Jason Coleman

A convicting line from a Crucial Encounter post about modern-day slavery and human trafficking:

Knowledge is power, yet we choose ignorance, because it’s bliss.

Great opening line from an Amazon.com book review of former evangelical Christian Frank Schaeffer’s book Patience with God

Former evangelical Christian political agitator Schaeffer has been born yet again.

From a book review at Undeception.com

But the simple fact is that these people who are the quickest to demand scriptural support can point to no scriptural basis for this belief [in biblical inerrancy as opposed to biblical inspiration]. No passage speaks of the entire canon in which it has become enclosed, much less claiming inspiration or inerrancy for it. Instead, their belief comes down to “logic”, falsely so-called: if the Bible is inspired from start to finish — as surely it ought to be — than it will be inerrant — for surely, it ought to be.

Punctuation help from Sussex University

Adding more dots and squiggles to this perfectly clear sentence would do absolutely nothing to improve it. No punctuation mark should be used if it is not necessary.

One of their example sentences is too good to not pass along:

Mae West had one golden rule for handling men: “Tell the pretty ones they’re smart, and tell the smart ones they’re pretty.”

I like this quote about Bible interpretation from the blog Confessions of a Doubting Thomas

I’m not sure I was ever of the opinion: “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it”, but I’m now a bit further from that opinion. I’m now more like: “The Bible says it, that shows us something of what the person who wrote that bit of the bible believed, that opens up a whole heap of interesting questions…”

A quote from George Murphy about Adam, Eve, and the first sin:

The latter view, in which humanity was created in an immature condition and expected to grow, corresponds best to our scientific picture. The earliest human sin was not a fall from perfection but a start along a path that led away from God.

The first humans would have inherited tendencies for selfish behaviors that injured their fellows. Sin has to do with our relationship with God, and didn’t exist before God revealed his will to our ancestors. But when God told them not to harm others, they would have been tempted to ignore him.

Humanity could theoretically have obeyed God, for our behaviors are not hardwired. Sin wasn’t “necessary” but was “inevitable.” Refusing to obey God, humanity turned from God’s intended goal and started on a road to perdition. Science of course supplies further details about early humanity, but we’re concerned here with theology rather than history.

This corresponds to the picture we get from Genesis.

I really liked this comment by Bob MacDonald on Christian marriage.

The wife and the husband have gifts for each other that no one else can – and not even God – will supply.

The blog post commented upon is about whether the Apostle Paul knew the first thing about marriage and whether we should trust his opinions when he writes about it in the Bible. The article itself was interesting — tho not wholly convincing to me — and set the stage perfectly for someone like MacDonald to come along and distill the modern Christian understanding of marriage into the quote above.

Thom Stark in an interview about polytheism in the Old Testament. I like his articulation of the idea that ultimate meanings, not material details, are what we build our faith upon.

Truthful God-talk is poetry, not science—evocative, not descriptive. “Faith” is what we have when we live our lives as if they were meaningful…

He says this in the context of finding polytheism in the old-old-testament that is then reinterpreted to monotheism in the newer-old-testament. To put the quote in proper context I’ll provide the rest of it here.

…and Christianity offers us one language that helps us do that. Like any language, of course, there are different dialects, accents, and vocabularies. Just as with English speakers, some Christians get irony, metaphor, and humor, and others don’t. Moreover, just as languages evolve to adapt to new realities and new knowledge, religions do the same, and rightly so, whether practitioners acknowledge it or not.

Some timely Bible application from James McGrath given the number of stories about bullying and suicide in the news lately. He started by quoting Jesus about how Christians are to treat different groups of people: friends, family, strangers, enemies, and everyone really. Then he writes this:

The heart of the matter is this: Jesus didn’t say “Bully people until they commit suicide.” And so those who engage in such bullying, and those who bring up their children in such a way that they can feel justified in doing such things, are not practicing Christianity nor bringing up their children in a Christian way. We have no record of anti-gay speech from Jesus. We do have a story about him responding to his own rejection, and the suggestion of his disciples that fire be called down from heaven upon those who didn’t welcome him, with a rebuke (Luke 9:53-56). If you don’t get this, then you don’t get Christianity – that’s all there is to it. If you are a Christian that consider homosexuals and “gay activists” your enemies, then you have two options: love them, or stop pretending you’re a Christian. I don’t see that you’re left with a third option.

From an article at Experimental Theology discussing the Christian Church’s problems with gay marriage and gentiles.

A key notion in Rogers’ book is that the vast majority of Christians need to recover their identity as Gentiles. This is important for a few different reasons. First, this recovery highlights the fact that we are not “by nature” children of God. We’ve been chosen and adopted. In the language of Paul we’ve been “grafted into” the tree of Israel. Second, this action of God, grafting in the Gentiles, highlights how the grace and election of God determines the people of God. We are not God’s children because of nature. We are God’s children because of election. This places election at the center of Christian notions of marriage (and celibacy) rather than a Darwinian focus on procreation. Marriage is grace, not biology. Finally, a recovery of our identity as Gentiles helps us understand why God’s actions toward the Gentiles was such a shock and offense to the Jews (both Christian and non-Christian). Importantly, this shock was very much focused on issues of holiness and morality.