Between the Trees

With classes finishing up a week from Friday, I’m starting to put together a summer reading list. Here’s what I have so far, I’m also hoping to do some lighter reading, possibly some Stephen Lawhead and some of the Arthurian books I haven’t been able to read for class this semester:

Crunchy Cons - Rod Dreher

A [...]

Interesting excerpt I came across today in Fareed Zakaria’s book The Post-American World (which, by the way, is an excellent read) :
For a century after 1894,  most of the cars manufactured in North America were made in Michigan. Since 2004, Michigan has been replaced by Ontario, Canada. The reason is simple: health care. In America, [...]

Note: This is part 3 of an ongoing series discussing the question of hell. Here are posts one and two.
Last time, I tried to offer a take on the big story of Christianity, putting the questions of hell and divine judgment in their proper contexts. I’d like to sum up four major points from this [...]

I’m sorry for the dearth of posting, but seminary is crazy right now. That said, I had to make a quick comment.
There is a video game called Guitar Praise, which for those not in the know is Guitar Hero for church kids. One of the reviews on the site starts “We are not conformed to [...]

I was baptized at Grace Chapel.
As odd as it was for me, having grown up in the church, to not be baptized till I was almost 21… I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ll always look back at that day with a very sweet fondness.

New DN column.
I feel really vain posting these here but I feel like it’s the only substantial posting I have time for unfortunately.

A big, beautiful, 47-year-old middle finger to the idea that musical talent needs to come in an anorexic hourglass body.
Made me cry.
(HT: Andrew Sullivan)

He who hung the earth is hanging.
He who fixed the heavens in place has been fixed in place.
He who laid the foundations of the universe has been laid on a tree.
The master has been profaned.
God has been murdered…
But He rose up from the dead
and mounted up to the heights of heaven.
When the Lord hath clothed [...]

A repost from last Easter, but I love the poem.
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of [...]

To start talking about hell, it is critical that we place it within the framework of the larger biblical story. Both the objections people outside Christianity have to the doctrine and the distortions that tend to creep into our own ways of discussing it come from placing hell into a different story than the biblical [...]