In a day of fake news, alternative facts, and politicians regularly not just massaging the truth but fabricating it to their own benefit, the work of George Orwell seems like it was written in response to today’s news. The writer best known for 1984 and Animal Farm was adamant in his opposition to what he called newspeak–any doublespeak using convoluted and pretentious language to conceal the truth.
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Why Doesn’t Mark Tell the Christmas Story? (Part 2)
Isn’t Mark a bit of a Scrooge for not including the story of Jesus’ birth in his gospel? Really! No star in the east. No angels touching their harps of gold. No little town of Bethlehem. What a grump! And what’s up with beginning with John the Baptist preaching repentance? Does that sound like Christmas? I submit that it does not!
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Why Doesn’t Mark Tell the Christmas Story? (Part 1)
The gospel of Luke has a wonderful birth story of Jesus. Every year we even get to hear it read by Linus in A Charlie Brown Christmas special. Matthew adds in the Wise Men but starts even further back, beginning his gospel with Abraham. Not to be outdone, John’s gospel goes back even behind Genesis, before creation, to when the Word was with God.*
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A Story Even Those Who Aren’t Baseball Fans Can Enjoy
Moneyball is the kind of book (as was the movie) that you can love even if you aren’t interested in baseball. It’s a David and Goliath story. It’s story of calcified tradition vs. gritty innovation. It’s a story of rising from the ashes.
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Thank You for Arguing
Arguing doesn’t always mean getting angry. Sometimes it means persuading, trying to make a civilized attempt to convince others of a viewpoint. That’s what Jay Heinrichs has in mind in his Thank You for Arguing, subtitled, What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion.
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Thinking, Fast and Slow
Consider this problem. A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
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The Past Is Always Present
What can you find in Mark Through Old Testament Eyes? Glad you asked. Here’s what some have had to say.
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From Africa for the World
Why would a old, white, North American, evangelical male be interested in the Africa Study Bible? I’ll get to that in a minute. First, a bit of introduction to this remarkable volume.
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A Man and His Metaphors
One of the many delightful features of Fredrik Backman’s bestselling novel is his frequent use of apt similes and metaphors to paint vivid, miniature portraits of the cantankerous and lovable main character in A Man Called Ove.
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Classic Writing Advice from a Dystopian Author
George Orwell published his famous essay “Politics and the English Language” in 1946 while he was working on his dystopian novel 1984. Both deal with the way bureaucracies hide their agendas with convoluted grammar, pretentious word choice and intentional ambiguity. In this way, they conceal the fact that “pacification of the population” actually means “defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets.”
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