Nathan Busenitz has written a 4-part series that seeks to answer the question, “What principles should guide Christians who interact on blogs?” Here are the ten principles that he discusses:
Have Your Quiet Time First
Stay Within the Lines
Consider the Consequences
Check Your Motives
Check Your Facts
Make It Personal (Because It Is)
Speak the Truth in Love
If in Doubt, Wait It Out
Choose Your Battles Carefully
Maintain the Family Honor
There is nothing new and earth shattering here, but these are solid reminders for everyone who interacts with others on blogs, forums, newsgroups, email and other internet-based forms of communication. I commend them to you.
The Miami Herald has a story about the increasing number sites (some Christian, some not) that allow people to confess their sins online. Here are some examples:
Finally ready to confess, she turned not to a minister, but to her computer.
”I am sorry God for not keeping that baby,” her anonymous confession reads. “I had an abortion and had kept that secret for over 18 years. I feel so ashamed. Please forgive me!”
The confession appears at ivescrewedup.com, a website launched by the Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City. It’s one of a growing number of such sites across the country—some secular and others church-sponsored—that offer a place to spill out ugly secrets or just make peccadilloes public.
From briefly looking at a sampling of the “confessions” on the secular sites, notproud.com, dailyconfession.com, and grouphug.us, it’s apparent that most are using them not to confess with sorrow but to brag with pride or just be downright rude and offensive. I’m not sure if this is representative, but this was true of the handful of “confessions” I read.
The two sites run by churches, mysecret.tv and ivescrewedup.com, seem to contain more legitimate confessions and are probably moderated for offensive content. Yet I don’t know that I really see much value in anonymous confessions, except for the occasional prayer that may be offered on behalf of the unidentified.
All sins should be confessed to God (1 John 1:9), and some probably to God alone. Other sins should be confessed to those against whom the sin was committed (or others related to the situation under certain circumstances [cf. 1 Tim 5:20]). Ongoing struggles should be confessed to other believers for the purpose of prayer, help, encouragement, and support (Jam 5:16).
When biblical confession is taking place, there really is no need for sites like these. The real solution, then, is probably not to create online confession websites, but to teach and practice biblical confession in our churches.
When a Cincinnati man appeared in court yesterday to face charges for attempting to use a stolen credit card, his attorney thought the fact that his client attended church would sway the judge to set a low bond. The judge, however, needed more than just the attorney’s word, so he asked the man to recite Psalm 23, and he did, rattling off all six verses, which drew applause from those in the courtroom. That satisfied Judge John Burlew, who released Eric Hine on a $10,000 appearance bond.
This seems like a rather odd basis for making a decision of this nature.
LATimes has a story about the influence Latinos are having on religion in the U.S., particularly the Roman Catholic Church.
The growing numbers of Latinos in the United States, and that population’s embrace of charismatic styles of worship, are reshaping the Roman Catholic Church and the nation’s religious landscape, according to a major study of Latinos and faith released Wednesday.
The study, by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, found that a majority of Latino Catholics practiced a distinctive, charismatic form of Catholicism, one that might include speaking in tongues, prophesying and other practices considered more typical of Pentecostal churches. Those traditions are much less widespread among non-Latino Catholics, who also are less likely to identify themselves as charismatics or Pentecostals, the researchers found.
. . .
About a third of all U.S. Catholics are Latinos, with that percentage considered certain to rise, alongside the growing Latino population. And about 54% of Latino Catholics surveyed identified themselves as charismatics or Pentecostals, compared to about 12% of non-Latino Catholics, the study showed.
“What do you think of Richard Dawkins’ argument for atheism in The God Delusion?” Dr. William Lane Craig responds with a devasting critique of Dawkins’s illogical argumentation:
This argument is jarring because the atheistic conclusion that “Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist” seems to come suddenly out of left field. You don’t need to be a philosopher to realize that that conclusion doesn’t follow from the six previous statements.
Indeed, if we take these six statements as premises of an argument implying the conclusion “Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist,” then the argument is patently invalid. No logical rules of inference would permit you to draw this conclusion from the six premises.
. . .
So Dawkins’ argument for atheism is a failure even if we concede, for the sake of argument, all its steps. But, in fact, several of these steps are plausibly false.
Amazon has launched a new website, currently in the beta stage, called UpSpun. It allows anyone to create and rate lists of blogs, books, movies, music, theologians, preachers, food—you name it. I’ve come across some great new blogs as a result.
There are a couple of ways to share your opinion. You can add an item to the list by simply typing it in and clicking add. Then you can click on the up and down arrows to rate the items. You can also log in with your Amazon account, and once you’re at the UpSpun site you can click on a list and then click “Your Ranking.”
It looks like a fun and helpful site. You could use it to discover new things like blogs or as a way to publicize your own website or blog. It might also save you time in the future. If someone asks you for a list of your favorite books or blogs, you could simply send them a link to your list at UnSpun. Here are some lists you might find interesting.
St. Philip’s in the Hills, the largest Episcopal church in Tucson, AZ, denies that the term “Lord” appropriately applies to Jesus in today’s culture.
“Lord” has become a loaded word conveying hierarchical power over things, “which in what we have recorded in our sacred texts, is not who Jesus understood himself to be,” St. Philip’s associate rector Susan Anderson-Smith said.
Excuse me? Jesus didn’t “understand himself to be” one with “hierarchical power over things”? Might I ask what “sacred texts” you are reading? Jesus was and is indisputably “a person having high position or considerable authority” (Random House). In fact, that is a gross understatement. He is not just a lord in high position with considerable authority; He is the quintessential Lord of all lords (Rev 17:14; 19:16) in highest position, to whom “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given” (Mt 28:18).
Unfortunately, there’s more.
“The way our service reads, the theology is that God is love, period,” St. Philip’s deacon Thomas Lindell added. “Our service has done everything it can to get rid of power imagery. We do not pray as though we expect the big guy in the sky to come and fix everything.”
God is love, period? Come on. The Scripture has a lot more to say about God than that and, consequently, so should our theology. This is just plain nonsense, period. Power imagery expresses a very vital part of who God is. To strive to eradicate that imagery is to create a god other than the God of the Bible.
Anderson-Smith said [that the] evidence suggests the word [”Lord”] was used in talking about Jesus as the fullest embodied revelation of God, but it had a lot less to do with hierarchy than what the word means now.
Really? So when someone in the first century heard the word κύριος they thought a lot more about deity than than they did of hierarchy? I have (at least) two problems with this. First, the exact opposite was true. The word “Lord” conveyed deity in reference to God and Christ to be sure, but it had absolutely everything to do with hierarchy in their culture. Quite to the contrary, it is in our culture that “Lord” has way too little to do with hierarchy and almost everything to with deity so that we are missing out on the full hierarchical force of the term. Second, deity without hierarchy is just utter nonsense.
Apparently this “church” isn’t alone as “other local religious leaders already are eschewing the use of ‘Lord’ for similar reasons.” The First Congregational United Church of Christ in Midtown renamed The Lord’s Prayer “The Prayer of Our Creator.”
Interestingly, this rejection of the biblical concept of authority goes right along with their rejection of the biblical teaching on gender. It is perhaps the masculinity of “Lord” that is the deeper reason for their repulsion: “there’s no question ‘Lord’ has patriarchal connotations.” Wayne Grudem surely is right that a rejection of biblical gender opens the door wide for this kind of folly.
I’ll close with this glorious portion of Scripture:
9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:9–11)
Christian leadership entails telling people every day, “God is so wonderful!” You will constantly point people toward God’s worth and beauty, despite the fact that often your own heart is numb or dead to any sense of divine love and glory. What will you do in response to that?
. . .
The first (and right thing) to do is to watch your heart far more closely than you would have otherwise, being very disciplined to observe regular times of daily prayer.
. . .
The second (and wrong thing) to do is to rely not on prayer and your personal walk with God, but on the excitement of ministry activity and effectiveness.
. . .
The terrible danger is that we can look to our ministry activity as evidence that God is with us, or as a way to earn God’s favor and prove ourselves.
. . .
So examine yourself. Despite being effective in ministry—is our prayer life dead? Do we struggle with feeling slighted? Are our feelings always being hurt? Is there a lot of anxiety and joylessness in our work? Do we find ourselves being highly critical of other churches or ministers or co-workers? Is there a lot of self-pity? If these things are true, then our ministry may be skillful and successful, but it is hollow, and probably we are either a) headed for a breakdown, or b) doomed to produce crowds and funds but superficial long-term effects.
The whole article is worth reading and rereading—for pastors and anyone actively involved in ministry.
You show me a preacher who is not regularly reading or at least listening to others read, and I will show you a preacher who has little to nothing to preach. . . . Those who would be faithful in their discharge of duties will find a regular and growing appetite for books, beginning with the Bible.
It is the primary means through which God has chosen to communicate to his people. The fact that the principle revelation of God to his people is the written word should not be lost to us. It reveals not only that we are intellectual beings, expected to reason and rationally assess logically communicated data, but it also demonstrates the primacy of written communication. . . .
It broadens our perspective. Reading tends to make us more rounded. One of the most dangerous tendencies among conservative Christians is to become intellectually ingrown. . . .
It encourages our creativity. More so than anyone else, Christians should be people given to creative expression. Unfortunately, we are usually lagging behind in creative ventures. . . .
It strengthens our confidence. Too often Christians are discouraged from engaging in the exchange of ideas because we do no feel confident in addressing varying subjects. Yet, Christians should be the most diverse. . . .
It gives us a sense of accomplishment. One of the greatest benefits to seeing a task through to completion is the satisfaction of knowing that an assignment is finished. . . .
It heightens our communion of the saints. One of the lost treasures of modern Christianity is its connection with the past. If our faith is a mile wide and an inch deep, it is largely due to our inadequate understanding of the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. . . .
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Robert E. Webber
Derek Thomas at Reformation21 
