Blog, page 14

Jerry Useem in The Atlantic:

Conventional wisdom has it that the Cubs are either cursed—by a billy goat, a black cat, a fan whose name we shall not speak—or, less cosmically, just plain unlucky. But are they really? A University of Chicago economist, Tobias Moskowitz, asked the same question a few years back and arrived at a startling conclusion: The main source of the Cubs’ curse was the fans themselves.

They are too loyal.

City Lab:

The situation [post-Brexit vote] is so tense and surreal that in the aftermath of the referendum result, over 178,000 people have signed a petition demanding that London become an independent city-state.

Talk of city-as-state continues for a number of reasons, including: cities routinely produce an outsized proportion of surrounding regions’ culture, politics, and economy; agriculture’s mechanization and subsidization; and cities are often able to simply get things done in practical ways that elude federal and state governments.

Much of what is said here about London could also be said for many cities around the world in relation to their countries or regions. And in the US, many states have one or two cities that represent most of their “GDP.”

Richard Florida in City Lab:

In the end, mapping neighborhood change in both cities underlines the fact that wealth is no longer relegated to the suburbs, nor is poverty a characteristic of the city alone. As a result, the terms “urban” and “suburban” are less helpful now than they were previously. Today’s city is made up of a much more complicated intermixing of neighborhood DNA.

The story of the gentile woman’s encounter with Jesus in Mark 7:24-30 has been called one of the most difficult biblical passages about the life of Christ. Recently, while reading and re-reading chapter 7, I realized that the story of the gentile woman stands starkly against the immediately preceding story of Jesus’ confrontation with some Pharisees (Mark 7:1-23).

It is a study in contrasts:

A study in contrasts

The two episodes are back-to-back, and they are almost perfectly mirrored:

The pharisees spend days traveling to get to Jesus. In contrast, Jesus spends days traveling and gets to the gentile woman.

The pharisees come from Jerusalem, religious elites from the epicenter of first-century hebrew elitism. In contrast, Jesus goes to the outskirts, the territory of the outsider, Tyre and Sidon, largely inhabited by gentiles.

The pharisees purpose is to correct Jesus on the finer points of religious ceremony. In contrast, the gentile woman’s purpose is to plead with Jesus for the life of her daughter.

Borrowing Jesus’ illustration of a family meal, the pharisees’ presume themselves sons at God’s table. In contrast, the gentile woman presumes herself lowly before Jesus.

The pharisees receive unequivocal rebuke. In contrast, the gentile woman receives everything she asked for — bread from God’s table.

These contrasts demonstrate some of the fundamentals of the Christian good news:

• Humans are universally needy: Everyone is needy before the God, whether they know it or not. In fact, “knowing it” repeatedly appears to be prerequisite to one’s need being satisfied.1
• Being good enough is a fairy tale: Adhering to a code of conduct — be it ceremonial washings or sharing your ice cream — is not enough and will never be enough merit a place at the King’s table. Or stated differently, anyone approaching Jesus is like the poor begging for bread. Asking for what you don’t have is categorically different than laying claim to what you’ve earned.
• Jesus’ generosity knows no favoritism: In Jesus’ household, the “children” and the “dogs” alike eat the best food.2
• Jesus’ goodness is prodigious Jesus’ table is so abundant that even crumbs satisfy the most desperate appetite.3

Fareed Zakaria:

Economic issues affect the head. Identity issues hit the heart.

More than anyone in American television news, Zakaria’s reporting and interviewing consistently account for the cultural aspects of current events.

Timothy Keller in Generous Justice:

In both the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus delivers a famous discourse, which is usually called the Sermon on the Mount. For centuries readers have acknowledged the beauty of its high ethical standards. What is not noticed very often is how Jesus weaves into a whole cloth what we would today call private morality and social justice. Along with the well-known prohibitions against sexual lust in the heart, adultery, and divorce there are calls to give to the poor (Matthew 6:1-4) and to refrain from overwork and materialism (Matthew 6:19-24).

In Western society these sets of concerns have often been split off from one another. In fact, each of America’s two main political parties has built its platform on one of these sets of ethical prescriptions to the near exclusion of the other. Conservatism stresses the importance of personal morality, especially the importance of traditional sexual mores and hard work, and feels that liberal charges of racism and social injustice are overblown. On the other hand, liberalism stresses social justice, and considers conservative emphases on moral virtue to be prudish and psychologically harmful. Each side, of course, thinks the other side is smug and self-righteous.¹

This book isn’t brand new, but this (and much more therein) are remarkably applicable to present rhetoric and crises.

I recently heard a recording of a pastor with decades of experience say that the passage in Mark 7:24-30 is one of the most difficult passages about Jesus in the entire Bible.¹ This was also the passage from which we read a few weeks ago at our local church. How does one defend Jesus’ apparent ethnocentrism directed at a marginalized mother who is desperate to find a cure for her child?

Confronting difficult passages is, well, difficult. But this difficulty presents some important points. Here are three good things about difficult Bible passages:

1. We learn about veracity of the Bible. In other words, a difficult passage about the life of Jesus (or of any other Biblical “hero”) reinforces the historicity of the documents, because this is exactly the kind of thing that writers of hagiography or fiction would avoid.2
2. We learn about our church’s relationship to the Bible. A church leadership that routinely walks paragraph-by-paragraph through a biblical book demonstrates a posture of humility and submission to the Bible’s authority. In other words, verse-by-verse progression provides a practical demonstration of a church doing its best to simply take God at his word. It’s the difference between asking, “What does the Bible say?” and, “How can I make the Bible say what I want to say?”3
3. We learn about our own biases. It’s important to recognize that when it comes to the Bible, “difficult” almost always means, “contrary to the norms, presuppositions, or expectations of my own culture.” No single culture or people group finds all of the Bible’s teaching attractive — not even the cultures recorded in the Bible itself! The fact that the very passage that you find “so difficult” is one that millions of others find “so obvious” (and vice versa) is both humbling and heartening.

We don’t dodge Mark 7:24-30. We read it. We meditate on it. We discover that we needn’t defend Jesus at all, at least not in the way we originally feared: compelled to “explain away” or “spin” his words with present-day categories that have nothing to do with the original intent of the passage. Instead, we discover that the sum total of Jesus’ action with the woman in Mark 7 is like his action with us: offering bread (himself) that was never deserved.

So before gritting your teeth or quickly scanning to the next chapter heading, remember that there are (at least!) three very good things about encountering difficulty in the Bible.

“…you live in a narcissistic echo chamber!” That would be true, if the digital world were the only world. But it’s not. I listen to my wife, my friends, my co-workers, my secretary, my elders, the members of my church, the members of my presbytery, and on and on.

I resonate with virtually everything Kevin DeYoung writes here about engaging — or not — the twitterverse, blogosphere, Facebook black hole, etc.

Rosaria Butterfield on TGC with three things the average Christian doesn’t understand about the LGBT community.

Redemptive personal story and teaching from Sam Allberry.

McKinsey projection for 2025:

Six hundred cities… are projected to generate more than 60 percent of global growth to 2025.

Dan Pelino’s projection for 2050 (emphasis mine):

70 percent of the world’s population will live in just 200 cities by the year 2050. And these cities will then boast 75 percent of the skilled labor in the world and 91 percent of the global economy.

So what do the numbers tell us about the future of megacities? For one thing, it’s clear that the most rapid growth is taking place in countries that still have large rural hinterlands and relatively young populations.

Good thoughts from Logan Greer and Kevin Greer:

As the small group leader, you are a discussion facilitator, a firefighter (diffusing drama as needed) and occasionally a teacher — but only occasionally. It is important to learn to ask the right questions as well as know how to guide discussion with the students’ answers.

Dr. Shawn Okpebholo on composition:

[I was] energized by my devotion to Christ and his church, recognizing that the gift music is not limited to one era or to one region of the world. So as a Christian, I could not help but explore.