July 8, 2016: This Week's Best Posts

Trevin Wax over at Gospel Coalition just posted his "seven best articles I've read this week," an idea that inspired me to re-activate this blog. Why not capture here some of the things that I've found most inspiring, thought-provoking, and maybe, sometimes just too funny not to hold on to?

Yesterday I was looking for a recipe on-line with the boys and they were impressed, as always, by the number of tabs I had open in Firefox. I probably was up to at least 12 or 13 at the time, not unusual on any given day, as I stay on a site until I decide if I should share it on Facebook, make a Word copy to keep in my files, or maybe just add another bookmark. Finally, when I reach a point where my system slows to a crawl, I may take one or all of these actions and then close out the tab.

How much better it seems to move these URLs to a posting here, with a brief comment about why it is memorable enough to be included.

So here is what I hope will be a continuing series of blog posts that may provide a future reference more easily accessible than those other options. The plan will be to open an entry on a Saturday and continue to add items through the week, finally posting to the blog on the next Friday.

I am guessing that I will gradually see some patterns here, some sources that I look to a great deal for well-thought out discussion and opinion. 

For now, a few of this week's posts follow.

With the Fourth of July holiday to start the week, things seem to have gone downhill pretty quickly, with three police related shooting tragedies, two involving individuals killed by police while the third took the lives of at least five police officers while they were defending a peaceful protest of the first two. Even so, some (most?) of the posts will be related to issues both major and minor, that affect all of my daily life too.

So let's start with a few of the many items dealing with the police shootings. This one is full of data,  transcripts of prior incidents, etc., ending with this:

"But ultimately those things simply help avert crisis when a tense situation has already arisen. We also need a way of having fewer tense situations arise in the first place. And the way we get there will not be via policy fixes, but through a rediscovery of neighborliness and, with it, a renewed social trust between citizens and law enforcement officers. So while we should pursue policies that will help address these problems, we must also cultivate again the virtue of neighborliness so that we can begin to repair the fraying social fabric that no longer holds our nation together."

https://mereorthodoxy.com/on-alton-sterling/
Russell Moore is a person whose input I am likely to come back to again and again here, and this post is an example of why.
http://www.russellmoore.com/2016/07/07/shootings-justice-body-of-christ/

" We must bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2), which means that those in majority cultures listen to our brothers and sisters who are directly in harm’s way. Again, those personal viewpoints and relationships do not solve the question of structures and institutions. But structures and institutions are changed only by people. And people are only awakened to act when their consciences are enlivened to the moral stakes involved. That means that we can work for justice in the public arena as we learn to love one another in the personal arena, and vice-versa.The path ahead will be difficult, but it will require the Body of Christ—the whole Body of Christ—to call one another to moral awareness and action. That starts with acknowledging that we have a problem. When the videos are no longer viral, our witness must still be Christian."

Summer vacation and kids:
The first three are linked sites, providing some rich ideas for helping kids read across a variety of topics. While focused on vacation reading, these look well worth exploring throughout the year.
http://simplehomeschool.net/read-the-world/
http://simplehomeschool.net/africa/
https://www.amazon.com/Give-Your-Child-World-Globally/dp/0310344131?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0310344131&linkCode=as2&linkId=2KRWEAGVWTPT5AWT&redirect=true&ref_=as_li_tl&tag=simplehomeschoolnet-20#reader_0310344131

2016 Politics
This year's political campaign is going to continue to be part of these preserved posts. I can only hope that we will look back at this time as something that did NOT lead to a full breaking apart of our country.
The first two here deal with the very troublesome part of the Trump campaign, that is, the willingness of some "evangelical" leaders to look past his questionable moral, ethical, and spiritual stances in so many areas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/opinion/campaign-stops/the-theology-of-donald-trump.html?_r=1
 https://www.yahoo.com/news/transcript-donald-trumps-closed-door-meeting-with-evangelical-leaders-195810824.html

One of the issues that keeps coming up in this campaign is the picture of America as an "exceptional" society. Good discussion of this:
http://www.cpjustice.org/public/capital_commentary/article/1345

"

--> But the attempt to define our exceptionalism as a civil religion with vague biblical warrant is not appropriate. So what is? Grounding our institutions in legitimate spheres, each with norms to guide their functioning. Striving for a just and flourishing society. Using our wealth to assist the less fortunate. True patriotism means being duly proud of our legitimate achievements while being appropriately critical of our limitation."

But the attempt to define our exceptionalism as a civil religion with vague biblical warrant is not appropriate. So what is? Grounding our institutions in legitimate spheres, each with norms to guide their functioning. Striving for a just and flourishing society. Using our wealth to assist the less fortunate. True patriotism means being duly proud of our legitimate achievements while being appropriately critical of our limitations - See more at: http://www.cpjustice.org/public/capital_commentary/article/1345#sthash.Ks3vKQ0J.dpuf

But the attempt to define our exceptionalism as a civil religion with vague biblical warrant is not appropriate. So what is? Grounding our institutions in legitimate spheres, each with norms to guide their functioning. Striving for a just and flourishing society. Using our wealth to assist the less fortunate. True patriotism means being duly proud of our legitimate achievements while being appropriately critical of our limitations. - See more at: http://www.cpjustice.org/public/capital_commentary/article/1345#sthash.Ks3vKQ0J.dpuf

Rochester MN
And of course, I will continue to focus on many things related to Rochester and the surrounding area, considering the many challenges and privileges of the growth we continue to see.

First, "the train." Zip rail and its alternatives just don't seem to leave the building. Dave Beal has a good piece on this topic here:  tcbmag.com/Industries/Transportation/Stealth-Train

Education
Are there really class biases in our society, in our schools? This article gives some disturbing support for this continuing problem:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-class-based-school-integration-to-take-hold/489863/?utm_source=atlfb

Cultural issues
Though the current police shootings have taken center stage, some issues never go away.

The mass shooting in Orlando has provided some insight into the role of gay nightclubs as a "sanctuary." For example: https://thinkchristian.reframemedia.com/when-the-nightclub-is-a-sanctuary?utm_campaign=TC_RSS_Campaign&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=30942931&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9kg3pUY2Lsaj2xtnH52nQdsu7UtXu1hS0oeGXRzXe_w6IULIN0bTSDaL_oBHSOZST1A343AqztPo7mSbZxz8m0ZhOShA&_hsmi=30942931#comments

And, of course, abortion never goes away either. Frederica Matthews-Green is a reliably sensible writer, so her current article is worth keeping: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430152/abortion-roe-v-wade-unborn-children-women-feminism-march-life