FEEL FREE TO POST COMMENTS

I have enabled this blog so that you can post comments without being registered as a follower, or having a registration with blog spot. Just go the COMMENT section and follow the instructions for posting.

SUMMER GETAWAY

If all goes well, Dianne and I will slip away a few days next week to the beach to celebrate our 37th Wedding Anniversary. We will be heading to one of Dianne's favorite vacation spots, Assateague Island near Ocean City MD. The fact that it's the beach is enough to restore her soul. The surf, the sea breezes, the great blue skies are an atmosphere where Dianne feels very close to God. For me the fact that I can turn off my cell phone and read a good book, sharing a quiet afternoon with my wife, is a pleasure to be treasured.

Assateague has another attraction--its wild horses. These protected animals often share the beach with the sunbathers and body surfers. They are magnificent animals with a unique history that remind us that this island is not one of those sandy amusement parks that pass for beaches on so much of the East Coast. This island is a wildlife preserve, a reminder of the creation that we are blessed to inhabit and called by God to protect and use wisely.

We should treasure our planet, its life and its resources. They are part of God's gift to humankind. Their beauty and their charm are part of what makes Christians sing, "This is my Father's World."

FIFTEEN BOOKS (PLUS ONE) I WOULD KEEP IN MY LIBRARY

A while back I suggested that we share the books we would keep in our library. In addition to my NIV/Message Parallel Bible, I would keep these 16 volumes that have significantly impacted me and continue to do so.

1. CS Lewis MERE CHRISTIANITY
2. John Ortberg IF YOU WANT TO WALK ON WATER, GET OUT OF THE BOAT
3. Dallas Willard HEARING GOD
4. Rebecca Pippert HOPE HAS ITS REASONS
5. Mark Buchanan THE REST OF GOD
6. Jim Cymbala FRESH WIND, FRESH FIRE
7. Ruth Haley Barton RESTORING THE SOUL OF YOUR SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP
8. Tim Hansel HOLY SWEAT
9. Douglas Rumford SOUL-SHAPING (out-of-print(
10. Robert Lewis THE CHURCH OF IRRESISTIBLE INFLUENCE
11. Dietrich Bonhoeffer THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP
12. Gordon Stuart and Douglas Fee HOW TO READ THE BIBLE FOR ALL ITS WORTH
13. Reggie McNeal THE PRESENT FUTURE
14. Calvin Miller ONCE UPON A TREE
15. Andy Stanley THE BEST QUESTION EVER
16. Oswald Chambers MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST

Later I will share the 15 fiction books I would retain.

RISK-TAKING

My friend Ethan Galebach posted this comment on his Facebook page yesterday.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." -Wayne Gretzky

Gretsky is on to something. In a world where people want to be inoculated against risk, many people never want to exert themselves or extend themselves. Fear of failure or fear of accountability often lead to the unwillingness to even try unless you can insure success and/or approval.

The Christian church in China might have died at the hands of Mao and the Red Guard if countless and nameless believers hadn't taken a risk.

Imagine a world where no one ever took a risk. Many of us residing in the United States today would still be thinking that Europe was the center of the universe and that you fell off the world somewhere beyond the Azores. Except for a man named Christopher Columbus. who took a risk.

People on a US Air flight that lost power over Manhattan might have died in a crash somewhere except for a pilot who took the risk that he could land on the Hudson River.

Slaves would have remained in bondage in the Deep South if some Quakers and others had not risked reputation and prosecution to create the Underground Railroad.

Soldiers would have continued to die needless death on the endless battlefields of Europe if a woman named Clara Barton hadn't taken a risk and carried medical treatment (and herself) into harm's way.

No great achievement that has truly benefited humankind has been accomplished without someone taking a risk and even paying a heavy price for that risk.

Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than when he lays down his life for a friend."

Love is not afraid of risk.

JARROD WASHBURN AND ROY HALLADAY

My beloved Detroit Tigers have been a pleasant surprise. They have been first-place in the American League's Central Division now since ..... Although they have only one player batting over 300 (Miguel Cabrerra) they have managed to win through pitching. Two of their most dependable stars have been Allstars Justin Verlander and Edwin Jackson. The other three rotation spots have been held down by a revolving door group whose pitching has been up and down.

Last week they added another proven ace, Seattle Mariners' Jarrod Washburn. He started last night against the Baltimore Orioles.

Someone once said you cannot win a World Series without solid starting pitching. Good pitchers command among the highest salary prices in Major League baseball. That's why going into the July 31st trade deadline--the most talked about and sought after player was baseball's best pitcher today, Toronto's Roy Halladay. The Phillies, seeking to repeat aa World Series champs went after him--but the price was far too dear--basically their young pitching future. So Halladay remains a Blue Jay.

It'll be interesting to see if Washburn can help the Tigers pull away from the White Sox and the Twins in a tightly contested division race. And then to silence the bats of the likes of the Angels, Yankees and Red Sox in the ALCS.

15 books in 15 Minutes

Mike Stallons, a pastor friend from Charleston IL sent me this "library response."

15 Books in 15 Minutes


Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Name fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose.

1. The Holy Bible - Our Awesome Creator and Recreator
2. Where is God when it hurts? Phillip Yancey
3. Disappointed with God - Phillip Yancey
4. The Practice of the Presence of God - Brother Lawrence
5. Healing for Damaged Emotions - David A Seamands
6. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey
7.The Road Less Traveled - M Scott Peck
8. The Purpose Driven Life - Rick Warren
9. How to make your children mind without loosing yours - Kevin Leman
10. Transitioning - Dan Southerland
11. Total Money Makeover - Dave Ramsey
12. Wounds that Heal - Stephen Semands
13. The Blessings of Brokenness - Charles Stanley
14. Celebration of Disciplines - Richard Foster
15. Invitation to a Journey - Robert Mullholland

SCOTT McKNIGHT ON ATHIEST DELUSIONS

Scott McKnight publishes a thoughtful blog called JESUS CREED. It is a daily commentary on Jesus and orthodox Christianity in the 21st century. You can access this blog by going to the blogs I follow section in my profile or by Googling Jesus Creed at Beliefnet.com.

The worst society I can imagine is one where Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris get to determine what is good and what is bad and where they get to determine who is good and who is bad.

They are, you know, Christianity's fiercest (and sometimes uninformed) critics and, once we let them rip all traces of Christianity (or religion) from culture and society, I can't imagine they will be able to find any grounds for morality. Let them yack all they want about the problem of "religion." Their beef is with Christianity. Nietzsche, at least, understood Christianity as a cross-shaped form of love and sacrifice. He knew what he was staring at and he knew the alternatives.

But Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris have chosen to ignore what Christianity teaches, fasten themselves on all the bad they can find about those who have abused Christianity to their own ends, and then offer to the world a vision of peace and tolerance and justice shorn of Christianity (or religion).

Problem #1 enters. If DHH were to spend more time thinking through the issues, they would have to admit that what they want for society -- justice, for example -- is clear biblical teaching and that's where their vision originated. Problem #2: they also need to admit that what they want for their new society is what they inherited from a mostly Christian social world in which they were nurtured. There is no promise that if they got the world purged of religion that they'd get a Christian social ethic without the religion parts. In fact, as David Bentley Hart argues in his new book, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies , they're playing with dynamite -- apocalyptic chaos.

So begins our series on David Bentley Hart's new book ... join us for this bi-weekly series.

Hart is an intellectual's intellectual. He's orthodox, he's unafraid of impolitic ideas, and he's taken on the critics in this book -- a book that sweeps us through Christian theology and Western civilization in order to put Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris to the test.

Here are some of his opening claims about the book: "... that among all the many great transitions that have marked the evolution of Western civilization ... there has been only one -- the triumph of Christianity -- that can be called in the fullest sense a 'revolution'..." (xi). "And," he says, "I am convinced that, given how radically at variance Christianity was with the culture it slowly and relentlessly displaced, its eventual victory was an event of such improbability as to strain the very limits of our understanding of historical causality" (xi).

Along with this claim for Christianity, he tosses dust into the eyes of modernity, which he rejects: "I mean the modern age's grand narrative of itself: its story of the triumph of critical reason over 'irrational' faith, of the progress of social morality toward greater justice and freedom, of the 'tolerance' of the secular state, and of the unquestioned ethical primacy of either individualism or collectivism (as the case may be)" (xi).

Hart tires of the DHH line that religion is violent and therefore should be put to rest. Why? Because "the modern secular state's capacity for barbarism exceeds any of the evils for which Christendom might justly be indicted, not solely by virtue of the superior technology at its disposal, but by its very nature" (xii). I'm not yet a fan of his prose style, but I'll get over it.