Six-Pack (58)

Consider this Six-Pack “right out of the ice” — these prairies are unbelievably cold this past week. Spring may not be far off, but it feels light years away in the midst of these days.

My reading and writing habits are beginning to regain some steam after stretches of sickness and travel. Here are the best pieces of the past week’s exploring.

If six ever feels overwhelming, start with my two *Picks of the Week*, and move out from there.

For a steady stream of such links, follow me on Twitter to the right of this post.  Sharp quotes and solid articles are tweeted 3-4 times daily.

Today’s edition:

1) What Studying Camels Can Teach You About the Bible (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
This is an very intriguing read for any who love Scripture and long to understand its journey from “inspired word” to “leather-bound book”. This piece does nothing to shake my confidence in the Bible, but it raises some great questions for how believers define the Good Book’s authoritative nature.

2) Top Ten Jesus Movies
Last week marked the ten-year anniversary of “The Passion of the Christ”. To mark the date, CT released its assessment of a century’s worth of Christ-centered cinema.

3) Five Powerful Ideas that Could Change Your Ministry Approach
This will take you two minutes to read. How long you think about it after is up to you. Any one of these five succinct ideas has the potential to contain the kernel of truth that you and your church need for the season ahead.

4) Two Different Types of Hitchens (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
Christopher Hitchens was a well-known atheist. His brother Peter is a slightly less-known journalist. One died viewing religion as a source of poison’ the other lives, having embraced a faith he once scorned.

5) The Hardest Medal to Win
The nation of Poland have a special medal you can win, but it will take you fifty years to do it! Why don’t more nations do this?

6) How to Begin Forgiving Your Parents
W
hether you’ve had great parents, lousy parents, or somewhere in between, you haven’t had perfect parents. What do you do with those gaps, those shortfalls? What about the wounds or the scars or the hurts you still carry. Leslie Leyland Fields (hosted by Ann Voskamp) has a few ideas on where to begin — they arose as she visited her long-absent and dying father.

May your week ahead be filled with life, as you seek the One from whom it flows!

leaveacommentYOUR TURN: Your input makes this post better!

  • Which link above was today’s best-of-the-best?
  • Why that one?

Direct others to the best of the bunch with a quick comment.

[You can subscribe to this blog via RSS or email, in the upper right corner of this page.]

Saturday Six-Pack (44)

Welcome to the weekend and to the Six-Pack. Below is the latest installment of best-of pieces I’ve recently read online.

As per usual, most pieces are faith-focused or ministry-minded; for the rest of them, you get a smattering of who-knows-what!

If you need direction, begin with my two *Picks of the Week*, and move out from there.

For a steady stream of such links, follow me on Twitter ( @JasonBandura ) to the right of this post.  Sharp quotes and solid articles are tweeted 3-4 times daily.

Today’s edition:

1) Christopher Hitchens’ Lies Do Atheism No Favours
Salon featured this intriguing piece, by professing atheist Curtis White. It is his call for greater intellectual integrity among those believing in no-God.

2) I Am a Preacher (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
Thank you Jonathan Martin for giving language to some of the bizarre aspects of being a preacher. If you are a preacher or know a preacher, this may be enlightening.

3) Here’s Something about the Bible of the First Christians I Bet You Didn’t Know
If you love the Bible, then Peter Enns wants to give you a crash course on this word: Septuagint. Count this as your “something new” for today’s learning.

4) Why Christians Make Miserable Addicts (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
For the Huffington Post, Heather Kopp says that addiction wields power in some uniquely destructive ways for people of faith. Here’s why.

5) World Crokinole Championships: The Great Paternal Experiment
Ominocity recently featured this piece by my friend Nic Olson, on a most unique road trip.

6) A Brief History of the Demise of Battle Bots
Remember those UFC-for-Robots shows? I possess no skills to create such contraptions, but just enough geekiness to appreciate those who do. Here, from PopSci, is how that odd trend of programming wound toward extinction.

Another Six-Pack served.  Have at it!

May your weekend be full of awareness and enjoyment of the One who loves you deeply. Grace and peace, my friends.

YOUR TURN: Which link above was most intriguing–why that one? Direct others readers to the best of the bunch. Your input makes this post better!

[You can subscribe to this blog via RSS or email, in the upper right corner of this page.]

Saturday Six-Pack (23)

Imagine: A “Saturday Six-Pack” arriving on… wait for it… Saturday!

After two weeks of lateness and a week of absence, I’ve regained my position on the top of the pile!

Here’s your weekly fodder of faith, ministry, and who-knows-what tossed in!

If you need help starting, begin with my two *Picks of the Week*, and move from there.

For a steady stream of such links, follow me on Twitter ( @JasonBandura ) to the right of this post.  Sharp quotes and solid articles are tweeted 3-4 times daily.

Today’s edition:

1) Why Churches Should Euthanize Small Groups
Being part of a leadership team that has significantly increased our emphasis on Small Groups in recent years, this title grabbed me.  Author and pastor Brian Jones points out a few of the struggles that many of us have experienced…

2) What Legalists and Atheists Cannot Understand (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
This little piece from the Gospel Coalition revolves around a late night visit between Christian apologist Larry Alex Taunton, Oxford mathematician John Lennox and the late Christopher Hitchens, author of “God is Not Great”.  Throw in some rich references to my favourite portion of Scripture, and I freely recommend this one.

3) Fourteen Indispensable Leadership Quotes from Jim Collins
Jim Collins is recognized across the board as a voice of wisdom on the theme of leadership. Here, Thom Rainer captures a couple touchdowns’ worth of his best bits.

4) Why Women are More Religious than Men
For Psychology Today, Nigel Barber puts forth a theory that I confess to find quite weak. A strand of truth is here, but more than anything, this article served to enlighten me on why people of faith must live out their convictions or else risk observers like Mr. Barber largely missing the whole point.

5) You Are Not a Computer (Try as You May)
Here’s my favourite line from this great piece from the Harvard Business Review is this: “What information consumes is rather obvious. It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”  That opinion was shared in 1970, and it is abundantly on-the-mark today.  Some thought-provoking stuff here on how to live well within the “information age”.  If I had a third *PICK OF THE WEEK*, I’d put it here.

6) The Science of Productivity (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
I just discovered Gregory Ciotti’s site: SparringMind.  This post features a three-minute video (which I tweeted a link to, earlier today) that breaks down some of the science behind our minds work and how we might better work within that framework to be more efficient in spending our time and energy. Quite fascinating to me!

May your week be full of awareness and enjoyment of the God who already fills it with Himself and every good thing.  Blessings on you, my friends.

YOUR TURN: Direct other readers to the best stuff with a comment below, or weigh in on what you read.  Your input makes this post better!

[You can subscribe to this blog via RSS or email, in the upper right corner of this page.]

Of One Mind: Christopher Hitchens and Jesus Christ

In his book “With”, Skye Jethani pushes readers to re-imagine the way they relate to God. Hanging his presentation on five prepositions, Jethani observes humanity’s strong inclinations toward four poor paths for God-connection:

1) Life Under God

2) Life Over God

3) Life From God

4) Life For God

Both older brothers and younger brothers, in the language of Luke 15, are represented here. The first and last approaches reveal the elder’s pursuit of righteousness, while the middle pair speak to the younger’s path of rebellion. As the parable teaches, there is more than one way to get lost. As C.S. Lewis said: “One road leads home and a thousand roads lead into the wilderness.” Or as Jethani argues: There are at least four wide paths to God that will not deliver you to that destination. But there remains one narrow path, a leads-to-life lane summarized in these three words: “Life With God”.

There are numerous reasons why I freely recommend this book; however, this post will focus on only one attention-grabbing section:

Voices from within the New Atheism movement, most notably Christopher Hitchens (pictured at left), Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins, have leveled numerous criticisms at religion as an strongly negative force in our world. Many of these arguments are based on sentiments of frustration common even to God-lovers. Often, cases are stated forcefully with intellectual sharpness. It is not uncommon for people of faith to feel unsettled by such strong negativity, despite an inner sense that says something like, “I don’t have a satisfying response at this moment, but something in me says that this attack is not entirely accurate.”

Jethani shed light on such moments through the following section:

“Events like 9/11, and the holy finger-pointing that followed, give ammunition to critics of religion like avowed atheist Christopher Hitchens. The Vanity Fair columnist and author of the best-selling book ‘God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything’ makes a compelling case that religion adds to the fear in our world rather than reduces it. But an examination of Hitchens’ critique of religion shows that he is primarily reacting to the Life Under God posture held by many who claim religious labels.

In a debate on the merits of religion with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (a committed Roman Catholic), Hitchens asked, ‘Is it good for the world to worship a deity that takes sides in wars and human affairs, to appeal to our fear and to our guilt? Is it good for the world?’

Blair responded by noting how religion also motivates many people toward good and charitable actions. He gave the Northern Ireland peace accords as an example. Hitchens pounced on the statement;

‘It’s very touching for Tony to say that he recently went to a meeting to bridge the religious divide in Northern Ireland, where does the religious divide come from? Four-hundred years and more in my own country of birth of people killing each other’s children depending on what kind of Christian they were.’

Hitchens went on to blame religion for blocking peace in the Middle East, for subjugating women in many societies, and for fueling the 1994 genocide in Rwanda–a country where 90% of the population claims to be Christian.

After the debate between Hitchens and Blair, the audience voted; 68% said that religion is a more destructive than benign force in the world.”

One part of me sighs at this point. Another part chimes in, “Yeah, but that isn’t really fair.” However, despite this inner conviction that some key information is being overlooked, I feel unable to respond. What is Hitchens missing?

Jethani clarified it for me: Hitchens’ attack isn’t actually zoomed in on genuine Christianity, as he might think. Rather, his cross-hairs rest on the first mistaken approach listed above: Life Under God. On this front, Jethani concedes:

“It is difficult to squabble with Christopher Hitchens’ evidence that traditional religion fuels violence, bigotry, and oppression, and therefore adds to the fear and suffering in our world. If Life Under God was intended to reduce our fears and provide greater control over our unpredictable world, it has proven to be an utter failure. Any way of relating to God predicated on fear and fighting for control cannot deliver us from what plagues humanity–namely, fear and fighting for control.”

The real twist?

“It may surprise some people, but at times Christopher Hitchens sounds a great deal like Jesus. Like Hitchens, Jesus frequently spoke out against the hypocrisy and harm inflicted by the religious system of his day.”

Yes, you read that rightly.

In at least this regard, Christopher Hitchens and Jesus Christ are of one mind. That said, it intrigues that one laid himself down, confident that the sacrifice would lead others into life, while the other spent himself in critique aimed at discrediting the former. The irony: Jesus is abundantly aware of the pathetic, even downright destructive, approaches that people take to God. He knows these things better than any, and it drove him to blaze a purified path to the Father. As much as Hitchens could observe, he felt compelled to label any path associated with a divine name as damned by default.

Jesus, on the other hand, lay himself down to redeem the wretched and to free the fools–both those shackled by ritualistic righteousness and reckless rebellion.

Along the way, you can be certain that he loves Christopher Hitchens deeply. And about some matters, he even speaks an “amen”.

Saturday Six-Pack (10)

Welcome to some weekend “Wandering & Wondering”.

In an effort to add some information and inspiration to your Saturday, today’s Six-Pack follows the usual guidelines.  Most articles are faith-focused or ministry-geared, with the “disorderly pile of who-knows-what” tagline at the top of this page catching everything outside of that!

Today’s collection:

1) Twelve Months, Twelve Religions
Out of Ur provides this springboard into more extensive blog reading OR the buying of a book.  If you only have one click to spend on this story, some of the comments after the short article are worth the time.

2) What the Holy Spirit Can Do for Your Preaching
Jim Cymbala sees radical need for churches to be powerful witnesses for Christ in our world.  What does your preaching really need to fuel and feed toward this end?  It needs the Spirit of God.

3) Prayer is Hard Work
Though prayer is instinctive, it is also difficult labor. David M’Intyre makes and explains this point in his book The Hidden Life of Prayer.  Tim Challies provides this excerpt.

4) By What Standard?
A few years ago, a documentary called Collision was made where Douglas Wilson debated Christopher Hitchens on Is Christianity Good for the World? Hundreds of hours of footage was shot and edited down to 90 minutes of solid debate and conversation.  Discussion and highlights of this work can be found here.

5) Eulogies and Dyslogies for Charles Colson
Colson passed away last month.  I found no better post dedicated to his life and passing than this one from InternetMonk.  If, for whatever reason, you don’t know much about Charles Colson, this post will still contain plenty for you.

6) 14 Action-Inducing Lessons from Benjamin Franklin
Dumb Little Man has provided a “get moving” post here that features some great quotes.  Provocative enough to nudge the most planted butt off the couch.  Read it, and get rolling!

That’s a wrap.  Treasure the day, friends–renew yourself and reverence God.