“In so many ways, Christians had become the Jews of our time—the scapegoats of choice for the thug regimes around the world,” Michael Horowitz says in this interesting interview with World.

Q: How can Christians involved in politics make the world a better place?

Take a look at what William Wilberforce did. His lessons: Be very attentive to defining yourself and not letting others define you. Understand that politics is seductive and corruptive. Understand that “us against them” and demonization of the other side is not very Christian—and won’t succeed. And don’t simply say, “I care about these issues” and sign letters, because that doesn’t count.

“. . . nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail

With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Tell folks that God gives us his grace without strings, but don’t be a jerk about it like this guy.

Rebecca started a theological fight while visiting a Sunday School class in Minnesota. This post gives you a summary of the fight so far (you can backtrack on her blog to read a few more details), and the fight continues here.

First of all, please understand that I’m not becoming an atheist. I’m about to restate an argument against the existence of God, one which I feel as if I “grasped” today. But that doesn’t mean I’ve adopted that argument. It’s my job, as a novelist, to try to understand how people think, even when they’re very different from me. I’d say, “I’m a professional. Do not try this at home,” but I don’t really believe it’s destructive to faith to understand opposing arguments. It’s vigilance and intellectual honestly.

Anyway, I think I figured out one reason why atheists feel morally superior to religious believers, even though history is not exactly overflowing with examples of atheists who were great humanitarians and moral paragons (no doubt there are some, but in general religious believers have been both far worse and far better than atheists).

To an atheist, anyone who says he believes in God appears to be complicit in cruelty. Continue reading In which Walker attacks another straw man →

It was a good weekend. I spent it pretty much alone, but for me that’s a feature, not a bug.

I spent most of Saturday concentrating on reading over the galley proofs of the new novel, West Oversea. It had been some time since I’d actually looked at the thing, and to my amazement I thought it was really good. There were plot twists I’d forgotten about completely, so I had the odd pleasure of surprising myself.

I’ve often thought that it’s too bad I can’t read Lars Walker’s novels, because he seems like the kind of writer I’d take to. Apparently that’s true.

Sunday started, as they generally do, with church. I don’t think I’ve told you that I finally made the big jump and started attending a different church. Not the one I blogged about visiting a while back, but a different church which I’d known about, but whose location I’d entirely mistaken. Turns out it’s convenient for me—miles closer than my old church. And the great thing is that they offer a traditional service (with Communion), so I don’t have to do praise songs anymore.

The difficult part is that this service is at 8:00 a.m., which means I have to get up at my normal getting-up-for-work time. The upside is that when I come home, about 9:30, I’ve got the whole beautiful Sunday in front of me. Continue reading Sunday thriver →

I’ve discovered a couple good blogs I hadn’t seen before. One is Salvo Blog (Signs of the Times). They provided this further link to a report from another good-looking blog, Mindful Hack, which examines the tale of Phineas Gage, a story you probably heard or read in college (I know I did), and demonstrates that it doesn’t necessarily mean what that guy in the tweed jacket with the arm patches told you it meant. Continue reading Links and fallacies →