I believe this is from Lars’ current weekend location.
All posts by Phil
What Is the Culture?
What is culture? Is there a difference between people and culture? If someone argues that Jesus calls to redeem people but not culture, are they really saying anything, or is the difference inconsequential?
It seems to me people make up culture; to reach people would be to reach their culture, and you can’t reach a culture as such because it’s a concept, a description. You reach people who think and act in patterns we describe as cultures, and if we apply the gospel to the making of art or business, then we are reaching people within their cultural context.
Or am I missing something?
Pringles Are Potato Chips. Yes, They Are.
Procter & Gamble must pay a particular snack food tax in the UK, because it failed to make its case that Pringles is not, in fact, a potato chip. The company said that because Pringles have only 42% potato in them (the rest being flour and fat), they are more like a cake or biscuit and therefore not subject to the tax in question.
I wonder if P&G would have won their case if they had employed a five-year-old to argue it.
Keep Dreaming
And don’t let people stop stopping you from not following your dreams. No, really. Those people, they don’t know, but you are awesome. Keep on dreaming on those dreams.
What Does a Publishable Author Need?
That is, what does an unpublished writer need to know or do to become a published author. In this post, the writer says a variety of important things which he contradicts later in the post, specifically how writers should do their homework before thinking they are good for anything–more or less.
When I Am Weak, He Is Strong
The iMonk talks about our brokenness before our Lord:
How can someone who has the answers for everyone one moment, have no answers for themselves the next? Why are we, after all that confident talk of “new life,” “new creation,” “the power of God,” “healing,” “wisdom,” “miracles,” “the power of prayer,” …why are we so weak? Why do so many “good Christian people,” turn out to be just like everyone else? Divorced. Depressed. Broken. Messed up. Full of pain and secrets. Addicted, needy and phony. I thought we were different.
…
You people with your Bibles. Look something up for me? Isn’t almost everyone in that book screwed up? I mean, don’t the screwed up people- like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Hosea- outnumber the “good Christians” by about ten to one?
Freest States in the Union
In case you missed this, the states with the most freedom are those with low taxes, low government spending, and not too much legal management of private lives. Liberal state governments restrict freedom far more than conservative state governments, according to a study. “The problem is that the cultural values of liberal governments seem on balance to require more regulation of individual behavior than do the cultural values of conservative governments.”
Yes, this is a problem. As I was discussing with the good wife after watching “The Dark Knight” recently, good people rely on each other to behave and be trustworthy. There can be structures for law enforcement and personal defense, but the whole system breaks down once enough people become corrupt in one way or another. Add to that someone willing to force his agenda on everyone, you can have chaos quickly.
So conservatives want everyone to do what’s right, believing the more power concentrated in government, the less positive freedom we all have, and liberals want the heavy hand of government to force everyone to do what’s right, believing government power will always work they way they want it to, never turning on them to take their freedom away. For many years, conservatives have been lousy communicators and in many ways lousy practitioners of justice, liberty, and mercy. Liberals have been lousy visionaries, misunderstanding the base reality that given enough power we will redefine justice, liberty, and mercy.
On a related note, let me say that I’m proud of a man I work with, who told me today of a plan he is working with others to form a non-profit which will work to open opportunities for local minority workers–people who want to work but have few options. The organization will encourage employment from our community, specifically for those who have had many doors closed to them. That’s the way to do it, private citizens helping each other and not relying on the government to force them to do it its way.
Original Work
Longfellow on a Rainy Day
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains . . . continued
Behaviorism in the Household
Jared is meekly discussing the grace behind the book, Have a New Husband by Friday: How to Change His Attitude, Behavior, and Communication in 5 Days.
It turns a woman’s spouse into a project, a problem, not a person made in the image of God to be loved and given the gospel in word and deed to. It is legalistic, basically. . . . it’s gross. It plays on the stereotype of men as children who need wives to make them better, more suitable and acceptable.