This was too good not to rip off.
Tip 'o the hat to City of God who tipped th' hat to Volokh
BTW - If you haven't checked them out yet, City of God is a group blog which is one of the finest new blogs I have come across in awhile - I recommend it highly.
Just a note about a few minor blog redecorations. I moved all of the contact and subscribe stuff to the left to have it all in one place and I've done several things on the right sidebar.
I'm using more widgets - some of the things that I had been using are available as Typepad widgets so I wanted to do that to see if they will help with load times.
Search
Thus, at the top right I now have the Blogbar widget in place of the old standard Google search box. You can still search by Google on the blog and on the internet but you can see it also gives you a couple of extra options. You can do a Google Blog search directly from the widget as well as Technorati. I just noticed that you can also search on my friends blogs - I haven't looked at that but I am guessing this will be something like Rollyo where you can roll your own search engine. So I'll do some snooping around and try to figure out how to get that up and running.
Bible Search
I'm very excited about the NET Bible search and verse of the day which I have included here. I don't remember when I first became aware of the NET Bible - it may have been 10 years ago. I've had it loaded into my Logos software for some time and I use it as my default bible for Logos. I also had it in an old Compaq iPaq and now have it loaded in my cell phone. If you have a Smartphone, Blackberry, Treo, or Palm or other such device you can download a free copy of the NET Bible for your phone. It is very handy, and Olive Tree has a good many other works available for download, some free and some paid.
But back to the NET Bible - these guys get it. They have created a faithful translation that is free to all. On their site they talk about their policies regarding copyright and the need to update copyright conventions:
We don’t like the copyright notice on the second page of the NET Bible, but we don’t yet know the best way to fix it. The reason for this dilemma is that we stand at the beginning of a new era made possible by the Internet. New approaches to ministry, publishing, distribution, and collaboration are made possible by the Internet. When the first Bibles and books began to be printed rather than copied by hand, new issues emerged (plagiarism, author’s rights, freedom of the press versus censorship, copyright laws, etc.). It is now time to recognize that the copyright and permissions conventions carried over from printed books must now be upgraded for the Internet age.
Thus, while you can buy a nice leather bound print edition, their focus was to publish this and make it available for free on the internet. They also have a wealth of excellent study resources, their NeXt Bible Learning Environment is an excellent online study tool. And the Bible notes themselves are terrific. What is unique about their notes is that they have a wealth of material dealing with textual issues, outlining issues in particular texts and explaining why the translators went this way instead of that way, and discussing other points of view. These notes are the next best thing to having Metzger's Textual Commentary. So I do hope you will enjoy searching the NET Bible from here and seriously consider adding it to the list of translations you use.
Dilbert
And last but not least, I was checking ye old rss reader this morning and came across Scott Adams and found that he's got a nifty widget that lets you read Dilbert on your blog. I couldn't resist. Scott also gets it - he's giving away his content. Thanks Scott and enjoy.
In the Challies blog tour of the last couple of weeks a fair number of the questions posed to Tim dealt with watchblogs and being overly critical of others. I'm particularly thinking of how the issue came up in various forms at Justin Taylor's blog, TeamPyro and the Internet Monk.
As one who is firmly committed to self-aggrandizement and tooting my own horn (I like to think of myself as the Terrell Owens of the blogosphere) I think it only appropriate that I direct your attention to my own impeccable thoughts on the matter in a post called Some Thoughts on Godly Disputation or "How to Have a Christ-Like Argument."
But most importantly I want to call your attention to a terrific article called "A Critical Spirit" by George D. Watson D.D. (pssst - I'm whispering this - please don't tell the presbytery that he's a Methodist - shhh!). Here's the start of it:
Censoriousness - What it Is
Censoriousness is composed of self-conceit and severity; a self-conceit that we are superior to others, and are entitled to some sort of lordship over them; and then a severity of judging others by the outward letter of righteousness instead of by the Spirit. There are other people who are censorious besides Christians, but it does not look so conspicuous in their lives, for it is the very nature of religion to make a streak of badness look more ugly.
Censoriousness has a special facility of fastening itself on a religious person, and on persons professing a great deal of religion, and its very intensity is in the proportion to the intensity of religious zeal, and seems to find its greenest pastures in those who profess the perfection of love.
It is a parasite which, like the mistletoe, fastens itself on the tree of religion, and seeks to spread itself until it claims to be the tree, and, in fact, if not killed off, will succeed in killing the tree, which, indeed, it often does.
There seem to be certain weaknesses, and ugly, disagreeable infirmities, latent in the soul that nothing even develops till be becomes religious, and sometimes the more intense the religion the more glaring are these infirmities. There is nothing disagreeable in handling a piece of dry wood, but if you undertake to make the wood pass into a live coal of fire then will develop the unpleasant concomitant of smoke, and soot, and ashes, which would never have been known but for the process of burning, and there is something like this in the soul's transition from a state of nature to that of the pure, burning love of God, and though all souls do not manifest the same disagreeable things, yet, as God's grace is burning us through, it seems inevitable that there will be a smoke in the shape of some religious infirmity.
Censoriousness is not grace, but is assumes the profession of grace, and oftentimes of great sanctity, and it seems to develop in some characters only when they are really under the operations of grace, as an iceberg throws off a heavy fog when it comes near the Gulf stream. One thing is certain, that many professors of very high grace are very censorious, and they were never very censorious until some time after their declaration of entire yielding to God. Perhaps we can never understand the metaphysics of it, but we know it is a delusion of Satan to get religious people to mistake censoriousness for sanctity. One of the remedies against it is a clear understanding of what it is.
Read the rest. (HT - Counterculture Blog and my apologies to whoever pointed me to Counterculture)
Anthony Bradley nails the problem of communication in the blogosphere here. He just took a terrific trip to Japan and blogged about it and mentioned his love for the city. Soooo . . . someone took that as a backhanded putdown of the suburbs. I am sure Anthony was banging his head against a wall when he titled a response post "I Am So, So Tired of This." Anthony describes this as "disassociative reading" -
This is an example of "disassociative reading" and arguing a "straw man." Disassociative readers will read a line of text which sparks a trigger in the reader's mind, whether it's related to the text or not, and the reader will disassociate, going off on a huge tangent.
He also says:
Why can't individuals express a preference for a thing without it being ASSUMED to be an argument against something else?
I feel your pain Anthony. This is why, when I get a comment that is off-topic I usually just delete it without further mention and ban the commenter (I realize that sometimes some of you are trying to reach me and can't get me any other way, so I'm not speaking of you). But Anthony's point is well taken and is something we all need to consider. I know I have this temptation - sometimes a small matter will push a personal hot-button of mine and I'll want to jump on it. So I offer my apologies if I have ever done that to any of you.
I really think this goes back to our compulsion to criticize - there is something delicious about critiquing and criticizing someone else. If the main point doesn't interest us or we aren't qualified to interact with it, a smaller point will do.
Please read the rest of Anthony's post, he's got a lot of other good stuff in there.
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"Here's a hint" from Gina Dalfonso of The "Point" who "points" to what, at the "end" of the day, is a post you really "must" read, if you are the new kind of blogger. But I bet you figured this one out for yourself, didn't you.
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Here are some things I have been reading lately that may be of interest to you.
Theology/Christian Living
I'm trying to avoid attack blogging these days, but this is just one thing I need to get off my chest and into the blog. Even Slate Magazine recognizes that Joel Osteen has a deficient view of God. Chad Bresson at the Vossed World has a good post on Slate's fisking of Osteen. After listing a number of the ways that Joel saw God do favors for him, they say:
This is a long, long way down the road from the inscrutable, infant-damning theology of this country's Calvinist forebears—it is, rather, a just-in-time economy's vision of salvation, an eerily collapsible spiritual narcissism that downgrades the divine image into the job description for a lifestyle concierge. Lakewood and Osteen seem to keep God so preoccupied it's a wonder He can ever find the time to stock his fridge or whip out His wallet.
I'm not sure where the infant damming Calvinist comments come from as most Calvinists I know believes children who die in infancy go to heaven, but that is beside the point. He nails Osteen's theology in an important way.
A few months ago, being the idiot I am, I picked an argument with a much greater man than myself - Lon Solomon - over the issue of praying for parking spaces. While Lon is theologically orthodox and I am sure I am in agreement with him on almost everything of importance, I still stand by the gist of my comments there and find them in accord with the Slate guys here. God is not a spiritual concierge, we cheapen our faith when we view Him as such.
I missed this when it first came out - Steve Brown has a podcast on his book Scandalous Freedom. Listen to it, read it, live it. Thanks to my friend Barb Pruitt for letting me know about it.
C. S. Lewis in a nutshell - Art Lindsley posts C. S. Lewis's Seven Key Ideas.
Well, with the new year upon us I should be able to get back to blogging now. Thanks for those of you who responded to my last post. I do want to answer Mwalimu's comment in the last post where he suggested I blog on the following in the future:
How about the obvious superiority of the sport of baseball over basketball or even football? Examples from the Bible abound...
I have seriously considered that (well, if you mean while seriously laughing) and have decided that I may consider it, as this suggestion fits into one of two genre's I could expand to.
First of all, I have never tried my hand at science fiction, but when I told my wife about Mwalimu's suggestion she thought it would fit in that category. I don't know though, it will take a more creative mind that mine to create an imaginary world where baseball is superior to football.
On the other hand, I do enjoy writing comedy and this would certainly be a good topic for comedic writing - I just don't know if I have what it takes to write consistent comedy on this subject. Although, now that I think of it, what with the steroid scandal and everything, major league baseball is doing it's best to offer up more and more comedic material.
True story - we're driving down the road and my son asks "dad, why would a baseball player ever need to take steroids?' We cracked up at the question itself. My son asked if I thought Babe Ruth took steroids. I said yes, definitely, only they were called something different back then. My other son chimed in - "they were called beer and hot dogs!" We cracked up even more - we agreed that a steady diet of beer and hot dogs are all that is necessary to achieve the physical conditioning needed for baseball. We actually came up with a theory that the Babe's beer/hot dog gut helped him extend his arms and swing more powerfully through the ball. So in other words, today's players could save themselves a lot of trouble if they would give up HGH for beer and hot dogs.
I'm going to try to dust off an old thing I used to do - a link list called "Around the Jollysphere." I used to do this and then let it fall by the wayside. I have accumulated quite a lot of links in my del.ici.ous folders and saved rss feeds so I think I can make a go of this. As I do this I'll try to separate it into categories and share with you some of the best things I have read. I'm not going to have set categories, but you can expect that each time I do this I'll have some theology/biblical/Christian living links, cultural stuff, and a bit of sports stuff (especially during football season). I also will share some stuff on diet and fitness as this something I have been very consumed with over the last few months and have quite a bit of material on. So, without further ado (or is it adieu?) . . .
Theological Goodness
John Barlow has a good quote from Samuel Johnson. It wasn't written in a theological context but is too good not to mention here:
"Hume and other skeptical innovators are vain men and will gratify themselves at any expense. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity, so they have betaken themselves to error: Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull."
Glenn Lucke gets caught quoting the Bible on the the gospel and the kingdom. Some of the brethren are troubled that some of the brethren seem to be defining the gospel in terms of the Kingdom of God. So, Glenn does the unthinkable and searches the Scriptures on the matter. Be sure and read the post and then look at a few other comments that Glenn made in response to me. I understand the fear - some have used the "gospel of the kingdom" as an excuse to abandon the historical (biblical) teachings on justification. But an errant understanding of the relationship of gospel and kingdom does not mean we abandon that which the Scripture plainly teaches - the gospel is the gospel of the kingdom
And of course, if we were still allowed to quote Tim Keller, we might find some wisdom. But since we can't do that I'll quote Tony Stiff who quotes you-know-who as follows:
“In general, I don’t think we’ve done a good job at developing ways of communicating the gospel that include both salvation from wrath by propitiation and the restoration of all things. Today, writing accessible presentations of the gospel should not be the work of marketers but the work of our best theologians.” Tim Keller, The Gospel and the Supremacy of Christ in a Postmoderd World (pg. 111)
This is what gets to me - Christians just love to fight over things that shouldn't be fought over. The "gospel is the kingdom" guys want to deny or downplay propitiation in favor of the redemption of all things. The propitiation guys are afraid that the restoration guys are going to lose propitiation so they don't want to talk about it. The gospel is both - let's run with it.
And here's a good quote from Michael Bird that sets a correct trajectory for discussing the gospel:
"When Christians speak of salvation, they telll a story. It is a story that stretches from even before the creation of the world to its final redemption, when the plan of salvation conceived by God from eternity is to come to fulfillment. While God's dealings of old with God's chosen people, Israel, play an important role in this story, ultimately it revolves around Jesus Christ and his death on the cross."
David Brondos, Fortress Introduction to Salvation and the Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress, 2007), p.1.
After the inaugural GodBlogCon at Biola in 2004 a group of us were sitting around chatting about the future and John Mark Reynolds said that, if nothing else, a book needed to come out of that conference. So, a bunch of us started working on it back then, and that conversation has now turned into a book. Roger Overton of the A-Team blog has been the point man on this project, which will be titled "The New Media Frontier." I did a chapter on "Theological Blogging." The book will be out next September and for more info here is Roger's announcement.
will be published by Crossway Books in September 2008.
Here's the Table of Contents:
Introduction: Roger N. Overton (www.ATeamBlog.com)
Part One: The Landscape of New Media
Chapter One: The New Media: First Thoughts -Dr. John Mark Reynolds (Scriptorium Daily)
Chapter Two: The Future of New Media -Dr. John Mark Reynolds (Scriptorium Daily)
Chapter Three:Three Cautions among the Cheers: The Dangers of
Uncritically Embracing New Media - Matthew L. Anderson (Mere Orthodoxy Blog)
Chapter Four: Beginning Bloggers Toolbox -Joe Carter (Evangelical Outpost)
Chapter Five: Beginner's Toolbox Part II: Even Newer New Media -- Podcasting, Video Casting and More – Matthew Eppinette (Americans United for Life) and Terence Armentano (TerenceOnline.blogspot.com
)
Part Two: Engaging New Media
Chapter Six: Theological Blogging -David Wayne (JollyBlogger)
Chapter Seven: Blog as Microwave Community – Dr. Tod Bolsinger (It Takes a Church Blog)
Chapter Eight: Pastors and the New Media -Dr. Mark D. Roberts (MarkDRoberts.com)
Chapter Nine: Navigating the Evolving World of Youth
Ministry in the Facebook-MySpace Generation
- Rhett Smith (RhettSmith.com)
Chapter Ten: Evangelism and Apologetics - Roger N. Overton ( www.ATeamBlog.com)
Chapter Eleven: Professors with a New Public: Academics and New Media
–Dr. Fred Sanders (Scriptorium Daily)
Chapter Twelve: Virtual Classrooms, Real
Learning –Dr. Jason Baker (BakersGuide.com)
Chapter Fifteen: Social Justice, Social Relief and New Media -Stephen Shields (FaithMaps.org)
Continue reading "I'm in Print - Announcing "The New Media Frontier" Book" »
Hello to all my friends who are wondering where I've been. I haven't posted lately due to busy-ness and a missing muse (if you have my muse, please return her to me!), but just wanted to let you know that I'll be back. I'm not dead yet, in fact, I'm getting better, I feel fine, I think I'll go for a walk, I feel happy. In the meantime, how about a little Monty Python to amuse you until I return.
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