Stuff I Caught Out Of The Corner of My Virtual Eye

Follow these links at your own risk...

• Charlie Peacock on the future of "Christian Music" in CCM Magazine

Christian music’s alliances with mainstream entertainment corporations will all prove eternally less than successful, since they all bet first on the power of the market to deliver results and not the hand of God—something God has never been fond of. (See Bible for evidence.)

I don't like everything he says... but I'm not telling you I think he's wrong.

• #268. Slow dancing with temptation. (The dump, throwing up and your dad.) from the Stuff Christians Like blog

I think about Carsten sometimes when I face temptation. He had a visceral, full body, completely committed response to things he thought were gross. It wasn’t soft, it wasn’t casual. It was big and loud and final. His entire life stopped momentarily while he addressed an issue with every fiber of his being. And that reaction doesn’t feel like how I respond when I’m tempted by something.

Strong stuff - but as usual, he's on target (and manages to get in a couple of great gross-out stories at the same time.)

• Tall Skinny Kiwi on Contextualization - Context: Does It Matter?, Context [part 2]: Between Mindlessness & Recklessness, and Context [part 3]: Between Absolutism & Relativism

I am writing from an internet cafe in the downtown city of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. All the men around me are in turbans and are smoking Sheeshas. I have just drunken a long fruit drink as I contemplated what would happen if I just stood up and starting sharing about Christ without any regard to context. How would I communicate it? What have they heard already? If they decided to submit to Isa and follow him, would they still remove their shoes to pray or wear them like the westerners? Could they call him "Isa" as in the Quran, or should they use the English name "Jesus" and would he then be a blue-eyed blond-haired Jesus? Much to think about. Carelessness kills.

As usual, Andrew manages to drag important stuff into the light without killing it or trying to kill those who disagree with him. Andrew's superpower: patience.

• A barely-there, skinny 19-point margin from the GetReligion blog

Yes, you read that right. In the Los Angeles Times newsroom, 19 percentage points constitute slim, narrow, bare majorities. Gosh, I wonder how the story would be played if the opposite results were found. I know, as Barbie says, that math is hard. But this is truly inexcusable and the Times’ cheerleading in support of same-sex marriage is anything but journalism.

Believe what you want about same-sex marriage - but editorial comment belongs on the op/ed page. (BTW, regardless of your religious background, you ought to be reading GetReligion.org, which focuses on news coverage - or the lack thereof - of religion.)