Unsettled Christianity

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February 17th, 2012 by Joel

In the Mail: “More than Enchanting” by Jo Saxton @ivpress

more than enchanting

Click to Order

I suspect that this will be on my Lenten reading list…

Women have always been central to the life of the church. From the early hours of the first Easter, when women were charged to announce the resurrection of Jesus, to the state of the contemporary church, where women outnumber men in pews and positions of service. But as central as women have been, they’ve also found themselves regularly marginalized–and not only in the church but in the neighborhoods, cities and societies they inhabit. Sometimes they’ve had to endure the well-intended biases or benign neglect of the leaders of their communities; sometimes they’ve been sidelined by their own crises of confidence. Sometimes they’ve had to contend with both at once. Women who doubt their influence, who struggle to accept their distinct strengths and talents for what they are–gifts given through them to the world–suffer for it. The church, and really all of society, suffers with them. Jo Saxton invites women to discover (or rediscover) the gifts and talents that God has vested in us, and more important, the calling he has placed on each of us to seek first the kingdom of God where we are.

 

February 17th, 2012 by Joel

Congrats to Jim West

Still happier (from my point of view anyway)- the fact that they’ve chosen to include my little introduction to Zwingli titled ‘Christ Our Captain: An Introduction to Huldrych Zwingli‘ (Quartz Hill Publishing: 2011) in it (as the introductory volume!).

via The Contract Is Signed and The Collection is in the ‘Works’ « Zwinglius Redivivus.

February 17th, 2012 by Joel

Is Twitter killing our Minds?

“Our assumption about text messaging is that it encourages unconstrained language. But the study found this to be a myth,” says Lee. “The people who accepted more words did so because they were better able to interpret the meaning of the word, or tolerate the word, even if they didn’t recognize the word. Students who reported texting more rejected more words instead of acknowledging them as possible words.”

via Texting affects ability to interpret words.

This fits into other studies and interests of mine, but for now…

Jst dwl on it

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February 17th, 2012 by Joel

If the sky starts to burn, don’t worry, it’s just the Eta Carinae Supernova that never existed

Eta Carinae, in the constellation of Carina, o...

Image via Wikipedia

I mean sure, we’ll see the lights and will be able to detect the physical waves and particles of it, but since it lies more than 7500 light years away, then by YECer standards, it doesn’t exist and never has.

When the sun finally dies some 5 billion years from now, the end will come quietly, the conclusion of a long, uneventful life. Our star will, in a sense, go flabby, swelling first, releasing its outer layers into space and finally shrinking into the stellar corpse known as a white dwarf.

Things will play out quite differently for a supermassive star like Eta Carinae, which lies 7,500 light-years from Earth. Weighing at least a hundred times as much as our sun, it will go out more like an adolescent suicide bomber, blazing through its nuclear fuel in a mere couple of million years and exploding as a supernova, a blast so violent that its flash will briefly outshine the entire Milky Way. The corpse this kind of cosmic detonation leaves behind is a black hole.

Read more: here

Oh… by the way… this helps to prove that time is an illusion.

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February 17th, 2012 by Joel

Is this the perfect picture of Evolution?

LWe9w

I thought that this was interesting… The notion of “the missing link” is still a Darwinian concept, but as science has moved past Darwin, to expect a “missing link” is only media hype.

In theistic evolution, this can be seen as God pushing Creation forward, must like He does in perfection and sanctification.

February 17th, 2012 by Joel

Friday with the Fathers: Ignatius and the Eucharist

They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again.

It is fitting, therefore, that ye should keep aloof from such persons, and not to speak of them either in private or in public, but to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the passion |of Christ¦ has been revealed to us, and the resurrection has been fully proved. But avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils. (ISm 7:1-2 APE)

February 17th, 2012 by Joel

Question: Religious Liberties and Healthcare

Okay…

So there has been a lot of discussion lately, for some reason, about health care insurance and religious liberties.

Got a question that I’m wrestling with…

If a fundamentalist business who doesn’t believe in going to the doctors decides not to provide health insurance for religious reasons… what then?