Flotsam and jetsam (1/4)

• Wired Magazine has a fascinating article on the fight brewing over the new edition Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), “Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness.“

At stake in the fight between Frances and the APA is more than professional turf, more than careers and reputations, more than the $6.5 million in sales that the DSM averages each year. The book is the basis of psychiatrists’ authority to pronounce upon our mental health, to command health care dollars from insurance companies for treatment and from government agencies for research.

• Michael Hyatt explains why the iPad couldn’t kill the Kindle.

So how did Amazon do it? How did they compete with the Mighty Apple, when everyone was predicting they would be crushed by a more sophisticated machine? They used a four-prong strategy.

• iMonk discusses Luther’s A Treatise on Good Works.

Luther’s great insight was that obedience to God which springs from faith exhibits itself in the course of our ordinary, daily vocations.

• Matt Flannagan discusses original sin and the moral gap between everyone’s moral ideals and the universal reality of moral failure.

It seems then that this paradox is part of our moral experience. It is inevitable that we will sin. In an important sense we cannot but fail morally and yet we are responsible for our moral failure. On the face of it, there appears only two ways to address this. One is to deny we are responsible for our moral failures. The other is to claim that we can achieve moral perfection. But both claims seem to be obviously false and as such are implausible.

• Stuart reports on the targeting of Coptic Christians in Egypt in the wake of the recent bombing and resulting violence.

• Steve Duby reviews Graham  Cole’s God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom.

• And, here’s a list of 100 things we didn’t know last year.

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Flotsam and jetsam (12/31)

• Tullian Tchividjian explains The Tri-Centrality of the Gospel.

There’s a lot of discussion taking place regarding the essence of the Gospel. People are asking questions like “What is the center of the Gospel?” and “Can (or should) the essence of the Gospel be distinguished from its implications?” Some insist the gospel is just the message of Christ’s substitutionary atonement and that anything else is an “entailment” or a “result.” However, the Bible says the essence of the Gospel is bigger than this.

• Stuart offers another good article reminding us of the terrible persecution of Christians in Iraq.

Two Iraqi Christians have been killed in a new wave of apparently coordinated bomb attacks in the capital just two months after militants massacred 46 Christians in a church in the city.

• Matt and Madeleine Flannagan discuss William Lane Craig, Original Sin and Original Guilt. In the process they provide an excellent example of reading someone charitably and carefully before assuming they’re an idiot. A good lesson for us all.

But really it is the duty of readers to read in context, to read charitably – where there are two possible readings, the one that does not entail blatant contradictions two lines later is probably the reading we should adopt… It is unfortunate that in this case it appears many Christians have failed to do so and are so quick to publicly jump to conclusions about one of their brothers.

• Tom Verenna has an excellent post on the destructive nature of labels in academia.

As a friend of mine once said, “atheism and theism died in the trenches of World War 1.”  Indeed.  If we continue to fear each other, the answers will always elude us and, alas, the past as we know it will disappear to us entirely.

• You can now lend Kindle books to your friends for up to 14 days. (Has anyone tried this yet?)

• And, here’s a list of 10 Unusual Traditions for Ringing in the New Year around the World