the affections of unbelief

Nick Nowalk has a great piece over at The Harvard Icthus entitled The Christian Epistemology of Narnia. Apart from a long and judicious quotation from The Magician's Nephew, Nick offers his own thoughts on unbelief, including this:

it cannot be the case that people fail to believe in Jesus because they are not intelligent enough or incapable of evaluating the evidence coherently.  While sin smears the ways we choose to perceive the world, it is ultimately our affections that are the problem, not our brute capacity for seeing what is there.  Human beings would not have had higher IQ’s if they had not become sinners.  They would simply be more open to the truth in love instead of suppressing it in unrighteousness.  For Christians, the primary epistemological problem is humanity’s hardness of heart toward spiritual beauty.  We simply like the fantasy worlds of our own construction (where we are at the center) better than the real world where there is an awesome Lord who stands over against us in judgment and grace, calling us to account and beckoning us to align our perception of reality around Him.  

downtime & sacred space

Scott Belsky makes some fine points in this article about the need for downtime and sacred space.

It doesn't take much imagination to see his points are all grounded in a biblical understanding of life in God's image, even where unacknowledged.

the transfer of emotion

In the course of an article on Really Bad Powerpoint, Seth Godin makes these remarks:

Communication is about getting others to adopt your point of view, to help them understand why you’re excited (or sad, or optimistic or whatever else you are.)  If all you want to do is create a file of facts and figures, then cancel the meeting and send in a report.

May be some stuff in there for preachers to mull over. In a phrase, his point is that "Communication is the transfer of emotion", not just information.

Was your sermon too good for words?

Why You Can't Express The Most Important Things.

Poison & Wine by The Civil Wars

being a disciple

Watching this conversation with Matt Chandler made me realise, again, that all Christians - no matter what their service - are first and foremost disciples of Jesus.