My ques­tion is the first one. That’s right — I’m an inter­net big shot now. Feel free to tell peo­ple you knew me when.

Freako­nom­ics » How to Get the Best out of Col­lege? Your Ques­tions Answered

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This is real­ly quite star­tling to think about.

All in One Lit­tle Life­time: All Gone with the Wind

A reflec­tion by a great 20th cen­tu­ry jour­nal­ist on the var­i­ous empires and rulers he has seen rise and fall in his lifetime—and who remains stand­ing at the end.A reflec­tion by a great 20th cen­tu­ry j…

What The Bible Teaches About Baptism

African American citizens attend a baptism

I just added an arti­cle about bap­tism to my repos­i­to­ry of essays and Bible stud­ies. It’s a pdf called What The Bible Teach­es About Bap­tism.

Here’s an excerpt:

Why Should I Be Baptized?

“Why should I be baptized?” is a rea­son­able ques­tion, but I pre­fer the ques­tion asked by the Ethiopi­an eunuch: “Look, here is water. Why should­n’t I be bap­tized?’” (Acts 8:36). Get­ting bap­tized is some­thing that Chris­tians do – it should be your default deci­sion for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:

1) I Should Be Baptized To Obey Jesus

Jesus com­mand­ed his apos­tles to bap­tize peo­ple as they pro­claimed the gospel (Matthew 28:18–20), and so we see that he expects new believ­ers to be bap­tized as part of the process of becom­ing his dis­ci­ples.

2) I Should Be Baptized To Identify With Jesus

Being bap­tized is a procla­ma­tion of our spir­i­tu­al union with Christ. Colos­sians 2:12 says that Chris­tians are “buried with [Jesus] in bap­tism” and that we are then “raised with him through our faith in the work­ing of God, who raised [Jesus] from the dead.” Anoth­er way to approach this point is to rec­og­nize that Jesus, though with­out sin, was bap­tized and there­by iden­ti­fied with us, and we com­plete the cycle when we are bap­tized and like­wise iden­ti­fy with him.

3) I Should Be Baptized To Proclaim My Devotion To Jesus

In 1 Peter 3:21, bap­tism is described as “the pledge of a clear con­science toward God” (that’s the NIV: some oth­er trans­la­tions phrase it as “an appeal to God for a good con­science”). Whichev­er is the bet­ter ren­der­ing in Eng­lish, it is clear that bap­tism is an act of for­mal­ly giv­ing our­selves to God.

And so if you name Christ as your Lord and have not been bap­tized, then seize this oppor­tu­ni­ty and be bap­tized.

Read the rest of the pdf.

Hymns To Remember

hymns & psalmsI was chat­ting with a new wor­ship leader recent­ly who did­n’t know any hymns, so I decid­ed to make a quick list of some of my favorites (in alpha­bet­i­cal order, not order of favorite­ness). There are mul­ti­ple ver­sions of each hymn on youtube; I picked the par­tic­u­lar videos I linked to some­what at ran­dom.

If you’re a wor­ship leader and don’t know any of these, you should add them to your reper­toire. You’ll be amazed at how use­ful they can be. And if you search for “con­tem­po­rary arrange­ment of [name of hymn]” you’ll find good resources for mak­ing them sound fresh.

You can find chord charts for most of these at Indeli­ble Grace Music’s online hymn book.

For an inter­est­ing list of the most pop­u­lar hymns of all time, check out The Hymns That Keep On Going.

We host­ed Anne Cross­man, one of the authors of this book, on cam­pus for a talk on max­i­miz­ing the col­lege expe­ri­ence. She did a great job. This should be a good Q & A.

Freako­nom­ics » How to Get the Best out of Col­lege? Bring Your Ques­tions

“Our argu­ment is that most stu­dents focus on get­ting into col­lege, but do not focus ade­quate­ly on get­ting out of col­lege. They coast, or make bad deci­sions, or sim­ply fail to take full advan­tage of wh…

Heh: “the case for epis­temic humil­i­ty remains wor­thy of your atten­tion.”

The world we live in

Both of these arti­cles are from this evening’s New York Times: U.S. to Be World’s Top Oil Pro­duc­er in 5 Years, Report Says and: Text Mes­sag­ing Declines in U.S. for First Time, Report Says Fur…

Lin­coln once said, “I don’t like to hear cut-and-dried ser­mons. No–when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fight­ing bees.” Love the image. 

Book Explores Abra­ham Lin­col­n’s ‘Bat­tle With God’

– “Lin­col­n’s Bat­tle with God: A Pres­i­den­t’s Strug­gle with Faith and What it Meant for Amer­i­ca” (Thomas Nel­son), by Stephen Mans­field He has pre­vi­ous­ly explored the faith of Barack Oba­ma and George W…

Para­graph 7: “When you are a pro­fes­sion­al artist, mean­ing that you are mak­ing a liv­ing off your work, you do learn to say good bye to your work every day.  That is what it means to be mak­ing a liv­ing.  A friend recent­ly told me that this is sim­i­lar to a farmer not get­ting too attached to ani­mals that will be slaugh­tered.  Not a pleas­ant thought, but appro­pri­ate, some­how, as the art is feed­ing us, and my attach­ment can­not be too deep either.”

Mako­to Fujimu­ra | Sandy, Gold­en Sea and Dil­lon Gallery

When I spoke at the last IAM gath­er­ing on “Cul­ture Care,” I referred to the com­ing par­a­digm shift for the gal­leries of Chelsea. I paint­ed a rather gloomy pic­ture. Nev­er did I imag­ine then the cat­a­stro…

Impres­sive: “A new study by Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sors shows that it is vaster than per­haps any­one imag­ined, with 39,900 active for-prof­it com­pa­nies that can trace their begin­nings to Stan­ford. In addi­tion to found­ing busi­ness­es, Stan­ford grad­u­ates have also cre­at­ed some 30,000 non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions. In fact, there are so many busi­ness­es with Stan­ford roots that if they formed an inde­pen­dent coun­try, their com­bined rev­enue of $2.7 tril­lion annu­al­ly would make it the 10th-largest econ­o­my in the world, gen­er­at­ing an esti­mat­ed 5.4 mil­lion jobs since the 1930s…”

Stan­ford grad­u­ates have enor­mous impact

[…] there are so many busi­ness­es with Stan­ford roots that if they formed an inde­pen­dent coun­try, their com­bined rev­enue of $2.7 tril­lion annu­al­ly would make it the 10th-largest econ­o­my in the world,…

Who­ev­er thought of this is a genius of com­pas­sion. The name is reli­gious — I won­der if the idea was brought for­ward by some­one of faith.

The Peo­ple’s Bailout: Occu­py is for­giv­ing per­son­al debt

Occu­py Wall Street con­tin­ues to show that it’s more than just a sim­ple protest move­ment. They have been doing amaz­ing work with Hu