Plunder Pile

A New Home for the Pile

2010-08-18T13:47:00.002-04:00

I propose that we move the Plunder Pile from Blogger to WordPress because over there potential authors will no longer need a Gmail account to join us and WordPress has a lot to offer (despite its annoying "Just another…" tagline at the top).

I've created a slimmed-down Plunder Pile over at the new venue. Please share any ideas or concerns about the proposed new location.

All old post will show up under my account until the authors move over to WordPress, at which point their usernames will automatically reappear on any previous posts.

http://plunderpile.wordpress.com/

2010-08-13T16:39:00.004-04:00

CCA Community is extended a 20% discount to Shepherd Press East Coast Marriage Conference, Rejuvenating the Gospel inYour Marriage and Family, being held right here in Harrisburg on Oct 1 & 2 (~ 47 days away from this post ). Use Discount Code TCM when purchasing tickets.

Dave Harvey, Tedd Tripp (with all new marriage material never heard publicly before-plus a bonus breakout) along with 5 other authors; Ed Welch, Rick Horne, Margy Tripp, Jay Younts and John Crotts for you to customize your conference experience.

Shepherd Press will also be giving away a free book for those who register before Sept 1st and a second free book to those who stay at the Hilton overnight for the conference (at a discounted rate).

It should be a meaningful time in which marriages will be strengthened and families will have healing and/or purposeful direction through the Gospel.

Horse Play

2010-07-21T22:15:00.005-04:00

One of the items auctioned off last fall at our school auction was the opportunity to go horseback riding with Mrs. Stucky. The three winners hit the dusty trail tonight at Prairie Fire Farm.

After getting matched with a horse,

getting a few lessons on steering

and stopping,

they hit the trail!

Riding off into the sunset.

Thanks to Emily and the girls at Prairie Fire Farm for making this night possible
and for supporting the CCA Scholarship Fund.

Do you have pictures from an auction outing? We'd love to see them.
Send them to Natalie at natalie.martin@ccahbg.net

CCA 's "It's a Wonderful Life" Auction
Saturday, November 13, 2010

Watch this blog for more details!

Join us for the next Spirit Night on July 27

2010-07-10T20:17:00.000-04:00

It's time for our next Spirit Night at Hoss's in Hummelstown on Tuesday, July 27. You can stop by this Hoss's location anytime between 11:00-9:00 that day, present the flyer that you print off from the CCA Web site and 20% of your check will be donated to CCA. Please note that you must present the flyer when you order for CCA to receive the 20%.

It's that easy! Food, fellowship, and funds for CCA.

Kohl's Cares...About CCA!

2010-07-07T17:59:00.002-04:00

In celebration of Kohl's 10th Anniversary, they are donating $500,000 to 20 schools each for a total of $10 million. The winners will be determined by a vote taking place on Facebook. Each person gets 20 votes, but you can only use up to 5 votes on a single school.

So use the handy link and go straight to our page and vote for CCA to win the $500,000. While you're there you are encouraged and list some ways that CCA could use the money.

Then after you are voted, make sure you share this great opportunity with all your friends on Facebook and encourage them to vote for CCA. If you haven't taken the plunge into Facebook, well then this just may be the time to do so.

If we ban our Facebook resources together, we just may be able to be the Hickory High School of 2010!!

Celebrate America

2010-06-25T19:53:00.006-04:00

Looking for something to do this weekend that's fun, free and family-friendly? Then come CELEBRATE AMERICA this Sunday beginning at 4pm at Christian Life Assembly in Camp Hill.

This FREE event will feature fun stuff for the kids: 8 inflatables, 20 games, petting zoo, pony rides, face painting and live entertainment. Did I mention it is all FREE??!!

There will also be 60 arts and crafts vendors, Blue Moon Cruisers specialty car & motorcycle display, rock climbing walls, and local fire, police and food vendors.

Also, you can enjoy two Patriotic Celebrations in the Indoor Main Stage at 5:00 & 7:00 PM featuring former American Idol Finalist PHIL STACEY and the Celebrate America Vocal Solo Competition. The day ends with a 23-minute fireworks display set to music at dusk

At the last Celebrate America, over 8,000 people came out to take part in the fun. So come early and bring a friend.

2010-06-22T16:35:00.002-04:00

My husband has a few favorite feeds and sent this to me from one of them. I thought I'd pass it along. It is a constant, ongoing conversation Dan is having with our children (and with ourselves).

why-i-returned-my-ipad-harvardbusinessreview

A Classical Education: Back to the Future

2010-06-10T10:25:00.000-04:00

This opinion piece was written by Stanley Fish and printed in the NYT on June 7. Great explanation of classical education and its significance in the modern world. Good discussion in the comments also!

Chris Perrin responded to Fish's piece with an essay of his own that points out although Fish is an ally of classical education he is lacking one important element in his educational foundation.

Mother/Daughter Book Club Keeps the Reading Bug Alive

2010-06-07T22:03:00.001-04:00

Next year's third graders have made room in their busy summer schedules for a special event every two weeks...a Mother/Daughter book club! The moms and girls are reading Little House on the Prairie over the course of the summer which is a great follow-up to Little House in the Big Woods which is what they read during the school year.

Eight moms and their daughters read the first six chapters and then engaged in a great discussion on the author, life in the 1800s and their favorite scene in the book so far at their first get together.

Of course, there was plenty of snacks and lots of fun...for both the girls and the moms!

Our fearless leader!!

Summer Break

2010-05-29T14:38:00.002-04:00

I'm taking a break from the Plunder Pile for the summer, but anyone can feel free to use or revamp it in any way that they'd like. Prizes for the 2009 to 2010 school year go to Dan for the post with the most views, Natalie for the longest post with the most links (a category snatched out of my hands at the 11th hour), Mr. Kearns for the best line (Who wouldn't want to fly into the sunset with a warrior queen at his back, leading and protecting his people from the skies and sleeping in a gigantic tree?), and Donald Miller for generating the most non-virtual community dialogue. I've heard exciting rumors of others planning to join the authorship next year. I'm so glad Sarah, Dave and Natalie managed to keep this past couple months from being a complete theological geek fest.

With the summer upon us, seeing some of our alumni hanging around the school has been wonderful. Ben Brown recently sent me a link to this frisky post by Doug Wilson: "It is assumed that where creation is thick—where the music is glorious, the beer stout, the women beautiful, the lawns rich, the architecture splendid, and so on—it presents a greater temptation to idolatry than where someone has mixed the paint thinner of ascetic striving into the created order in order to avoid the idolatrous distractions. But this does not work."

This means, I think, that enjoying your rich lawns as God's good gift is the best way to prevent idolatry.

The Most Miserable Day of My Mother's Life

2010-05-28T17:37:00.004-04:00

I appreciated reading over this essay by my wise Dad. Please check it out and leave a comment or two.

"Marriage is the deepest relationship between human beings: it is also the most difficult. My wife told me, the day after our wedding, that it was the most miserable day of her life…"

I also like that my Dad enters the online world about as hastily as an ent moots: "This was not knocked off last night at two a.m. This has taken shape slowly in my mind and heart over the last forty years."

menandwomenbook.org

Does God Tamper With Evidence?

2010-05-28T17:06:00.003-04:00

A great post, quite concise and accessible, from the anonymous man moving to Elfland on some of the various presuppositions of the creation/evolution argument. The question raised is, why do we automatically preclude supernatural intrusion in the act of creation? We accept the miracles of raising people from the dead and the feeding of the five thousand and assume "that God would never suspend the 'laws of nature' to create the world..."

That said, I am still a little closer to Kline's position, which is covered briefly in the article.

101 Things to Do this Summer in Central PA

2010-05-25T20:39:00.000-04:00

With summer break beginning in just 48 short hours, I thought I'd pass along some summer fun ideas that I posted on our family blog several years ago. Some ideas are specific to Central Pennsylvania and the surrounding region while other ideas are for activities that kids can do anywhere.

Did I forget something? Let me know in the comments what are your family's favorite activities.

1. Make an obstacle course with sidewalk chalk and time each other on how long it takes to complete the course.

2. Teach the kids how to decorate cakes and let them experiment with a few cupcakes.

3. Plan a scavenger hunt. All you need to do is list 20 or so items that are frequently found in nature. Then distribute the list to each of the kids. The first person or team to find everything and bring them back wins a small prize.

4. Bike or walk the Capital Area Greenbelt Trail, a 20-mile loop around urbanized portions of Harrisburg, linking many city neighborhoods, parks and open spaces. It provides recreational opportunities such as hiking, biking, birding, walking, and jogging for visitors of all ages and can be accessed at multiple locations...including just over the hill from CCA.

5. Tour the Martin Guitar Factory. This free tour showcases the 500+ workers who craft about 90% by hand. The tour lasts about an hour and then you can head over to the free Martin Guitar Museum in the same building.

6. Take the kids to a free movie at the Palmyra and Camp Hill Cinema Centers on Tuesday mornings. Hoyts Theater in Harrisburg offers a G and PG movie every Tuesday and Wednesdays at 10:00am. Check their web sites for a complete listing of the movies.

7. Keep your kids reading this summer with the summer reading program at your local library. The program runs June 1 - August 31 and gives your children the opportunity to win prizes and attend great events and activities. For teens ages 13-19, Metamorphosis is their summer reading program. Check out your local library for more details and to pick up your reading log.

8. Introduce your kids to the theater through the Popcorn Hat Players. Shows running this summer are "Aesop's Fables" and "Princess and the Pea". Tickets are $7 for adults and children and shows are performed at the Gamut Theatre in Strawberry Square.

9. Go tubing down the Yellow Breeches.

10. Have lunch or just browse the booths at the Broad Street Farmer's Market or at the West Shore Farmer's Market.

11. Bike the many rail trails in Central Pennsylvania. These biking trails are great for beginner riders because they are always flat or with minimal incline. My favorite is Stony Creek in Dauphin.

12. Catch fireflies.

13. Put the PJs on the kids, pop some popcorn, and load into the mini-van for a nostalgic night at the drive in movies. Haar's in Dillsburg still has the magic.

14. The Children's Garden at the Hershey Gardens is filled with surprises at every turn. This magical world of whimsy provides a self-guided learning environment designed specifically for children. Kids of all ages are enchanted as they scamper, climb and dance throughout the 30 colorful theme gardens. The Children's Garden even makes it fun to learn the ABCs, colors, counting and math!

15. Have your kids help you wash the car. Or let them wash their bikes.

16. Set up a lemonade stand.

17. Go outside during a summer rain and play.

18. Play miniature golf: Adveture Sports in Hershey, Challenge Family Fun Center in Hummelstown, Bumble Bee Hollow in Harrisburg, Water Golf at City Island.

19. While they call it the "Children's Lake," visitors of all ages will also enjoy sharing a rest with the ducks calling the Boiling Springs Lake home. Take along some bread or buy some food for the ducks at the cafe on the corner.

20. Children tend to marvel at it and adults tend to marvel at how it intrigues children! It's Strawberry Square's three-story clanging, clinging, ball-dropping, kinetic clock. Its playful whimsy is pure enchantment. And it tells time to boot!

21. The largest one-day street-fair on the East Coast takes place in Mechanicsburg. Admission to Jubilee Day is free and so is the fair's non-stop entertainment.

22. Sway to the beat of reggae, soak in sounds of jazz or country's latest hits. Harrisburg's free summer music festivals at Reservoir Park offer great musical entertainment, as well as an excuse to walk the grounds of a city park recently receiving $1.6 million worth of improvements.

23. On Sunday nights, Italian Lake in Harrisburg is the place to be for free summer concerts that will have included in past years the Harrisburg Symphony, American celtic and Latin Jazz music.

24. Get lost in Cherry-Crest Farm's Amazing 5-acre Maize Maze in Lancaster. Travel 2.5 miles through an elaborate corn maze and collect clues along the way to find your way out. It was listed in Sports Illustrated Kids as one of the "25 Coolest Things to do this Summer."

25. Even if you're not interested in the Maze, you can still enjoy great family fun at Cherry-Crest farm. They have a Pumpkin Slinger, Hay Chute, Singing Chicken Show, Barnyard Jump, Lil’ Farmers Playland (Play House - Coloring Barn - Sand Box - Bean Toss - Climbing Structures), Cherry Crest Farm Tour Wagon, Petting Zoo, Big Ball Play Area and general store.

26. Ride the Millersburg Ferryboat.

27. Learn about some of the Indians that first settled in the Susquehanna Valley at Indian Echo Caverns.

28. Plant a vegetable or flower garden together.

29. Decorate flip-flops with puffy paint, beads, foam shapes or even small toys to make a one-of-a-kind fashion statement.

30. Slip n' Slide

31. Enjoy a Summer Concert on the lawn of the Fredrickson Library. Concerts include the Baltimore Steel Orchestra, The West Shore Symphony, Greater Harrisburg Concert Band and Voxology.

32. Take a ride on the Hershey Trolley Works. This memorable excursion delivers good, old fashioned fun as singing trolley conductors dressed in period costumes entertain and inform you on an enchanting ride through CHOCOLATE TOWN, USA.

33. The Pennsylvania State Capitol building is supposed to be one of the nicest state capitol buildings in the US. It was "architecturally inspired" by St. Peters Basilica in Rome and dedicated by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. Guided tours of the Capitol are offered every half hour Monday through Friday.

34. For the lil' fireman in your family, consider visiting the Pennsylvania National Fire Museum in Harrisburg. The Sights, sounds and history of firefighting come to life in the 1899 Victorian firehouse Reily Hose Company No. 10. The museum houses an outstanding collection of artifacts from the hand-drawn equipment of yesterday to the modern tools of today.

35. The Pride of the Susquehanna Riverboat is an Authentic Paddlewheeler that sails the Susquehanna River. The Riverboat is docked on City Island. The island is a lovely park where there are walking areas, a free playground, a miniature golf course, and places for children to play and eat lunch.

36. Have you ever wondered how chocolate is made? Take a trip to Wolfgang Candy in York or Wilbur Chocolate in Ephrata to see how your favorite treat is concocted.

37. For the budding journalist in the family, show them what it takes to put out a paper by visiting the Upper Dauphin Sentinel. Visitors tour the various departments of the newspaper and learn how the paper is produced from start to finish. Demonstrations of cameras, computers and printing presses are included.

38. Food and snack makers are in abundance in the Susquehanna Valley. Martins Potato Chips, Snyder's Hanover, Seltzer's Lebanon Bologna, and Utz all offer tours so you can see what it takes to make a bag of your favorite snack food.

39. Unleash your child's inner artist at The Crayola Factory. You can color, draw, paint and create with the latest Crayola products without the worry of cleanup afterwards. Each creative space invites you to play and explore while learning and having lots and lots of fun. See how Crayola Crayons and Markers are made.

40. Lake Tobias, located in Halifax, offers safari tours, petting zoo and a reptile building to see various kinds of animals up close.

41. Ranked among the top 5 children's museums in the US, Port Discovery in Baltimore provides experiences which ignite imagination, inspire learning, and nurture growth through play. Less than two hours away, Port Discoversy allows kids to learn about life on a real farm, explore a three-story urban treehouse, create in the art works gallery or take part in running a 50s diner.

42. A rainy day is the perfect day to explore the many hands-on type houses in the area. Locally, Curiosity Connection in Harrisburg are great choices or you can travel to the Hands On House in Lancaster or Explore n' More in Gettysburg.

43. All Aboard! The Choo Choo Barn is a one-of-a-kind hand-uilt display of miniature trains. This unique experience for your train enthusiast will enjoy over 1,700 square feet, with 150 animated figures and 22 operating trains.

44. Show your kids the kind of fun we use to having by going to The Castle Roller Skating rink in Lancaster. This family-oriented rink is the perfect place to do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around. Every Wednesday night is Christian music night.

45. A recent birthday party took us to Color Me Mine and I realized how much fun this place can be for the entire family. Create your own one-of-a-kind masterpiece. Choose a piece of pottery, paint it and then have it fired. Great for all ages.

46. For just $1, kids can enjoy the sounds of the Gretna Music summer concert series. Experience theatre, comedy, jazz, pop and our signature classical chamber music concerts in the beautiful Mt. Gretna Playhouse.

47. After the concert, head over to The Jigger Shop. A lot has changed about the Jiggershop over the years, but their generous serving sizes and incredible ice cream treats haven't. Introduce your kids to a Mt. Gretna landmark while enjoying the beauty of the area.

48. A summer's not complete without a trip to the zoo. In our own backyard is ZooAmerica featuring its exhibits of animals native to North America.

49. If you head south, you'll find The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. Currently the Zoo’s animal collection encompasses more than 1,500 animals displayed in natural settings replicating their native habitats.

50. The Philadelphia Zoo is America's first zoo, established just after the Civil War. This 42-acre Victorian garden is home to more than 1,300 animals, many of them rare and endangered.

51. Visit one (or more!) of the 18 State Parks are in the greater Susquehanna Valley. Camping, swimming, boating, hiking, canoeing, fishing, nature trails, rock climbing, biking, picnicking and wildlife watching are just some of the activities offered for free at the parks.

52. Letterboxing is an intriguing pastime combining navigational skills and rubber stamp artistry in a charming "treasure hunt" style outdoor quest. A wide variety of adventures can be found to suit all ages and experience levels. Visit the Letterboxing web site to learn more about this growing pastime.

53. Take your kids to their first ball game! The Harrisburg Senators or Lancaster Barnstormers, the area's newest farm team, are great choices for even the smallest fans.

54. Attach a note to a helium balloon and ask the finder to send you a postcard and let you know how far it travelled.

55. Make a home fire plan and have a surprise fire drill.

56. Research your family tree.

57. Clean out your closets, host a yard sale and donate the earnings to a charity.

58. Make ice cream in a bag.

59. Tie-dye tee shirts.

60. One of the highlights of the summer is the Smith Barney Harrisburg Mile that takes place every year on Front Street. Thousands of people come to run in the largest race in our area. It's a great event to take the kids and watch or if your kids like to run, they even offer a half-pint half mile and a fun run/walk.

61. Keep the kids' reading skillz sharp doing MadLibs.

62. For the older kids, a little adventure is probably what they want. Treat them to a wild White Water Rafting trip.

63. Take advantage of those clear summer nights to expose your kids to the science of astronomy. Head out to your local observatory for programs and viewings especially designed for the your astonomer.

64. Teach your kids how to make a daisy chain.

65. Start a new tradition at Celebrate America on Sunday, June 27 at Christian Life Assembly in Camp Hill. This local church puts on a huge patriotic celebration that includes inflatables, arts and crafts, petting zoo, and carnival games for the kids. Also on hand will be Fire Trucks, Police Cars, Blue Moon Cruisers, Black Dog Motorcycles/Harley Davidson Display, a 30 Foot Rock Wall, and a 45-minute multi-media Celebration will feature patriotic music, a Salute to the Armed Forces with full color guard, and a performance by former American Idol finalist, Phil Stacey. Oh, and Fireworks!!! And the best part...it's all FREE.

66. Build a time capsule.

67. Mix 2 cups water with a little food coloring, add 6 cups of cornflour/cornstarch to make goop.

68. Go pick your own strawberries.

69. Take the kids to breakfast at a diner.

70. Everyone enjoys a good amusement park and we've got lots to choose from in Central Pennsylvania. The obvious first choice is Hersheypark.

71. Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster is a great choice if you need an amusement park that's scaled to young kids. With over 30 kid-friendly rides, including coasters, water-play, miniature golf, and live entertainment, Dutch Wonderland provides many of the first and most memorable moments of childhood.

72. Knoebels is the home of free admission, free parking, free entertainment and free picnic facilities. Is there really anything else to say?

73. Clyde Peeling's Reptiland, along Rt. 15 in Allenwood (north of Lewisburg), has alligators, tortoises, snakes and much much more. With interactive exhibits, multimedia shows, touching sessions and programs running five times a day, this fun adventure is not to be missed.

74. Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater house is Come visit one of the world's most significant architectural structures. The key to the setting of the house is the waterfall over which it is built. Entrusted to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in 1963, Fallingwater is the only remaining great Wright house with its setting, original furnishings, and artwork intact.

75. Vacation Bible Schools are a staple of any kid's summer---and don't believe the myth you can only attend the one at your own church. VBS's are plentiful and usually offer crafts, drama, games, and, of course, Bible truths for kids that follow a fun theme. Held usually in the morning or the evening, age requirements will differ from VBS to VBS. Call around or watch your local newspaper for VBS's offered in your area.

76. For those football punks in your house, take them over to Carlisle late summer to watch the Washington Redskins practice. Yep, you heard me right. The Washington Redskins hold their pre-season camp in Carlisle in August.

77. I'd like to think that this next idea is a no-brainer for anyone who lives here, but just in case there's a newbie out there, a trip to Hershey's Chocolate World definitely needs to be on your short list for the summer. Cute music, fun "ride", free chocolate. Any questions?

78. The Doll House Museum in Harrisburg is an extraordinary collection of dolls and toys displayed in a life sized Victorian doll house. There are ten rooms filled with over 5,000 dolls and toys from 1840 to present day.

79. Hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail.

80. Visit Boyd's Bear Country in Gettysburg, the world's most humongous teddy bear store. Adopt a bear, visit the free museum, sample some vittles, or make your own bear to take home.

81. Get up close and personal with miniature horses at the Land of Little Horses and their farm animal friends. Races, displays, and special events are sure to delight the kids and "kids at heart."

82. The Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the Civil War. It also provided President Abraham Lincoln with the setting for his most famous address. Give your kids a tour of the battlefields and be sure to stop by the brand new visitor's center. Whether you choose a guided tour, audio tour or you do it on your own, your kids will love walking with history.

83. Teach your kids about Amish culture with hands-on projects at the Make-A-Friend Workshop in Lancaster. Kids can choose to make an Amish doll or become a craftsman and build a wooden Lancaster County barn, steam train, or tractor and wagon. The workshop supplies everything you'll need to build your special creation.

84. Have the kids write a letter to grandparents the old fashioned way---with a pen and paper.

85. On a rainy day, host a Brady Bunch or Little House on the Prairie marathon. Check the library for the complete seasons of both show.

86. For the kid who likes to concoct new delicacies in the kitchen, they might enjoy getting their hands dirty at The Kitchen Shoppe's in Carlisle's Cooking Classes for kids.

87. Got a kid that can't keep his feet on the ground? Head on over to the Climbnasium in Mechanicsburg. Climbnasium is an indoor rock climbing facility that caters to first timers as well as advanced climbers. Kids as young as six can climb 40 feet walls.

88. Build an art farm.

89. Teach your kids how to speak pig latin.

90. Have a picnic on the lawn of the State Capitol.

91. Take a bike ride along the Harrisburg side of the Susquehanna. Head down to Shipoke. Stop at the park.

92. Play flashlight tag at night.

93. Camp out in the backyard.

94. Fly a kite.

95. Get an appliance box from a store and let kids turn it into a space ship, house, fire engine, or store.

96. Wade in a creek and try to catch fish with your hands.

97. Visit a local nursing home and have your kids play an instrument or sing, pass out pictures colored by them or simply sit and let residents tell them stories of yesteryear.

98. Organize a neighborhood pet parade.

99. Make popsicles.

100. For several years, the Rachel Carson building in Harrisburg has been home to falcons who nest there. This year there are three nestlings that hatched in May. Visit the falcon cams perched on the building to watch these beautiful birds as they grow.

101. Visit the Peter J. McGovern Little League Museum in Williamsport, a tribute to Little League baseball and softball past and present. Check out the Hall of Excellence, where you can throw a swing or a pitch and watch your instant replay, and do your own play-by-play on a World Series game.

What is Art? Is it "Sitting with Marina"?

2010-05-24T21:43:00.004-04:00

In the great debate about what art is and is not, an article about performance artist Marina Abramovic, currently "sitting" (literally) on display at New York's MoMA.

Talking to the World (About Sex)

2010-05-24T21:34:00.006-04:00

Tim Keller looks to Immanuel Kant and Wendell Berry for ideas about how to talk about sex with unbelievers. "I think that in our contemporary society, Christians' beliefs about sex and gender will be one of the biggest points of conflict with our culture. We will need to co-opt some of our culture's own baseline narratives (the importance of human dignity and community) in order to gain any hearing at all for our beliefs."

Christians should listen constructively to what unbelievers (or believers--as if we really need to figure this out every time) say. Listening earnestly allows Christians to develop and maintain normal human relationships with people in the world around us. We can then engage naturally in conversations that express love, shed salt and light, and testify to the hope that we have in Christ. This sometimes invites persecution and sometimes attracts people to our churches where they see and hear Christ preached and worshipped.

Pornography—The Difference that Being a Parent Makes

2010-05-24T14:57:00.004-04:00

A contribution form Jen White:

Steve Jobs is a businessman of unquestioned ability, a technological wizard, and one of the greatest orchestrators of "cool" in world history. Nevertheless, he has not been known as a critic of pornography . . . until now.

Read the full article by Albert Mohler.

This too Shall Pass

2010-05-24T08:34:00.000-04:00

An idea for keeping the kids busy this summer!

via Dana Kenny on Facebook

New Readership and New Readings

2010-05-19T06:30:00.006-04:00

Fun videos from two other authors on here took readership numbers to record heights. With a current average of about 30 pageveiws from 9 unique visitors (IP addresses) per day, the recent video posts inspired one day with 61 pageviews from 23 unique visitors. It's great to have others contributing.

Here are some readings that I enjoyed over the past couple weeks.

Toddlers who tell lies early on are more likely to do well later, researchers claim. A Canadian study of 1,200 children aged two to 17 suggests those who are able to lie have reached an important developmental stage.

Police crackdown on hate crime across London: Raids across London have been carried out by the Metropolitan Police as part of an operation to crackdown on hate crime. Between March 2009 and April 2010 there were 51,839 domestic violence offences, 9,914 racial offences and 1,336 homophobic offences committed in London.

Many Christian bloggers responded to this post: Does God delight in non-Christian art? It's a thoughtful article. However, I would have asked: how does God delight in non-Christian art? God's love for art seems obvious. What isn't so clear lately is if God has much to delight over in Christian art.

Hunter, Crouch, and Colson on To Change the World: Christians need to abandon talk about "redeeming the culture," "advancing the kingdom," and "changing the world." Such talk carries too much weight, implying conquest and domination. If there is a possibility for human flourishing in our world, it does not begin when we win the culture wars but when God's word of love becomes flesh in us, reaching every sphere of social life. When faithful presence existed in church history, it manifested itself in the creation of hospitals and the flourishing of art, the best scholarship, the most profound and world-changing kind of service and care—again, not only for the household of faith but for everyone. Faithful presence isn't new; it's just something we need to recover.

Here's a lovely and godless recognition of something terrible and glorious about humanity: "Might not the human brain, that most complex object known to exist in the universe, have undergone a qualitative change as well? If my metaphor only suggests the possibility that our species is more than an optimized ape, that something terrible and glorious befell us—if this is merely another fable, it might at least encourage an imagination of humankind large enough to acknowledge some small fragment of the mystery we are."

Several Christian bloggers responded to this article where Kathleen Parker used her column in The Washington Post to take on Franklin Graham and his belief that belief in Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation.

Justin Taylor appreciated that "Doug Wilson has been interacting with some of John Piper's thinking on Christian Hedonism—not disagreeing per se, but taking it 'further up and further in.'" Wilson reflected on our relationship to God's gifts: "I have to think about the fact that my feet are not cold anymore, that it is time for dinner, that one of my shoulder blades itches, and so on. To use Lewis' conceit from the toolshed, I have to spend a lot of time looking at the sunbeams, and a fraction of my time is set aside for direct worship of God, looking along the sunbeam. The temptation we have is that of treating all this as a zero-sum game, assuming that any time spent on the gifts is necessarily time away from the Giver. But though this sometimes happens, it does not need to happen. Rightly handled, a gift is never detached from the one who gave it."

Role of Art in Education and Life

2010-05-13T16:26:00.007-04:00

If any of you (like me) missed Christine Perrin's talk about the role of art in education (given at CCA's most recent PTF meeting), much of the material is available at her Art of Poetry blog. (Note: CCA's web server seems to block this page, and I can only access it from home.)

Also, take a moment sometime to explore this 360 panoramic tour of the Sistine Chapel recently made available by the Vatican (accompanied by one of their a cappella choirs if your speakers are turned on).

When the Contemporvant Church Leads to Growtivation.

2010-05-10T13:02:00.003-04:00

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

Here is a great video showing the extremes of when a church strives too hard to be and overshoots relevance...if this made you chuckle, leave a comment.

Comments from a fellow on vimeo.com, Craig Wilson, are insightful:

I understand why some of you are upset...I get that what matters is not the medium in which the message is delivered, but the heart of the people and is the service spirit filled.

What happens though is a bunch of church leaders go to a conference and are told "this what cool church looks like, so do this." It may not be who they are, who God has called them to be or even who their community is. We should not ignore culture and even popular culture, but there is no "Cookie Cutter" stamp for all churches. If this is who you are or if you truly believe God has called you to be about these things, then by all means do it.

For all the "cool" stuff we can do in a church with lights and media it will never be as good as the "Cold Play" or "Muse" concert I go to...but you know what the world cannot compete with when it comes to the church? True Love, True Grace, and True Community. They will alway fall short in that arena. I feel like we will always fall short competing with the world's culture and sometime we may look silly trying.

Came across this through Nathan W. Bingham's blog.

How is Harrisburg's Gospel Ecosystem?

2010-05-05T23:24:00.007-04:00

A bosom buddy of mine from college who is church planting in Providence, RI attended a Tim Keller conference a while back and came home excited by Keller's concept of gospel ecosystems. Strong schools form an important part of the picture. My friend gave a summary of Keller's ideas and closed with these paragraphs:

With these elements in place, a Gospel Ecosystem is up and running. You will know that it is working when you see two tipping points pass.

The first is a tipping point in the churches. That is when you see growth happening all over the city spontaneously, not just in one or two churches or movements. That is when you will start to see the percentage of Christians in the city grow (and not simply move around).

The second is a tipping point in the city. That is when, at some point, the percentage of Christians in the city actually gets big enough to make the cities look different. (Maybe 10%, as Chuck Colson suggested is the tipping point in prisons.) At this point the change is unmistakable, and even those who don't like the Gospel message like what the Christians are doing in the city.

Keller closed the talk by making an important point for church planters. He said that he wants to "raise your eyes beyond the current horizon." The first horizon for a church planter, he noted, is usually simple: he doesn't want to be a failure! The second horizon is when the church planter has succeeded long enough that he wants to start another church, or a network or movement. The true horizon for our work, Keller says, should be the existence of Gospel Ecosystems in our cities.

Now, for some more of the usual potpourri... I also appreciated these reflections on The Death of Embarrassment:

Far from dividing people, embarrassment "can be a peacemaking force that brings people together - both during conflict and after breeches of the social contract, when there's otherwise great potential for violence and disorder." By expressing embarrassment we put others at ease by reinforcing our commitment to group norms. Keltner encourages us to see embarrassment as "a window into the ethical brain."

But in our nonjudgmental, individualistic culture, it is often uncomfortable and occasionally dangerous to attempt to enforce social norms. Even when people are objectively behaving badly - like the people who flout cell phone bans in trains or doctors' offices and impose their conversations on everyone else around them - it is often difficult to muster the courage to tell them to be quiet. In his book Embarrassment, psychologist Rowland S. Miller argues that, far from being inappropriate, embarrassment "is often a desirable, correct response to social predicaments." Our fleeting sense of embarrassment when reminding someone else to follow the rules is normal, and as Miller reminds us, people who are unwilling to express embarrassment mark themselves as socially suspect. "A capacity for embarrassment is a marker of normal humanity," writes Miller. Or at least it should be.

A news item from our motherland:

Dale McAlpine was arrested for saying that homosexuality is a sin and for doing so "in a voice loud enough to be heard by others."

A strong reminder (Doctrine Rightly Held from the Banner of Truth article collection):

A person who has a great grasp of the great doctrines of the Bible and yet is unloving toward people is in reality a spiritual freak and does not know what he thinks he knows.

Lastly, Werner Herzog reads Curious George: This spoof is probably funnier if you know something about Werner Herzog, but any fan of dry (and slightly dark?) humor might enjoy it. Two others exist (Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel AND Madeline). My wife and I thought Madeline was the most fun, but it was a little too edgy for me to post directly.

Just Because...

2010-05-05T11:42:00.004-04:00

it makes me smile!

New Book: Why America Is Not A New Rome by Vaclav Smil

2010-05-04T13:58:00.005-04:00

In light of the current Rome exhibit at the US Constitution Center, this book caught my interest. I can't yet tell whether he really has a point or is just splitting hairs. I have only read bits and pieces so far; I'd love to hear what you all think! Click here to read excerpts.

Anybody could get up and just talk

2010-04-28T22:04:00.006-04:00

Marvin Olasky recently asked Tim Keller what it was like being in "college during those weird years of campus protests four decades ago." Keller's response speaks volumes regarding much of contemporary communication (including much of the blogosphere): "There was no school for weeks. We had huge meetings in the center of the campus with an open mic. Anybody could get up and just talk. It was really boring."

At the risk of just talking, here are a couple highlights from my CCA week and some top reads.

Donald Miller's visit to Messiah inspired several great conversations in class earlier this week. Since I've voiced ill-informed opinions about him before, I'll add that several of his ideas, as summarized by a couple thoughtful students, sounded a lot like open theism (the idea that God develops and grows alongside his creation). Along with a several serious concerns like this, there were a couple things (like his ruminations on nakedness and innocence in the garden) that I really enjoyed. To capitalize on this event, a group of CCA students will hold a Vittle Moot regarding some of Miller’s political views over lunch on May 5.

Also, I've gotten into several good conversations in the last couple days about the value of critical thinking vs. humble submission. Students need to learn loving service, wisdom and submissiveness alongside boldness, curiosity and creativity.

For two weeks, I've been experimenting for the first time with an online feed reader. It's an almost impossible tool to tame, but I think it could cut down on time wasted online if used rightly. Also, I've enjoyed a couple great article exchanges with my wife (the first two below are thanks to her):

This refreshing rant against the good life in Dubai takes moral excoriation to delightful levels.

Anyone who was interested in the recent CCA talk with Kevin Kelly would enjoy this article about posthumanism. It underscores the fact that Kevin Kelly is in a fairly narrow class of his own as someone trying to be both a Christian and a posthumanist (or transhumanist, which is typically synonymous).

This is a great reminder to vote in a couple days.

Here’s a report on some brave Christians in Iraqi (followed by some discussion what it means for Christians to avoid making graven images).

I agree that China vs. America is the most likely fight of the century, but I’m not quite as optimistic about the outcome.

CCA staff are all reading a wonderful book about sin, and here is an excellent summary of the book (by the author) in 23 pages.

Here a student of Bruce Waltke goes to bat for his old teacher.

This review of a great-looking picture story Bible mentions another one, Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name, that we've just finished in our family and enjoyed quite a bit.

There's been lots of blog talk about the two big theological conferences taking place recently:

thoughtful report
gushing report
critique of gushing report
slam of gushing report
response from gusher

My thoughts on these exchanges: Telling a fellow Christian that you think they are wrong does not constitute failing to love them. Wanting to all just get together and sing songs that we can agree upon is no solution. Given our historical situation, we'd do well to render our heavenly worship enthusiastically and faithfully within our separate churches while also coming together in love outside of church for delightful times of honest debate and creative culture-making (like building schools together, for example).

This report on the little-known Museum of Biblical Art in Manhattan makes it sound like a great field trip opportunity.

Finally, a few good words on how to write and think well (with Orwell):

Many people ... who think about the general quality of scholarly prose would admit that we're in a sorry state, and most would say there isn't much to do about it.

But George Orwell did something about it. In 1946 he wrote "Politics and the English Language," an essay that explains the connections between bad writing and bad thinking as well as the political consequences: "Modern [insert the word "academic" here] English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional [or scholarly] writers."

By writing prose that is nearly unintelligible not just to the general public, but also to graduate students and fellow academics in your discipline, you are not doing the work of advancing knowledge.

The Avalon Project - Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

2010-04-25T21:50:00.002-04:00

The Avalon Project is the name of Y ale Law School's digital library of Documents relating to Law, History and Diplomacy.

The project contains online electronic copies of documents dating back over the past two thousand years and so it possible to study the original text of not only very famous documents such as Magna Carta, The English Bill of Rights, The United States Bill of Rights, etc. but also the text of less well known but significant documents which mark turning points in the history of law and rights.

Our Confessedly Striking Method of Life

2010-04-23T11:03:00.002-04:00

With the ever-present desire to keep up on gossip and stay relevant, I need to turn more often to out-of-date voices and keep happily silent. This passage from the Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus (one of the earliest Christian apologetics) keeps coming to my mind this year and reminds me of 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12. "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody."

CHAPTER V -- The Manners of the Christians:

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.

Our Christian call to a hidden and private kind of distinctness becomes increasingly vital as the culture at large drifts further away from godly values. I can always use the reminder to pipe down and worship God more faithfully with my private life. Therefore, even though (or because) the number of new readers on here continues to climb a little each day, I need to back down and post no more than once a week. Hold me accountable. However, I'd always love to see gleanings from others.

How Close We Came to Losing It: Pennsylvania, Marriage & The Courts

2010-04-21T10:56:00.002-04:00

From the PA Family Institute Blog by Michael Geer:

I think Pennsylvanians ought to know just how close they came to seeing the long-standing definition of marriage as the union of husband and wife gone.

In a recent case involving a lesbian couple, a Berks County judge was asked to throw out Pennsylvania’s marriage laws. The legal brief argued that “it is time to change our definitions…” This was a direct challenge to how Pennsylvania’s government has always treated marriage.

...Marriage may not be paradise, but it is the proven foundation of society. Paving it over with a newer and trendier model will only further weaken that foundation, to the detriment of families, children and all of society.

[Follow this link for the full story.]

Recent Reads

2010-04-19T10:49:00.005-04:00

This assessment is too simplistic (and lumps together lot of names, an issue in most writings on this topic), but it's helpful to note that many elements of both the emergent church and post-modernism are passing fads. Farewell Emerging Church, 1989-2010 by Anthony Bradley:

From Brian McLaren to Erwin McManus to Rob Bell to Tony Jones to Mark Driscoll and others, the theological lines have been drawn and are settled. We have all moved on. We know who fits into evangelicalism, post-liberalism, Anabaptism, Calvinism, and so on. If you are interested in the emerging movement as church history, pick up a copy of Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Communities in Postmodern Cultures by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger.

...Because post-modernism as movement is also dead as scientific realism emerged as a recent culture-shaping philosophical movement, the generation of Christians struggling to meet the challenges of post-modernism, instead of yelling at it hoping it would go way, are shifting as well to address a world asking different questions. While the effects of the emerging church movement will linger for some time we will begin to see books praising and attacking the movement go out of print.

Help Your Kids in their Faith Without Being Cheesy by Dan Bartkowiak:

Does God Exist is a DVD series from the creators of The Truth Project. The host, Dr. Stephen Meyer, plays a "philosophical survival game" pitting four worldviews against one another in the quest to decide which one gives the best answers.

A Few Good Books by Carl Trueman:

In addition to Kevin DeYoung's great little devotional commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, The Good News We Almost Forgot (Moody), there is also J.I. Packer and Gary A. Parrett's learned and provocative argument for putting catchesis back at the heart of the church, Grounded in the Gospel (Baker). Taken together, these books are delightful, encouraging, and, for those involved in church leadership, challenging, calling us to revisit old paths in new ways, avoiding both the romantic antiquarianism of so much Reformed church life, and the consumerist eclecticism of the ad hoc approach to the past found in emergent quarters.

The Examined Life, Age 8 from the NYT:

A few times each month, second graders at a charter school in Springfield, Mass., take time from math and reading to engage in philosophical debate. There is no mention of Hegel or Descartes, no study of syllogism or solipsism. Instead, Prof. Thomas E. Wartenberg and his undergraduate students from nearby Mount Holyoke College use classic children’s books to raise philosophical questions, which the young students then dissect with the vigor of the ancient Greeks.

Veith links to this article by a Catholic artist and educator David Clayton who makes connections between science, aesthetics, classical education, and then (for good measure) liturgy:

When we apprehend beauty we do so intuitively. So an education that improves our ability to apprehend beauty develops also our intuition. All creativity is at source an intuitive process. This means that professionals in any field including business and science would benefit from an education in beauty because it would develop their creativity. Furthermore, the creativity that an education in beauty stimulates will generate not just more ideas, but better ideas. Better because they are more in harmony with the natural order. The recognition of beauty moves us to love what we see. So such an education would tend to develop also, therefore, our capacity to love and leave us more inclined to the serve God and our fellow man. The end result for the individual who follows this path is joy.

This fellow plays a tune I like. But whatever you think of his rhetoric, CCA excels at this. On Remaking Private Life–At School by Jason Peters:

I wrote in a previous piece that I have been making preparations for a future in which such disciplines as my own will be an unaffordable luxury in most liberal-arts colleges. May no fate willfully misunderstand me: I’m not hoping for the early advent of that future. I would like to continue to teach Coleridge. But not only Coleridge. Cabbage too.

Here are a couple articles on a topic that I posted about some time back.

Theistic Evolution: A Hermeneutical Trojan Horse by Rick Phillips:

I have been interested to follow the web reaction to Dr. Bruce Waltke's resignation from RTS for his Biologos video insisting that evangelicals must accept evolution or be considered a "cult", especially that which lambasts those who would criticize scholars of such eminence as Dr. Waltke. There are, however, some features of Waltke's video, as with Dr. Enns' articles on Paul and Adam, that counter this sentiment. Most significant is the fact that neither of these Old Testament scholars base their arguments on the Old Testament at all. Rather, their claims are based on evidence from outside of their academic competence - science and archaeology - and only then do they turn to the Bible, seeking to harmonize Scripture with the scientific orthodoxy. This is, in fact, the true issue that has people like me so concerned: our supposedly eminent Bible scholars are now going on record to say that we must subordinate the authority of Scripture to the higher and more objective standard of secular science.

The Stakes Have Never Been Higher by Darryl G. Hart:

According to ABC News, and its report on the resignation of Bruce Waltke from Reformed Theological Seminary, both sides agree that the stakes are indeed that high. Higher than the Scopes Trial? But to the idea that if Christians do not accept the idea of evolution they run the risk of becoming a cult, I wonder if Waltke or his supporter Enns, or ABC’s expert interviewee, Balmer, ever considered what belief in the resurrection of Christ makes the church look like before the scientifically knowledgeable world. Granted, the Genesis account of God’s creation of the parents of the human race may from a scientific perspective be hard to believe. I, frankly, am not sure that the naturalistic accounts of human origins are any easier to understand or believe. Be that as it may, do the Christians advocating evolution – and I am not going to give them too hard a time since one of my favorite theologians (sorry, Gary), Benjamin Warfield was one of them – really think the idea of Christ’s resurrection makes Christians soft, cuddly, and scientifically mainstream?

One more list:
100 Free Online Ivy League Courses You Should Take Just for Fun

God's Temple

2010-04-18T22:05:00.004-04:00

I occasionally collect my thoughts and pester my siblings by posting some meandering biblical-theological ruminations on our extended family blog. They generally consist of wild speculations and ridiculous over-generalizations (on a narrow set of grossly repetitive themes). I'll try sharing one on here:

We are God's temple. Cosmos, city, church, family, couple, friendship, and individual human, each entity is best understood as a temple.

Theologians often note that the Old Testament tabernacle and temple plan reflected the rest of God's creation, like a mini cosmos. Moses and Solomon incorporated motifs from heaven and earth, garden and city, land and sea into the divinely dictated layout, decorations, and utensils. Meredith Kline’s writings repeatedly emphasize our human status as priest-kings, designed to minister within God's creation as the bearers of God's glory, made in his image and likeness for this one purpose. John H. Walton (OT professor at Wheaton and author of the Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament) argues that most cultures around Israel understood something to exist in so far as it had a divine function (i.e. served the gods) rather than in so far as it had spatial-temporal properties (as our modern minds naturally tend to think). This fundamentally different ontological perspective alters the way that we perceive and value ourselves and the world. It understands the entire universe to be, at its most basic level, a temple designed to display glory and enable worship. And God gave humans charge over it, placing us at the center of it all.

Not surprisingly, many ancient peoples had some concept of these things, but Israel received the truth regarding this Creator from God himself. As God relates it, He built the first temple, fashioning the heavens and the hearth to declare His glory. He then made us to serve him in the midst of the glorious creation, giving us the job of enjoying and bringing out the best in everything that surrounds us. As priests, we display His glory in every task and interaction that we undertake with each other or our physical environment. These principles underlie the Reformed doctrines of vocation and the priesthood of all believers. God at Work, a little book by Gene Veith, explains this wonderfully. Recognizing all of creation as a temple and we as its priests also brings to mind a string of other voguish concepts such as "redeeming everything for Christ" or "living sacramentally" or "living incarnationally." Serving as the "hands of God" (or recognizing God behind every ordinary blessing) is how Veith puts it. These priestly connections and responsibilities grow even more clear and profound as we look at how all this temple imagery plays out in the rest of scripture.

Skipping over the rest of the Old Testament (and essential material that comes to mind from Ezekiel, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Zachariah), we'll jump straight to the New Testament for a highlights version wrap-up. Christ, in his incarnation, is identified clearly as the temple. Christ is said by John to have come down and "tabernacled among us." He promised to tear down the temple and rebuild it in three days, linking the temple directly with his own flesh and blood. And we are the body of Christ. Feasting upon him and united with him, we live, die, and are raised into the heavenly realms with him. Paul identifies each of our bodies, then, as a temple of the Holy Spirit. We are living sacrifices. Peter says that we are living stones being built into a temple upon Christ who is the chief corner stone. (Elsewhere, Christ is called the stone that the builders rejected, reminding us that a rival building project is underway.) Being members of Christ's body and parts of the Divine temple mean the same thing, further reinforcing the connection between body and temple. Finally, when John sees the New Jerusalem descending from heaven, its gates are the twelve tribes of Israel and its foundations are the twelve apostles of the church. Within that city built of living sacrifices, however, there is no sun and no temple because our triune and incarnate God will be its light and its fullness of glory.

God help us, even now, to see, speak and think as priests within our own bodies, our churches, marriages, families, schools, neighborhoods, and nation. No matter where we turn or what we touch, if it doesn't display glory and enable true worship, we haven't recognized it for what it is.

Truth Project Training Seminars

2010-04-15T22:52:00.000-04:00

Pennsylvania Family Institute and Focus on the Family invite you to attend our Truth Project Training Seminar. At the training you receive The Truth Project 8-disc DVD curriculum and the necessary training to lead a small group through this innovative and potential life-changing experience. For more information and to register for a training near you, go to www.pafamily.org/truthproject.php or call 717-545-0600.

Sand Animation of Life in the USSR during World War II

2010-04-15T20:04:00.004-04:00

My brother in law shared this with the family recently. Kseniya Simonova is a sand animator from Ukraine. She started drawing with sand after her business collapsed in the 2008 financial crisis, and had less than a year's experience when she entered Ukraine's Got Talent. She became the 2009 winner (and an internet sensation) with her animation of life during the USSR's Great Patriotic War against the Third Reich in World War II. It's nifty and kind of lovely (in a Ukrainian TV kind of way at the very least):

2010-04-14T14:26:00.003-04:00

Donald Miller has come up on the Plunder Pile here and here. I just received this poster promoting his upcoming talk at Messiah. Regardless of where you stand regarding his ministry and theology, he's being listened to earnestly by many young people and worth learning more about.

Kids Online: Some Secular Resources

2010-04-14T11:22:00.006-04:00

Teaching About Web Includes Troublesome Parts at the NYtimes.

One resource they recommended:

Common Sense Media is dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in a world of media and technology.

We exist because our nation's children spend more time with media and digital activities than they do with their families or in school, which profoundly impacts their social, emotional, and physical development. As a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization, we provide trustworthy information and tools, as well as an independent forum, so that families can have a choice and a voice about the media they consume.

GoodReads.com

2010-04-12T11:54:00.004-04:00

I only just discovered goodreads.com in a blurb from World magazine (below). It's great for organizing your reading wish list, keeping track of books you liked, and finding good books. You can find booklists by authors or friends that you know. Douglas Wilson, for example, has rated 1681 books and (briefly) commented on 1357. If you join (or know of a better such forum), please let me know.

Here's the blurb from World: Goodreads, the popular social networking and library cataloguing website for bibliophiles, has released a free iPhone app. Search for books and categorize them in custom virtual bookshelves. Catalog the books you've read, are currently reading, or plan to read in the future. Rate and review books, or start a virtual book club. Don't have an iPhone? You can do all this on the Goodreads website as well (goodreads.com). — Alissa Wilkinson

What evangelicals need from Lutheranism (and vice versa?)

2010-04-12T11:50:00.003-04:00

Gene Veith (scholar and journalist whose recent little book God at Work is a great read) writes about a recent post by the late Michael Spencer (a.k.a. Internet Monk), a widely-respected Baptist pastor and blogger who just passed away:

Michael Spencer … was ecstatic about the new resources for theology and spirituality recently published by Concordia Publishing House: the Concordia (the reader’s edition of the Book of Concord), the Treasure of Daily Prayer, and now the Lutheran Study Bible. In the course of his rave review of the latter, he expressed his frustration with Lutheranism, which tends to keep to itself even though its emphases are exactly what the broader Christian and evangelical world needs right now.

…The Calvinist influence in evangelicalism far exceeds the number of actual confessional Calvinists. Lutheran theology would seem to resolve a number of issues that evangelicals are struggling with: how you can believe salvation is by grace alone while also insisting that Christ died for all; how to resolve the conflict between Christianity and culture; how to affirm the heritage of catholic Christianity while also affirming the best of Protestantism; etc., etc.

Messiah College Brass Choir Concert at Trinity Church

2010-04-12T11:48:00.001-04:00

The Messiah College Brass Choir will present a concert at Trinity Presbyterian Church on Friday, April 16, 2010 (at 7:30). The Brass Choir, under the direction of Mike Harcrow, is a group of 24 talented brass players and percussionists. They have been honored with an invitation to perform the following week at the Pennsylvania Music Educators' Association Convention in Pittsburgh, and the concert at Trinity will be the debut of the program to be performed there. Selections will include exciting works by well-known composers Paul Dukas and Serge Prokofiev, George Gershwin and John Philip Sousa, Pennsylvania composer Jack Stamp, and others. There will be section features as well as solo performances by two outstanding young soloists from the Toronto Salvation Army Staff Band who currently attend Messiah College.

See calendar on sidebar for details.

Google Analytics

2010-04-12T11:47:00.001-04:00

I've set up Google Analytics for the Plunder Pile to see if it's serving anyone.

From March 31 to April 11 (mostly over Spring Break), there were a total of 169 visits and 325 page views from 74 different IP addresses.

Some of those are bots and random outside hits. By only looking at IP address from the city of Harrisburg over the same time period, we had 99 visits (just over 8 per day), averaging 5.5 minutes on the site each time.

I know very little about what these stats mean. If anyone would like access to the analytics account, I can pass it on.

The Gospel and our Culture; redeeming social-life online

2010-04-05T23:11:00.002-04:00

http://www.gospelandculture.org/2008/12/redeeming-social-life-online/

Christ vs. Witch-hunts

2010-04-01T09:44:00.004-04:00

A sober news item thanks to Chip Boyle:

Is One Man's Faith Another's Superstition?

An article by David Gibson writing for The Wall Street Journal.

...Earlier this month, Amnesty International reported that more than 1,000 people were rounded up in Gambia in a government-sponsored witch-hunt, and in Tanzania alone, at least 45 albinos have been murdered since 2007 because popular superstition holds that they are witches.

...Accidental similarities between religion and magic should not lead anyone to confuse the difference in their content. Nor should the focus on witchcraft in places like Africa blind the rest of us to the lures of superstition that continue to cloud our own beliefs.

In Africa, Pope Benedict answered objections that he should leave the superstitious in peace -- arguing that it is no injustice to "present Christ to them and thus grant them the opportunity of finding their truest and most authentic selves, the joy of finding life." That could be said to be the highest goal of any true religion, as opposed to the best that witchcraft has to offer.

Impressive Little Tool: Readability

2010-04-01T09:42:00.001-04:00

Readability : An Arc90 Lab Experiment from Arc90 on Vimeo.

More information here.

Go here to set up your own prefferences and create a link.

Social Justice

2010-03-31T20:52:00.003-04:00

Social justice at Wheaton College came up on this blog a while back. Here's a recent rundown on the topic by a guy who knows a lot about it. Marvin Olasky writing for World magazine:

...This past month Beck advised listeners to "look for the word 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church website. If you can find it, run as fast as you can." Beck said those two terms are "code words" for giving government more power. Wallis again struck back: "Beck says Christians should leave their social justice churches, so I say Christians should leave Glenn Beck. Christians should no longer watch his show."

...Do those historical wrinkles mean that the term should not be used? No, but it should certainly be defined. We can study the 150 or so times that mishpat in Hebrew and kreesis in Greek—words commonly translated as "justice"—appear in the Bible. Biblically, justice—tied to righteousness—is what promotes faith in God, not faith in government. Prophets criticized not entrepreneurs but those who combined economic and political power to lord it over others, as today's bureaucrats and corporate/government partnerships tend to do.

I can understand Glenn Beck's frustration....

How to respond? I'd suggest four possible ways.... Fourth and best: Tutor a child. Visit a prisoner. Help the sick. Follow Christ.

[My mother got me World magazine for my birthday, and the first issue arrived today...]

John Piper's Upcoming Leave

2010-03-31T15:22:00.003-04:00

Thanks to someone for pointing out this recent letter by John Piper modeling honesty and godly priorities:

"...But on the other hand, I see several species of pride in my soul that, while they may not rise to the level of disqualifying me for ministry, grieve me, and have taken a toll on my relationship with Noël and others who are dear to me. How do I apologize to you, not for a specific deed, but for ongoing character flaws, and their effects on everybody? I'll say it now, and no doubt will say it again, I’m sorry. Since I don’t have just one deed to point to, I simply ask for a spirit of forgiveness; and I give you as much assurance as I can that I am not making peace, but war, with my own sins.

"Noël and I are rock solid in our commitment to each other, and there is no whiff of unfaithfulness on either side. But, as I told the elders, 'rock solid' is not always an emotionally satisfying metaphor, especially to a woman. A rock is not the best image of a woman’s tender companion. In other words, the precious garden of my home needs tending. I want to say to Noël that she is precious to me in a way that, at this point in our 41-year pilgrimage, can be said best by stepping back for a season from virtually all public commitments."

A Poem on Patience and Peace

2010-03-30T16:18:00.003-04:00

Today, the relationship between patience and humility was in my mind when I got this poem about the connection between patience and peace. The lines "he does leave Patience exquisite, / That plumes to Peace thereafter" makes me think of Hebrews 6:19. "We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain."

In Luke 13:34, Christ speaks of Peace and God in just these terms. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!" I'm just not all that comfortable sitting under God's broody wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

WHEN will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.

Philip Yancey to speak at Messiah College

2010-03-29T14:04:00.003-04:00

Philip Yancey will be delivering the final keynote lecture at Messiah College's Centennial celebration on April 7 at 7p.m. The event is free, but tickets must be reserved by calling the ticket office at 691-6036.

Judgment Day Care for Pets

2010-03-29T11:11:00.006-04:00

Caring for Pets Left Behind by the Rapture

For a fee, this service will place your dog or cat in the home of a caring atheist on Judgment Day

By Mike Di Paola
Many people in the U.S.—perhaps 20 million to 40 million—believe there will be a Second Coming in their lifetimes, followed by the Rapture . In this event, they say, the righteous will be spirited away to a better place while the godless remain on Earth. But what will become of all the pets?

(full article here)

Scott Cairns: More Spirituality

2010-03-28T21:26:00.005-04:00

While on the topic of Donald Miller, I thought that I should confess to having a soft spot or two for "spirituality" myself. I've long been a fan of Annie Dillard and recently got introduced to Scott Cairns who considers himself Dillard’s slowest student. Cairns has a harsh view of poetry in America:

"As for the place of poetry in America, or in the American church for that matter, I'm not so sure that it currently has a place. Until America and its church folk develop a greater hunger for the apophatic, the parabolic, the vertiginous mystery of the God in whom we live and move and have our being, I don’t suppose that those constituencies will ever have much of a taste for the poetic, which is, at its heart, a way of leaning into the apophatic, the parabolic, the mystery. I hope that sounds neither too glib nor too dismissive. There are, after all, lots of items that look like poems, earnest anecdotes and sentiments that make both the common culture and its Christians happy; I'm not, finally, interested in wrecking that pleasure for anyone, even if I can't consider it as approaching anything like a poetic pleasure. That said, I pray that the American church will one day—sooner than later—overcome its addiction to narrow certainties. Thereafter, its people might recover a taste for enormity." (From an interview at The Other Journal.)

I'm not versed enough in these matters to fully understand Cairn's assessment, but I'm pretty sure that I differ with him at several critical points. Nonetheless, something about his critique of America (and its church) rings true. I can certainly recognize, among some of my own favorite songs or poems, those "earnest anecdotes and sentiments that make both the common culture and its Christians happy."

As a sample of Cairn's poetry, here is one that works well with Easter coming up (because the poem is, in part, about Christ's dead body). It also happens to be the first poem by Cairns that I came to know. (It was published most recently in Philokalia.)

Finding the Broken Man

When I found the fallen climber caught
halfway down the slope of stunted pines,
he was already dead two days, and his body
stank; he was loose and careless as a boy.
I gave my jacket up for lost, and wrapped him
as I could, then shouted loud, hoping others,
in my group were near enough that together
we could lift him out. It's a common thing
near White Pass and, I suppose, any mountain town
to be called out in search of hikers
overdue at home. Having found one dead
is a sort of badge we wear, and one
I'd probably wear, if the others searching
had heard me call, of if I'd been
man enough to wait.

Read These Seven Books, and You’ll be a Better Writer

2010-03-28T16:56:00.006-04:00

While learning more about Donald Miller (who will be speaking at Messiah College on April 26), I came across his list of favorite books on writing. Here are two samples.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield:
True, professional writers are not walking around looking at flowers waiting for inspiration, they are, rather, fighting the urge to distract themselves and sitting down at the computer to hammer out their days work. Pressfield instills in his readers a professional perspective. Being a writer, to Pressfield, is no more glamorous than being a plumber. A professional shows up every day and "fixes a toilet."

On Writing Well by William Zinsser:
From Zinsser I also learned to write for myself, not for an audience. This is one of the greatest lessons a writer can learn. Zinsser teaches us to write what we think is funny, or what we think is touching, and trust there are more people out there like you.

Although I enjoyed a lot about Donald Miller's blog, I'm still pretty sceptical of his thinking in several basic respects. (As he himself says: "psychology" and "personality types" are topics that "I geek out on." This list could also include "spirituality.") At least in places, however, he distances himself from the emergent "conversation" because, in part, he has a more serious view of human depravity (a healthy thing to take seriously).

Isaiah and a Libertarian Remnant

2010-03-28T16:42:00.002-04:00

My brother in law, who is a wild-and-woolly secular libertarian (we talk like this to each other), recently sent me a link to "Isaiah's Job," an old essay by Albert J. Nock. Alought Nock's summary of Isaiah misses the prophet's point entirely, I suppose that remnants do exist at more than one level. Here are a couple excerpts:

In the year of Uzziah's death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. "Tell them what a worthless lot they are," He said. "Tell them what is wrong, and why, and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don't mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you," He added, "that it won't do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you, and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life."

Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job in fact, he had asked for it but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so if the enterprise was to be a failure from the start was there any sense in starting it?

"Ah," the Lord said, "you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it."

...As things now stand, Isaiah's job seems rather to go begging. Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last, and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses' attention and interest.

Genesis, Evolution, and Inerrancy

2010-03-28T16:31:00.003-04:00

With once-conservative scholars such as Bruce Waltke, Pete Enns and Tremper Longman delivering increasingly loose readings of Genesis and redefining or dismissing inerrancy, I'm wondering with one blogger below: What happened to "Scripture's role in interpreting general revelation"? Since when did science and evidence become the starting point or the driving factor behind our pursuit of truth? Despite the serious challenges, I'm increasingly convinced that high school graduates should have a decent handle on these issues.

Adam an historical figure (another here)
Bruce Waltke on Evolution

These two sample statements come from posts at The BioLogos Foundation:

Bruce Waltke: "If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult…some odd group that is not really interacting with the world. And rightly so, because we are not using our gifts and trusting God’s Providence that brought us to this point of our awareness."

Pete Enns: "Maybe Israel's history happened first, and the Adam story was written to reflect that history. In other words, the Adam story is really an Israel story placed in primeval time. It is not a story of human origins but of Israel's origins. Everyone has to decide for themselves which of these readings of Genesis has more 'explanatory power.' I (and other biblical scholars) come down on the second option for a number of reasons, some having to do with Genesis itself while others concern other issues in the Bible."

The Gospel Coalition

2010-03-28T16:22:00.003-04:00

I was introduced to The Gospel Coalition a few months back (in a series of emails that made me think a CCA blog might be a blessing) and finally got around to checking it out. It is a fantastic collection of theological resources and blogs by a remarkable group of godly leaders. Here are a couple highlights:

Kevin DeYoung
For the Love of God (D.A. Carson)

Family of Five Tandem

2010-03-26T11:10:00.002-04:00

Here's a fun family story.

(Thanks to kk.)

Phillip Blond on Our Side of the Pond

2010-03-24T20:23:00.002-04:00

From "The Broken Society" by David Brooks in the NYTimes:

The United States is becoming a broken society. The public has contempt for the political class. Public debt is piling up at an astonishing and unrelenting pace. Middle-class wages have lagged. Unemployment will remain high. It will take years to fully recover from the financial crisis.

This confluence of crises has produced a surge in vehement libertarianism. People are disgusted with Washington. The Tea Party movement rallies against big government, big business and the ruling class in general. Even beyond their ranks, there is a corrosive cynicism about public action.

But there is another way to respond to these problems that is more communitarian and less libertarian. This alternative has been explored most fully by the British writer Phillip Blond.

...To create a civil state, Blond would reduce the power of senior government officials and widen the discretion of front-line civil servants, the people actually working in neighborhoods. He would decentralize power, giving more budget authority to the smallest units of government. He would funnel more services through charities. He would increase investments in infrastructure, so that more places could be vibrant economic hubs. He would rebuild the "village college" so that universities would be more intertwined with the towns around them.

Essentially, Blond would take a political culture that has been oriented around individual choice and replace it with one oriented around relationships and associations. His ideas have made a big splash in Britain over the past year. His think tank, ResPublica, is influential with the Conservative Party. His book, "Red Tory," is coming out soon. He's on a small U.S. speaking tour, appearing at Georgetown's Tocqueville Forum ... and at Villanova....

[Thoughtful discussion of this topic at the Front Porch Republic.]

Virtual Choir

2010-03-23T22:13:00.004-04:00

Eric Whitacre conducts 'Lux Aurumque' with a virtual choir of 185 voices (about 4:20 sans credits at end):

Learn more about how it was composed and read Kevin Kelly's gushing review of it here. I thought it was lovely as well (although rather hokey in its visual presentation).

Suggested Viewing

2010-03-23T14:30:00.003-04:00

In light of our recent discussion with Kevin Kelly, I have an artistic recommendation to make: the movie Blade Runner. It's a classic piece of sci-fi, based on a Phillip K. Dick short story which is, as is usually the case with his material, superior to the originating work while remaining true to its core principles. It also happens to be one of my favorite films. A rather infamous piece of film for a variety of reasons, it deals primarily with the humanity of artificial people, who look and act like normal humans but who have serious emotional and physical deficiencies due to their source. This makes it an ideal film to watch in light of Mr. Kelly's interest in technology and some of the philosophical and ethical ramifications of advancements in bioengineering.

On a practical note, I would recommend the "Final Cut" of the film, as it is the director's preferred cut and is the best and most challenging overall. The other versions (there are at least four, total) are acceptable substitutes, though.

Disclaimer: Blade Runner is rated R for good reason, and is not recommended for a young audience.

White Board Thank You

2010-03-19T06:44:00.004-04:00

Given an assignment to write a thank-you note for a grant with which CCA purchased all of our white boards, our creative senior class produced the following (click on the image for full size):

Blind Man Sees With His Tongue

2010-03-15T15:46:00.006-04:00

This story from FoxNews (thanks to my bother):

A British soldier who lost his sight in Iraq is being taught to 'see' with his tongue, using a revolutionary new device.

Craig Lundberg, 24, who was blinded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack three years ago, is the first British soldier to test the BrainPort system. The device consists of a high-tech "lollipop" that rests on Craig's tongue. It converts images from a video camera, that he wears on a pair of glasses, into signals that stimulate electrodes on the lollipop.

The $15,000 device works on the principle of sensory substitution. The brain recognizes that the signals stimulating the tongue have nothing to do with taste, and re-routes them to the visual center of the brain for processing. The brain is able to interpret the image, giving Craig rudimentary vision.

[The product website gives this slightly less sensational description: "Users describe it as pictures drawn on their tongue with champagne bubbles. With training users may perceive shape, size, location and motion of objects in their environment."]

Some Children Must Be Left Behind

2010-03-13T09:50:00.003-05:00

By Katherine Dalton at the Front Porch Republic (full articl here):

And for young people like Trey and Jessica, more of what has failed already is unlikely to be the fix. Trey didn't need more school. The best hope for Trey was something like an apprenticeship, where he might find work, finally, that he could do. He might have failed there too–very likely–but at least he'd be making a step towards adulthood, not locked in truant officer-enforced juvenility. He might have found some motivation to try education again. Unfortunately, at his age working rather than going to school was not legally possible, and soon, probably, it will be legally impossible longer.

Virtual Worlds, Actual Sin

2010-03-11T11:52:00.002-05:00

Here is a sobering article for those of us interested in the philosophical implications of technology. Food for thought, given our upcoming discussion with Kevin Kelly.

Have you heard the one about the Archbishop at a Baptist University?

2010-03-10T20:08:00.004-05:00

Two weeks ago, Archbishop Chaput of the Archdiocese of Denver spoke at Houston Baptist University. (Link to article.) The topic? The vocation of Christians in American public life. There is no smarmy can't-we-all-just-get-along ecumenism, rather, he recognizes the sharp doctrinal differences between groups of Christians while pointing the greater "familial bond in baptism and God's Word" between those who share a love of Jesus. It is apparent that the Bishop sees the Church as greater than our fabricated denominations, but that is another discussion.

Archbishop Chaput takes umbrage at John Kennedy's September of 1960 campaign statement that his Catholicism would not effect his loyalty to the country as President. In other words, Kennedy's religion only had effect on the areas of his life that he wanted it to, leaving other areas - significant areas - untouched. Unchanged by the gospel. Chaput explains his concerns by 1) looking at the problems in Kennedy's words, 2) reflecting on a proper Christian approach to politics and public service, and 3) examining where Kennedy's remarks have brought us to.

The article is thought provoking and timely as in recent years, research has found that the Christianity of todays teens and young adults is a "moralistic therapeutic deism".

The underlying question is, is Christianity a religion that we are to practice or is it a covenant between God and man encompassing the whole of life? Consider Genesis 15:17 (a good life verse if anybody needed one)...the rest of the chapter is good too.

The truth is that we all have areas of our lives that we do not want to have changed by the gospel. Is there anything for us to hear in the Archbishop's words?

The one about the Archbishop at a Baptist University...Probably would not have been much of an original joke anyway.

(Thanks to Michael Geer for the link to the news story posted at catholic.org.)

The Importance of Classical Christian Education By Chuck Colson

2010-03-10T19:48:00.005-05:00

Intelligence Plus Character

The Importance of Classical Christian Education

By Chuck Colson as aired on BreakPoint

November 8, 2005

"Education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. . . . We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education."

You may remember that I quoted these lines, which come from Martin Luther King, Jr., when I was talking about a student’s convocation speech at Dartmouth College. But they are worth pondering, because they raise a very profound question: How, in today’s society, do we provide the kind of “true education” that King was talking about, that develops both character and intelligence?

Never have we needed more urgently to find an answer to this question. The modern secular university cannot cultivate character in a value-free environment, because if there is no truth, there is no standard of ethics by which we can measure character. So the university has simply given up on it.

And not only are our schools and colleges not teaching character, but they’re increasingly abandoning academics as well. The typical student at a great secular university will not learn much about the history of Western civilization. My alma mater, Brown University, an Ivy League school with a great reputation, no longer has a core curriculum. You can go through the school without ever knowing who Plato, Aristotle, Darwin, or Freud were. In fact, you could major in African drum-beating. So from my perspective, the modern secular university has abandoned both the pursuit of classical learning and the development of character. That’s why they’re particularly dangerous places today, and it’s why Christian students must be well grounded before they go there.

And this is also why I so strongly support the Christian classical education movement that is beginning to spread across the country. It combines, you see, the two historic goals of a liberal education: the cultivation of knowledge and the cultivation of character. It shows us the continuum in the intellectual history of the West that goes back to the Greco-Roman era and, therefore, enables us to better understand our own postmodern era. If we cut ourselves off from the past, we can’t understand the present. And it’s particularly critical, in my mind, for Christians to understand the philosophical and cultural currents that have shaped our society.

Let me give you just one good example. Galileo, as everyone knows, was thrown in jail for challenging Aristotle’s philosophical assumptions about an eternal universe. But, as I mentioned in an earlier broadcast, Francis Bacon, sometimes called “the father of modern science,” was influenced by the Protestant Reformation, and he embraced Luther’s idea about abandoning the constraints of tradition and going back to the root: the Bible. He applied this principle to freeing science from philosophical assumptions and instead looking at what God has made—go back to the root of things, as Luther did. This allowed modern science to pursue truth uninhibited by philosophy.

Why is this relevant today? Because we’re dealing with the same issue. Naturalism is the philosophical assumption that binds modern science. And this is at the heart of the intelligent design debate, but you only see this when you know your own history.

I believe that every serious Christian needs to be classically grounded, not only to understand the history of our own civilization, but also to contend for truth in the marketplace. So I hope that you will check for a classical Christian school in your area—as a place for your kids and as a cause to support.

Building a Better Teacher

2010-03-09T19:38:00.002-05:00

Today I am humbled and motivated by this article from the NY Times about the state of education in America today. According to the author, most schools in America are going down the tubes, and no one can really put their finger on what to look for in the search for new "good" teachers who can replace the "bad" ones they are in the midst of firing in the wake of low student test performance. I am so spoiled to be involved with a school with not only good academics, but a (muscular) Christian worldview that isn't afraid to name ills and strengths in both teachers and students. If a student is misbehaving, correcting that behavior seems to be an obvious solution. If a teacher needs help, dealing with the person directly through mentorship and direct instruction will get the job done. We don't wait for a standardized test score to judge performance. We are intentional about our school culture and constantly guard it, and are meticulous about how we manage even seemingly small details.

Apparently many teachers in our country have no idea what discipline really means, or how to enact it in the classroom. Of course classroom management takes time to learn, but public schools and politically correct Americans are overcomplicating life by shying away from discipline. Without admitting that certain behaviors are right and others are wrong, of course classroom management will be a hit-or-miss experiement. It doesn't take too much study into Korean, Indian, or Chinese education to see that discipline (of the self and others) has a lot to do with strong educational results.

I'm thankful to the Lord for the biblical examples of what discipline, boundaries, and love look like. I'm thankful to the CCA community for proof that the biblical model still works!

Donald Miller

2010-03-04T20:06:00.005-05:00

A couple students today were debating the value of the book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I've never read anything by him but have heard of his books as being soft. This review by Chris Brauns covers Miller’s latest book (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years) and sounded like an even-handed critique:

"Reading the strength with which I have expressed my concerns, you may question if I was sincere with the initial positive things I said about AMM. Was I only taking a preliminary swipe at being charitable before I unloaded? My response is that I truly do affirm those things about AMM. But, that is why this book is a dangerous combination. Many will read this book. It will resonate. But, I fear that it plays to the weakness of our day. We spend too much time looking at ourselves. We don't need a million more mirrors all pointed back at our small stories. Rather, we need to see how our individual episodes relate in a Christ-centered way to the story of creation, fall, and redemption."

Does anyone have other reviews of his books to recommend?

The Arts & Faith Top 100 Films

2010-03-04T14:20:00.002-05:00

Showcasing top films and directors from around the world and spanning cinematic history from silent movies (F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise, 1927) to films currently in theaters (the Coen Brothers’ Oscar-nominated A Serious Man), the list is the culmination of years of discussion and debate within the Arts & Faith online community.

(See the list here. Thanks to Christine.)

Self-Esteem, Self-Destruction

2010-03-04T14:17:00.002-05:00

George Will writing at TownHall:

But the theory that praise, self-esteem and accomplishment increase in tandem is false. Children incessantly praised for their intelligence (often by parents who are really praising themselves) often underrate the importance of effort. Children who open their lunchboxes and find mothers' handwritten notes telling them how amazingly bright they are tend to falter when they encounter academic difficulties. Also, Bronson and Merryman say that overpraised children are prone to cheating because they have not developed strategies for coping with failure.

(Full article here. Thanks to Alison.)

Government, Yes! God and Parents, No!

2010-03-03T20:31:00.006-05:00

I appreciate Dennis Prager's perspective. Additionally, he supports CURE International!

Philadelphia Art Museum Trip

2010-03-03T19:25:00.002-05:00

9th grade history field trip to Philadelphia Art Museum. Fun times-thank you, Jesse.

Where Satan Lurks: Avatar or the Plunder Pile?

2010-03-02T19:58:00.003-05:00

Since I initiated this particular Avatar stuff, I'll try to clear it out of the way (despite the fact that I'm in danger of giving Satan a small reason to grin by indulging in a wee post).

Mark Driscoll is entirely right that Avatar makes a great tool in Satan's well-manicured hands. Only a slight knowledge of the film makes it easy to imagine several scrumptious ways in which Satan or his fellows have no doubt put this film to excellent use in millions of lives. (Not that we humans really need help from Satan every time we put something to a gross and destructive use; Sabotaging Avatar viewers might be too simple a task for even a junior tempter.) However, when Driscoll consigns the film to Satan's domain (by sloppy implication anyway), he's doing more harm than good. (And I have no doubt that Driscoll could happily and skillfully clarify this fact himself.) Everything delightful about the film (find several examples in the posts below) comes from the fact that all the materials and skills that James Cameron had to work with were designed by God and pronounced good by God because they display the Creator's glory in wonderful ways. Those who watch the film (or discuss it from the sidelines) combat sin most effectively when they enjoy the good for what it is at the same time as they talk honestly about godless ways to abuse the film (or godless conclusions to draw from it). I'm convinced that idols topple most thoroughly and promptly when we learn to enjoy them as God intended.

But all the same things can be said of this blog or any "God-honoring" effort. If I should be grading or doing dishes instead of trotting out theological fundamentals, I'm putting the Plunder Pile to a use that would (at the very least) warm the cockles of Satan's heart.

Thoughts on Avatar

2010-03-01T08:17:00.002-05:00

I noticed a few posts before with references to Avatar. I saw it three times in theaters, and I have some thoughts.

First, the film is a triumph of artistic design. Every frame of the film is gorgeous, imaginative, realistic, and otherworldly. James Cameron, the film's director, did an amazing job creating an entire ecosystem, replete with coherent inter-species relationships that follow the classic "one broken rule" law of sci fi (i.e. in good sci fi, you change/break one aspect of they physical world but keep the rest consistent, which is a forms a solid basis for a "what if" scenario). I've never flown through a jungle on a pterodactyl, or been chased over a waterfall by a giant panther, but after seeing the movie I feel like I have. And it was great.

Second, the story and characters are actually what make the movie a triumph. Cameron is known for creating sympathetic characters that back up the crazy experiences he drums up (for those not familiar with his oeuvre, he created Terminator 2 and Aliens, both classic sci-fi releases that transcended their genres thanks to good writing), and Avatar is no different. It's a love story, combining a "noble savage" sensibility with touches of Pride and Prejudice, Braveheart, and Hook. A mash-up, yes, but a successful one in my view. Who wouldn't want to fly into the sunset with a warrior queen at his back, leading and protecting his people from the skies and sleeping in a gigantic tree?

But to respond to criticisms leveled at the movie, I'll go back to the "one broken rule" bit. The major change in the film is the literal interconnectedness of every living being on the planet, which lends it a bit of classic Asimovian "Gaia" geek cred. I've seen the film lambasted for this and for the politically liberal message it's seen to convey, but I have to admit I wasn't bothered by either. The politics are easily ignored, as the greedy corporation has long been a whipping post in these sorts of movies. If you don't like Avatar's faceless corporation, I'd have to ask how it's different from Weyland-Yutani (from Aliens and its brethren) or Cyberdine Systems (from the Terminator films), and thus why this film is more political than either of those.

As for the new-age bits, I wonder if this objection indicates a tendency in modern Christianity to react dogmatically rather than rationally. We believe our faith because we have good evidence to support it, no evidence to disprove it, and personal experiences on which to build a relationship with God. If, however, it was somehow proved that Jesus Christ was not divine (I don't know how this proof could be effected, but let's just say it could be, for argument's sake), I'd have to go back to my worldview and reconsider it from the ground up. I don't know that my morals would change, or that any visible differences would show up in my conduct, but I would be forced to consider that my faith was not based on fact, but on fiction. Now transpose this philosophy to a distant planet in which there's a scientific basis for a sort of planet-level pantheism, and realize that in this situation, to ignore the planet's spirit and the interconnectedness of everything would be to ignore the facts. To blow off the religion of the natives in that world would be the same thing as an atheist ignoring Christianity in this world; to do either within the scope of those respective environments would be ignoring the truth. Within the reality of the movie, this is the correct response, I think. Cameron is posing a "what if" scenario, and intellectual honesty requires me to side with the natives as long as I'm inside the scope of the work.

Driscoll's objection, if I've understood it, is partly that the film is a glorification of backwardness, and thus defies God's command to man that he go forth and subdue creation. Taken out of context, this makes sense, but within the scope of the film it's clear that the humans want to strip the planet of its resources and move on, as they've apparently done on other planets including their own. To me, this is off; ruling creation doesn't mean plundering it, it means helping it to grow to its fullest potential. To use a grotesque example, Driscoll's point seems akin to glorifying rape because God created sex and proclaimed it good. Technology has allowed us to produce more food than we could in past history, and to ship that food to areas of the world that would otherwise starve. It's allowed us to create beautiful buildings, to go to the moon and to the bottom of the ocean, to cure diseases, and these are good things. It's also given us new, horrible ways to kill each other, to kill ourselves, to waste time, to overindulge appetites without effort, and these are not good things. So to object that the movie stands against progress is facile; it's standing against the abuse of technology, the abuse of culture, not technology or culture itself.

So to sum up, I liked Avatar. As long as it's kept at a distance and not taken as gospel, it's a good time spent in a beautiful world with intriguing characters and a moving love story. To read it as a treatise on how we should live is taking it farther than it should, and is likely mean to be, taken.

Why Blog Together as a School

2010-02-28T21:07:00.002-05:00

I'm hoping that this place starts to sparkle and become something more than a parade ground for my own eclecticism, idealism, and naiveté. (Idealism is a genetic trait with me. Rather than bring my parents into it, witness this lion trap that my daughter recently designed.)

I do have earnest hopes for this blog and want to share them before returning to my more real (and neglected) duties for a while. If anything develops on here, I'll eagerly rejoin the ruckus. If nothing happens, I'm still well above my target ratio for the month of ten to one failed versus fruitful ideas.

After outlining my thoughts behind this blog proposal, I'll make a modest request.

First, these kids will only turn out as strong and lively as our parent and teacher relationships. Parents who bleed together, succeed together. This blog is a convenient way to laugh and bleed together a little bit more as parents and teachers. These young people need us to succeed at this kind of thing (whether on the blog or elsewhere).

Second, I don't want to face these kids alone. I need correction and support from more adults as I engage these young people. And I think that my colleagues would enjoy it as well. It's not healthy to pontificate for long hours in front of eager or pliable young minds (or distracted and sullen young minds either). And who better to offer some constructive feedback than the parents? In loco parentis requires robust relationships and two-way communication.

Transparency before each other and our leaders should (mostly) be a good thing (in the end). It's not that I'm trying to indoctrinate students with my own positions at every point (or keep teaching all these classes!). However, teaching systematic theology, philosophy, apologetics, world religions, world literature, and senior thesis project involves a lot of input into young people as they leave high school. I want to be as honest and open about my ideas as I can. If you know me better, you can better support and teach your kids at home (in both areas of agreement and disagreement). And our leaders at CCA can better lead us (parents and teachers) if they know more about all of our interests, joys, and struggles (that's me speculating, not them talking).

Although I enjoy theoretical discussion, I don't care if that rarely makes it onto the blog. I want to see what parents and other teachers enjoy and consider important.

Of course, we need some wisdom and can't try to address everything on here. There will be mistakes if we are trying hard enough to share real stuff, but I'm confident in our wonderful school administration (and collective sanctification) to pilot us through the reefs.

So, post questions and ideas. You can't start a fire without some wood. Talk about how to best utilize the blog for developing constructive relationships and dialogue.

Here's my modest proposal. We have seven authors signed up right now. If we can find 14 people who will each post something every two weeks, that would be one post every day. My own feeling is that there should be enough on here for people to feel like they don't need to read it all. Not that I'm in favor of quantity over quality, but I'd like to see a sampling of different things from different people so that we start to get to know each other. I think it would be nice to browse through a diverse selection. But maybe that's a bad model. If you think so, put up other ideas. I've got lots more ideas, but I think that I'd better hold off and let God’s red pen (in your hands) do its work for a while.

Poetry Out Loud 2010 at CCA

2010-02-28T20:49:00.005-05:00

Thanks to the many hands who helped with the regional Poetry Out Loud contest this weekend. Nessa and I had lots of fun. (Nessa's criteria may have been a little soft, but she had the final winner pegged even before the initial three-way tie.) The contestants have definitely gotten stronger each year.

One of the three-way winners (before elimination) had several people laughing out loud with his recitation of Progressive Health by Carl Dennis. I thought that his other performance, Beat! Beat! Drums! by Walt Whitman, was the strongest of the first two rounds. The girl who won did The Death of Allegory by Billy Collins as one of her two poems. Stephen Rayner did that last year at our school’s poetry festival, and it was great to hear it again. Gwen delivered a beautiful (but too poised and polished) version of Hush by David St. John. Matthew Fox placed second with a commanding delivery of The Minefield by Diane Thiel.

"Social Justice" at Wheaton College

2010-02-26T17:49:00.001-05:00

Changes at Wheaton College concern alumni. From the article...

In the current document known as the “conceptual framework” of the education department at Wheaton College which must be endorsed by each of its faculty, the thinkers cited include among others, the father of the social justice movement, Brazilian Marxist, Paulo Freire and former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

http://townhall.com/columnists/SandyRios/2010/02/26/billy_graham_meets_bill_ayers

Avatar and the Joy of Naming Things

2010-02-26T07:58:00.008-05:00

I've not seen Titanic and I wasn't too interested in Avatar (mostly out of snobbery against big-money films) until I read this comment in a NYTimes review by Carol Kaesuk Yoon (while I might not add Avatar to the Netflix list, I'll probably buy a copy of the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects):

To so strongly experience these kinds of wonderfully shocking similarities and dissimilarities among living things is the kind of experience that has largely been the prerogative of biologists — especially those known as taxonomists, who spend their days ordering and naming the living things on Earth. But now, thanks to Mr. Cameron, the entire world is not only experiencing this but also reveling in it.

...I spent much of the last six years working on a book about exactly this, about how inside of all humans there is a deep desire and ability to really see life, to see order among living things, and about the joy that comes with it. So at the end of Naming Nature (W. W. Norton, 2009), I make a plea to readers to go out into the world and see the life and find the order in the living world around them. I may have to amend the paperback to suggest, or you may want to begin by, heading into a darkened room to see "Avatar" and have your mind blown.

Carol Kaesuk Yoon summarizes her book in another article at the NYTimes, Reviving the Lost Art of Naming the World:

J.B.R. could no longer recognize living things. He could still recognize nonliving objects, like a flashlight, a compass, a kettle or a canoe. But the young man was unable to recognize a kangaroo, a mushroom or a buttercup. He could not say what a parrot or even the unmistakable ostrich was. And J.B.R. is far from alone; doctors around the world have found patients with the same difficulty. Most recently, scientists studying these patients’ brains have reported repeatedly finding damage — a deadening of activity or actual lesions — in a region of the temporal lobe, leading some researchers to hypothesize that there might be a specific part of the brain that is devoted to the doing of taxonomy. As curious as they are, these patients and their woes would be of little relevance to our own lives, if they had merely lost some dispensable librarianlike ability to classify living things. As it turns out, their situation is much worse. These are people completely at sea. Without the power to order and name life, a person simply does not know how to live in the world, how to understand it. How to tell the carrot from the cat — which to grate and which to pet? They are utterly lost, anchorless in a strange and confusing world. Because to order and name life is to have a sense of the world around, and, as a result, what one’s place is in it.

Today few people are proficient in the ordering and naming of life. There are the dwindling professional taxonomists, and fast-declining peoples like the Tzeltal Maya of Mexico, among whom a 2-year-old can name more than 30 different plants and whose 4-year-olds can recognize nearly 100. Things were different once. In Linnaeus’s day, it was a matter of aristocratic pride to have a wonderful and wonderfully curated collection of wild organisms, both dead and alive.

...We are so disconnected from the living world that we can live in the midst of a mass extinction, of the rapid invasion everywhere of new and noxious species, entirely unaware that anything is happening. Happily, changing all this turns out to be easy. Just find an organism, any organism, small, large, gaudy, subtle — anywhere, and they are everywhere — and get a sense of it, its shape, color, size, feel, smell, sound. Give a nod to Professor Franclemont and meditate, luxuriate in its beetle-ness, its daffodility. Then find a name for it. Learn science’s name, one of countless folk names, or make up your own.

Avatar and Feisty West Coast Pastors

2010-02-26T07:55:00.006-05:00

Here’s a recent Mark Driscoll clip (3:59 run time).

And the end of a response by Jason Stellman, another (even more) pugnacious pastor from the West Coast:

...Lastly, why is the main character's sojourn among the tribal people construed as a "false incarnation" by a "false Jesus"? Why can't it just be that the director is employing a Christian metaphor, the way Lewis did with Aslan the lion, or the way the Wachowskis did with Neo? Could it be because many conservative Christians dismiss Avatar's message as "liberal," necessitating their insistence that the warmongering soldiers and the corporation they work for are actually the good guys, and that therefore the native tribes must be bad (I mean, how dare they stand in the way of progress, right?).

For my own part, I didn't even like Avatar all that much. But to waste 3 minutes and 59 seconds of people's time on Sunday in church when they're supposed to be hearing about Christ crucified? That might actually be more demonic than fictional blue people who love trees.

Creation in the Image of the Glory-Spirit

2010-02-25T22:51:00.003-05:00

In his 1977 article "Creation in the Image of the Glory-Spirit," Meredith Kline sketched out the meaning of imago Dei in connection with God’s overall creative intent to imitate His own theophanic and incarnate Glory. The article was first published in the Westminster Theological Journal 39 (1977), 250-72 and is available in full as part of an online collection of Kline’s writings:

When defining the imago Dei, dogmatic theology has traditionally tended to engage in an analysis of what constitutes humanness. But to answer the general question 'What is man?' is not the same thing as answering the precise question 'What is the image of God?'. If our objective is to discern what the biblical idea of the image of God is, it would appear necessary to abandon the traditional dogmatic wineskins, go back to the beginning of Genesis, and start afresh.

…Under the concept of man as the glory-image of God the Bible includes functional (or official), formal (or physical), and ethical components, corresponding to the composition of the archetypal Glory. Functional glory-likeness is man's likeness to God in the possession of official authority and in the exercise of dominion. Ethical glory is reflection of the holiness, righteousness, and truth of the divine Judge (not just the presence of a moral faculty of any religious orientation whatsoever). And formal-physical glory-likeness is man's bodily reflection of the theophanic and incarnate Glory.

Society For Classical Learning Conference

2010-02-25T20:03:00.003-05:00

This year's Society For Classical Learning Conference in Williamsburg, Virginia was placed on the Community Events Calander (on sidebar). Save the Dates: June 24 through 26, 2010 (Pre-Conference June 23, 2010).

The Society for Classical Learning has existed since the mid-1990s to facilitate and encourage thinking and discussion among professionals associated with Christ-centered education in the liberal arts tradition. It is the desire of the Society to provide a forum in which educators can share wisdom, experience and ideas as they deepen their understanding of classical pedagogy and philosophy, stay abreast of developments, and strive to translate classical theory into everyday, real world education. The Society is committed to historic Christianity as expressed in the Nicene Creed and to exploring the relationship of Christ to the broader culture.

The Society of Classical Learning hosts an annual summer conference and publishes The Journal quarterly. In its efforts to support educators, the Society is actively exploring additional membership benefits such as peer consulting, web based search-able databases and communication, and potential sources of continuing education.

Kaufman Field Guide to Insects

2010-02-23T07:16:00.003-05:00

"This is the all-around best one volume field guide to insects in North America. It employs retouched photographs for the images and includes representative profiles at actual sizes, which are very handy. The most difficult task for a guide like this is helping you find your way through 2,350 pictures of bugs. Its solution is a rough categorization of 13 body types, which are fairly easy to browse visually, so generally we've been able to identify most of what we find to the genus level."

Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America (at Amazon)
Eric R. Eaton, Kenn Kaufman
2007, 392 pages
$13

Click here for a full review by Kevin Kelly.

Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children for the Apocalypse?

2010-02-23T06:19:00.001-05:00

This is an old favorite from the (typically not-so-good) Onion:

Church Needs Dudes

2010-02-22T16:26:00.001-05:00

"Church Needs Dudes" by Mark Driscoll

Abstract Thoughts? The Body Takes Them Literally

2010-02-22T16:25:00.006-05:00

By Natalie Angier (at NYTimes.com)

The new study, published in January in the journal Psychological Science, is part of the immensely popular field called embodied cognition, the idea that the brain is not the only part of us with a mind of its own. "How we process information is related not just to our brains but to our entire body," said Nils B. Jostmann of the University of Amsterdam. "We use every system available to us to come to a conclusion and make sense of what's going on." Research in embodied cognition has revealed that the body takes language to heart and can be awfully literal-minded.

(Link to full article.)

Totally like whatever, you know?

2010-02-22T16:25:00.005-05:00

This great animated poem skewers the "whatever generation."

Ronnie Bruce created it and posted it online without the permission of the author, Taylor Mali. However, Mali was impressed and now links to it from his own website. Mali's original poem is titled "Totally like whatever, you know?"

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.