slimfastcrusader's Xanga

Best Books of 2007

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 02:09:06 GMT

Best Books of 2007

It's almost the end of the year and time for best of lists. Most of the books I read this year came out before 2007, including these 4.

1) Jesus and the Holocaust by Joel Marcus
One of the most moving reflections on evil that I've read.

2) Walk on: Life, Loss, Trust, and Other Realities by John Goldingay

3) Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

4) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

The last 3 books are more autobiographical(the last is fictional). I think I needed autobiographical reflection this year, so that I could see that I'm not crazy, or at least I'm not the only one who is.

BTW all these books are available at the Louisville Free Public Library.

Thing I would Want to Take With Me If I Left Louisville

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 02:21:18 GMT

1) Def. Meijer's as mentioned in the last comments

2) The In-State Sports Rivalry. The UofL Cardinals and the UofK Wildcats(although I wish sports talk radio would talk about the national scene more often)

3) Used book stores that don't smell like Cat Urine(Half Price Books, Christian Book Nook---although the odor here is not all that pleasant.

4) Traffic----The fact that you can get anywhere in Louisville in a half hour or less(although I've never tried to get anywhere on 65 in rush hour or anywhere past 265). St. Louis is the only other large city I've lived in. I hate St. Louis traffic. Even when they spend years redesigning a highway, traffic flow doesn't improve.

5) Louisville Cops---maybe it's just me, but they don't seem like they are out to get people or trap normal everyday people. There were places in St. Louis where you had to be paranoid about getting pulled over. Again maybe I just don't go to those places in Louisville. Now that I think of it, I've heard that 264 might be a place to be paranoid. But I'm not on 264 that much.

6) My Church...After seminary I didn't know if I would ever enjoy church again. Thankfully I there is a theologically serious, non-Calvinist, worshipful, welcoming, not-take-yourself-too-seriously church, and I go to it.

7)As far as restaurants, I can't think of any that I would take from Louisville that aren't in other cities. I do like the non food court Chick-Fil-A's, but I'm sure other cities have those as well. I don't remember these in St. Louis. I'm sure they are there by now. They might have been there when I was, but I don't remember one.

Things I would Transport From Missouri

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 01:04:05 GMT

I lived in MO for 19 years. I lived in St. Louis for 4. If it were up to me the following things would be in Louisville.

1)Lion's Choice

2) Chevy's

3) Imo's

4) Levee Landing(SE Missouri)

I'm sure there are things other than restaurants that I wish were in Louisville, but can't think of one at the moment.

Place vs. City

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:15:48 GMT

Got the latest Covenant Theological Seminary magazine in the mail today. There was an interesting Alumni Profile called "When Grace Comes to Town". It's about a pastor in Washington D.C. I really appreciated two paragraphs in the article.

"Glenn prefers emphasizing place instead of city because sometimes the call to love the city is wrongly elevated as a more righteous thing than to love a small town. "Cities pump me up, " Glenn explains. "They are strategic and important, but Jesus used a bunch of fisherman from a small town. He was from a small town. Anytime we try to pin God down with our view of strategic, He tends to blow away our expectations.

"I think the deeper issue is taking space and place more seriously. We are all prone to make our own idols. For city pastors, it can be idolatry of city ministry. As believers, we need to step back any time we start finding a form of righteousness in anything other than Christ. And we need to develop a more consistent view of place. The late Francis Schaeffer, a theologian and pastor, talked about no little people and no little places--and that's the greater value that people need to learn."

On a related note Eugune Peterson says in his book The Jesus Way, "what I want to insist upon in this is that Jesus did not work out his way of life in the intensely personal and God-oriented small towns of Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida simply because he didn't know any better, because that was the only world he knew. No, he chose them. He had equal access to Sepphoris and Tiberias and, over the coast, Caesarea, where the Herod way set the tone for how the people intended to live." page 206

And this small town boy (populations 3,000 growing up) said "Amen" and another "Amen" just in case the first one came out like a whisper.

Speaking of speaking up. I saw a bumper sticker a month or so ago that really helped me (that's saying a lot for a bumper sticker). Somewhere in the last few years I gained a fear of public speaking. I never was real comfortable with it, but the fear and nervousness grew. Anyway, the bumper sticker said "Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes". I have no idea what the background of the saying is, but it was encouraging to me.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:25:24 GMT

This next one is just humor. I can be 3 times more of a jerk than most Calvinists I know (emphasis mine :) :) )

The Agricultural Mandate

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 23:57:55 GMT

"So the responsibility of human creatures in their vertical relationship to God is a social and political responsibility. Woman and man are to"rule the fish in the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all wild animals on earth" (Gen 1:26). They are placed in a garden and told to "till it and care for it" (Gen 2:15). This is a mandate to unfold culture, to unearth nature's treasures, to build civilization and be agents of God's activity in the world." Robert E. Webber and Rodney Clapp, People of the Truth: A Christian Challenge to Contemporary Culture, page 23.

I've never understood how the following verses mean we should be involved in politics and "civilization building". To me it means humans should be farmers more than it means we should be political activists or something like that. Just a thought, but maybe we've made life more complex than it should be. We've replaced the simple, but difficult task of subduing the earth (meaning soil) with the task of subduing people. Not that we shouldn't care about government and stuff like that, but maybe we should spend more time tending a garden than tending to the latest political news. Not that I'm anywhere close to fulfilling an agricultural mandate, I live in an apartment and work in an office building(though office building is a bit too glamorous a term for where I work).

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 01:56:47 GMT

New Posters

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:37:34 GMT

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 18:42:32 GMT

The Pyro Maniacs did some funny caricatures of emergent people this last week. Some of them are laugh out loud funny.

http://teampyro.blogspot.com/ you'll have to scroll down

My fav

I thought I would try one for myself. Only it's not as funny, I used Paint, oh and it's not as funny.

Spurgeon on War

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 17:10:49 GMT

"Whatsoever things are honest, true, kind, humane, and moral, may reckon our aid. WE are on the side of temperance, and therefore on the side of the limitation of the abominable traffic which is ruining our country; and we are opposed to all that licenses vice among men, or allows cruelty to animals. We are up to the hilt advocates of peace, and we earnestly war against war. I wish that Christian men would insist more and more on the unrighteousness of war, believing that Christianity means no sword, no cannon, no bloodshed, and that if a nation is driven to fight in its own defense, Christianity stands by to weep and to intervense as soon as possible, and not to join in the cruel shouts which celebrate an enemy's slaughter. Let us always be on the side of right. Today, then, my brethren, I beg you to join with me in seeking renewal. Now is the time for a man to buckle on his harness, and bestir himself.

---Charles Haddon Spurgeon, An All Around Ministry, "A New Departure", page 153.