallis, John Sheppard, William Byrd and others — generally disregarded Cranmer’s dictum. Sacred music in England survived the Reformation, as the concerts themselves illustrated.

I will almost certainly run out of adjectives to describe the music itself …

But nothing in between — no priest, no Eucharist, no passing of the peace among parishioners — and here is where the festival lost some of its power. Most of the people in attendance, both singers and audience, were there solely for the music. But the music was wrenched out of its liturgical context, stripped of all religious or spiritual meaning. One of the choirmasters acknowledged the disjunction between the performers themselves and what they were singing.

The effect was not unlike Joni Mitchell’s tree museum, or a plane taxiing down the runway but never lifting into the air. Here was sacred music for a secular age, carefully curated from centuries past and meticulously performed. A music museum for the discerning aesthete.

We shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. The West is still captive to Enlightenment-style rationalism, where faith and belief defy the strictures of positivism. Weekly attendance in the Church of England hasn’t topped a million since 2013, out of a population in excess of 65 million. The prevailing assumption these days is that no clear-minded person can also be a person of faith, that the canons of Enlightenment rationalism serve as the final arbiter of truth and that the realm of the transcendent is the habitation of fools. Darlington’s biggest laugh line was “Well done the clergy” after describing some admittedly risible restrictions on organ music at Lincoln Cathedral in the 16th century. Then he added that he needed to be careful because “there may be some clergy here.”

Priests reduced to caricature. Faith consigned to the dustbin of history. Music as artifact, nothing more.

Call it moral tribalism, but none dare call it reason:

Good as Haidt’s books are, they’re probably too late in offering a solution, and will probably in the future be seen as timely warnings that we as a culture ignored.

And the sewer-fest that is the SCOTUS hearings around Brett Kavanaugh is simply proof of that.

Haidt’s work aims to draw the sting out of our deep differences; to acknowledge that we form tribes, but without having to descend to the hateful – and hate-filled – tribalism that is our politics in the early part of the 21st century.

Sorry folks, but that particular boat has sailed.

Having read the Kavanaugh/Ford debacle across the political and social spectra: The Guardian, The New York Times, The Conversation, The Huffington Post, the ABC on one side; The Australian, The Wall Street Journal, Breitbart online and others, on the other, here’s the conclusion I have come to, and it’s not about Kavanaugh….

With zero evidence in the SCOTUS hearing other than the assertions of both parties, what we are left with is a tribalism that pits “good” (us) against “evil” (them). Meaning that once again, here in our hard secular age, in which there is no public acknowledge of anything transcendent, we are borrowing transcendent terms to describe each other.

And that’s worrying. Our default is no longer to identity ourselves – as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn noted – as possessing the fault line of good and evil within each of us.

No. Our actions are merely psychological and require therapy. Your actions are deeply sinful and require judgement. I need to be “understood”. You need to be “condemned”. [HT: JS]

Our cell phones, tables, computers, work and the Puritans:

Periodically some of the very institutions most responsible for the 24/7-always-on work culture that we inhabit rue that culture, and then give counsel on how to disconnect for a while. Matthew Kitchen, writing recently in the theWall Street Journal has fresh such advice. Because technology has expanded “the workday’s boundaries until it seamlessly blurs with the rest of civilian life,” Kitchen writes, we need to learn to say no to emails, to switch off our phones. It may be hard to get clear of the madding crowd of co-workers, shooting us a quick note to ask a question or share a spreadsheet.

Lest some among us flinch from claiming the quiet evenings or personal days due to us, the article assures, “actively disengaging from work can help you rest up so you’re more productive during office hours.” Indeed, when we learn how to turn off the always-on work mindset, we might be even better workers and, what is more, look like our work is more important. Kitchen brings us to author Greg McKeown, who observes that “being selective about how we spend our time turns it into a valuable commodity to be traded, ultimately earning you respect and making you more productive when you’re ‘on.’” To help us do this—in Kitchen’s terms, “steal some of my life back”–we may use our functions of Google Calendars or the features of our new iPhone operating system to prevent interruptions. We can even impose apps on ourselves to limit screen time, a kind of child-lock for hardworking adults, that help us regain control of our lives by helping a machine control mask our lack of control.

American religious history offers a range of other strategies taking a break in the work week. Some ways of keeping the Sabbath holy may strike us as more sound than others. Laws in years past have pioneered bans on Sunday mail delivery, or sale of strong drink, or tippling of ice cream sodas. But few earnest believers have topped the Sunday rules put in place by New England Puritans. Especially in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but to varying degrees elsewhere in those northeastern outposts, settlers required themselves by law not to be always on. …

Reacting against the Anglican way of doing Sundays in England, New England Puritans put a firm ban on any kind of work on the Sabbath. In his book on the communitarian character of New England work culture, Creating the Commonwealth, Stephen Innes writes, “Hard, productive work for six days was to be followed by one day of almost complete surcease.” By law, everything was shut down on the Sabbath, with rules enforced by enforced by “a potent combination of family, church, and court.” Closed off for the day were “all farming, artisanal, mercantile, and professional work; all domestic labor (including cooking, brewing, sweeping, bedmaking, haircutting, and shaving); all traveling, hunting, drinking, running, and all walking, (even in one’s garden) except ‘reverently to and from meeting.’” [HT: JS]

Eventually….

A typically quiet geyser in Yellowstone National Park erupted last month, spewing water up to 30 feet in the air. Afterward, park employees found a slew of garbage surrounding its vent, including a Hamm’s beer can, a vintage pacifier, a shoe heel and dozens of coins.

Curators considered placing the items in the park’s archives as a reminder: Please, don’t use the springs as a trash can. The park posted a photograph of the “strange” items after last month’s eruption of the geyser called Ear Spring.

“Foreign objects can damage hot springs and geysers,” said the park. “The next time Ear Spring erupts we hope it’s nothing but natural rocks and water.”

The pacifier dates back to the 1930s, according to Live Science, which noted a cinderblock, a busted bottle, old signs, cigarette butts and an eight-inch drinking straw among the items.

“Some are clearly historic,” the park said in its post. So was the Sept. 15 eruption.

Old Ear had not experienced a known eruption of that size of since 1957, the United States Geological Survey said, though smaller bursts took place as recently as 2004.

After the eruption, a shift in hydrothermal activity occurred in the area around Old Ear known as Geyser Hill, the USGS noted, which is located across the Firehole River from Old Faithful.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

October 12, 2018

Taking Love For Granted

Next Post

October 14, 2018 Lord, We Pray

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

I am an animal that chews the cud and has split hooves. What am I?

Select your answer to see how you score.

A clean animal A sacrifical animal An unclean animal A protected animal