my burg

Bible reading for March 22 -- 23 Mar 22 -- Proverbs 9 and Ephesians 2 Mar 23 -- Proverbs 10 and Ephesians 3 "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight." (Proverbs 9:10) TWO INVITATIONS (ch 9). The invitations from Lady Wisdom (ch 8) and the Woman Folly (ch 7) are again proclaimed. We hear these voices almost every day, and we must make, and keep making, the right choice. The two invitations are similar regarding what is promised, but the final results are so different. One is true, the other is a lie. One leads to life, the other to death. Those seeking wisdom from God must be humble, willing to receive correction. Someone once said, "There are two types of pain in this life; that of discipline, which lasts a short while, and that of regret, which can last a lifetime." To know God -- to bow before his will and his ways -- this is the fear of the Lord which leads to wisdom.  This chapter concludes the introduction ...

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..."   (Matthew 28:19 ESV) "As the Father is God, so is the Son,  And as the Son is God, so is the Holy Spirit;  And the Three are likewise One God when seen together.  Each is God because they are of the same essence,  And they are One God because of the single principle of Deity. And when I see the Three together, I see only one torch,  And I cannot divide or share out the Undivided Light." ~ Gregory of Nazianzus (AD 329--390)  [Cited by Nick Needham in Daily Readings – The Early Church Fathers ] Image above: an icon of the three Cappadocians -- Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory of Nazianzus.   Continuing this Sunday: "Highlights in Church History", a summer adult class, meeting first hour (9:45 am) in the fellowship hall.  Topics include Council of Nicaea, Chalcedon, the gre...

Here are a few more quotes in line with my post earlier today... "Technology is good, as a means for the human spirit and for human ends.  But technocracy, that is to say, technology so understood and so worshipped as to exclude any superior wisdom and any other understanding than that of calculable phenomena, leaves in human life nothing but relationships of force, or at best those of pleasure, and necessarily ends up in a philosophy of domination.  A technocratic society is but a totalitarian one ."  ( Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads , 1943 , quoted in The Year of Our Lord 1943) "The severance of ethics from fixed values and standards, ardently promoted by John Dewey and the naturalists, has brought moral chaos.  Theological sanctions discarded, the modern man covets only social, and sometimes only individual, approval of his behavior .  The sense of ethical imperative is evaporating from one range of life after another.  The obligation...

Update 9/14/2018 : imagine my chagrin when I discovered that you can't disable comments on Facebook!  Notifications, yes.  You can block others one at a time, but you can't stop comments wholesale.  In light of this I will either disable or delete the account entirely, or most likely, just use it for family, humor, and non-controversial stuff and post the articles I am reading somewhere else...  "Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God."  (James 1:19-20 ESV) I'm increasingly convinced that social media is not contributing to a reasoned and civil discourse in our country.  Recently, a popular (popular with some, and unpopular with many others) pastor/theologian posted a number of theological statements about social justice as taught in the Bible.  There was a lot of material to evaluate.  But social media posts came out -- bot...

Wow. I read "Among The Disrupted," by  Leon Wieseltier, a very insightful essay on the state of humans, information, and technology.  Some excerpts... What does the understanding of media contribute to the understanding of life? Journalistic institutions slowly transform themselves into silent sweatshops in which words cannot wait for thoughts, and first responses are promoted into best responses, and patience is a professional liability. Economists are our experts on happiness! Where wisdom once was, quantification will now be. Quantification is the most overwhelming influence upon the contemporary American understanding of, well, everything. It is enabled by the idolatry of data, which has itself been enabled by the almost unimaginable data-generating capabilities of the new technology. The distinction between knowledge and information is a thing of the past, and there is no greater disgrace than to be a thing of the past. The notion that the nonmaterial dimensions...

Interesting fact: "Irene" comes from the Greek, eirene, meaning "peace".  The New York Times has a great real-time map here that tracks the storm's progress.

...to hear Whoopi Goldberg's take on sexual ethics . Is this how the film industry protects one of its own? See " Whoopi Goldberg on Polanski Crime ".

This is a quote from Marshall McLuhan, educator and media scholar of the 1960s & 70s. He said, "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us" , namely that advances in media through technology increase our extension, but ultimately change us. We are ultimately communicating ourselves, and our extensions become part of us and our self-identity. He said, "With telephone and TV it is not so much the message as the sender that is sent." What was once face to face communication changed with the advent of the telephone and TV. There's a greater reach, but it is only our voice or image. We gain extension, we lose dimensions. McLuhan said, "When you are on the phone or on the air, you have no body." Other insights from McLuhan, who also coined the term "global village": "The future of the book is the blurb." "The ignorance of how to use new knowledge stockpiles exponentially." "At the speed of light, polici...