Tim Stafford’s blog post on “Why Marriage?” 

T.M. Luhrmann, author of “When God Talks Back” does a shorter piece in the NYT trying to explain “evangelicals” to outsiders. If Dems want to speak a language that “evangelicals” can hear then they need to rework their talking points to address a “self-improvement” narrative. This is really telling about the state of evangelical identity at least according to Luhrmann. I don’t doubt her BTW.

Richard Mouw with a nice piece on how Congregants wished their pastors understood their work lives.

NT Wright sings Bob Dylan. http://vimeo.com/41782945 Love it! 🙂

How positive do you need to be for: Happy marriage? 5 positive to one critical, business? 3:1, if you’re over 13:1 you lose credibility with people. Fascinating.

How to love people you disagree with. 

Our language problem. When something is easy we think we’re “good at it”. When something is hard we think “we’re bad at it”. Kristen T. notes that this isn’t true. When things get hard they get real. Good observation.

ThinkChristian.net has a really wise write up on “50 Shades of Gray”. Something I vaguely remember hearing something about. The comments are wise too.