Decline of mega church evangelicals

Posted on December 9, 2013 by PaulVK

“Orange Country, Robt Schuller, Rob Bell” http://feedly.com/k/IzNFyf

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On Bible Translations

Posted on December 8, 2013 by PaulVK

Someone on CRC Voices posted someone’s review of the 2011NIV.

I’ve been playing with the 2011 NIV for a couple of months now. I’ve been fairly pleased with it but, as the article says, all translations are translations.

Pastors and scholars will pay close attention to details.

In my experience most of the lay people who just read it glaze over most of the details and read what they imagine it is going to say. Sometimes someone will STUDY it and pay close attention to grammar and syntax, and there of course comes the nub of the problem. They will create some insight or conclusion on their close reading of the text and trot off with it in joy. On one hand we want them to study it. We are always telling them to study or at least to listen closely to our study of it but then when they do it they develop some heresy that is at least new to them. We set them straight based on our own “more learned study” (original languages, commentaries, etc.) and what we’ve really taught them is to not bother studying but to just ask us or pick up a commentary or a book by NT Wright.

So what we usually REALLY want is for them to accept what we tell them, and if they “study” we hope it confirms what we “experts” have already taught them, which means, again, when they read they are basically finding in the text what they expect to find in it, not what the text is saying. So much for the Protestant Reformation. 🙂

Most of the detail differences in translations don’t get caught in the riffles in the sluices (watching too many discovery channel gold shows lately). pvk 

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Driscoll

Posted on December 7, 2013 by PaulVK

“Plagiarism, Personality-Driven Leadership, and the Problem With Evangelicalism” http://feedly.com/k/IODyWP

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Complaints about Francis

Posted on December 7, 2013 by PaulVK

“Would Someone Just Shut That Pope Up? | The American Conservative” http://feedly.com/k/1bkKCoj

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A Mathematician Takes on John VS’s Sermon on Math

Posted on December 5, 2013 by PaulVK

Link

My comment

I hear your warning of believing the math of preachers who dabble outside their disciplines. I’m tempted to apply this warning to you, who it sounds is dabbling in the discipline of preachers.

In watching your little video I was tempted to believe that math doesn’t exist. If you go to the top of a mountain you can’t find it. If you travel to the moon it isn’t there. Our robots out in space haven’t found it nor can our telescopes see it.

Yet billions of people spend billions of hours studying it. We allow math to determine how we build the bridges we trust with our lives, how we fashion the weapons to kill our enemies, how we engage in commerce that will fill some and starve others. People use math to know the world and control the world yet it is a complete abstraction, whose existence itself cannot really be proven, because of course we can’t even prove our own existence.

Math is clearly not found in nature. My guess is that mathematicians very much believe in math, and that nature reveals it, and is revealed by it. In that way they are not far from Rev. Van Sloten.

Theologians and mathematicians engage in conversations as old a human civilization about something they cannot lay their hands or eyes upon. The judgment that such a venture has been folly, like all human judgment belongs to its author.

Judgment itself, however, always begs for a verdict but within the courts of humanity none can find one that is final, universal or decisive. Math offers itself as such a court. Something that will transcend judgment and language.

It would be a shame, however, if no such court or judge existed for the matters of our lives far greater than the abstractions of mathematics. It’s no wonder humanity, who can’t keep itself from making judgments about what we cannot fully understand, has always imagined a judge who will judge with justice and finality.

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Esther for Advent Act 2: What Haman Saved Esther From

Posted on December 5, 2013 by PaulVK

“I’m a romantic, and I kind of believe in this fairy tale. I think that’s always been to my advantage. If you can believe in something great I feel that you can achieve something great. I have that same belief system with everything, from career, to my life to my personal life, to everything. And I will do everything it takes to not fail. I did everything it took, but it still failed.”

Sermon Audio

Katy Perry’s breakout album was in 2008. She had another album in 2010, a movie in 2012 and just released a new album in 2013.  She’s at the top of her career. How long will it last?

In Katy’s movie the topic of her quick marriage and divorce comes up, which is what she talks about in this brief clip. Her faith in her ability to deliver for herself the life she imagines is glorious is challenged. What will she believe in?

Katy here basically articulates a sense of personal exceptionalism. She would be smart enough, hard working enough and talented enough to dodge the pitfalls that others have succumbed to. She still believes in her own exceptionalism, even though she knows full well it has failed her. She won’t give up the quest for the inner ring, no matter what it costs.

Lewis observed a couple of things about “the inner ring”

Once the first novelty is worn off, the members of this circle will be no more interesting than your old friends. Why should they be? You were not looking for virtue or kindness or loyalty or humour or learning or wit or any of the things that can really be enjoyed. You merely wanted to be “in.” And that is a pleasure that cannot last. As soon as your new associates have been staled to you by custom, you will be looking for another Ring. The rainbow’s end will still be ahead of you. The old ring will now be only the drab background for your endeavor to enter the new one.

Shelf Life in the Age of Decay Continue reading →

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Minimum Wage

Posted on December 5, 2013 by PaulVK
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Posted on December 5, 2013 by PaulVK

Oldest human DNA sequence yet confuses our picture of pre-modern humans

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The “Christian” Music Industry is about Marketing

Posted on December 4, 2013 by PaulVK

The Problem with the Christian Music Industry

So the point? (I haven’t forgotten) The point is that the industry that labels things as Christian and sells them to you has far more to do with marketing then Christianity. They are marketing to the mixed bag of values that has created the Evangelical Christian subculture. It’s a mix of some historically Christian values, some American values, and a whole lot of cultural boundary markers that set “us” apart from “them.” This sort of system makes us feel safe and right, and it makes some of its gatekeepers very wealthy and powerful.

The effect is then the filtering down of this subculture to people that don’t necessarily want to think through the viability of every one of these boundary markers, but in their simple desire to belong to what they consider the good guys, they acquiesce to the rules handed to them. At least in public. As the joke goes, why do you take two Baptists with you when you go fishing? Because if you only bring one, he’ll drink all your beer.

  1. It makes us dishonest
  2. It kills creativity
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David Brooks on the Place of Politics

Posted on December 4, 2013 by PaulVK

The Stem and the flower

Imagine you are going to a picnic. Government is properly in charge of maintaining the essential background order: making sure there is a park, that it is reasonably clean and safe, arranging public transportation so as many people as possible can get to it. But if you remember the picnic afterward, these things won’t be what you remember. You’ll remember the creative food, the interesting conversations and the fun activities.

Government is the hard work of creating a background order, but it is not the main substance of life. As Samuel Johnson famously put it, “How small, of all that human hearts endure,/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.” Government can set the stage, but it can’t be the play.

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