The images used to teach soldiers to kill
But who is the enemy? The enemy is always the other one. “I never felt guilty about killing people who deserved to die. In my eyes they deserve to die because they are the enemy. I am trained to think that way,” a soldier told me.
Whichever side a soldier is on, in America, in China, in Russia or in Israel, he always believes he is on the right side. And he has to believe this in order to be willing to die. “I accepted killing and being killed. It’s part of the job.”
Have You Taken a Gospel Immunization Shot?
This perspective of the gospel preserves just enough of the kingdom exterior to pass for the real thing. But what is easily missed when matters are construed this way is that the kingdom is all about cultivating an actual life-giving relationship with God, and this can only be done moment by moment, for life can only be lived, and relationships can only be cultivated, in the present. Surface resemblances notwithstanding, the legal paradigm easily misses the life flowing out of the relationship with the King that defines the kingdom of God.
A Christmas Present from the Mainstream Media: Newsweek Takes a Desperate Swipe at the Integrity of the Bible (Part 1)
A Christmas Present from the Mainstream Media: Newsweek Takes a Desperate Swipe at the Integrity of the Bible (Part 2)
By way of conclusion, it is hard to know what to say about an article like Eichenwald’s. In many ways, it embodies all the misrepresentations, caricatures, and misunderstandings of the average non-Christian in the world today. It is short on the facts, it has little understanding of interpretive principles, it assumes that it knows more about theology than it really does, and it pours out scorn and contempt on the average believer.
Nevertheless, in a paradoxical fashion, I am thankful for it. I am thankful because articles like this provide evangelicals with an opportunity to explain what Christians really believe, and what historical credentials the Bible really has. Eichenwald’s article is evidence that most people in the world understand neither of these things. With all the evangelical responses to this article, hopefully that is changing.
The many sins of Newsweek’s expose on the Bible (COMMENTARY)
Even with a generous 8,487 words, Eichenwald reveals he is out of his depth for this subject matter. Though he doggedly advances his predetermined thesis from a mishmash of angles, experts quickly showed online that Eichenwald has not really done his historical homework or read his Bible carefully.
24 Things World Christians Wish North American Short-Term Missionaries Would Quit Doing…
[I won’t spoil it… go read the list! Tim]
RESOLVED: Comments sections need to go
The problem with this model is that while self-policing — think of it as a sort of neighborhood watch for the online community — can work, it becomes harder and harder to do the larger the community grows. In the early days of the Fix, a group of regular commenters — some who liked my work, some who didn’t — banded together to keep the guy typing IN ALL CAPS ABOUT SOMETHING THAT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ACTUAL POST from overrunning the site. It worked — for a while. But, as we added more writers and the traffic numbers grew, the ability of a small-ish number of commenters to police an increasingly large number of “loudest guys on the block” was reduced significantly. (To understand why self-policing fails: Try arguing with a five year old. You will NEVER win. Trust me. I do it all the time.)
Everything ‘Back to the Future Part II’ Got Right and Wrong About 2015, According to Futurists
Now that the real 2015 is not a week away, let’s assess: How much did screenwriter Bob Gale, director Robert Zemeckis and the rest of the filmmakers get right? For an expert look at how the real 2015 will stack up with Back to the Future’s fictional universe, Newsweek contacted a slew of influential futurists—scientists and thinkers who study and make predictions about the technologies of the future.
