Christian Carnival
The latest Christian Carnival is up at Semicolon. Thank you Sherry, for your hard work putting together this sixty-something entry Carnival!
If you are a Christian writing a blog, consider joining us for the next Christian Carnival. Entry instructions can be found here.
Evangelical Diablog
Be sure to visit our brand spanking new sister site, Evangelical Diablog. Drop by and join the conversation about how your eschatology (doctrines of the end times) affects your Christian walk and worldview, or about whether or not Christians should support the death penalty, and read a dialog on the role of Church and State, Defining Crime and the Limits of Civil Government.
Also let us know if you spot great conversation or debate out there on the web that can be linked to from Evangelical Diablog.
The Magical Power of the Tilde
Students of formal logic know that the tilde [~] is used to negate a statement. Add a tilde to the statement, "All dogs are mammals." and you now have the statement, "It is not true that all dogs are mammals." But did you know the tilde has magical powers? Read Paul Nelson's post, The Magical Power of the Tilde, on the blog, Intelligent Design The Future.
Family Secret
Remember when you were a child and people whispered about the kids with a family secret? It was the sort of thing that never came up when the students were asked to talk about their homes or write an essay about their summer vacation. Perhaps it was whispered that that boy's daddy beat his kids, or that boy's mommy showed up drunk to the PTA meetings. Well, nowadays the big family secret that has to hushed up at school is that (shhh!) THAT boy's family reads the Bible. Read more about it here at World Magazine. (HT World Magazine Blog)
IrisesIrises are blooming here at my house. This photo was taken with a simple digital camera on the close-up setting, just at dusk as it was beginning to get dark. The contrast in light makes it look like it was very dark outside. I love taking pictures this way. Give it a try!
If you want some more nice photos to look at, check out this one at Wittingshire. Don't you just want to hop into that one?
Christianity's FAQ's
That's the clever new title JD Wetterling gives to an old work--357 years old today, in fact--The Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms. He has a great post, Your Chief End, Your Only Comfort, on this catechism and another favorite of mine, the Heidelberg Catechism, (a standard of the Dutch and German branches of the Reformed family tree), and the value of using catechisms to teach and defend the faith.
If you are looking for a great way to use the Westminster Shorter Catechism with your junior high and high school kids, (or for adults, too!), take a look at G. I. Williamson's, The Westminster Shorter Catechism: For Study Classes. My husband and I use the book in our Sunday School class for 12 and 13 year old kids. It would also make a great introductory Systematic Theology course for home schoolers, too. Williamson not only deals well with the errors that the Westminster Divines were encountering in their day, but he also provides a great antidote to today's errors, cults and fuzzy pop doctrines. I understand he has study guides for the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Heidelberg Catechism, too, but I am not as familiar with those. You can get your own inexpensive copy of the Westminster Shorter Catechism here, and the Heidelberg Catechism here, or you can read them for free online here, thanks to the good folks at the Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics.
Thanks for the plug, Dory. I can highly recommend from personal experience all of the G.I. Williamson study guides you mentioned. He was a key part of turning my world right side up that I failed to mention in this week's blog.
Posted by: JD Wetterling | May 13, 2005 at 07:37 PM
Isn't it odd that Paul Nelson and the ID folk refuse to take comments? No one can correct their scientific heresies for them that way.
Of course, no one can correct their theological heresies, either.
Which heresies are they trying to preserve?
Posted by: Ed Darrell | May 13, 2005 at 11:50 PM