The Flip Side of Atheism
This thought has really stuck with me since I read it some weeks ago: It's belief [and not unbelief] that involves the most uncompromising attention to the nature of things of which you are capable. Belief demands that you dispense with illusion after illusion, while contemporary common sense requires continual, fluffy pretending – pretending that might as well be systematic, it's so thoroughly incentivised by our culture. Take the well-known slogan on the atheist bus in London. I know, I...
Fish Is Brain Food
Stanley Fish is a legal scholar, and as best I can tell, he got into that line of work because of his fascination with interpretation in general—he started out as a literary critic and theorist. Law certainly furnishes many fascinating case studies, and when judges with the social prominence and brilliance of U.S. Supreme Court justices weigh in on issues of national importance, the result is irresistible to Fish's witty pen. Antonin Scalia recently put out a book in which he describes his...
Announcing Bible Truths B: The Story of the Old Testament
A Christ-Centered Bible Bryan Chapell helped revolutionize my thinking about the Old Testament when I read his Christ-Centered Preaching for a required expository preaching course in seminary. He came up with a great way to name—and spot—the problem of moralism in your preaching. He did it by warning against "Be Like" messages. If the point of your sermon is "Be Like Noah," or "Be Like Gideon," you may very likely have forgotten something very important: the grace in the gospel. It's possible...
New International Reader’s Version and Evangelism
I run a weekly outreach ministry mainly attended by lower-income adults with low educational and reading levels. The KJVs they got who-knows-where are often unintelligible to them, but they seem to truly want to learn and understand. (They listen so much better than more educated audiences to which I've spoken!) This sturdy, vinyl covered edition of the New International Reader's Version has been the answer for us, and I encourage you to consider it if you are involved in evangelism to a...
How to Write Multiple-Choice Questions
Not the most exciting post for my readership, perhaps, but you two could improve any teaching you do if you learned about it: multiple choice questions. My supervisor, Brad Batdorf, Ed.D., recently gave a talk on the subject and gave me permission to share with you his excellent points. Advantages of Multiple Choice Questions Multiple choice questions are versatile because they can go up and down Bloom's taxonomy [in other words, they can be about something as important but low-level as...