Wisdom For Your Weekend: your weekly installment of things we’ve been reading around the web.
Book Review of the Week
Cold Case Christianity, by J. Warner Wallace. Reviewed by Lyndon Unger. “Wallace and I have some theological differences, but those differences don’t really manifest with an overwhelming majority of the excellent material in the book. In the future, I’ll most likely use Cold Case Christianity as a textbook in my introductory apologetics courses for senior high and college-aged kids, and the theological differences we have will be easily addressed in a single lecture. I give Cold Case Christianity 4.75 solid stars—but that ultimately means nothing. . . . Chuck Norris likes it too.”
Articles of the Week
Google Is Getting Out of the Porn Business, Relevant Magazine. “AdsWords [Google’s advertising partnership] are extremely profitable for Google. A 2012 study estimated that the company made $100 million a day just from AdWords campaigns. But, by allowing ads to porn sites, Google was essentially making money directly off of people going to look at porn. That is, until now.”
Gay, Christian, and . . . Celibate? Sarah Pulliam Bailey. This is a helpful extended article discussing some of the changing debate regarding Christianity and homosexuality—particularly in terms of the nomenclature used. Part of the danger of the current debate is the tendency to eliminate nuance and depict the “other side” with such broad brushes that sympathy and compassion are impossible. Some cooler heads would be welcome at the table.
Six Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, Tony Reinke. “For seven years an iPhone has always been within my reach, there to wake me in the morning, there to play my music library, there to keep my calendar, there to capture my life in pics and video, there for me to enjoy sling-shooting wingless birds into enemy swine, there as my ever-present portal to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. My iPhone is such a part of my daily life, I rarely think self-reflectively about it. . . . But what is life like now because of the smartphone? How has the iPhone changed us?”
You Might Want to Fact-Check Your Pastor’s Sermon, Bob Smietana. It can be tempting to use a story or statistic to bolster a sermon point, but use an untrue one and you’re in a bad spot. As a fact-checker myself, I know it can be tough to verify a lot of stats and stories. But the extra work is worth it . . . if we want to keep our people’s attention and our credibility. (On the flip side, be gracious with your pastors, who—more often than not—try really really hard to check their facts!)
On The Lighter Side
Anatomy of Songs, John Atkinson, Wrong Hands. Don’t get me wrong, I like each of these genres. But he’s got a point.
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