Your weekly installment of things we’ve been reading (and watching) around the web.
Articles of the Week
Four Things the “Hate Psalms” Teach Us, Wendy Stringer. The Psalms are usually one of people’s favorite books of the Bible. And it’s no surprise why: Israel’s ancient songbook contains the most profound and moving poetry ever written. But it’s not all rosy: there are also the so-called “imprecatory” psalms, those unsavory psalms that invoke God’s wrath and revel in his violence. Feel like skipping them? Stringer urges us not to.
A Theology of Sports, David Roark. In case you’re curious: yes, theologians are allowed to simply add “theology of” in front of whatever term they like. But even though you’re not likely to find a theology of sports in your average systematic textbook, it’s worth pondering. We Americans tend to either make sports an unhealthy idolatry or to disparage them completely. Is there a more excellent way? Roark gives us a start.
Every Pastor Should Be An “Iceberg” Pastor, Andrew Haslam. “There is one rule that I think ought to underpin every pastor’s understanding of his calling, which is that he needs to be an iceberg. What do I mean? Simply this: that whatever public ministry he engages in (that bit above the surface) needs to be built upon a lifetime of preparation, growth, character, learning, and reliance on God (the mass under the surface). Public prayers ought to be a taste of how he prays in private. Preaching ought to be the cream scraped off the top of his brain.”
“But Jesus Never Talked About …” Karen Swallow Prior. The argument has becoming vogue of late—in discussions ranging from homosexuality to street preaching—to appeal to Jesus’ silence. The argument runs roughly like this: “If Jesus never addressed it, then we shouldn’t either.” As Prior beautifully points out, this is a wildly inconsistent and unhelpful hermeneutic.
Twelve Reasons Churches Don’t Practice Church Discipline, Chuck Lawless. Church discipline has to qualify as one of the clearest parts of New Testament . . . that is regularly ignored by most churches. Lawless seems to have put his finger on the biggest reasons they avoid it. It’s understandable but sad how many of these boil down to something like, “They don’t do it because it would be really difficult.”
On The Lighter Side
Email in Real Life, Tripp and Tyler. Though I don’t know much about “workfront.com” (the product T&T are promoting), they seem to have pegged the various frustrations of the ol’ electronic mail. Honestly, I’m still not sure what people intend to accomplish with the 10-page “this is confidential” footer on every email. I’ll take the Nigerian prince over that any day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTgYHHKs0Zw
Wisdom For Your Weekend is presented to you by Chris Pappalardo, with occasional guidance from J.D. Greear. This is our attempt to reflect Proverbs 9:9: “Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning.”
