Daily Links 2-7-14

Good morning! Here are a few links to start off your weekend: debating creationism, time to stop Facebook lurking, the importance of writing letters by hand, and more.

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Earlier this week, the Creation Museum hosted a debate between co-founder Ken Ham and Bill Nye. In case you missed the debate, here's a great recap from Dr. Albert Mohler on what was discussed.

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It's time to stop Facebook lurking:

For all of the good it’s done in connecting us all, Facebook has redefined the way we think about community in a singular way: It’s turned us into a culture of lurkers.

Where actual community requires that its members compromise and meet certain social requirements (like listening, interacting, being in relationship), Facebook allows users to join a community on their own terms. With its filters, search tools and editing powers, it’s turned community into a product that can be customized by its customers. 

We see, react and share only what we choose to. And, there’s nothing preventing us from standing on the sidelines and just lurking into lives we’re not involved in. 

Real community is predicated on two-way communication: The delivery of information and feedback. Though social media applications like Facebook have plenty of tools that enable back-and-forth discussion, scanning a newsfeed and checking out profiles turns community into a consumer experience: It distills conversations into one-way updates, that are filtered into easy-to-consume streams.

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This week also saw the conclusion of series three of the popular BBC program Sherlock. Here's why we love the show so much. After the final episode concluded, I was left wanting to see more. That's what good television will do.

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Tim Challies on the new book The Gospel at Work:

The Gospel at Work is a new book from Greg Gilbert and Sebastian Traeger and its big idea is this: You work for the king, and this changes everything. No matter what you do, your work has value because you are doing it for the Lord and who you work for is far more important than the details of what you do. This means that there is no such thing as a meaningless job and no such thing as a job that is insignificant. 

Much of the book is structured around two of the ways that we can allow our work to become sinful. Each represents an extreme. For some the temptation is idleness at work while for others the temptation is idolatry of work. Some hope to find their significance and worth in the work they do so that work becomes “the primary object of our passions, our energy, and our love. We end up worshiping our job.” But then others “can slip into being idle in our work. When we fail to see God’s purposes in our work, we don’t really care much about it. We fail to give any attention to it, or we despise it and generally neglect our responsibility to serve as if we are serving the Lord.” And, sadly, both of these extremes are celebrated in our culture. 

The challenge of The Gospel at Work is to avoid those extremes, and the way to do that is to work out the implications of the gospel in what you do.“ If you are a Christian, we want to challenge you to begin connecting the reality of what God has done for you in Christ to your job, thinking carefully about how this applies to and changes the way you think about your work.”

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Brett McKay (from The Art of Manliness) on the importance of writing letters by hand:

In our hyper-connected world, with its text messaging and its Facebooking and its Twittering, the good, old-fashioned handwritten letter has nearly become extinct. Which is a shame because when it comes to sharing one’s true thoughts, sincere sympathies, ardent love, and deepest gratitude, words traveling along the invisible digital superhighway will never suffice. Why?

Because sending a letter is the next best thing to showing up personally at someone’s door. Ink from your pen touches the stationery, your fingers touch the paper, your saliva seals the envelope. Something tangible from your world travels through machines and hands, and deposits itself in another’s mailbox. The recipient handles the paper that you handled and they see your personality and individuality conveyed in your handwriting. 

So what keeps folks from taking advantage of the marvels of letter writing? Laziness, primarily. But I also think there’s an intimidation factor in play. Thanks to Ken Burns documentaries in which talented voice actors read eloquent 19th century correspondences, a misguided belief has formed that if you’re going to write a letter by hand, it needs to be filled with ponderous gravitas. Both roadblocks can be eliminated with a bit of preparation and education.

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Six ways to salvage an unproductive day. I've had my fair share of those.

Daily Links 1-31-14

In today's edition: Common Core and reading, faithful thinking, Sherlock and male friendship, ditching social media, and more.

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Lost in the debate over Common Core standards is that they inhibit teachers' ability to instill a love for reading in students:

How did you develop a love for reading?

Ask George Saunders, Barry Hannah, or Andrea Barrett. For each of these writers, their love for reading was realized in a K-12 classroom. For Maya Angelou, it’s thanks in part to Miss Kirwin, a “brilliant teacher” at the George Washington High School in San Francisco. For John McPhee, it’s thanks in part to Olive McKee, an English teacher he had for three years. Of course, you don’t have to look to lauded authors. Most readers, writers, and book-lovers can point you to a moment in their educational journeys where a love for reading was inspired in them by a passionate K-12 teacher. 

However, the ability of schools and teachers to foster a love for reading in students is under assault in today’s educational climate. We live in a time of high-stakes accountability, where quantifiable metrics, namely standardized test scores, are used to judge students, teachers, and schools. Now, we are faced with the Common Core, new standards in Math and English Language Arts that are sweeping the nation. Incentivized by billions in federal grant dollars, 45 states are adopting the Common Core, with some states rolling out their implementations over the last two school years and other states waiting until next school year. 

With these new standards come new tests, namely the Smarter Balanced assessment and PARCC, which are expected to take up to 10 hours for students to complete every year, starting in third grade. These tests will dominate students and teachers’ lives and turn many engaging classrooms into test prep zones. This myopic focus on testing places an extraordinary burden on students and teachers — such an extreme focus detracts from students’ educational experiences and greatly impedes schools and teachers’ ability to foster a love for reading in all students.

This should matter not only to students, parents, and teachers, but to publishers, writers, readers, and booksellers across America. If we want reading to flourish as a pastime and a serious pursuit, schools must be able to devote the necessary time and resources toward reading for pleasure.

Hat tip: Book Riot

The problem with putting so much emphasis on standardized tests as a measure of educational progress is that curriculum then is tailored towards teaching to the test rather than actually educating the child.

The other major flaw in such programs is the inherent desire to treat students as a homogeneous group. As we have discussed here before every student is different and so it should not be unreasonable to think that their education should be tailored to the needs and the learning style of the student.

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Seven observations on church discipline from Thom Rainer. These are some good thoughts on an important topic.

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Sherlock as an example of male friendship. The author is probably overstating it a bit that it's the best example ever but it is certainly a very good example of what male friendship should look like.

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A collection of unique town slogans you are unlikely to see anywhere else.

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Dr. Albert Mohler on developing a Christian worldview:

A robust and rich model of Christian thinking—the quality of thinking that culminates in a God-centered worldview—requires that we see all truth as interconnected. Ultimately, the systematic wholeness of truth can be traced to the fact that God is himself the author of all truth. Christianity is not a set of doctrines in the sense that a mechanic operates with a set of tools. Instead, Christianity is a comprehensive worldview and way of life that grows out of Christian reflection on the Bible and the unfolding plan of God revealed in the unity of the Scriptures. 

A God-centered worldview brings every issue, question, and cultural concern into submission to all that the Bible reveals, and it frames all understanding within the ultimate purpose of bringing greater glory to God. This task of bringing every thought captive to Christ requires more than episodic Christian thinking and is to be understood as the task of the church, and not merely the concern of individual believers. The recovery of the Christian mind and the development of a comprehensive Christian worldview will require the deepest theological reflection, the most consecrated application of scholarship, the most sensitive commitment to compassion, and the courage to face all questions without fear. 

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Secrets of creative success: an interview with Cheers writer Rob Long.

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Food for thought: quitting social media. These are all valid points to consider. Like anything else, you need to be wise in how you use it (if at all). 

Daily Links 1-22-14

In today's edition: the sinner's prayer, a theological toolbox, Sherlock returns, doing hard things, and more.

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Relevant Magazine asks whether the Sinner's Prayer is biblical. The short answer is no. The much longer answer which the article provides is that our focus on the sinner's prayer dilutes the power of the gospel by diminishing the much larger story of how God is at work.

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A Theological Toolbox that every pastor (and for that matter, every Christian) ought to have. I have used the theological triage tool that he references in the article time and time again. It's been an invaluable resource for us especially given some of the issues we have faced over the past few years.

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In honor of the return of Sherlock earlier this week, here is a collection of terrific swag.

A Sherlock themed messenger bag

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Continuing the introvert/extrovert discussion: 7 Ways Extroverts Can Help Introverts and 6 Lessons Extroverts Can Learn from Introverts.

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Why are pastors pulling so many stunts?  Part of it has to done with churches focusing more on entertainment than teaching Scripture.

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19 hard things you need to do in order to be successful. This is a good list to keep in mind.

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