Linkathon!
Power made perfect in weakness…how does a child with Downs Syndrome know God?
Faith and justice can’t be separated…
Thirteen false and debilitating ideas…
Beth Moore on life after the SBC…
The great and terrible meaning of war…
We need a new evangelicals and Catholics together moment…
America Reads the Bible...virtue signaling to right wingers…
N.T. Wright challenges historicity of OT characters…
Gen Z women are losing their religion…
Kenneth Copeland sits for an interview…
Maybe we shouldn’t celebrate peoples deaths…
Getting older doesn’t have to mean getting meaner…
What really matters to cultural conservatives…
Just war, non violence, and Pete Hegseth…
C.S. Lewis…apostle of the imagination…
MIchael,
Such a nice selection of links after a busy day with my 150- fourth graders. So, I settled on commenting on two articles (although I read or scanned most of them)-“Getting Older Doesn’t Mean Having to Get Meaner” and “CS Lewis: Apostle of the Imagination
I don’t want to be a grumpy old woman. It just doesn’t sound like fun, nor is it a way to keep relationships. Grumpy seniors I have known tend to be isolated and/or tolerated. They don’t have many friends or activities, and life comes down to lunch at the senior center and being unhappy if Jeopardy isn’t on (that is the world one of my grandmothers inhabited during her last decade of life). I do know seniors who are busy with family, community, and church. They’re much happier, and they seem to live longer. That is who I want to be when I “grow up”
As to CS Lewis, I so appreciated (and continue to appreciate) his body of work on the essentials of Christianity. It was what I needed as a new Christian-the plain, unvarnished gospel in a pleasing package. I made a “pilgrimage” to Cambridge to see the cathedral and where Lewis had taught on a personal day on my senior class concert band trip to England. I went to the bookstore and bought every CS Lewis book they had, stuffing all of them into my carry-on for the trip home. “Basic Christianity” grounded me theologically, and the “Problem of Pain” helped me deal with my never- ending hip and walking issues.
I needed to take a break from reading politics. I had already read several of those articles in other publications. I can see Christ AS an antichrist, but not as THE antichrist. I am so disappointed with the American church in general for bowing down to an evil, probably mentally disturbed man, whose actions will cause huge problems for our country in years to come. I don’t know what to do anymore, except to pray for God’s mercy on us all, and protection for my immigrant friends.
Linn,
Thank you.
I’m bone tired of Trump stories too…but it gets harder and harder to find content these days that isn’t political.
C.S. Lewis cures that kind of malaise… 🙂
Enjoyed the Lewis piece. Always enjoy reading different angles. I did know that he was born in Ireland.
I do think Trump is an antichrist; I don’t think he is the Antichrist, but that might be because I think the figure of the Antichrist as we have it in the New Testament is a composite and symbol of all the antichrists who have existed and will exist rather than a final historic figure predicted in prophecy.
If I’m a grumpy old man that’s because I started out as a melancholy child and became an angry young man first.
I’m aware of many of the complexities regarding the morality of war from a Christian perspective, and also that the history of the early Church is not a black and white thing when it comes to the same subject. And when the Church became the de facto religion of the Empire it soon, for good and bad reasons, changed its imminent eschatological theology to the pragmatic theological concerns of time, perhaps a long period of time, for the Church yet to operate in the world before the Parousia. But what has gone on over the last weeks in the prosecution of the current American war against Iran has been a policy of contempt for even the most rudimentary understanding of just war, and an embrace of vicious and bloodthirsty rhetoric that insults the name of Christ by invoking him in its machinations.
America LARPs reading the Bible.
Michael,
Tolkien helps me, too…and cats!
I may or may not have teared up while reading the article about the Down Syndrome boy.
The joint chiefs showed some cojones when they refused to give the President the arming and launch codes for a nuclear option in the Iran debacle.
May God protect them (the joint chiefs).
Linn,
Speaking of Tolkien, Mordor is Russia, Sauron is Putin, Trump is Saruman, Franklin Graham and all the MAGA Evangelical Leaders are Grimka Wormtongue, and the Orcs have invaded Middle Earth (Ukraine). And yes, the Russian “soldiers” in Ukraine are known as Orcs since all they do is loot, pillage, burn, and rape (just like Orcs) and they need to be treated as such. As of today, approximately 1.3 million orcs have been either eliminated or wounded. Perhaps if Mordor did not invade Middle Earth, then maybe those orcs would still be alive.
Well, this should be fun:
The latest news is that the DOJ Inspector General is commencing an investigation into DOJ’s compliance with the law mandating release of the Epstein files.
We know how much the administration loves inspectors general! Why open a can of little worms when you can open a can of big worms.
John AZ
Sadly, the DOJ acting inspector general is a Trump appointee. He’s required by law to do this particular investigation, so it isn’t something he took upon himself. I expect a whitewash.
And the scandals and miscreants still pour from Calvary Chapels:
https://roysreport.com/il-calvary-chapel-pastor-confesses-to-sexual-misconduct-in-chaotic-church-service-resulting-in-arrests/