July 15, 2016 This Week's Best Posts

Police, Shootings, and Race

Given the events of this week ("A Week from Hell" as a NYTimes columnist called it), re-reading and pondering Lincoln's Second Inaugural address seems well-timed:

http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html

And here is Charles Blow's column with the aforementioned title:

www.nytimes.com/2016/07/11/opinion/a-week-from-hell.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article&_r=0

A somewhat local group of evangelical churches is getting my attention more these days too, and their take on the week's events is worth saving:

http://transformmn.org/we-weep-with-those-who-weep-a-call-to-pray-and-lament-for-recent-deadly-violence/

Their "about us" page is here, for more info:
http://transformmn.org/about-us/

Yet one more on the racially fraught situation:
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/white-fragility-why-its-so-hard-to-talk-to-white-people-about-racism-twlm/

And finally (I hope), this on a view of the civil rights situation from four Christian historians:
https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/evangelical-history/2016/07/01/a-conversation-with-four-historians-on-the-response-of-white-evangelicals-to-the-civil-rights-movement/


Free Speech and Judging
On another topic that never seems to go away these days, the strangely constricted views of "free speech" on so many campuses, Regis Nicoli has written a column that FB friends of mine on both the left and the right of evangelical Christianity seem to agree:

http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo25/speak-no-evil.php

Then there is this inciteful analysis of the judging of those who say "judge not."
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-blasphemy-code-regis-nicoll?trk=eml-b2_content_ecosystem_digest-network_publishes-25-null&midToken=AQGufJ-dBd95HA&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=29UslJs85Zp7k1


Book Lists
Here's an interesting list of books that "showcase the grand narrative of scripture," chosen by Trevin Wax. Worth keeping for possible future reading/gift giving. As he says, they are listed from easiest to most challenging; nice to have that kind of progression.

https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/trevinwax/2014/07/28/12-books-that-showcase-the-grand-narrative-of-scripture/

Rochester related
This is a site that I've had in my tabs for months! It will require sometime sitting and watching the video for 30 minutes, but it is a piece of history I don't want to lose. Dave Beal provided the link at an early In the City for Good meeting.

https://vimeo.com/115804095

2016 Presidential campaign
Maureen Dowd has captured much of why a Hilary Clinton presidency is so frightening:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/the-clinton-contamination.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

Was Jesus white?
Some good discussion on this topic that never seems to go away:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/insisting-jesus-was-white-is-bad-history-and-bad-theology/282310/?utm_source=atlfb

Especially worth keeping is this:

For this reason, one American Presbyterian minister in the 1880s warned his flock not to trust popular images of Christ:

If He were particularised and localised—if, for example, He were made a man with a pale face—then the man of the ebony face would feel that there was a greater distance between Christ and him than between Christ and his white brother.’ Instead, because the Bible refused to describe Jesus in terms of racial features, his gospel could appeal to all. Only in this way could the Church be a place where the ‘Caucasian and Mongolian and African sit together at the Lord’s table, and we all think alike of Jesus, and we all feel that He is alike our brother’.

Health and Fitness
Here's a great summary page about the four different kinds of exercise we all need:
http://www.livescience.com/55317-exercise-types.html?linkId=26347854

Gardening and lawn mowing could certainly fill all four needs if we could do enough of it all the time.


Justin Gray out in OH has posted a provocative entry on FB (with lots of responses) related to white Appalachian poverty. Here is a link he also included:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

I have saved the early interchange on FB in a Word document, 7-11-16JustinGrayonAppalachianPoverty.

Science and Faith
I will admit the flood account is harder for me to fit into my understanding of the earth than the creation story, so this was a helpful article:
http://biologos.org/common-questions/biblical-interpretation/genesis-flood

Technology
Maybe I especially liked this because I've had similar concerns about the inanity of so much that drives our world today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/solving-all-the-wrong-problems.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

In the City for Good--Education
Really relevant article about the difficulty of less privileged parents to have an influence in their local schools/PTAs:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/how-marginalized-families-are-pushed-out-of-ptas/491036/?utm_source=atlfb

Another good item about some problems in programs working to help improve low-income schools:

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/07/nostalgia-in-social-advocacy/374309/?utm_source=atlfb