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Snatches from Today's Reading

I have a few days where I do not even have to leave the house (well, the neighborhood, in a car). So I am reading: my email (which is a treasure trove), Dante's Inferno (for a podcast on Friday), books on Appalachia for a novel, NT Wright on the first century world and its connection to the church, and some fiction. From an essay in Christianity Today on tourism and pilgrimage: But whether our destination is a martyr’s grave or a crystalline pool, the pilgrimage mindset is a fallacy. Tulum isn’t holier than Toledo. Paris, Texas, is just as filled with God’s grandeur as Paris, France. Jerusalem is made out of the same stuff as New Jersey. Because the Holy Spirit indwells Christians, we don’t need to go anywhere to better experience God.   I am going to Greece in November, God willing. But that may be my last such trip. I doubt I will ever get to the "Holy Land." That would be nice, but by the time Israel is safe again I may be too feeble to maneuver that terrain. I visited...
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More worries about AI-- DO NOT USE AI OVERVIEW!

  https://newsletter.oalannoble.com/p/what-happens-when-no-one-is-curious?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=2pwl1&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email First part: Former Google employee and current neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff has published a chilling article at the New York Times on Google’s shift from giving links to search queries to offering AI summaries. You may not have thought much about this shift, but it’s radical and is changing how many people perceive the world. Google has 91% of the search market share . This is how people get their questions answered (although increasingly they will turn to AI—more on that in a minute). In the past, Google didn’t give you answers to your questions, they offered up links which may contain various possible answers. You may find several links to Reddit where people offer various answers. You may find a Wikipedia site. You may find scholarly sources. You may find government sources. You may find commercial sources. You ma...
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N.T.Wright for today

For my current devotional reading, I am studying The New Testament and Its World by N.T. Wright and Michael F. Bird. It is a thick, textbook-like tome, and their interpretation of Jesus in his world is meant to bend evangelical world views and smugness, I think, that we know everything about Jesus we need to. He (I assume this is Wright because of the style) closes this chapter  (11, "The Death of the Messiah," p. 261) this way:   Granted all this, it is worth highlighting how this might shape our own understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. When we speak of 'following Jesus,' we are talking about the crucified Messiah. His death was not simply the messy event that enables our sins to be forgiven and which can thereafter conveniently be forgotten. The cross is the surest, truest, and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God, the more we learn about the cross, in all its historical and theological dimensions, the more we disco...
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Let's stop acting like one X/Twitter Post is that important

 The Supreme Court's decision on birth right citizenship was a decision to do nothing. It kept things the way they have been for decades, or a century.  So some posts on X, such as below, means a. all conservatives are against birthright citizenship, and b. all conservatives are stupid and apocalyptic.  I don't like that anyone born in this country is automatically a citizen, but anyone includes me.  The post: It seems to rage at two SC justices in particular. To be clear, I don't agree with this. Several ways forward here given the choice of Roberts/Barrett to nullify the 14th Amendment and extra-constitutionally replace it with their own language: 1) Nullification. States issue birth certificates, and they can just stop issuing them to non-citizens. Roberts/Barrett can deal with the fallout and litigate each birth individually. 2) Pack the court. If Robert wants to be a politician who writes laws instead of a judge, then he can fight with 10 more unelected legis...
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Question for the SBC

 From the Constitution, Article IV, Authority:  While independent and sovereign in its own sphere, the Convention does not claim and will never attempt to exercise any authority over any other Baptist body, whether church, auxiliary organizations, associations, or convention. What does this mean? How then  can the SBC vote to kick out churches for disagreement with the Baptist Faith and Message? Wade Burleson asks the same question.  https://www.facebook.com/wade.burleson.9
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What Does "Adult" Mean?

 Excerpt from a Substack by O Alan Noble, who writes of bringing a group of teen boys back from Christian camp and driving past a dilapidated building in the country with a neon sign ADULT out front.  And here was a sign that took the good thing they were working toward (becoming an adult) and used it to represent the very opposite of adulthood: being controlled by your passions, lusts, and sins. And it seems to me that there is something very perverse about calling pornography “adult content.” It implies that adults are people who give in to their passions and indulge in their sins, which is true on some level because of our sin nature, but should not positively define adulthood. And it also perverse because we need adults to be mature, safe, self-controlled, responsible and godly. The word “Adult” shouldn’t have connotations with pornography. It should call to mind those higher qualities.
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