I just finished watching an excellent DVD series entitled, PovertyCure. In this six-part study, Michael Matheson Miller leads the viewer through an exploration of the causes of poverty, the role of aid in poverty alleviation, and the significant obstacles aid-only approaches create for people seeking to move from poverty to flourishing ...
When my father died, I grieved. My father died on a Sunday morning, early. His hospital roommate told us that Dad had spent his last nightthe whole nightpraying softly for his family, person by person, before dying peacefully in the early morning. Even though wed known that he would die soon from bone cancer, and knew that he was eager to be home with the Lord, it was still a shock. It was still too soon. Death is like that: it always surprises us and it interrupts our lives. We stop, and we grieve.
Imagine my double-take when I was confronted with this assessment of our comparative religions by an Orthodox believer several years ago back in Ukraine: Mark, you Protestants follow a religion of professors, whereas we Orthodox the religion of monks" ...
This summer I had the privilege of attending Acton University. This week-long meeting is hosted by the Acton Institute, a think-tank whose mission is to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles. Common themes at Acton are religious liberty, economic liberty, and natural law. Much like C.S. Lewis mere christianity, Acton seeks to promote a civil society advanced on natural law reasoning. At Acton one encounters philosophers, economists, entrepreneurs, theologians, biblical scholars, ethicists, and aid workers from around the world ...
I had the occasion to watch a six-part DVD series called PovertyCure, produced by the Acton Institute. It is indeed an eye-opening series that Id encourage you to watch. Each part is less than 30 minutes long and is available in the 51蹤獲 Library (BV4647 .P6 P68 2012 DVD). It challenges the effectiveness of the traditional model of helping the poor through foreign aid in regions where there is wide-spread poverty and the economy is largely depressed. This aid can come in the form of government sponsored foreign aid, through global agencies such as the IMF or World Bank, and even from NGOs (both secular and Christian). By the end of the series, I think most would at least pause to consider if aid (as a handout) helps to alleviate poverty, or whether it actually exacerbates the problem ...
My forthcoming book on warfare in the Ancient Near East and the Old Testament not only has many words, but also about 150 pictures. While ancient Near Eastern texts are somewhat familiar, visual imagery remains unknown for the most part. This is partly due to the difficulties of acquiring permission to print the pictures. Some pictures I was required to buy directly from museums or professional photographers (and so I will not be able to post these pictures online). However, I was also able to acquire pictures for free from three other sources. First, I will show some pictures that were taken by friends ...
In a post on his blog, "Jesus Creed," eminent New Testament scholar Scot McKnight seems to agree with some of the findings of Claude Mariottini's book Rereading the Biblical Text: Searching for Meaning and Understanding which argues that Gen. 3:15 is not in fact messianic. McKnight further points out that such a conclusion agrees with Old Testament luminaries Gordon Wenham and Gerhard von Rad as well as some translations. These, says McKnight, conclude that the seed mentioned in Gen. 3:15 refers to not an individual, but rather the sum total of the descendants of both the woman and the serpent ...
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