Archive for January, 2008

« Older Entries

Perspective on the Culture Wars

Monday, January 28th, 2008

This is actually a slightly reworked version of a post over on the Sojourn blogs a month or so . . . discussion about this didn’t really get off the ground there, we’ll see if it does any better over here.

These ruminations have been triggered by my (among other things) keeping what can only be charitably called a loose eye on the upcoming Republican and Democratic primaries. As I’ve watched the candidates, I’ve noticed people on both sides of the aisle who have no trouble invoking religious language to explain why voting for them is a good idea.

(more…)

Posted in Worldview::Politics | 10 Comments »

Towards an Emerging Christology

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

I’ve been plowing through Dan Kimball’s They Like Jesus but Not the Church over the last few days as a result of someone handing me a copy of it that they thought they were returning to me. It’s not actually mine, but I’ve been meaning to read it for some time now, so I’ve been hoping that I’ll finish reading it before I figure out who the book actually belongs to and have to return it. As it turned out, that didn’t happen, but Charles was nice enough to let me finish it before giving it back.

In any case, what follows here are a few reflections on the book, and a few reflections on reactions that I’ve heard to the book. If everything goes according to plan, you will not have to have read the book to know what I’m talking about.

(more…)

Posted in Theology | 6 Comments »

I’ll probably be here from now on

Monday, January 21st, 2008

Those who are looking for theological ramblings occasionally have to tolerate my forays into discussions of good beer, fondue recipes, wine recommendations, and essays about Thai food. I will try to keep it brief.

I met a few folks tonight over at The Nook tonight – first time I’ve been over there – and it’s highly recommended. For this area, they’ve got a great selection of stuff on draft, and over 120 different kinds of beers in bottles. (They do not, however have Bud Light. This tends to cut down on the riffraff, although one wonders how they can stay in business in this area.) Also they have good food, good live music (that was quiet enough that you could still have a conversation, wonder of wonders), and a no-smoking policy. Quite a bit different – and better, for my money – than your average bar experience.

This is the sort of place that I would think I would run across somewhere other than in Huntsville. I’m rather surprised and delighted that we have it here. Wow.

Posted in Food and Drink | 7 Comments »

Worldview and Political Theory

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Discussions spawned by observations of the current election season, if one could charitably call it that, has led to some ruminations about the relationship between the difficulty of connecting the Christian worldview to a particular political theory. This seems to be, according to most evangelicals today, a fairly easy thing to do, at least judging by the tendency of conservative theology to follow conservative politics. However, I think it’s more complicated than that, for two basic reasons: (a) the Bible doesn’t really tell us much about how to run any sort of government, and (b) even the general worldview principles are general enough that they could be applied, with varying degrees of success, to several diffent political theories.

(more…)

Posted in Worldview::Politics | 2 Comments »

Worldview, Cause and Effect

Monday, January 7th, 2008

A few points, before we get started:

  • I’ll be making frequent references to two books, throughout this post. They are (a) the revised and expanded edition of Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and How Now Shall We Live, by Charles Colson, Nancy Pearcey, and Harold Fickett. You don’t have to have read either one of these to get what I’m talking about here, I’ll try my best to give some sort of coherent background. Maybe you’ll want to go read them after you read this . . . or not. I hope so, they’re both good worth reading. Just to eliminate confusion, though those are practically the only books that I make reference to throughout this post. Mostly we’re talking about Chapters 35 and 36 in the Colson/Pearcey/Fickett book, and Chapter 4 in Levitt/Dubner book.
  • Please don’t assume that I’m treating economics and ethics as the same thing. Economics gives us tools to understand what is happening in the world that exists; ethics tells us what should happen in an ideal world – the one that doesn’t exist, at least so far. Knowledge about one field doesn’t necessarily inform our knowledge about the other field. That is to say, what should work sometimes doesn’t, and what does work isn’t always right.

(more…)

Posted in Worldview::Culture | 10 Comments »

« Older Entries