Wednesday, March 26, 2008:

Religious Fumblings On Marriage: In mid-December, blogger Andrew Sullivan called for Mike Huckabee to confirm whether he stands by his support for a 1998 USA Today ad that included the following:

"A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ."

Huckabee signed the ad, along with other leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Within the last week or so, I came across an interesting passage in Henry Chadwick's book, The Early Church (pages 58-59 of Penguin's paperback edition):

Christianity [in its first few centuries] seems to have been especially successful among women. It was often through the wives that it penetrated the upper classes of society in the first instance. Christians believed in the equality of men and women before God, and found in the New Testament commands that husbands should treat their wives with such considerations and love as Christ manifested for his Church. Christian teaching about the sanctity of marriage offered a powerful safeguard to married women. The Christian sex ethic differed from the conventional standards of pagan society in that it regarded unchastity in a husband as no less serious a breach of loyalty and trust than unfaithfulness in a wife.

So here, as in so many cases in the New Testament, we find much needed context for Jesus' teachings. This illustrates the importance of understanding the state of the culture at the time Jesus entered history -- before we apply those teachings to our modern culture.

I can't speak for the intended (or imagined) purpose behind the Southern Baptist Convention's full-page ad in USA Today. But it left Andrew Sullivan (in my opinion, a fair-minded observer of religious news and views) with the impression that it was a Christian-sponsored attack on the role of women in our society.

The very Gospel that liberated women in one culture has now been packaged in a way that seems to force them back into a less-than-equal societal (even Christian!) role today.

In fairness, in my one-on-one conversations with Christians who approve of the USA Today ad, they are quick to point out that the ad goes on to explain a man's role in marriage as characterized by that of Christ's -- specifically, his role as suffering servant for the Church.

A fair point! But I would also say that the Christian teaching on the man's role in marriage needs no 1st century cultural context before it can be accurately understood by modern readers.

The same can't be said for the Christian teaching regarding wives.

Moral to the story? A secular newpaper is a poor forum for publishing bare-boned, hit-and-run excerpts from a broader theology. Especially when, in the case of Christian marriage, most Christians need a healthy dose of contextual background provided before they can fully understand the teaching themselves!

Thursday, Feb. 28, 2008:

Winter Daydream: Living in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, where the temperature reached 90 degrees a couple of days ago (before a cold front -- thankfully -- blew through later in the day), I'm in no hurry to say goodbye to the cooler weather of winter.

But when I come across a story like this in The New York Times, I can't deny there's a part of me ready to fast forward to the outdoor swimming season. And, as a lover of natural pools, like Barton Springs in Austin, I'm not surprised that surfing pics of the saltwater rock pools of Sidney, Australia, has been my choice of time-waste in the last 48 hours.

My favs? How about: The Ross Jones Memorial Pool. The Newcastle Bogey Hole. And... the Whale Beach Rock Pool. (Make sure to click on the pics for larger versions...!)

Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2008

Disasters and God: Hurricane Katrina. The 2005 Tsunami. 9/11. The Virginia Tech Shootings. When large scale, disastrous events transpire, whether they are natural or human in origin, the mainstream media usually seek explanations from religious people for how a merciful, loving God--if He is indeed all that merciful and loving--allows such pain and suffering.

Depending on which religious leader you ask, you may discover that these events are judgments against sinful cultures; or that they are cleansing agents for the world; or that they are catalysts whose purpose is to thrust charities and giving hearts into the limelight.

If you're like me, these explanations aren't too satisfying. At the least, they seem incomplete or insufficient. And maybe they're on the wrong track altogether.

So I'm going to refer you Rev. Greg Boyd of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. This was Greg's first sermon of 2005, and it was delivered in response to the devastating tsunami that had just hit shorelines throughout the Indian Ocean. The sermon is titled "Being the Kingdom in a Groaning Creation," and you'll find it at the top of this link.

You can listen to it on an mp3 player, on your computer; or you can burn it to a CD. For those of you with iPod FM transmitters, I've taken this sermon and turned up its volume. My file will be easier to hear via an iPod transmitter on your car radio.

After hearing Greg's explanation for disasters in God's creation, I was finally able to step back and say, "Now that makes sense." If only The New York Times would set aside some op-ed space for Greg after a tragic event.

I hope you'll take the time to give Greg Boyd a listen.

Friday, May 4, 2007

Amazon History: Via the latest Wilson Quarterly, a mention of an interesting piece in Conservation magazine. In it Fred Pearce wonders how much of the Amazon rainforest is virgin. Today's Amazon explorers are finding evidence that pre-European civilizations had done some serious forest clearing of their own. Euro diseases probably led to the collapse of those civilizations, and, in the hundreds of years since, the forest has re-grown. But what percentage of today's forest is virgin?

Surely in the Amazon, the greatest rainforest on the planet, virginity can be discovered—nature red in tooth and claw? That's what everyone thought until an American oil prospector named Kenneth Lee first climbed aboard a beach buggy and bounced across the grassy lowlands of Baures in the Bolivian Amazon in the early 1980s. After a while, Lee began to wonder why he was bouncing so much in the grass.

On closer inspection, the landscape appeared to be corrugated. It was composed of a remarkably symmetrical series of ridges and trenches stretching as far as the eye could see. From time to time, he came across higher ridges that looked like roads, and wider depressions that seemed as if they might once have been canals.

(Subscription required.)

Transmitting Your iPod : A useful article comparing the many FM transmitters available for your iPod. Looks to me like this guy, and this one over here, are your best options. And, by best options, I mean that they seem to transmit clean audio to your FM radio. Most transmitters deliver disappointing signals.

Father Of American Wine?: Who deserves this title? Maybe Thomas Jefferson. (Again, via Wilson Quarterly)

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Incident At Mid-State Office: The end of an era at The Onion? Was this the H-Dog's final column?

His offering from November 1998 will always be dear to me: "Human-Resources B-----s Be Makin' Me Take Vacation Days." An absurdly devoted worker, the H-Dog is introduced to the concept of vacation days--and that he must take them or lose them. In response to the HR rep who delivered this news, our H-Dog responds:

...I just laughs at tha fool. "You payin' me to chill?" I says. "Man, that's some straight-up wack s--t, sucka."

The full Herbert Kornfeld archive here.

Hitch On Tenet: Christopher Hitchens holds no punches in his response to George Tenet's new book:

In his latest effusion, [Tenet] writes: "I do know one thing in my gut. Al-Qaeda is here and waiting." Well, we all know that much by now. But Tenet is one of the few who knew it [before 9/11], and not just in his "gut" but in his small brain, and who left us all under open skies. His ridiculous agency, supposedly committed to "HUMINT" under his leadership, could not even do what John Walker Lindh had done—namely, infiltrate the Taliban and the Bin Laden circle. It's for this reason that the CIA now has to rely on torturing the few suspects it can catch, a policy, incidentally, that Tenet's book warmly defends.

iPod For The Kids: A free episode of a new Disney computer animated cartoon offering, My Friends Tigger & Pooh, is available in the "TV Shows" section of the iTunes store. These free downloads are always temporary, so act fast if you've got a young one who digs on some Pooh.

Older Posts:

Brave Sir Blogger at Blogspot: My archives are now at Blogspot.com. In fact, I'm mirroring the entire blog there.

The direct link is:
http://coffeeshoptimes.blogspot.com