Parts of Speaking Publishing

I was asked to teach life group tomorrow, sort of at the last minute. I am blessed to have a good educational background in Bible study and close reading.   A Pivotal Point in the gospels, Matthew 12:1-14   I am going to start differently today, and this is not to take up time. When you start to read the New Testament, you realize there is repetition in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They tell some of the same stories, and they tell unique ones. Only Luke tells the story of Zacchaeus and the two men on the road to Emmaus who meet Jesus, for example. But all three tell about the feeding of the five thousand, as does John’s gospel. But when you read them carefully and slowly, you see that these are not just cut and paste, but they tell the accounts with different details and purposes.   Last week we read Mark 2:23-3:6 as part of the lesson about the disciples, but this lesson is about the same story in Matthew. We are going to read it three times so we can see how ...

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...

  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...

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...

 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...

  https://www.thefp.com/p/an-emboldened-iran-goes-after-its?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email