Odds and Ends VIII

Serious:

• Easter was two weeks ago, and over at Pulpit Nathan Williams explained why the resurrection is so important to the gospel and our faith.
• Al Mohler praises the new "dinner party test" that seems to be reducing abortions in Great Britain: people don't like to say "I'm an abortionist."
• Centuri0n addresses the different forms of apologetics, and why people who can't identify the differences between them make lousy apologists (see key quote below).
• Tim Challies describes Satan's skill at perverting the good to make counterfeit pleasures.
• Centuri0n also explains why our churches should imitate Sonic (the restaurant) by focusing on our famous product and demonstrating its tastiness to the rest of the world.

Funny:

• Dave Barry is one of my favorite humorists, and every year he writes a "Year in Review" column for the Washington Post. I only just found this year's, so here it is in all of it's glory.
• Down at Southern Baptist, someone got pictures of the pick-up game of the decade: C.J. Mahaney, John MacArthur, and Thabiti Anyabwile versus three seminary students. The old guys even won a game!
• Gene Kelley's "Singin' in the Rain" is one of the classic film moments of all time...so of course it was a prime candidate for a Volkswagon commercial parody. Never thought I'd see Kelley pull moves like that...

Interesting:

• ESV is releasing the new Literary Study Bible which evaluates the Bible as literature. Intriguing...
• John Mark Reynolds posted the thirty books he thinks every college student should read, ten books everyone should read to be civilized, and ten modern books everyone should read. I have five of the ten civilized books down (seven if you count the one or two poems I studied of Donne and Wordsworth in Brit Lit). Not too shabby.
• Even telephones can be made into art...for example, a flock of sheep. What will they think of next?

Quotes:

"Many of these lousy apologists cannot identify these categories, and therefore they are constantly in the wrong mode of approaching people with their apologies for the faith. And most often, it’s not that they are erring on the side of being too philosophical for people: it’s that they are usually wielding a very big hammer to drive in a finishing nail, and sadly when they do get the nail in, they often have set the molding crooked, or upside down." --Centuri0n