Wal-Mart to the rescue - again
I know that Wal-Mart is much mistrusted for it's colossal size and buying power. Local small businesses fear them. However, the Christian ethos runs strongly through the world's largest retailer and it shows not only in their unashamed selling of Christian books, but also in what (and I hesitate to use this phrase at all in a post-Glenn Beck world) I used to refer to as 'social justice' issues. I guess I ought to drop that incedary phrase and call it 'righteousness-in-society- issues.
First they did what the Federal Government had failed to do for decade: provide afordable medications. Now they are looking out for Joe and Jane Average in the financial services sector too: what they call 'the unbanked or the unhappily banked'. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/business/wal-mart-benefits-from-anger-over-banking-fees.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Good for you Wal-Mart. Good for us too.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Humanity's Early History
Unlike many American evangelical Christians, I have no real problem paying the truth of the Bible alongside the every-deepening truth of scientific discovery. Both are types of truth. Sure, science is a process that often revises and sometimes overturns its own conclusions. So we need to understand that, and not be afraid to embrace difficult of inconvenient truths when the evidence seems broad and persuasive. During the Old Testament period we see God working with the Israeli people as they changed from bronze age to iron age technology, from a nomadic people to a settled people - both huge technological changes.
The BBC do a decent job of reporting about the early history of humankind, as in this latest article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15540464. Sure they often are guilty of mixing their science with a pervasive secular humanist worldview. When they do, I try to read past it to get at the science, without the unhelpful philosophical additions. The Discovery Channel and the national Geographic are so caught up in secular humanism that they just can't get over themselves, so I tend not to read/listen to them anymore.
I believe in all that Genesis has to say about our origins. Genesis isn't a science handbook. The first few chapters are not historiographical either. They are a more profound subset of the History genre - theological history. To think of Genesis as a science handbook is to make a genre mistake, or perhaps even a category mistake.
I'd like to encourage my friends and church family to celebrate the God who formed us over such a long time period, breathing into us every moment, working towards what we would become - His conscious, moral children, the object of His love and mercy and providence.
Unlike many American evangelical Christians, I have no real problem paying the truth of the Bible alongside the every-deepening truth of scientific discovery. Both are types of truth. Sure, science is a process that often revises and sometimes overturns its own conclusions. So we need to understand that, and not be afraid to embrace difficult of inconvenient truths when the evidence seems broad and persuasive. During the Old Testament period we see God working with the Israeli people as they changed from bronze age to iron age technology, from a nomadic people to a settled people - both huge technological changes.
The BBC do a decent job of reporting about the early history of humankind, as in this latest article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15540464. Sure they often are guilty of mixing their science with a pervasive secular humanist worldview. When they do, I try to read past it to get at the science, without the unhelpful philosophical additions. The Discovery Channel and the national Geographic are so caught up in secular humanism that they just can't get over themselves, so I tend not to read/listen to them anymore.
I believe in all that Genesis has to say about our origins. Genesis isn't a science handbook. The first few chapters are not historiographical either. They are a more profound subset of the History genre - theological history. To think of Genesis as a science handbook is to make a genre mistake, or perhaps even a category mistake.
I'd like to encourage my friends and church family to celebrate the God who formed us over such a long time period, breathing into us every moment, working towards what we would become - His conscious, moral children, the object of His love and mercy and providence.
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