Andy Crouch on Postures and Gestures
Over the last few months since work (and baby!) deadlines led me to drop Andy Crouch’s Culture Making, waiting to pick it up again some day soon, I’ve thought many times about his model for describing typical Christian cultural engagement. He sees four typical “postures” toward culture among Christians: Fundamentalist Condemnation: this group just dismisses popular or secular culture as sinful, he says. Evangelical Critique: this group, a la Francis Schaeffer, evaluates culture, probing its...
Excellent Insights on Biblical Literacy
His set of buzzwords is a bit different from mine, but his insights are profoundly needed: David R. Nienhuis' article in Modern Reformation on how to promote biblical literacy is a great read. He points to our entertainment culture as one reason even evangelical kids don't know the Bible well, coming up with a corker of a quote in the process. One of his students told him, "Reading a lot is not a part of my learning style"! He also points to the proof-texting traditions we've built up in...
BDAG Could Be a Much Bigger Book
This is what its entry on ἀγάπη looks like in BDAG, the standard Greek lexicon. This is what it looks like uncompacted, with all of its separate points turned into descended bullets: It’s like unfolding some incredible origami! I find I can’t use the information nearly as well when it is not laid out visually this way. I don’t plan to do this for very many more BDAG entries, however…
Notes for Ph.D. Students at Bob Jones Seminary
On 8/31/04 at 7:30 pm, the dean of BJ Seminary met with all the doctoral candidates and gave some instruction, encouragement, and advice. Obviously, this won’t be of interest to everyone, but I’ve tried to let all this counsel guide me and it may help anyone who’s in school. Re-reading it now, I see some areas where I wish I had listened better, but overall it was a great help. “Keep sound wisdom” like this, and “it will be life to your soul, and adornment to your neck. Then you will walk in...
Buzz Off!
No, no, no, NO! Google Buzz lasted about four hours on my Gmail account. I admit, I don’t mind seeing my friends’ comments on Google Reader items (even though I’m trying to cut down on those, too…), but I simply do not need any more messages clamoring for my attention on the Internet. Maybe you can handle it, but I can’t. No Google Buzz for me, and (almost) no Twitter. They don’t help me do what I want to do. They’re distractions. Enough is enough. I want to be wise more than I want to be...