Parts of Speaking Publishing

 Our pastor has been preaching on Biblical doctrines of conscience, and he cited a book that I went ahead and bought: Conscience: What is it, how to train it, and loving those who differ, by Andrew David Naselli and J. D. Crowley. I have been reading it.  It is a good and short study on the subject, about 140 pages with discussion questions, bibliography, lots of citations, and readable. I recommend it, and I am not a recommender.  However, I do have some thoughts. One of the authors is a missionary in Southeast Asia, or has been, and the other is a professor at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis. That is John Piper's institution. This second author (who gets first bill on the book) also has a Ph.D. from Bob Jones and one from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. The Bob Jones background shows. But having been a part of fundamentalism, I feel his pain. It comes out in the examples they use.  Some of the examples seem dated, like wearing jeans, others fit m...

 I live just south of Tennessee and actually lived in that state for many years. I am happy to live in Georgia now, but what happens in Tennessee sort of affects me because I go to church and visit doctors in the closest big city, Chattanooga. So we have been talking about Christa Pike.  A woman in my Life Group class who would probably be a conservative on most issues asked why Christians support capital punishment if it is wrong to murder. We talked about how it is commanded in the Old Testament, in general terms, and the government is not an individual and is not a church. However, I left out the important stuff. Really.  I think a lot of us would be pro-capital punishment if it were a flawless procedure. Flawless in terms of the judgment and justice system, as in no wrong convictions. Flawless in terms of not taking decades to execute the convicted person; in other words, relatively swift. Flawless in not taking so much money to house and pay for lawyers for the convi...

 https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/10/artificial-intelligence-human-training-bias/ Readers, I will continue to rage against the machine.  Please skip the AI Overview on Google and go to established sources, especially if it is about ethics or faith. If it's wrong about Christianity, why would you expect it to be right about other religious traditions?

  This one is good--I've got ten reviews in the front and on the back to prove it.   Buy here:  https://www.barbaragrahamtucker.net  (best price, shipping included) OR Amazon Barnes and Noble And a lot of other places on the Internet, including WalMart!

 This one may seem like a rant (anything that starts with "I hate" is at least at that level). I am not talking about the little rubbery covers on soda cans. I am talking about cozy mysteries.  This is not a new feeling for me, but it intensified this week for a purely illogical and unconnected reason. I am in a writing group with eight other people. We meet every two weeks, or actually twice a month, and at this point everyone is writing fiction, usually novels but sometimes short stories. One member is writing what she calls a cozy mystery, or at least a beach read. It has some potential, but from a reader's standpoint so far, it's a mess, and she gives us pieces out of order, or she changes the backstory without explaining it. I won't go into the plot, as I am unsure I really understand it and she might change it by next week anyway. Generally she writes well; I think she is just struggling with this particular vision.  A cozy is defined as (by Wikipedia)  a su...

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptlqXIhkrvM

 I thought about titling this something bland such as "Reflections on October 7" but I wanted to be clear about the nature of the blog post. It is about Israel, murders, terrorism, anti-semitism, anti-Zionism, and Hamas.  This link should take you to video of the "memorializing" this morning in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities.  https://www.facebook.com/reel/1886627422717161/?s=single_unit&__cft__[0]=AZi63azN2l94zWpx6Pw9rDV3bjDpl64vcK0l_YRw6OEmPxLm7vkUTkEiZygxa5pdtvxoPgJ8jBWb3KfM4Ep8xsJ5gEQxoUZdjjJGlG4G7oMT7iZnQ61h0MxBjHkFfq3Hc2iETybX7P1HgExQiBMgaXh5k6XyjCrHCabqYYXppeJQDQRZQ5pr&__tn__=H-R You may have seen this.  Social media is not a reliable door to the world. "It" lets you see what it thinks you want to see. Thus, I get lots and lots of videos and reels and links to pro-Israel material, and relatively little of pro-Hamas. Now, just typing the words "pro-Hamas" leads my mind in another direction. Will it bring people I don't want t...