The Lord be with you and bless you today.

There’s a nice and rather eclectic collection of Kindle deals today. Most of these deals last just a day or two, so be sure to check often.
From Silence to Complexification to Capitulation
Kevin DeYoung explains “why evangelical surrender on LGBTQ is almost never a surprise.”
God’s Glory On The Day I Watched My Husband Save Our Son’s Life
Lauren Washer describes a terrifying day. “‘911, what’s your emergency?’ I tell her our son is choking and we cannot help him. He has Down syndrome. Please, hurry. I give her our address, and tell her we live just down the street from the fire department. On the corner. The green house. He has Down syndrome, he doesn’t know what’s happening, and he can’t communicate to us what he’s thinking or feeling.”
3 Ways to Turn Against Your Pastor
Jared Wilson describes ways that people turn against their pastor. “Most people don’t set out to dislike their pastors. Something just happens. ”
Stop Throwing Pastors Under the Bus
In a similar vein, Brent McCracken wants people to stop throwing their pastors under the proverbial bus. “I’ve noticed an increasingly prevalent genre of online evangelical Christian commentary in which pastors are shamed because they’re insufficiently vocal about this or that outrage or not militant enough in the culture war. Increasingly, it seems, there’s a lot of social media mileage in throwing pastors under the bus.”
What Does My Dog Think I Do All Day?
“If I can’t explain ‘work’ to my dog, I certainly can’t explain quantum mechanics to an ant. They are so small, we barely inhabit the same world. Their perspective is totally different, their senses operate on a completely different scale, and their brains are so very tiny. I submit that ants are much closer to humans in intellectual ability than humans are to God.”
Life Together as One
I thoroughly enjoyed this simple account of two people meeting and marrying.
Flashback: 6 Reasons For You To Consider Writing
The best writing seems to come from those who have developed their talent in writing and then fostered the gift of teaching. Put together, they are a valuable means of serving other believers.

A converted beggar is far more important and honorable in the sight of God than an unconverted king. —J.C. Ryle

There are books you may be drawn to, but probably do not actually need to read. (Seriously, at some point you need to stop reading books about methods of prayer and just pray!) Then there are other books you may not be particularly drawn to but probably ought to read. Among these are books on technology, and especially the new digital technologies that have come to dominate our lives. I’d wager that your phone is in your hand at least several hours every day; I’d wager that you are on social media at least every few hours, often without even thinking about it; I’d wager that you communicate with others through your devices on a near-constant basis. Would it not be important to do some reading about these technologies, about how they are functioning in society and the church, and about how they may be quietly transforming you? What else could form such an important part of our lives yet receive so little attention?

Samuel James’ Digital Liturgies is meant to help you think about these technologies and the social internet they enable. For these are not harmless or inconsequential tools. Neither can they be exactly compared to any tools that we have previously experienced in human history, for they alone provide a “disembodied electronic environment that we enter through connected devices for the purpose of accessing information, relationships, and media that are not available to us in a physical format.” Our use of these technologies and our increasing immersion in them essentially brings us into a whole new kind of world in which we leave aside so much of what makes us who we are.
“Rather than being a neutral tool, the internet (particularly the social internet) is an epistemological environment—a spiritual and intellectual habitat—that creates in its members particular ways of thinking, feeling, and believing. It’s true in one sense that the web is a tool that responds to its users’ desires. But the web is not a tool in the way that a screwdriver or wrench is a tool. The web speaks to us. We talk to the web, and the web talks back, and this dialogue constitutes an ever-growing aspect of life in the digital age.”
What James means to show is that these new technologies teach a kind of liturgy, a series of practices, habits, beliefs, and desires that form us and shape us in particular ways. Just as Christians maintain a vision of the life they want to lead before the Lord and institute practices meant to foster it, these technologies hold out a vision of the good life and then promote practices that will further it. His burden is to identify and evaluate these liturgies to see where they may be opposed to the Christian faith and the Christian life. This is not a book that is anti-technology or promoting the way of the Luddite, but a book that takes seriously our responsibility to live with deliberateness, with care, and with a kind of biblically-inspired prudence.
In the first three chapters, James does some foundation-building by focusing on the Bible’s demand that we live with wisdom. He means to convince us that Christians are called to a way of life that is transcendent but also intensely practical. We are to live according to a liturgy that far surpasses anything the world can offer—a liturgy that the social internet and digital technologies can never come close to matching (but will do their utmost to displace).
The heart of the book is comprised of five chapters that each address a different digital liturgy. Here James means to help us understand both the content our technologies are preaching to us and the ideologies they are fostering within us. “The question is not, Is this technology shaping me right now? The question is, How is this technology shaping me right now?” And so he writes at some length about authenticity, outrage, shame, consumption, and meaninglessness—each of them a readily identifiable aspect of life online. He relies on a wide variety of Christian and nonChristian sources to prove and bolster his arguments. Each of them is concerning and compelling. 
In the end, he really means to convince Christians that God calls us to live according to divine wisdom and that the internet is an epistemological and moral context that makes such wisdom look like foolishness. If we are to thrive as Christians who take advantage of these technologies instead of eschewing them altogether, we will need to know how they are leading us to adopt and practice liturgies that are directly opposed to a Christian life of godliness, wisdom, and significance. Though I have studied these issues deeply in the past, I still benefited a lot from James’ insights and am grateful I read them. I’d highly encourage you to do the same.
Buy from Amazon

I’m thankful for this lovely review of Seasons of Sorrow from Sola Network.

I added some Kindle deals yesterday and will keep an eye out for more today.
(Yesterday on the blog: A Family and Personal Update)
Friends Who Fell Away: When Apostasy Comes Close to Home
“The memories, on most days, seem better left forgotten. Never has remembering sweet Bible studies tasted so bitter. Flashbacks of late-night conversations and time spent in prayer press inconsiderately upon the wound. In that large group, I can still hear his profession of faith echo. I thought I heard angels sing at his surrender. So long we had prayed for his salvation. Now, he no longer walks with Jesus.”
Holiness Is Transgressive
Brett McCracken reflects on attempts to be shockingly transgressive. “Because ‘transgression’ in contemporary pop culture has become ubiquitous to the point of banality. Transgressing gender binaries in fashion, pushing the envelope of sex and nudity on TV, ratcheting up gore in horror movies, celebrating ‘completely filthy’ chart-topping singles—it’s all so pervasive by now that it’s tiresome, as ‘transgressive’ as the khaki section of Old Navy.”
How Unanswered Prayers Have Shaped My Faith
Ruth Davidar Paul considers an unanswered prayer and says, “thinking about that prayer, I realised that it has been integral in cementing my faith, as incongruous as that may seem.”
Where Can I Find a Biblical Reason NOT to Gamble?
Biblical Counseling Coalition has a series this week on gambling meant to explain why Christians should not gamble.
What to Do When You Think a Friend Is Considering Suicide
“Over the last four years, I’ve been invited to churches, schools, and conferences all over the world to speak. What do you think my number one requested talk has been? It’s not the problem of evil, homosexuality, biblical justice, or even the existence of God. It’s suicide. More than 30% of the time, my host wants to hear about suicide. Why? Why is this issue so much more popular than all the others?”
Do You Carry More Than You Should?
I appreciate this article about Jesus telling his disciples that he would be going away. “In the wait, Jesus helped them anchor themselves in the One trustworthy for each and every day. He strengthened their faith then for later. When the time did come for the disciples to bear Jesus’ death, weakness turned to power, grief to joy, and the whole world turned upside down.”
Flashback: Procrastination Is a Failure to Love
…this is exactly what makes procrastination such an ugly and offensive sin. It is inherently self-centered. It is a form of self-love.

There is one song that you will sing every hour your first ten years in heaven, and the refrain of that song will be: “I am so glad God did not let me have it my own way!” —DeWitt Talmage