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A La Carte (October 26)

friday

The streak of Kindle deals ran out today. We’ll hope for better things over the weekend and into next week.

(Yesterday on the blog: EPIC Ecuador: Not Just Any Dam)

Reagan’s Challenge to His Dying Atheist Father-In-Law

Isn’t this an interesting little bit of history… “From the letter it’s clear that Reagan has been doing some reading about God, sharing with his father-in-law arguments that probably came from C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity and Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict.”

Your Church is Not a Restaurant

Trevin Wax: “In a consumer-oriented society, the default orientation for church attenders is to see their local congregation as a dispenser of religious goods and services. I say ‘default’ not because it’s inevitable that everyone who goes to church perceives their congregation this way, but because without serious and sustained effort to have a more biblical approach people will naturally gravitate toward a view of the church that is influenced by a consumerist imagination.”

How Christians Pursue Unity on Social Media

This is an important one for today. “It seems to me that the rise of social media has pushed people from a place of freedom of speech to duty of opinion. In other words, we’ve moved from the privilege of enjoying freedom of speech to being compelled to give our opinion on every matter, sometimes several times a day. The sheer volume of opinions and re-sharing of opinions has led to pain and divisiveness.”

Want a Whole New Body? Ask This Flatworm How (Video)

“Planarians are tiny googly-eyed flatworms with an uncanny ability: They can regrow their entire bodies, even a new head. So how do they do it?” How strange.

Cape Town’s Slave Ship Secret

Here’s an interesting article about a new discovery. “The project set out to find the São José based on archival documents of the Dutch East India Company (which governed the Cape Colony until 1795) found in the Western Cape Archives and Records Service. These documents told the story of a Portuguese slave ship with 512 Mozambican slaves destined for Brazil that sank on 27 December 1794 in Camps Bay on the Cape Peninsula. Boshoff and his team started diving the area in search of the wreck, but found nothing.”

This gallery contains some amazing photos of God’s creation.

What Is the Apocrypha? (Video)

Dr. Robert Plummer tells about the Apocrypha in this new episode of Honest Answers.

Flashback: Things Christians Just Don’t Get To Do

As a Christian you do not get to have a pet sin, a peccadillo, a sin you refuse to confront through the power of the Holy Spirit. Every sin, no matter how small or precious it seems, is to be confronted and destroyed.

Jesus does what legalism can never do: he gives us a new heart and a new spirit.

—Tim Chester

  • Free Stuff Fridays (Boyce College/D3)

    Pastors and Parents are always on the lookout for good discipleship resources for teens. You just might be the person who wins these items for free through the D3/Boyce College Giveaway.

  • Mothering Against Futility

    The Futility of Motherhood

    Life is made up of so much that gives the appearance of being futile. There are so many tasks and responsibilities that we intellectually know to be important but emotionally feel to be fruitless. And if everyone struggles with this to varying degrees, I have it on good authority that mothers are prone to struggle…

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    A La Carte (January 31)

    A La Carte: Dune and female moral authority / Three lies that separate spouses / Sin makes you stupid / Can a fallen pastor be restored? / Evaluating Trump’s first week of executive actions / A future for the family / Book and Kindle deals / and more.

  • New and Notable Christian Books for January 2025

    As you know, I like to do my best to sort through the new Christian books that are released each month to see what stands out as being not only new, but also particularly notable. I received quite a number of books in January and narrowed the list down to the ones below. I have…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (January 30)

    A La Carte: Small injustices / Is it necessary to be a church member? / How to make friends at college / My letter about a transgender teacher / Prayerless theologians / Deepening fellowship / Kindle deals / and more.

  • Throw Out the Buoys

    Throw Out the Buoys!

    When I was young, my family owned a cottage on a lake. From a young age, I loved to head out in our little motorboat so I could explore that lake and the others that were connected to it. I could easily make a day out of slipping into little inlets to see where they…