The OOC

For those of you coming to tonight’s Movie@Milligan House (and for those of you who aren’t), here are a few resources for additional reading:

• IMDB page
• ChristianityToday review
• Rolling Stone review
• NY Times review
• WSJ: The “Hotel” Lobby
• WSJ: Facing Evil
• The G Word (National Review)
• Ransom Fellowship review

Ok here is an idea.

Over the years, I have always thought that there needs to be a new confession of faith. In particular, one that spoke to the modern situation. This is not to say that current confessions like Westminster are inadequate, they are not. It is to say, that there is always room to reword, reorganize, rethink things afresh.

But maybe this time around things could be accomplished in a different manner. Enter www.oldorchardconfession.org (no, no website yet exists). A wiki that is set up offer collaborative accomplishment of the task. Instead of hundreds of pastors crowding church halls, what about mutiple lay people from around the world, all with some level of access to the wiki? Or maybe just from our own midwestern region? A regional confession could definitely be of value.

Such confession would provide the answers of Christianity to modern questions. Plus, using the wiki format it is not a document that has to be finished “now”. It could take years (decades?) to complete, and that would be ok. And maybe it would address more than the usual topics. Maybe it would address marriage, children, family, work, play, etc.

I realize it is a proposal that would take a lot of work. In particular, a lot of organization at first.

Maybe confession is the wrong word for what I propose. Anyway, it is just a thought.

Who’s interested?

I can see the personal ads being overcome with headlines such as this. Why not? If you live in Canada, the advantages to being “married” should make it a slam dunk. Get married to whomever (man, woman, gay, straight), and then when you find that special person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life (or at least a couple of years) , get an annulment and marry him/her. It’s brilliant! No more filing “single” on your income tax returns, no more checking the “Miss” box on the application. Now you can be married, with all the benefits that brings, but without the waiting for the perfect mate to come along. I say all we single folk band (wedding band, that is) together and make this happen right here in the U.S.A.

The Opinion Journal’s bookshelf column today spotlights theologian David Bentley Hart’s “The Doors of the Sea,” a book that is, as the review says, “a rhetorically powerful and conceptually dense restatement of what Christianity has to say, over the centuries, about the suffering and death produced by nature itself–that is, by events outside human agency.” According to the review:

From a Christian point of view, Mr. Hart notes, such events are quite easy to explain, if difficult to accept. They are dramatic instances of the fact that the world is profoundly out of joint, damaged in deep ways by the fall of Adam and Eve and the rebellion of man. This fall, brought about by the exercise of human freedom, has altered the very physical order of the cosmos so that what God had intended to be a world of harmony and peace, free from suffering and death, is now a world running red with blood.

Anyone have it or read it?

Too much information running through my brain
Too much information driving me insane
Too much information running through my brain
Too much information driving me insane
I’ve seen the whole world six times over
Sea of Japan to the Cliffs of Dover
Oh
I’ve seen the whole world six times over
Sea of Japan to the Cliffs of Dover
Oh
Overkill
Overview
Over my dead body
Over me
Over you
Over everybody

This song, Too Much Information, by the Police, was written 24 years ago. What could Mr. Sting now say with the revolution of the Internet and the rise of the Infoglutarian? The lyrics should probably be sung at the speed of an old 78rpm record if not faster.

Like it or not, most of us who write or read blogs are infoglutarians. We “eat” information on a regular basis and our appetites are insatiable.

There is a lot to say about the Infoglutarian. We can talk about the accelerating growth of information over the last two hundred years. We can talk about the burn out professional bloggers, TV anchors, and radio personalities have faced. Many have succumbed to info depression. Some have left their respective fields all together because they could not “keep up” with the daily information stress. We can talk about how to practically handle, aggregate, dispense, and consume information.

There is so much here, that a book could be written. Speaking of books, does anyone know if Dr. Winter’s book on boredom makes a connection between the information glut and personal boredom? Anyone know of other books that address this topic?

What does the future hold for the Infoglutarian? I recently read an article about the participatory Panopticon. In brief, with the emergence of mobile camera phones and imminent emergence of such cameras in glasses or embedded in our skin, everything can and will be recorded. I’m overwhelemed thinking about the idea.

Your thoughts? And does anyone want to help write a book? 🙂

Off the coast of Dubai, a new development is being started. 300 mini-islands arranged in the shape of the seven continents.

I just made a posting faux pas. I forgot the source which pointed me to this link.

Saw this in the latest ByFaith Update:

“In All Things…”: The Preeminence of Christ in the History of Covenant College, 1955-2005, authored by Dr. William S. Barker, is now available for purchase. Commissioned to commemorate Covenant’s 50th anniversary, this limited edition book features a foreword by President Niel B. Nielson, photographs spanning the half-century history of the College, and observations on all aspects of Covenant’s history. The first five hundred books will be signed and numbered. To order “In All Things…”, send a check for $55 to cover the book and mailing, make payable to and mail to:

The Covenant College Foundation
534 Chestnut Street
Suite 100
Chattanooga, TN 37402

Or, I’m guessing you can talk to that humble, unassuming fellow who sits over on the left-hand side of the congregation with his wife during worship… Congrats, Dr. Barker.

Granted, with a record of 51-47, “success” may be overstating it a bit, but the story‘s interesting all the same:

NEW YORK — As Mike Piazza stood by his locker Thursday, discussing the state of his career — “I look at it and surrender to it. It is what it is,” he said — a book titled, “Your Best Life Now,” courtesy of Carlos Beltran, rested in the adjacent locker, awaiting his eyes.

The book had been recommended to Beltran by his pastor in Puerto Rico. He bought one, and he and his wife, Jessica, began reading it together.

“It’s a good book. It’s about life and how to walk straight,” Beltran said. “I wanted to share it with all my teammates.”

So he bought books for everyone.

“Not just for Mike,” Beltran said.

In case you’re not a teammate of Carlos Beltran’s, Your Best Life Now is a bestselling book by “Houston megachurch pastor and inspirational TV host” Joel Osteen, in the words of Amazon’s review. I had heard that Beltran was a believer, but frankly I’m disturbed that an ultra-wealthy major-league ballplayer is sharing the prosperity Gospel with fellow millionaires. If you’re not entirely familiar with what Osteen, et al, teach, Ken Silva has a good backgrounder.

Let’s go, Mets — to the real Gospel, that is.

Fox news reports today that many couples are choosing alternate pledges to the traditional “until death do us part.” I’m wondering… is this a good thing (i.e., people are being honest about the fact they intend to stay married only as long as it suits them) or a terrible thing (no explanation needed!)? I certainly think it’s unacceptable for professing Christians and probably detrimental to society in general, even if it does reflect what is already a reality for many people (for a good “common grace” explanation of why marriage as an institution is important to our society, read The Case for Marriage).

A growing debate in the world of stem-cell research is whether injecting human stem cells into the brains of monkeys, especially fetal monkeys, could produce a moral monkey. Interesting in a time when many scientists are telling us that we are no more than animals ourselves, they would now debate that animals could become moral with human stem cells. The scientific world has become so very confused – we are all just animals, we are moral beings. Which is it!? The church plant has been conducting a “Questions of the Faith” series and next week we will be discussing how scientists form their hypotheses (are they using pure scientific methods, or is there something else behind it all – a personal belief system).
This kind of debate illustrates just how much our own belief system shapes how we interpret the world around us. Obviously, if there is no God and we are all just animals created from one cell, there is no reason to think that human stem cells would affect the moral values of a monkey. However, if we recognize that human beings do possess some moral values, we have to decide whether or not these values are genetic or if they come from another source (God). If there is a genetic tie to moral values, we should be very concerned about injecting human stems into the brains of monkeys. The human cells could infuse some kind of moral fabric into the monkey genetic code. Who knows where that could take us! On the other hand, if the God of the Bible is real, and “humans are set apart by God as morally speical and are given stewardship over other forms of life” (Genesis I: 26-28), then the debate is over and there is no possible way for the monkey to ever posses the kind of moral values that humans are given by God.