Day Bidet #16

Fourteen days, fourteen links:

1. “[Y]oung people are not abandoning religion but reinventing it to suit their own lifestyles.”
2. Clown World and Demon World—always both.
3. “The Spirit comes gently and makes himself known by his fragrance.”
4. Carnivore success story. (Related. Related. Related. Related. Related. Related.)
5. “Either John was an historical witness with the intention of being historically accurate ‘on the ground level of reporting’ or he was a highly creative liar.”
6. Heroes.
7. “Paul’s theology will always be objectionable to those who consider any kind of hierarchical power in principle wrong. … Paul’s views … clash with the modern consensus that freedom is an intrinsic good, and that slavery is wrong not only for the abuses associated with it, but because it deprives slaves of their fundamental human rights. Paul, we should acknowledge, does not hold to this modern conviction, even if there is some overlap in his language regarding the value of freedom.”
8. Related: “While it can be an inhospitable place for many women, contemporary evangelical church life is nonetheless chiefly ordered around the women at its heart. The good man in such a context must greatly tone down his manliness.” (Related. Related. Related.)
9. “These people lie. About everything. All the time.” (Related. Related.)
10. “Thus far there has been no satisfactory explanation of the name.”
11. They told us only conspiracy theorists would worry about this.
12. “[T]he methods of physics don’t capture the intrinsic nature of phenomena, but only those relations between phenomena susceptible of mathematically precise description.”
13. “All leftism is incomplete leftism.”
14. Pray for the persecuted Church.

More:

“Nursing, on the other hand, has always been useful.”

“[I]f Acts 1:18 is ascribed by Luke to Peter, and Peter is only reminding the crowd that Judas, as God’s punishment, did indeed ‘get a field’ as his reward—a field infamously associated with him, his blood money, and his ignominious death—then it is not the case that the verse in Acts is ‘scarcely reconcilable’ with Matthew.”

“The effort to close off and erase these sites is part of China’s broader campaign to turn the region’s Uighurs, Kazakhs and members of other Central Asian ethnic groups into loyal followers of the Communist Party.” (Thankfully, no such politically motivated campaign to erase historical sites exists in the United States.)

“Artistic activity reflects God’s creative activity, and God is the ultimate good. Given theism it is not surprising that the arts are of great value. There is something divine about them.”

“If you’re looking for a place to get rich while decrying the very system that’s allowing you to get rich, America is the place to be.” (Related.)

“[S]ince most exorcists employed magic spells or stinky roots to seek to expel demons, Jesus’ driving them out ‘by his word’ was impressive.”