partsofspeaking

Today I was standing in our college's library when a student of mine walked up and greeted me.  I was standing by the shelves of New York Times bestseller books that our library displays, and he asked me if I was looking for a book.  I joked, "If you want to read a good book, read mine.  Ha, ha, don't read this trash," pointing to the bestsellers. My book is NOT a bestseller.  I hope it's not trash. However, whenever I go to the CBD website to check on where it stands, I notice that all the "Christian" bestsellers in fiction seem to be about the Amish people--or better, young Amish women. I watched a Hallmark movie the other night based on one of them, called The Shunning .  I liked the movie, although it had some plot holes which I will not discuss in case someone wants to watch it.  But it got me to wondering about the Amish obsession in Christian fiction. I have been to Lancaster, PA.  It was back in the '80s, and a friend and I were up ther...

The Easter Season is technically over and I have been thinking about my return to blogging.  However, I am not bulging with ideas right now, other than some book reviews.  I just finished Mark Noll's Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and have many thoughts about it, which I will share eventually.  Most of my bloggings would be snarky, and snarky is not exactly in short supply.  I could also write about my dog, but I have nothing clever about that.  So I may be less visible on the blogosphere for a while, weighing in once a week or so.  I have neither been well nor energetic lately, and it's the end of the semester,  and a time of transition for my son, so blogging is just not a priority. A few points:  As mentioned earlier, I am mystified by this Donald Trump brouhaha.  Seriously?  Really?  But I am also marveling about his name.  Is that a made-up name?  Trump "trumps" his foes.  So cute. Back pain is just dreadfu...

Background of Colossians: Although Paul is writing to the church there, he did not start it and had not met them.   He had apparently won some of the leaders to the Lord in Phrygia (not a cold place!)   on his first journey, and they had gone to the city and started a church.   Epaphras and Philemon were two of them.   But he is concerned about them, and the major theme of this book is clear teaching on the identity of Jesus Christ and what that means.   As usual, there are false philosophical teachers trying to dissuade the Colossians from the doctrine that the church should be teaching and that in some cases is trying to "work out," understand, articulate.   To an extent, it would take 300 or 400 years for all the particulars of the doctrine of Christ to be settled, and there are of course still people who teach the wrong things about the identity (I don't want to use "nature" here) of Jesus Christ. There were two p...

These are some past posts on Holy Week.   http://partsofspeaking.blogspot.com/2009/04/long-walk.html http://partsofspeaking.blogspot.com/2009/04/in-meantime.html  http://partsofspeaking.blogspot.com/2009/04/passion-week-thoughts-roots.html http://partsofspeaking.blogspot.com/2009/04/holy-week.html

These are some parting words to the Philippians (not one church, by the way, but a group of churches which would circulate the letters in that area or city, meaning that they had a relationship with one another even though they met separately, and he addresses people who must know each other).   There is a lot of close fellowship talk here.   Paul knows these people and they know him.   What it must be like to not be distracted by media and to be totally dependent on communal activity for information and every other human need.   Today, due to media and big government, we can live almost completely isolated and yet be in a big city.   To be isolated in the past, people had to be hermits, living in the mountain caves. We can have a cave in a subdivision today.   Unlike these folks, we can choose fellowship and relationship.   Modernity has split us up, not brought us together.   Media, which should be a means ...

Recently we (i.e., the facultyat our college) had to redo all of our student learning outcomes to conform to our authorizing agency.  To some extent we had to put the SLOs in a format tht showed our class taught Global Perspectives, U.S. Perspectives, and Critical Thinking.  It was, as many things are, tedious, but it got done, and we are satisfied with it.  But the process raised a number of questions for me, as did a project I am working on with a colleague in another discipline. Critical thinking is the buzz word for the ages in higher education, but do we even know what we are talking about?  Below are my musings about the subject, which I put out here in cyber space to see if anyone want to comment upon them. First, critical thinking is a process, not an outcome.  It is a system for getting to a conclusion, not the conclusion.  The best definition I've read is this one, from the website critical thinking.com, "the skillful application of a repertoi...

I have not been posting, except my Sunday School lessons, and will continue not to until after Easter.  However, the urge just got too much for me and I have given in to writing down some not-so-random thoughts. The title of this post just reflects how I feel about the so-called news that I see on the Internet, TV, or newspaper.  We are bombing Libya but do not know who the rebels against Quadaffi, or Gaddafi, or whatever his name is, are.  One thousand or more have been slaughtered in Ivory Coast, who knows why; similar killings are going on in Syria, and of course Gaddafi had been murdering his own people.  The only place where chaos doesn't seem to be is in Japan, where the Japanese people are trying to cope despite seeming incompetence in their leadership over this nuclear threat. We have a Congress that can't make a budget and a president whose decision-making perplexes me and his own party. And people are seriously talking about Donald Trump being preside...

Key Questions in this passage. Who is Paul talking about in verse 2? To what extent can we forget the past?   Is he referring to a specific aspect of the past?   Who are examples of Christian living to whom you defer, look up to, or feel inspired by? How do we achieve spiritual maturity? I think the biggest struggle we have today is the tension between this world and the next, between our citizenship (or residency) in our culture or country and our citizenship in heaven.   Can we really be full citizens of both?   Is it possible?   Can we be excellent as employees, family members, neighbors, and excellent as God’s children?   As for the answers, I am reluctant to address them all.   I am a work in progress, so my answers would be a work in progress.   The first is easy enough:   persons who would add man-made or traditional requirements to the gospel, to grace, to full dependence on the cross for o...