Hitchens and Dawkins reviews NYT

Posted on July 7, 2017 by PaulVK
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3 Ways Ministry Can Make You Conceited

Posted on July 7, 2017 by PaulVK

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/3-ways-ministry-can-make-you-conceited

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Maps and Representations

Posted on July 6, 2017 by PaulVK

Peutinger Table

What map do we make to represent the Roman Empire? How did they imagine it?

The Roman government habitually understood itself not as controlling a homogeneous space—terrain—but as coordinating a collective of cities. That may seem strange, but consider the only visual representation of the empire, from the empire, that we have— or, rather, a 13th-century copy of it. It’s a map called the Peutinger Table, and you need only to glance at it to appreciate how the Roman political imagination could flatten the diversity of landscapes on three continents to accommodate a vision of the empire as an extended network of cities and roads connecting them. To us, it looks less like a topographical map, a map of space, and more like a subway map.

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“liberal”?

Posted on July 6, 2017 by PaulVK
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Jordan Peterson making over 500k a year from donations

Posted on July 6, 2017 by PaulVK

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/43dwj9/controversial-u-of-t-prof-now-making-over-dollar500k-a-year-in-donations

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The Book of Daniel, a primer in Political Theology

Posted on July 6, 2017 by PaulVK

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How technology turns everything into virtue signaling

Posted on July 5, 2017 by PaulVK

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Bill Gates 1999 Predictions of today, pretty accurate

Posted on July 5, 2017 by PaulVK

http://kirjonen.me/business-the-speed-of-thought/

If you’re old enough to remember 1999 you’ll know that most of the things on this list were not there then, even if today you find his predictions “obvious”.

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Right Wing Civil Religion is not dead

Posted on July 5, 2017 by PaulVK

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/worshiping-america-first-baptist-dallas-trump/ 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/ponderanew/2017/07/02/make-america-great-now-ccli-licensed-christian-worship-song/

I’m certainly not. the Hoeksema piece is a good one. It teases out a lot of the nuances and complexities that leaders have to navigate. Did Hoeksema do the right thing? http://www.swierenga.com/DisloyalDutch_pap.html

I was thinking that “well-behaved men seldom make history”. Hoeksema was not a well-behaved man. Neither is Donald Trump. Neither is Jordan Peterson. There is something to this, but it all depends on behavior in what direction, to make what point and towards what end.
I find the comments of the pastor of the “largest church in America” disgusting and a betrayal of the gospel. I did a video on the political theology of the book of Daniel that I’m hoping to re-edit and perhaps link to.
Daniel was able to on one hand be the best servant of his monarch, even tough his monarchs were bloody, ruthless men, or in Belshazzar’s case one more like Donald Trump always given to revelry and dissipation. He was also, however, first and foremost a servant to his God. Figuring out how to navigate this is an enormously tricky thing.
The last vision in the book which is complicated on many levels distinguishes between “the wise” in the Judean culture war during the time of Antiochus Epiphanies and those who went along with his hellenization of Judea and the temple. This culture war raged all the way through Jesus’ time. I think we need to take our cues on how to navigate a culture war from Jesus. He was incredibly savvy. He so often talks in codes about his Roman overlords and their clients (foxes have holds and birds have nests…) but calls his followers to transcend the war even as they make selective and shrewd strategic lines they will not cross. This of course gets Jesus, Paul, Peter and others arrested and killed but they understand that is how the game is played. It highlights that you can only play this game to win if you believe in the resurrection.
Both the left and the right are running their own games of civil religion. Our kingdom is not from this world, it comes from above, is born there, and will finally arrive from there. pvk
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Black Female Calvin College Dean and her husband who pastors an OPC Church Plant in GR

Posted on July 5, 2017 by PaulVK

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/truths-table-gender-race/532407/

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