Picture(s) of the Day - The Alps

A couple pictures I took at the base of the Alps in the small town of Interlaken.

And several that Katie snapped from the train as we were leaving the region.

Alexander

Photo of the Day - Appenzell, Switzerland

I snapped this photo when we had a brief period of sunshine en route to the small Swiss town of Appenzell. It is one of my favorites from this trip so far because I think it epitomizes the idyllic Swiss countryside.



Alexander

Weekend Plans

September 7, 2008

7:30 AM

Mitch Park, Edmond, OK

Route distances: 62, 40, 25 & Family Fun Ride

This is my plan for the weekend, along with studying microbiology, doing physics homework, and writing a quantitative analysis lab report. It'll be my first organized ride of this school year, time to break out the riding shorts :) Haven't decided if I'm going to do the 25 mile or the 40 mile ride yet. Should be fun!

Alexander

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race. - H.G. Wells

News to me...

Part of my post class routine these days involves finding WiFi, be it at home or in a coffee shop, and carving out some time to peruse a number of news sites.  Knowing what is going on in the world around makes me feel connected, as if I'm not just a bystander, but somehow a participant in the many events that are shaping my universe.  Media bias is not so much an issue for me (is it really news that journalists are biased one way or another?).  I try to visit a variety of sites to get a balanced perspective on things.  Some of my most visited sites:

CNN News - Sometimes insightful, sometimes infuriating.

10x10 - A site that uses an algorithm to scan the RSS feeds of several major news sources and then rank the hundred most important words and pictures in news and organize them into a collage.

The Jerusalem Post - A good source of both religious and political news from the Middle East.

ESPN News - Gotta have my sports fix.

SI.com - Still on the sports fix.

The Philadelphia Trumpet - An online news publication that "seeks to show how current events are fulfilling the biblically prophesied description of the prevailing state of affairs just before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ."  A good source for religious news.

BBC World News - Probably my favorite news site.  Provides both accurate world news and off-beat news stories.  Where else can you find real news stories like this and this?  And as a bonus, this fake BBC news story made the rounds on the internet recently.

Alexander

Church Politics...

While browsing a couple blogs I like to frequent, I came across this link to a recent Time Magazine article titled "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals". I found a number of their selections interesting and to be frank, saddening.

While traveling through Israel this past summer with my wife and sister, I spent several days in a hostel in Eilat, which is located on the southern tip of Israel. During our stay there, we encountered a group of college students from the U.S. who had come on a two week trip to Israel to spread the gospel. Armed with Bible tracts and enthusiasm, they would leave the hostel every morning and spend the day trying to discreetly (proselytizing is illegal in Israel) hand out tracts and initiate conversations with non-Christians on the beaches.

However, more often than not, when they were able to actually start a conversation they would be stymied by the questions the Israelis asked them. Their theological knowledge did not go much beyond the basic information presented in the tract.

Talking to our hosts in Jerusalem (friends from Oklahoma who have lived in Jerusalem for over a year now) several weeks later, I discovered that this is fairly common. A short term evangelical group will come over and try to distribute tracts or initiate conversations, but as soon as the Jews start asking theological questions (and they can ask some doozies) the evangelicals have no response.

But who can blame them? According to Time Magazine, their intellectual leaders include, among others:

A man who denies the Trinity in lieu of the prosperity gospel (T.D. Jakes)

Another who denies almost any truth associated with the Bible and subscribes to a postmodern view of scripture (Brian McLaren)

A prosperity gospel preacherette whose teachings lack a solid Biblical basis (Joyce Meyer)

The "theological mind" behind the Left Behind Series (Tim Lahaye)

And on a somewhat amusing note, one of the names on the list (Richard John Neuhaus) is not evangelical at all, but catholic. Huh?

To be fair, I was not previously familiar with all of the names on the list, so I cannot comment on all of them. It was disheartening to me that no serious theologians (to my knowledge) were included.

What do you think? Are you happy with the direction the evangelical church in the U.S. is taking? Do you think that it is creating a generation of shallow Christians?

Alexander

Jude 1:3-16

"Striving to attain the true church and pure doctrine is inherently necessary." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

While this is something I have been thinking about for some time now, some of the thoughts and inspiration and many of the links in this post come from a recent series on fads in the church by the Pyromaniacs blog. It is a thought provoking read.

Summer Reading List

Books I read this summer:

"The Gospel According to Moses: What My Jewish Friends Taught Me about Jesus" - Athol Dickson

"Jim and Casper go to Church: Frank Conversation about Faith, Churches, and Well Meaning Christians" - Jim Henderson and Matt Casper

"Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be)" - Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck

"American Jesus" - Stephen Prothro

"Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church" - James K.A. Smith

A portion of "A History of Eastern Christianity" - Aziz Atiya

The Lonely Planet guidebooks for Israel and the Middle East, almost in their entirety.

Books I reread this summer:

"Time to Hunt" - Stephen Hunter

"Blue Like Jazz" - Don Miller

"Velvet Elvis" - Rob Bell

"Street Lawyer" - John Grisham

"Without Remorse" - Tom Clancy

Books I intended to read this summer that are still on my list:

"The Orthodox Church" - Timothy Ware

"The New Testament Story" - Ben Witherington III

"The Problem With Evangelical Theology" - Ben Witherington III

"The Innocent Man" - John Grisham

"In the Shadow of the Temple" - Oskar Skarsaune

"Windows to Heaven: Introducing Icons to Protestants and Catholics" - Elizabeth Zelinsky and Lela Gilbert

"Social World of Ancient Israel" - Victor Matthews and Don Benjamin

Any good Biblical Hebrew overview/textbook (Don't want to lose what I learned this summer)

My favorites by far were "The Gospel According to Moses" and "Why We're Not Emergent". I'm definitely looking forward to some of the books coming up on my list.  Hopefully I'll have time to do some recreational reading on top of my school stuff.  On the bright side, it turns out that "The Innocent Man" actually is on the required reading list for my Administration of Justice class. Props to Professor Mask.

What did everybody else's summer reading lists look like?  Any suggestions?

Alexander

Break is over

Since arriving home I have taken a bit of a sabbatical from publishing my thoughts for the public to consume.  My apologies if you are a devoted reader (assuming I have any).  I will try to start writing again in the near future.  Since I no longer have any crazy/adventurous travel stories to share, my posting will be my personal, theological and otherwise random musings.