Wisdom For Your Weekend: your weekly installment of things we’ve been reading around the web.
Book Review of the Week
The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It, by Peter Enns. Reviewed by Michael J. Kruger. “In the end, The Bible Tells Me So is a book about contradictions. Enns intended it to be a book about contradictions in the Bible. But it becomes quickly apparent that the contradictions are really in Enns’s own worldview. . . . Enns has fully adopted the methods and conclusions of the most aggressive versions of critical scholarship, and yet at the same time wants to insist that the Bible is still God’s Word, and that Jesus died and rose again. While it’s clear to most folks that these two systems are incompatible at most levels, Enns is tenaciously trying to insist both can be true simultaneously.”
Articles of the Week
How to Die Beautifully, Lore Ferguson. “I had a conversation with a friend the other day and she’s asking the right questions: why does it have to be so hard sometimes? Why does it have to hurt? I don’t have answers for her. I’m finding the more I know, the less I really know. But I know this: those leaves wouldn’t take our breath away if they weren’t dying in the process.”
I Have The Worst Boss Ever, Jon Acuff. I’ve worked for some pretty crummy bosses, but I’m with Acuff on this one: the very worst boss I’ve ever had, the biggest slave-driver, the one guy who is never quite satisfied with any of my work, the supervisor keeping me from getting a good night’s rest . . . is myself.
Have We Told You How Pretty You Look Today? Sharon Hodde Miller. “If we want to bear witness to God’s holistic love, we will value the things that our culture devalues. Rather than merely celebrating another woman’s appearance, we must also celebrate her heart, her soul, and her mind. We must call good all that God calls good. Not in the order of our culture’s priorities, but in the order of God’s. . . . Consider your words carefully, and what they communicate. What values are you cementing, or subverting? Are you feeding into culture’s priorities, or reflecting the priorities of God?”
Four Misconceptions Millennials Have about Marriage, Aaron Earls. Marriage can be tough work, and millennials (those born between 1980 and 2000) have had the unfortunate experience of seeing many of their parents’ marriages falter and fail. As a group, we’re suspicious of the institution, and desirous to avoid some of the previous generation’s mistakes. But as Earls shows us, our proposed “solutions” are hardly any better than the problem.
On The Lighter Side
What actually happens in an NFL game, Joseph Stromberg. This is just one of 40 charts and maps explaining sports in the U.S. The whole gamut is pretty interesting, but this one is simply worth a chuckle. I’d be curious to see how this compares with other sports.
