Category Archives: some interesting links elsewhere

Some interesting things elsewhere VII


It’s still the first 2 weeks of the school-year over here, which are utter chaos for me as a teacher of protestant religion in Flemish secondary schools, so not much has been happening on this blog. I left this SITE-list half finished at the end of August, so maybe it’s time to finish it and publish it before it loses all relevancy in this constantly changing world.

The random picture today is quite cute. Having small children makes one like cute pictures of fuzzy apes…

Ray Hollenbach on how Jesus welcomes sinners at His table. Who do we welcome at our table?

Morgan Guyton actually has written a lot of posts that are worth reading since my last SITE-list. This one is about submission and leadership.

Thank you Lord for hearing me @ godspace.

2 interesting posts by Jonalyn on soulation. One about egalitarian marriages and one about friendships between men ans women. I still don’t have no idea who the mentioned Sally and Harry are, and I don’t think they’d interest me…

Roger Olson on the problems with John Pipers view of Gods sovereignity and sin.

Busyness as moral lazyness on internetmonk

An orthodox approach to sacrifice and atonement (I guess you all know I find those things very interesting)

Andrew Jones of Tall skinny Kiwi on homeschooling with the whole planet as a home… I wish I could go to all those places to learn those things…

shalom

Bram

Some Interesting Things Elsewhere VI


edit: I accidently published this post too early, it was scheduled for wednesday but I pushed the wrong button…

The random picture today (going round on FB)  is a man ‘hugging’ a Japanese giant salamander… I always liked freaky animals, and this monster certainly fits that description…

For the interesting things elswhere:

Sarah Moon on Christian forgiveness, how subversive it is, but how Christians turn it completely wrong…

One of the important theological discussions of the moment is ‘what is the gospel’, and Peter Enns has an interesting post on that question. (I’m sorta with Enns, Wright, and McKnight in this discussion, for those wondering.)

I found this article on the orthodox view of ancestral sin (not original sin like Augustine and those who follow him) interesting.

Interesting stuff about Pentecostalism being pacifist in its early years

And since we’re doing hard theological  subjects, here is Greg Boyd on the death of Ananias and Sapphira.

What we can learn from the dying

It seems like every disaster in or around the US gives us prophetic weirdos who say that it’s Gods punishment. It’s strange that they keep silent now, with the Isaac storm and the Republican convention (except for Roger Olson in his more satirical moments)

Kurt Willems on Christian politics: Speak truth, be truth, that’s it…

Derek Flood on sojo, on gender equality and how complementarianism misses something essential in their bible reading. On his blog there’s also an interesting post about re-thinking the Wesleyan quadrilateral (in favor of experience!)

shalom

Bram

Some interesting things elsewhere V


Not much happening here, but at least I have a new SITE- list for my readers:

The ten dogmas of modern science.

The difference between theistic evolutionism and evolutionary creationism on Jesus Creed. I never liked the first term,  and even if I do tend tend to an old earth and biological evolution (as an explanation for what we can find in the material world, which is NOT AT ALL the whole story of the origins of the universe and humanity), I’d never make an ism out of any creatonal view. But I agree that for a Christian affirming the Creator is more important than affirming any scientific theory.

(The problem between ‘creation’ and ‘evolution’ is not a scientfic one, but a metaphysical and philosophic one anyway, and I do like the way in which ‘evolutionary creation’ crosses those false dichotomies..)

Morgan Guyton being provocative again and criticising Tim Keller for creating a false binary of love and holiness. It also shows where I think Guytons Wesleyanism is more in line with both the bible and the great tradition of Christianity than the reformed tradition, but I think some people will not at all agree with that…

David Flowers has a list of five books that, according to him will be very important for the future of North-American Evangelical church in the 21st century . I mioght not be an American but those are important books to wrestle with indeed:

1. N.T. Wright: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church 
2. Scot McKnight: The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited 
3. Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet: Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ
4. Greg Boyd: The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church
5. Christian Smith: The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture 

(I read all of those ecxept #4, which might be the book in the list that is most fit for the Americansituation specificall, but I read other things by Boyd and I quite like him)

Rachel Held Evans has a very interesting guest in her ‘ask a…’ series: Ask an Indigenous Theologian.

Justin Lee cfor the gay Christian Network has a very strong point here: Worldliness in the other direction is still worldliness!

Totally unrelated is the news that ebay doesn’t sell magic anymore. I’m not even going to comment on that one…

Richard Beck of experimental theology on the ‘hole rule‘, a good consideration for those who are into simple living…

And then there’s Todd Bentley, still on the other side of the Atlantic ocean

Shalom

Bram

Some interesting things elsewhere IV


Yeah, it’s becoming almost regular now, my list of interesting things elsewhere…

Today we have a picture of an albatross to celebrate the release of my bandcamp single with that name. It has the original indie-folk versions, a trance version, a triphop version and another remix of my song ‘albatross’ and can be downloaded for free or for a chosen price if you like. so which version do you like most? ( The song might be based loosely on the dark island passage of the narnia book with the ship and all the islands…)

Btw, did you know that of 21 species of albatross recognised by scientists 19 are endangered? Long live progress I’d say…

Scot McKnight rethinks Near-death experiences (be sure to read the comments also.) A subject that I don’t have much opinion on, but I find it interesting nonethelesss….

American politics is something I don’t understand. One of the things I don’t understand is how certain ideas that are regarded ‘conservative’ can be seen as Christian. Morgan Guyton has an interesting article about how Ayn Rand and Jesus are completely uncompatible, according to a follower of Rand. I don’t know that much about Rand, but it’s seems quite evident to me that someone who hates altruism has nothing at all to do with Christ!

After my post on speaking about creation, it might be interesting to read the  opinion of your fellow-reader Eric, a scientist himself, on his blog the jawbone of an ass, with his views on genesis (read this first, and then gen 1 part 1 and part 2, genesis 2, genesis 3, genesis 4, and you can find a lot more interesting stuff over there…)

Also interesting is the last post from our Asian friend Vinoth Ramachandra, who clearly believes in evolutionary creation himself, and reviews a book from Raymond Tallis, an atheist himself, against ‘darwinitis and neuromania’, that looks quite interesting but also quite heavy… His review ends with the promising words “What a pity that so much effort has been devoted to lambasting the polemics of Dawkins and Harris, when Christians should be reading thoughtful humanists like Tallis.

Scott Morizot has (again!!) a must-read post, the third in his ‘pluralism and the christian gods’ series. Be sure to reas 1 and 2 too!

Roger Olson has an interesting article about panentheism, a word that is used in some corners of the emerging church, but that seems to have very different definitions depending on who’s using it…

And if you consider changing your religion, there’s always the terror of the Old Ones one can turn to. Read this tract and repent! (!!Do not read if you have a problem with sci-fi, horror, or religious propaganda!!) ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!! Looks like Jack Chick has some part-time job making flyers for other religions…

anything interesting that you read lately?

shalom

Bram

Some Interesting things elsewhere II


every witty quote might offend someone...

Welcome in the second issue of ‘Some interesting things elsewhere’:

Eugene Cho on ‘a lifestyle of enough‘ on Godspace. Shane Claiborne on the theology of enough, I think the rediscovery of ‘enough’ instead of more more more is very important, and one of the ways in which Christianity has to be countercultural in a world where growth for the sake of growth (the ideology of the cancer cell) is the norm in economics.

There is a promise in Scripture that there is enough: that God did not mess up and make too many people or not enough stuff.

Another criticism to a core value of contemporary neoliberal ideologies that are very pervasive even in Christian thought is addressed by Matt Stone in his blog post ‘do what thou wilt shalt be the law of the psychopath’, which invokes the infamous  occultist Aleister Crowley! More from the occult department in this very entertaining article by our anti-capitalist friend Tripp York, who finds neo-druids too capitalist, and points out how Satanists are plagued by the same problems as Christians are…

Totally unrelated is this cool technique of moss graffiti, something I want to try one day!

Sometimes the world seems like getting crazier and crazier. This story is quite enraging, and together with this one scatters my last hope that there is any ‘land of the free’ left in the illustrious US of A…: “Health department raids community picnic and destroys all food with bleach” This weird story about a homeless mother sent to jail because letting her children go to school in the wrong place is equally scary though…And the mess the Americans left in Iraq includes this story about teenagers being stoned to death for their emo look. And if we’re talking about the middle-east, this blogger from Bethlehem is worth following, and these ‘writings on the wall’ by persecuted Palestinian Christians are impressing!

At the same moment the state the planet is in isn’t much better: the acidifying of the oceans, a problem most people never heard about, might become one of the serious threats to earthlings in the future, and one we are responsible for! And if the ocean level rises due to global warming, this guy will be a president without a country… And there should be no patents on genes that are found inside of living organisms!

Some things are just weird. The anonymous declaration of cyberspace independence, which can be read here, looks like it’s from a sci-fi movie, but it’s from the real world we’re living in apparently…

did you read anything interesting?

shalom

Bram