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The Rosary
I read the Sermon on the Mount often as a child—mainly because I thought it was cool that it was the biggest stretch of red letters I could find in the New Testament. But Jesus’ teaching there is so simple and powerful that, despite my inane motivation, Jesus’ famous sermon made a deep impression on me. One of the instructions Jesus gives quite clearly (I recently enjoyed writing a lesson on it for seventh graders) is that kingdom citizens should not pray with 1) meaningless repetition or 2)...
BibleWorks Favorites
I can read English, Spanish, Greek, Hebrew, German, and Latin, in that order of fluidity. Truth be known, my German is mainly structural, my Latin mainly vestigial—though the latter is strengthened by my Greek. This mix of training means I can piece together a good deal of Dutch, French, Portuguese, and Italian. At the very least, I can recognize major cognates whether Germanic or Latinate in origin. And you probably can too if you try to start paying attention to such things. The skill of...
I ♥ Instapaper
I checked, and only a few of the cool people—by no means all—are using Instapaper. I’m here to change that. Cool people of the world, unite! You’ve just got to try Instapaper, especially if you have a Kindle and/or an iPod Touch like me. All you do is install a Firefox extension which gives you a nice little button. Run across an article you’d like to read but can’t read right now? Click the button. Right away, your Instapaper account downloads the article and puts it in your to-read list. It...
Agape Love
One of the most popular linguistic and exegetical fallacies in modern times is that the Greek word for love, agapao, carries in it the implication of a divine love that is unconditional and comes to us in spite of our sin. That is not true. Context must decide if agapao refers to our proud, cliquish love for our cronies (as in Matthew 5:46), or if it refers to God’s merciful and sacrificial love for sinners (as in John 3:16), or if it refers to our love for leaders, not unconditionally but...