Discussion on CRC-Voices on SSM lead to the question of what is happening in the Netherlands. For CRC people looking back over the Atlantic is an old habit, for better or for worse. In the Netherlands marriages are a state business, churches either hold “an affirmation of marriage” afterwards or in the RC setting “complete” the marriage. Also found an interesting article on the first trio marriage in the Netherlands in 2005.
Why do I take and keep these notes? Yesterday I read a piece on Tim Stafford’s blog that I didn’t note and today in a Voices discussion on caring for aging parents I remembered what I read. Tim Stafford is republishing some of his out of print books on Kindle, one of them on caring for aging parents. Here is the Amazon link.
Remembering the unpopular Jesus.
Oregon church sues former member for online criticism.
Can you call a 9 year old a psychopath?
These differences, researchers say, are most likely genetic in origin. One study calculated the heritability of callous-unemotional traits at 80 percent. Donald Lynam, a psychologist at Purdue University who has spent two decades studying “fledgling psychopaths,” says that these differences may eventually solidify to produce the unusual mixture of intelligence and coldness that characterizes adult psychopaths. “The question’s not ‘Why do some people do bad things?’ ” Lynam told me by phone. “It’s ‘Why don’t more people do bad things?’ And the answer is because most of us have things that inhibit us. Like, we worry about hurting others, because we feel empathy. Or we worry about other people not liking us. Or we worry about getting caught. When you start to take away those inhibitors, I think that’s when you end up with psychopathy.”
Eric Dirksen’s reflections on why young adults are coming to his church plant.
The Mythical Land Beyond the Culture Wars
I think most of us loosely think of culture warring as a special class of ressentiment, combat driven by a mentality of besiegement, symbolic struggle, and supposed existential threat to a cultural identity. But I’m not so sure we can make a clean separation between that and good old democratic disagreement. Democracy as we generally conceive it is a structure for managing and containing conflict, a framework for legitimate political struggle. There will always be factions, sides, particular interests, etc, and those imply we will have political friends and enemies. Deep down, I think describing serious political conflict as a “culture war” is part of the liberal allergy to vigorous debate; it tries to shove deep disagreements into a corner with some kind of label indicating that this is not welcome in “reasonable” discourse. “Culture warrior” is an epithet, used by the “sides” against each other and by bipartisan elites against all that shrill partisanship. But the reality is that certain issues like abortion, gay marriage, etc, are deeply divisive, and they symbolize and encapsulate dearly-held views about what is good and right in our country and the identities of people who hold those views. Despite what Washington pundits might tell you, people should have strong feelings about these issues, and they should fight about them. It’s called politics.
You are a very different person when you are sexually aroused.
Rachel Held Evans calls out the magazines at the supermarket.
On CS Lewis, the Medievalist or rather the Boethian.
Leadingchurch.com 