Wisdom For Your Weekend: your weekly installment of things we’ve been reading around the web.
Articles of the Week
A Thread Called Grace, Jonathan Merritt. This is an extended excerpt from Merritt’s new book, Jesus Is Better Than You Imagined, reflecting on a painful sexual past—dramatically and painfully exposed—and how God was faithful through it all. “Honesty has a way of humbling us, and it has me. It has softened my heart. As I’ve been honest about the bruised and broken parts of myself, the openness has become a doorway for God’s healing.”
7 Ways to Read a Book, Tim Challies. I remember first encountering the ironically titled How to Read a Book and thinking it was a joke. (It wasn’t, and is a classic for good reason.) As it turns out, there’s more to reading a book than merely passing your eyes over the words. And there are different ways to read a book, too. If you approach A Tale of Two Cities the same way you approach Mere Christianity (two of my favorites!), you’re in for trouble. So what are the different ways to read?
Why Singles Belong In Church Leadership, Lore Ferguson. “I am in no way discouraging marriage (I want to be married, after all), but I believe the church can do better in this area. If the trend of delayed marriage continues, we must have men and women who have walked the narrow path of godly singleness teaching those who come after them. The church’s tendency to primarily hire married men and women, for whatever justification—stability, plantedness, longevity—should be reconsidered for multiple reasons.”
Millennials’ Political Views Don’t Make Any Sense, Derek Thompson, The Atlantic. Sigh. This is my demographic (barely), and while passionate, we are not the most economically coherent. The most telling statistic in here is that when it comes to economics, “liberal” Millenials become more and more conservative as their income goes up. It seems we’re more charitable in theory than in reality. (“Wait, when I said taxing the rich was a good idea, I didn’t mean me!”)
Become a Heretic for a While, Marc Cortez. “I’ve noticed over the years that students have a hard time truly appreciating the beauty and power of the response because they can’t see the beauty and power of the problem. Orthodoxy shines less brightly when you think heresy seems so obviously wrong. So, if you want to understand heresy, here are at least three things you need to do.”
On The Lighter Side
If Wikipedia articles were condensed to one line…and then made sarcastic, the result would be TL;DR Wikipedia. Here’s a sample:
