Calvin vs Arminius: the predestination rock battle
Though they never met in real life, what if John Calvin and Jacob Arminius would have gone head to head…. with a driving rock rhythm backing them? Thanks to AI, now we can know!
What Christians need to know about Islam and the Quran (10 minute read)
Muslims’ sacred text has mistakes: “the Quran includes Mary in the Trinity (5:72–75; 116) and also confuses her with Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron (19:27–28).”
Inside the climate cult: former climate activist Lucy Biggers
Lucy Biggers helped get plastic straws banned, she interviewed Greta Thunberg, she pushed the Green New Deal, and she got 100 million views. I don’t know if the former climate activist is now Christian but this interview highlights how secular ideology can blind people to reality – it can stop them from asking obvious questions.
A time to dance?
There’s an old revealing joke about why Dutch Reformed folk are against premarital sex: “Because it might lead to dancing.” Such was the opposition to dancing, more so in decades past, and still to a degree today.
And not without reason. What reason? Well, a lot of the dancing done then and now is, in a word, sleazy. Dance programs on TV feature men and women in revealing outfits, and trying out moves that are sexually charged – bedroom material put out for public consumption. So no wonder that some good godly Reformed parents and grandparents didn’t want the next generation engaged in these kinds of contortions.
But is that what dancing has to be? No, it really doesn’t. The Bible speaks specifically of how dancing can be done in God-honoring ways (2 Sam. 6:14, Ps. 149:3, Ps. 150:4, Eccl. 3:4). So there are both dances to avoid, and dances to embrace. And one good reason to dance is to teach young people rules of etiquette, like how a gentleman would approach the opposite sex and ask for a dance, and how a young lady might say yes to most such initial requests, but also feel very welcome to say no to a second. This would require some education and coaching – every kid is born knowing how to wag their booty – so if we’re going to do this right and refined, they’ll need to be taught.
5 myths about C.S. Lewis
Even when these myths get it wrong about Lewis, they are still interesting, like that he never read a newspaper because if anything important happened someone was bound to tell him. Turns out not to be true, but it did still highlight how Lewis wasn’t a reactionary – very unlike today’s hot take culture, he responded to trends that went back centuries, not seconds.
Something changed in 2010, and don’t we all know it?
There might be some hype to this – this is one man’s testimony and should be taken as that – but doesn’t it match with your own experience? Don’t you, as an adult, feel stupider than you used to, more distractible than you used to, less able to concentrate on the sermon than you used to be? It’s worth noting too, that he attributes to evolution what we can attribute to God’s intent – that we learn relationally.
I didn’t post this to promote RP’s July 13-22 screen-fast, but I can’t help but mention it now. It’s an opportunity to put away the tech for 10 days, if only to be able to assess its impact on you and your family.
