Robert's Rules of Order, published in 1907. The signature on the inside cover is that of my great-grandmother. Pretty darn cool.

This response, despite the patriotic fervor with which it was proclaimed, has now finally widely been debunked (including a great bit by Frank Rich today in the New York Times). First off, the proposed building isn't a mosque, but a cultural center. And it isn't planned for the "Ground Zero" World Trade Center site; it's actually two blocks away. And similar "hallowed ground" within a two-block radius of Ground Zero houses an off-track betting establishment, a strip club, multiple fast-food restaurants, and several souvenir shops (just to name a few), so it's not like the whole area has been somehow 'set apart'. And finally, what does it say about our belief in religious freedom if, after due process has been followed, we then want then government to prohibit the building of a religious center based strictly on the particular religion in question?

Those points may not yet have gained full acceptance, especially among Republicans looking for an election-year issue, but in general I've seen them make inroads in he past few weeks.

But yesterday on the Christian group blog Evangel, a post by Tom Gilson (a strategist with Campus Crusade for Christ) brings up what I believe will be the next round of argument against the project: saying that if we look at this strictly as a religious liberty issue, we are making the mistake of believing that Islam is simply another religion.

[A friend] views Islam as a religion that deserves the same rights and privileges as any other. That’s questionable, to say the least....

If you think the Ground Zero mosque comes down to a simple matter of symbolism, or of religious freedom, then you don’t understand the issues deeply enough.

Instead, the author proclaims, Islam is a way of belief whose ultimate goal is domination, and that if we don't watch out, America will simply be Islam's next conquest.

On this topic I have heard and seen much from both sides. I have read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's chilling account of growing up in Somalia and her passionate assertion that Islam, as a religion, denigrates women. I have also heard first-hand from a Zimbabwean Christian pastor who warned that the Islam he encountered in Africa was intent on conquest. But by the same token I have worked for many years alongside Muslims who are gentle, family men, who had no aspirations but to provide for their families and to live here peaceably as neighbors and friends. (And, let's face it, I can no more fairly hold all Muslims responsible for 9/11 than they can fairly hold all Christians responsible for Timothy McVeigh, Aryan separatists, and, oh, the Crusades.)

The more I think on this subject, the more I am convinced that once again right-wing Christians like Mr. Gilson have mixed up their politics with their religion and gotten it wrong. Nowhere does the Bible instruct us to protect our turf, to repel the unbelieving alien, and to presciently foil those who might intend to persecute us. But it does instruct us, often, to love our neighbors. To turn the other cheek when wronged. It reminds us over and over that our battles are spiritual battles, not physical ones. That Jesus already is Lord, and that we need not fear what mortal men can do to us.

We should stop fighting new mosques at every opportunity, and stop making enemies of dear people for whom Christ died. Instead, we should follow Christ's command and love them.

It's time to apply Jesus' teaching about giving both coat and cloak. If someone comes and says 'give us land to build a mosque', don't just give the land; also bring cold water (in the name of Jesus) to those who are laboring to build it.

Quoting David Wells, he further adds:

And the further irony is that the younger generations who are less impressed by whiz-bang technology, who often see through what is slick and glitzy, and who have been on the receiving end of enough marketing to nauseate them, are as likely to walk away from these oh-so-relevant churches as to walk into them.

McCracken concludes that "cool Christianity" is not a "sustainable path forward", and that, "when it comes to church, [twentysomethings] don't want cool as much as we want real".

It's worth reading the whole post. I, for one, give him a hearty Amen.

So, here are my first set of recommended articles. The topics vary, but each has given me some interesting reading over the past few weeks.

Ten of the Greatest Maps that Changed the World - The Daily Mail

A fascinating look at 10 maps from history that had significant cultural impact.

A Review of Ken Ham's "The Six Days of Creation" - Daniel Jepsen, Franklin Community Church

I grew up with Ken Ham's position on creation being the default "correct" position. I remember watching his videos in Sunday School when I was in high school. One of the things I've been wrestling with now is how to best understand Genesis 1 - 3 in context, within its genre, and how to make sense of the apparently ancient universe we see around us. (This challenge has only been heightened now that I have a six-year-old who is fascinated with dinosaurs.)

This particular review is a fair (though brutal) assessment of one of Ken Ham's videos. Worth a read.

What Social Science Does -- and Doesn't -- Know - Jim Manzi, City Journal

A fascinating read on how difficult it is to get any useful results from social science studies. (Primary reason: so many influences, so hard to isolate to a single one for a study.)

Simply Lewis - N. T. Wright in Touchstone Magazine.

N. T. Wright's thoughts on C. S. Lewis and Mere Christianity. A humble and yet not deferential critique of Lewis's classic work. The gracious concluding paragraph:

And, as another imperfect apologist, I salute a great master, and can only hope that in sixty years’ time children yet unborn will say of me that, despite all my obvious and embarrassing failings, I too was used, in however small a way, to bring people under the influence and power, and to the love and kingdom, of the same Jesus Christ.

More links later. Have fun reading!

I have such a great bunch of siblings. Three brothers who are godly men, working hard and making their way on both ends of the country and in the middle. (Andrew & Heather are in Washington; Ryan is in Brooklyn, NY; Aaron and Emily are in Wisconsin.) One little sister who is just a shade (OK, maybe a little more than a shade) spoiled by her big brothers but who can keep up with all of us, anytime, anywhere. Mom and Dad came down from Wisconsin for the day, too, so we had lots of fun and frivolity and food. Much Mario Kart was played, many hot dogs were consumed, and much shrieking was heard from the girls as they ran between parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunt.

Clever and cheesy wordplay seems to be a hallmark of our family gatherings. We have a predisposition for puns and a love of mangling phrases. One such highlight from the visit is worth repeating, if only as an illustration.

Andrew, talking to Ryan, mentioned something about a "love cube". I have no idea what that meant. However, it immediately made me think of the song "Love Shack", so I started singing a twisted version:

"The love cube is a polygon where... we can get together..."

OK, yeah, cheesy. They indulged me with a chuckle. But then Ryan, per usual, came up with a retort.

"So, if you were involved in that love cube polygon thing, would you be... a... 'polygonist'?"

Groan.

Anyhow, it was a great blessing to have everybody under one roof, if only for a day. God is good.

Top row, L-R: Andrew, Rebecca, Ryan
Middle row, L-R: Dad, Mom, Chris, Katie (being held), Becky, Aaron, Emily
Bottom row: Addison, Laura
(click to see a bigger image)

• Fulcrum: The Scriptures, The Hope and The Mutual Welcome - N. T. Wright's farewell sermon
  "...I trust that in these seven years I have laid to rest any suggestion that to be interested in social justice you have to deny the resurrection of Jesus, or that to be interested in eternal salvation you have to treat the world as irrelevant. When I spoke in the Lords a few months ago about the future use of our massive and untapped coal stocks here in the north-east, I had Radio Newcastle on the phone. What, they wanted to know, was a bishop doing talking about coal? Fortunately Psalm 24 came straight to mind. Well, I replied, in the good book it says that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, and you can’t get much more fullness of the earth than all that coal down there. That’s why the Miners’ Gala which we celebrated last weekend remains so important to us here in Durham. God and creation belong together. In Isaiah’s vision, in Paul’s exposition, they belong exactly together. The root of Jesse, Paul declares – in a letter to Rome of all places! – ‘rises to rule the nations’. The resurrection serves notice on Caesar that his time is up, that he is reduced to a secondary role – still important, but strictly limited; and every act of justice and mercy puts that victory into practice. "

• Maybe You Deserve to be Persecuted! | 9Marks
  So I sometimes talk to my church about the "ministry of being normal". As believers, we are necessarily going to have a lot of distance between us and those who don't follow Christ. We live differently, love differently, hope differently. We're citizens of a different country.

  But it might be helpful if we limit the distance between us and the world in a lot of other ways. We don't have to flaunt our lack of a TV and be weird and preachy about grinding your own grain. That only serves to put unnecessary distance between us and the people we're trying to reach. Instead, we should try to engage the world around us, know what our neighbors care about, and try to inhabit the same universe they do.

  If they are going to persecute us, let us at least be for things that really have something to do with being a Christian.

I love you Becky! Here's to the next three dozen years!

With "D'oh!", a standard written form of the word was quickly propagated by means of episode titles of The Simpsons. The past few years, though, have introduced a new interjection with much less apparent standardization. I'm talking, of course, about Tina Fey's portrayal of the character Liz Lemon on the popular NBC sitcom 30 Rock, and her exclamation of disgust that Wikipedia appears to have settled on spelling "blerg".

Anyone surfing the web in the past couple of years will have encountered any number of variant spellings, all apparently based around the various authors' ideas of how it should be spelled. Google is of great help in honing in on the popular options.

'Blergh' - about 94,700 results.

Adding an 'h' to the end is a popular way to go - Blergh is quickly found on this budgeting website and as the name of the self-proclaimed "official boy band of the 21st century", an Aussie group whose Facebook page, as of today, boasts 17 fans.

'Blerg' - about 47,500 results.

This comes as a bit of a surprise, given that this is the spelling that Wikipedia has settled on. The Liz Lemon page on Wikipedia provides some insight into usage: "Liz also has a tendency to say the words "blerg" and "nerds" as a replacement for swear words."

'Blurg' - about 170,000 results

It is apparent that the English-speaking world thinks that the /ur/ spelling is more intuitive than the /er/. Additional popularity for this spelling is evidenced by blogs named with this spelling, for instance blurg.tumblr.com and blurg.wordpress.com, and the fact that my wife uses it in all of her instant message sessions. (No major blog links showed up for the first two spellings. Grab 'em while you can!)

'Blurgh' - about 214,000 results

What is it with the added 'h'? This hefty spelling appears to be the most popular, and has the added weight of being the spelling used by Tina Fey when she wrote about it on the 30 Rock blog.

A hint as to the fictional origin of the word can be seen in a shot from the Pilot episode of 30 Rock where this pile of unassembled Ikea-esque furniture is shown in Liz Lemon's apartment:

Come to think of it, I might use the name of pesky assemble-it-yourself furniture as a swear word, too, if I were coining words. Using the ë, though, makes it a little bit tough to type. As for me, I'll stick with 'blerg'.

What would it look like if we were forced to go back to attending local community churches? How would it affect our view of what was necessary in a church and what things were "essentials"?

Say gas prices spiked to the point where we couldn't afford to drive the 10 miles each way to our church of choice. Our choices are now walking or riding bicycles on Sunday morning. In my neighborhood, that would limit my choices to four churches, one Catholic, one United Church of Christ, one "Community of Christ" (which I know very little about) and one Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

In our 2008 church search (not limited by driving distance) we didn't really consider any Lutheran churches; would a walking-distance limit change my mind? Probably, given my options. Another possibility: would we canvas the neighborhood to see if there were other like-minded evangelicals who wanted to meet in a house church with us? Seems like an option, but it also seems somewhat fractured and silly given that there's a LCMS church in the neighborhood.

See how quick the criteria changes? All of a sudden I'm thinking about what might be "good enough" rather than finding the church that's exactly what I want. So what I've proved (to myself, at least) here is that in my non-distance-limited church choosing I've unconsciously made a tradeoff, choosing a church that more closely aligns with my doctrinal and worship style comfort zone above a local church that would have me going to worship with my neighbors.

This isn't an unusual trade-off; it's one that our suburban culture has widely adopted. Gas is (relatively) cheap, driving everywhere is natural, and so we spend time in the car to associate, or shop, or worship, with those of our choosing rather than those of our neighborhood. And this post isn't really all that different from a slew of other blog posts and books wrestling with the suburban culture and longing for a true local community.

But it's a challenging exercise to think through. What churches would you have as options? What would you do?