Challies Reviews Hawking

If you’re interested, Tim Challies has an excellent review of Stephen Hawking’s new work right here.  I highly recommend it–too many people think Hawking’s Grand Design is a stunning rebuke to Christian beliefs, when in reality it’s little more than freshly packaged scientism.  I particularly enjoyed the following summary:

Finally, p.180 does offer an explanation of spontaneous creation. The conservation of energy means that universes can only be created from nothing if their net energy is zero, with negative gravitational energy balancing out the positive energy of matter and radiation. This necessitates that a law of gravity must exist. Because a law of gravity exists it must and will of itself create universes out of nothing (no reasoning given).

So gravity is God.

Enjoy,
Dan J.

Review: Meaning at the Movies, Part 3

I saw half of "The Burbs" at a drive-in like this, in Broomfield, Colorado

So, it’s been some time since I left off part 2 of this review of Meaning at the Movies, and I’ve decided I might as well sit down and make myself finish this review.  Part 1 and Part 2 dealt with Professor Horner’s aesthetic philosophy (why movies exist, and how we should respond to them) as well as his argument for the practice of discernment (as opposed to the mere possession of such.)  I believe Horner did a fairly good job of laying out his case, and I believe Christians would do well to put his recommendations into practice.

The remainder of the book focuses on an analysis of various genres (including comedy, horror, and film noir) and an application of Horner’s general thesis to films within these categories.  Given the nature of the content, I can do little to provide a helpful review on this section.  I think he does an excellent job, and I think he makes some compelling points, and I am more than happy to see that he recommends that we view and evaluate dark comedy and film noir.  Still, I’d like to briefly mention the last chapter in the book. Read more >>

Stetzer Interviews Patrick

Cross celebrating delivery from a plague, Szentendre, Hungary

Ed Stetzer recently interviewed author Darrin Patrick regarding his new book: Church Planter. This looks like a good read, and one which will prove helpful to folks in many mission-minded contexts outside of the “standard church planting ministry” (as if such a thing exists).

The following comment struck me as insightful and needed for many churches today:

Stetzer: How is contextualization not compromise?

Patrick: Good contextualization is not bringing the gospel to people on their terms. That would be compromise. Biblical contextualization is bringing the gospel to people with their terms. That is why we take our language about the gospel and forms of church that declare the gospel and we adapt them to be understandable to the cultures in which we find ourselves.  (emphasis mine)

I think this distinction makes most of the difference.  When a church is willing to give up a long-held culture for the sake of the Gospel, it’s not out of a desire to appease, entertain, or placate a crowd, but rather out of an understanding that the intended audience will never hear the shocking Gospel as long as it is communicated in terms and forms that they just don’t understand.

Hit the link (here) for the rest of the brief interview.

Grace & Peace,
Dan J.

A Happy Break from the Heat

Julie, this one's for you!

It’s been a busy stretch since graduation, with us placing some increased time into initiating a couple new ministries at Mayer, both of us working hard on remodeling the kitchen (pictures will follow in a future post!), and the search for a second job for Dan.  So, when he said that he felt like he was getting grumpy about things he wouldn’t normally feel grumpy about, we decided to take a brief break over the Labor Day weekend to sit on the beach in San Diego and do absolutely nothing.  The whole sitting and doing nothing thing lasted for about an hour and a half before we decided it would be nice to move around a bit, and so we visited a few places we haven’t taken the time to visit in the past–namely, we spent an afternoon at Balboa Park and a morning at La Jolla.  The rest of the pictures are after the break… Read more >>