Do You Geek Out When There’s A New Episode Of Radiolab? Thoughtful Christian Podcasts

Podcast BearI love pod­casts. I lis­ten to them every day as I bike to and from cam­pus. I lis­ten to them in the gym as I work out. I lis­ten to them when­ev­er I dri­ve some­where and there is no one else in the car.
There are a ton of Chris­t­ian pod­casts out there, but most of them are ser­mon­ic. Noth­ing against ser­mons — I preach a lot of them and lis­ten to even more. I even pod­cast my ser­mons. But there are so many ser­mons pod­cast­ed that it can be hard to find some of the oth­er Chris­t­ian gems that are out there.
So if you’re into pod­casts and are into Jesus, here are a few to con­sid­er adding to your list.
Think­ing In Pub­lic with Al Mohler
http://www.albertmohler.com/cat­e­go­ry/­think­ing-in-pub­lic/
Dr. Mohler is the pres­i­dent of The South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. In this pod­cast, he inter­views inter­est­ing peo­ple about the­o­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al issues.
Unbe­liev­able?
This week­ly radio show from the UK fea­tures Chris­tians and non-Chris­tians in dia­log. They usu­al­ly bring in amaz­ing peo­ple and the host is good at help­ing each per­son put their argu­ments for­ward effec­tive­ly. The episodes feel long to me, but I still come back to it over and over again.
The Andy Stan­ley Lead­er­ship Pod­cast
This one is more min­istry relat­ed. High­ly suc­cess­ful pas­tor Andy Stan­ley explains prin­ci­ples of lead­er­ship in a help­ful way. This is one of my favorites.
This is a round­table dis­cus­sion about the­o­log­i­cal top­ics with intel­li­gent and well-informed peo­ple. Some­times it gets a lit­tle con­fus­ing because their voic­es are hard to tell apart, but it is nonethe­less worth­while.
Research On Reli­gion with Antho­ny Gill
Dr. Gill is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton. This pod­cast is pret­ty aca­d­e­m­ic and can be dry at times, but the best episodes are fas­ci­nat­ing. Two good ones to start with:

Race and Grace in a Broken World

UPDATE 12/4/2014: Last night was our first Chi Alpha gath­er­ing since the Fer­gu­son non-indict­ment — the same day as the NYC non-indict­ment. As a pre­lude to the ser­mon, I gave a more com­pre­hen­sive take on race and the gospel. If you’re inter­est­ed, check out the first few min­utes of xastanford.org/sermons?sermon_id=52

I emailed this to the stu­dents in my min­istry ear­li­er today and they seemed to find it help­ful. I share it in the hope that it will also prove use­ful to you.

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I know many of us are reflect­ing on racism and jus­tice this week. As a fol­low­er of Jesus, I encour­age you to remem­ber that the jour­ney Chris­tians are on is a jour­ney along­side “a great mul­ti­tude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, peo­ple and lan­guage.”

Why should we remem­ber that fact? Because it reminds us that racial uni­ty is one of the out­comes of the gospel. Christ brings peo­ple togeth­er by draw­ing them to Him­self.

So I urge you to think in a Chris­t­ian way about these issues. Here are some resources to stim­u­late you.

IF YOU WANT TO ENGAGE WITH SOMETHING BRIEF

If you are won­der­ing where the church has been in the midst of all of this, the answer is front and cen­ter. I men­tion this because it is fre­quent­ly over­looked:
http://www.getreligion.org/getre­li­gion/2014/11/25/what-role-did-cler­gy-play-dur­ing-fer­gu­son-chaos-if-you-looked-for-them-they-were-there

Thabiti Anyab­wile has some use­ful things to say in this eight minute video. He is speak­ing before the grand jury’s deci­sion was revealed. If you want to read more of him, he blogs at http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabitianyabwile/.

White Chris­tians in par­tic­u­lar will find Ed Stet­zer’s thoughts help­ful —  http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2014/november/deci­sion-in-fer­gu­son-how-should-evan­gel­i­cals-respond.html

IF YOU WANT TO DIG DEEP

If you have more time this Thanks­giv­ing break and want to go beyond read­ing an arti­cle or two, pick one of these books and dive in:

  • Blood­lines: Race, Cross, and the Chris­t­ian (John Piper) [like many (all?) of Piper’s books it is free on his web­site as a PDF — http://www.desiringgod.org/books/bloodlines )
  • From Every Peo­ple and Nation: A Bib­li­cal The­ol­o­gy of Race (J. Daniel Hays)
  • Divid­ed by Faith: Evan­gel­i­cal Reli­gion and the Prob­lem of Race in Amer­i­ca (Emer­son and Smith) [this book is quite crit­i­cal of the church — it is painful but help­ful read­ing]

May you have a blessed Thanks­giv­ing, and may the Lord con­tin­ue to heal this bro­ken world.

 

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This is the sort of stuff I hear from stu­dents at Stan­ford. Inter­est­ing.

Lis­ten­ing to Young Athe­ists, Lessons for a Stronger Chris­tian­i­ty

When a Chris­t­ian foun­da­tion inter­viewed col­lege non­be­liev­ers about how and why they left reli­gion, sur­pris­ing themes emerged.

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This nev­er occurred to me, but it makes a lot of sense.

Our gov­ern­ment will end up thwart­ing tech inno­va­tion and balka­niz­ing the web

…Google Glass + NSA PRISM essen­tial­ly amounts to a vision in which a for­eign coun­try is sud­den­ly going to be flood­ed with Amer­i­can spy cam­eras. It seems easy to imag­ine any num­ber of for­eign gov­ern­ments hav­ing a prob­lem with that

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This is a very inter­est­ing read, espe­cial­ly because most peo­ple who talk about inter­net porn are either absolute­ly con­vinced that it is addic­tive or are adamant­ly insist­ing that it is not.

Was I Actu­al­ly ‘Addict­ed’ to Inter­net Pornog­ra­phy?

Addic­tion isn’t a term to be thrown around light­ly. But some argue that it’s pos­si­ble to become neu­ro­log­i­cal­ly depen­dent on porn.

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The clos­ing anec­dote is chill­ing.

You com­mit three felonies a day

In a book called Three Felonies A Day, Boston civ­il rights lawyer Har­vey Sil­ver­glate says that every­one in the US com­mits felonies

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I won­der if this is true of oth­er dis­ci­plines as well. How inter­est­ing.

Aca­d­e­m­ic eco­nom­ics is more win­ner-take-all than you might think

John P. Con­ley and Ali Sina Onder write (pdf): We study the research pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of new grad­u­ates of top Ph.D. pro­grams in eco­nom­ics.  We find that class rank is as impor­tant as depart­men­tal rank as pre­dic­tors of future research pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. 

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I real­ly do won­der if our soci­ety’s legal struc­ture is unten­able. There comes a point when there are so many laws that peo­ple are forced to ignore or dis­obey that peo­ple must begin to dis­par­age the law more gen­er­al­ly. We are cer­tain­ly there in some peo­ple’s minds — how long until con­tempt for the legal sys­tem under­mines our abil­i­ty to func­tion as a soci­ety?

No One is Inno­cent

I broke the law yes­ter­day and again today and I will prob­a­bly break the law tomor­row. Don’t mis­take me, I have done noth­ing wrong. I don’t even know what laws I have bro­ken. Nev­er­the­less, I am rea­son­ably con­fi­dent that I

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Indi­rect val­i­da­tion of the church plant­i­ng assess­ment process.

Google Inter­view Ques­tions

The famous Google inter­view ques­tions? They don’t work. Here’s Las­z­lo Bock, senior vice pres­i­dent of peo­ple oper­a­tions at Google: On the hir­ing side, we found that brain­teasers are a com­plete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an

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How inter­est­ing. Whether this study is valid or not (I have not exam­ined their methodology/data), I think the approach has mer­it.

The Home­r­ic social net­work

The struc­ture of the social net­work among char­ac­ters in Home­r’s Odyssey indi­cates the sto­ry is at least par­tial­ly based on actu­al