Archive for the ‘Goodblog’ Category
1July2008
Good Post
Posted by Convallaria under: Goodblog.
This was a very good read and I thought that this in particular nailed it on the head:
All my life, the message I had heard loud and clear was that sex was for pleasure and bonding, that its potential for creating life was purely tangential, almost to the point of being forgotten. This mind-set became the foundation of my views on abortion. Because I saw sex as being by default closed to the possibility of life, I thought of unplanned pregnancies as akin to being struck by lightning while walking down the street—something totally unpredictable and undeserved that happened to people living normal lives…. I came to see that our culture’s widespread use and acceptance of contraception meant that the “contraceptive mentality” toward sex was now the default attitude. As a society, we had come to take it for granted that we are entitled to the pleasurable and bonding aspects of sex even when we are opposed to the new life it might produce.
27March2008
New Blog
Posted by Puretext under: General; Goodblog.
My dad has started blogging. The plan is to chronicle the ah… interesting stories he’s encountered in his career as a taxi driver. I’ve heard some of the stories. I have high hopes.
The address is http://tulsataximan.blogspot.com/
11April2007
Pneumasphere Review
Posted by Puretext under: Goodblog.
Rich Tatum, formerly a web designer at Christianity Today, has a penchant for organizing things. And being a Pentecostal blogger, he’s been organizing the “pneumasphere” for a while now, and providing a valuable service in the process. He’s got the most comprehensive list of quality charismatic bloggers available, and any number of tools to filter through them. Most recently, he’s come up with a list of the top 20 most influential pneumabloggers, based on Technorati rankings. No, I’m not in the top 20. But I was shocked to discover that I didn’t even recognize most of the people who are.
So I scanned through some of them, and found some interesting posts I thought I’d share:
The Gospel is Their Home
Rob Wilkerson on Theology and Experience
One More Added to the Kingdom
A story of the Holy Spirit working in a way that I really miss.
Dramatic Drop in Murder after Prayer
In July of last year, the Christian Defense Coalition held a 24-hour prayer meeting in Washington, DC. Six months later, the murder rate is down 27%. Coincidence?
If a human author wrote a book explaining, perhaps, his life, and then I were to call up this author and want to talk further with him about what he wrote, I would think it very bizarre if the author only answered me with quotes from his book, never saying anything else, but finding little snippets to reply to me from the published work. It would be very awkward and not very personal. I would wonder about the author and how much he really wanted to interact with me.
I remember when some Russian believers emigrated to our neighborhood from the old Soviet Union where they were persecuted. We “adopted” them but when we first met we had no means of communicating with each other. The only way we figured out to communicate was to use each other’s bibles (theirs in Russian and ours in English) to point out our general intents and feelings. It was well-meaning, but limited. (We put a scripture citation on their birthday cake and they read it and cried!)
19September2006
NT Wright on Miracles
Posted by Puretext under: Goodblog; Theology.
Really quickly, because I’m behinder in everything right now:
Jollyblogger has been working his way through some of the writings of NT Wright lately, and he’s come across a different sort of perspective on Jesus’ miracles. Traditionally, we have thought of Jesus miracles as having to do either with some kind of “proof” that he was who he said he was, or with him doing individual acts of mercy on human suffering. NT Wright, Jollyblogger says, sees something different: the restoration of the lost to Israel, God’s people.
Apparently, the miracles that Jesus performed, according to Wright, were always specifically for the removal of ailments which made people “unclean,” things which severed them from right standing as one of God’s people. In restoring them to health, he was primarily restoring them to Israel. That is, his work of healing performed the same function as his work of forgiving sin. Furthermore, in healing gentiles and Samaritans, Jesus was extending the kingdom of God to people outside the nation of Israel. No wonder he caused such a stir!
At any rate, there are implications here for the arguments between cessationists and charismatics, because the arguments about the continuation of supernatural gifts and miracles turn hard upon the theological purpose of those miracles.
Read on, MacDuff!
17April2006
Vending Machine God
Posted by Puretext under: General; Goodblog; Theology.
Slowly catching up on my blog reading here. Last week Hobbes was discussing something I touched upon briefly in Saturday’s post. You can’t divide God into bite-sized chunks.
When we come before God in our private devotional times, we sometimes approach Him hoping to experience Him according to the particular attributes that we think we need at that moment. For example, yesterday I needed God to be my ‘Forgiver’. Today I need God to be Father to me. Tomorrow I may need Him to be my Healer. The next day I may need Him to be my Strength. God is clearly all of these. But, He is all of these things at the same time, and infinitely more! The danger is that we approach God with a vending-machine mentality. We put our prayer into the slot, and select the Divine Attribute we want to consume at that moment. We seek bits of God, rather than all that He is.
Read the whole thing (just a couple more paragraphs). He presents a profound understanding of what it truly means to worship God.
24March2006
Castle Sands
Posted by Puretext under: General; Goodblog.
A few months ago I had the strangest opening to what has become (I think) the beginnings of a very nice friendship: a guy gave me a book.
Okay, that doesn’t sound so weird. But the guy who gave me this book was approximately five time zones to the East of me (he lives somewhat North of London), and the book he sent me is currently retailing at around $100. This, I knew, was the beginning of a fast friendship.
Since then, I’ve been paying close attention to a guy who lets himself be known only as “Hobbes,” on the basis that he may soon be going into mission work in a hostile field, where having his religious thoughts easily searchable on the web might be a bad thing. Since I’m currently at the top of the list for Google and Yahoo! searches for “Kyle French.” I completely understand.
At any rate, I dig this guy. He says a lot of things that I agree with, but more importantly for me, he seems to think about things in the same sort of way that I do. That’s a rarity (as, no doubt, you can fathom). There are some disctinctions. You will note in his writing a much more stiff upper lip.
So I would recommend, to those of you who enjoy reading what I have to say, that you click over and take a peek at what’s going on at Castle Sands. You might enjoy it. But if you don’t, you may want to brace yourself. I suspect there will be a good deal of interaction between that site and this for a while.
15September2005
Posted by Convallaria under: Goodblog.
Over at The Doctor is In, Dr. Bob is discussing one of the most recent developments in the Katrina mess: euthanasia of critically ill patients.
Read on, MacDuff!
4June2005
Plug for The Anchoress
Posted by Convallaria under: Goodblog.
The Anchoress has a good blog about the idolatry of feminism that has infiltrated today’s church. I found it to be an interesting read. Go check it out.
27May2005
Until finally you die, of a lack of corroboration.
Posted by Puretext under: Goodblog.
Writer Lars Walker at Brandywine Books writes of his pain at seeing other people erase his past. As someone who has to hire historians to tell him where he used to live, I can relate.
8April2005
Right Reason
Posted by Puretext under: General; Goodblog.
I’m slowly getting around to moving my surveillance crew up to “official” status. My number one criterion: Making us think (Making us think –strephon is making us think!) Right Reason definitely falls into that category.
It’s called “The Welblog for Philosophical Conservatism” and it has a whole host of contributors, listed neatly on the right hand column. These are not all longish pieces, but they all deal with… “thick” topics. All the more fun for me.
