Tacky title, eh? I don’t apologize. I had fun constructing it. The other day someone asked me whether there were any scriptures I liked to go to when I was having problems. I gave the answer immediately and then explained, but I’m going to do the opposite here. I’m going to explain and then tell…
I’ve appreciated the work of Brevard Childs since I first encountered him via his Isaiah volume in the Old Testament Library series.I just finished with the first section in his Exodus volume (see below), and I have to say that I find it even better. Childs takes note of source and redactional issues, but subordinates…
Being outraged about everything has a similar effect to being outraged about nothing.
Before I get to the article I’m linking from them today, I want to emphasize something important. I like numbers, yes, but you have to be careful. The reason for this is that you have to understand how the numbers you’re liking were produced.
I got this letter in the mail. If you look at the reply envelope, you’ll see that there is no identification of the company that is sending this e-mail out. Look to the right, where I’ve let a bit of the outer envelope show. It shows a quite correct statement of penalties for obstructing…
Our pastor at Chumuckla Community Church started a sermon series on the book of James. This provoked me to look again at Bruce Epperly’s little book Holistic Spirituality: Life Transforming Wisdom from the Letter of James. Here’s a sample: Despite Martin Luther’s misguided dismissal of James as “an epistle of straw,” due to James’ emphasis…
… even to this Air Force vet’s ears.
With a tip of my hat to James McGrath, I would like to call attention to this post by Jonathan Bernier. I think it brings up some rather important points. This is not an answer to your questions, but rather a bit of guidance in how one answers questions accurately. To quote: The critical historian is…
Brooke Borel of FiveThirtyEight.com published an article recently titled Fact-Checking Won’t Save Us from Fake News. Headline readers will not be led too far astray by that headline, though they will miss some interesting reasoning on the topic. I agree with Borel that fact-checking won’t save us. It’s useful, but it’s just one element. A…
In today’s Christmas sermon our pastor told a story he’s told before, but with a slightly different slant, and that reminded me of a number of things I’ve been thinking about over the last couple of weeks. Let me be clear that I’m not criticizing the pastor for telling the story with a different slant….
