Mark Overstreet

Since its earliest expression, followers of Christ in the church distinguished themselves among other regional religions as a faith that meets the listener in their cultural milieu and seeks to explain Jesus in a historically accurate, culturally sensitive way.  Unlike many global religions, Christianity translates and accommodates the limitations of the audience to make Christ known.  Today, pastors make this plain as they explain the Bible and its meaning. Missionaries seek to understand the receptor culture as they go to reach them.

Christians follow Christ in this example, as He revealed himself through ancient near eastern categories of thought among the exiting Israelites all the way to the post-exilic Jews who longed for the Anointed One to come and save.

As followers, how do we appropriately accommodate the cultural and linguistic dynamics of an unreached, unengaged people group?

What limitations should we embrace as we carry the message of hope?

Can cultural accommodation cross the line?

Can linguistic translation cross the same line?

The oldest law school in the West, the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, is defending its anti-discrimination policy against charges that it denies religious freedom. The school requires officially recognized student groups to admit any Hastings student who wants to join, but a group of students from the Christian Legal Society disagrees.

The group contends that requiring it to allow homosexual students and nonbelievers into its leadership would be a renunciation of its core beliefs, and that the policy violates the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech, association with like-minded individuals and exercise of religion.

The college argues it’s policy that enforces universal viewpoint-neutrality.” Any group may abide by the school’s viewpoint-neutral open-membership policy and obtain the modest funding and benefits that go along with school recognition, or forgo recognition and do as it wishes,” it said in its brief.

In the end, the high court will need to decide between allowing the university liberty in setting its funding/facilities standards and the right of religious groups who receive that funding to select members based on their stated beliefs.

Read the briefs:

Merit Briefs for April Supreme Court Cases, Term 2009-2010.

Read the article.

Schmidt vs. Jobs, round three.

Google Developing Tablet to Take on iPad.

There exists a certain ecosystem of loyalty among Mac users. There always has. From the intelligent minority in its early days, PC users characterized Apple-heads as black-nailed tweekers. Today, the mainstream Mac user more likely shops at Brooks Brothers or Façonnable, and the extent of his tweeking is his 2-a-day 4-shot lattes.

Mac has never been positioned better. Revenues are expected to jump 50% this year, and they’ve seen it coming all along.

Jobs and Woz couldn’t pay for better publicity. Daniel Lyons in this week’s Newsweek explodes with so much jactitation, its just plain creepy.

Why the iPad Will Change Everything – Newsweek.com.

Thoughts?

What on earth does earth does Geneva have to do with America? Interestingly, Josh Burek addresses the subject in this morning’s CSM. Here, Calvinism is described as the theological foundation for America’s patriotism, work ethic, sense of equality, public morality, and even elements of democracy.

In fact, he argues, they “all sprang in part from the Calvinist taproot of Puritan New England,” but in the next sentence he rails Calvinism as a “fatalistic and hopeless ideology.” The contrast seems striking, but Burek seems ok with it. Others view the subject with less division. The article is peppered with proponents and opponents of the doctrines commonly called Calvinism.

Either way, the congregation described and interviewed in the article seems less anxious to identify with Calvin and more anxious to identify their need for and love of Christ and His Word–and that’s refreshing.

Christian faith: Calvinism is back

I saw this video some time back and was glad to find it this week again making the rounds:

HT: Denny Burk

Information Technology Services administrators plan to join with Google Apps for Education to bring students, faculty and employees the Gmail e-mail service by the end of this month, said an undergraduate member of the Student Technology Collaborative who asked to remain anonymous because of ITS policy.

Google to run Yale e-mail

From the lists of statistics compiled, here’s a look at the president’s first year in office.

7,949.09—Dow Jones Industrial Average close on Jan. 20, 2009.

10,609.65—Dow Jones Industrial Average close on Jan. 15, 2010.

13 million—Number of people 16 and older unemployed as of January 2009.

14.7 million—Number of people 16 and older unemployed as of December 2009.

7.7 percent—Unemployment rate January 2009

10.0 percent—Unemployment rate December 2009

$787 billion—Cost of economic stimulus approved by Congress.

$10.6 trillion—Outstanding public debt Jan. 20, 2009.

$12.3 trillion—Outstanding public debt Jan. 14, 2009.

$296.4 billion—Federal spending from the financial crisis bailout fund before Jan. 20, 2009.

$173 billion—Federal spending from the financial crisis bailout fund after Jan. 20, 2009.

$165 billion—Amount of bailout funds repaid by banks and automakers.

139—Bank failures between Jan. 20, 2009, and Jan. 14, 2010.

274,399—Number of properties that received forclosure-related notices in January 2009.

349,519—Number of properties that received forclosure-related notices in December 2009.

34,400—U.S. troops in Afghanistan in January 2009.

70,000—U.S. troops inAfghanistan as of Jan. 12, 2010.

319—U.S. military deaths inAfghanistan from January 2009 through Jan. 15, 2010.

139,500—U.S. troops in Iraqin January 2009.

111,000—U.S. troops in Iraq as of Jan. 12, 2010.

152—U.S. military deaths in Iraq from January 2009 through Jan. 15, 2010.

539—Appointments to top federal policy positions submitted to theSenate

352—Appointments confirmed by the Senate.

180—Appointments in top policy positions carried over from the Bush administration.

12—Formal news conferences.

21—Foreign countries visited.

29—States visited.

10—Visits to Camp David.

2—Vacations.

Read the article.

He created all of it by a word. As you consider what this year has brought and the coming year will bring, watch this video and marvel at the work science has accomplished in compiling what we know of this cosmos God created and cares for deeply.

Watch this video and rest well tonight knowing the One who set the stars in space with a word, and who holds their path in His hands–He knows your every trial, your joys, and feels your pain with great sympathy. And, best of all, He wants you to worship Him, believe Him, and trust Him. Enjoy.

The Known Universe

“Patrick Hughes plays so that we might hear the music of opportunity and the sound of potential.” This story moved my family to tears as we watched this University of Louisville, KY, student whose father marches with him in the band. Watch it and enjoy.

(HT: DMB)