Friday in the Wild: February 9, 2024

It's Friday, and that means it's time for the weekly roundup of good stuff from around the blogosphere. I've got three articles this week.

Friday in the Wild: January 26, 2024

Last week's Friday in the Wild was a long one; conversely, this week's is short, as was my time for reading blogs.

Friday Saturday in the Wild: January 20, 2024

Welcome to the first Friday in the Wild of 2024! Between the Christmas holidays and a lingering cold, it's been a while. But I've been collecting links for the past couple of weeks nonetheless, so rather than waste them, this will just be a longer installment than usual. (I'm also a day late due to time constraints—but hopefully not a dollar short.)

Friday in the Wild: December 22, 2023

Happy Friday! After a couple of dry weeks, and now being away from home for the Christmas season, I wasn’t sure that there’d be a Friday in the Wild this week, either. Nonetheless, the Internet came through.

In today’s A la Carte post, Tim Challies linked to his 2014 post about the two kinds of blog—content creation and content curation—and why he started doing both. He writes, “I am a pretty normal person and have pretty normal tastes. If I find it interesting and worthy of a few minutes of time and attention, I suppose other people are likely to as well.” I highlight this because that’s basically my philosophy, also. If I find something interesting or helpful or funny, probably someone else will, too.

Friday at home: December 15, 2023

Last week I was unexpectedly out most of the day and evening and didn't get a chance to post. This week I spent a few days under the weather and in no condition to get out of bed, let alone look at blogs.

I'm trying, honest. Next week!

Friday in the wild: December 1, 2023

Years, ago, I used to fill out space on the Crusty Curmudgeon with a series I titled "Friday in the Wild," for showcasing blog articles from the previous week or so that I found interesting or thought-provoking. Now that I'm blogging more enthusiastically again, I thought it was appropriate to reboot it. It gets me writing … but it also gets me reading. So I present Friday in the Wild for the first time since 2014.

Friday in the wild: October 3, 2014

I haven't done a Friday in the Wild for a few weeks, so while it might look like I'm playing catch-up, it is in fact a doozy of a week. Lots of interesting stuff to share. So, without further ado:

Come Reason posted this about the rise in relativism in Christian youth:

This kind of thinking is how tyranny is born. If one cannot tell another his actions are evil, then they will continue until those that would dare to oppose immorality are themselves labelled as immoral. . . . And now, the kids we send to college hold not the belief that they cannot stand their moral ground, but that they should not stand their moral ground, because to do so is itself an immoral act!

[Read The Epidemic of Relativism Among Christian Youth]

Woe unto anyone who declares woe unto anyone.

Friday in the wild: August 15, 2014

It's that time of the week again! Friday, that is, when I give a little love to my parochial little slice of the Internet by sharing some of my favourite links for the week.

Last fall, KJV-onlyist and net.crank Steven Anderson sat down with James White for a two-and-a-half-hour interview about the translation and transmission of the Bible, for a documentary titled New World Order Bible Versions. He promptly abused the interview by using a snippet of it in the trailer, making White look ominious, with spooky music and everything.

However, he did promise to make the full interview available, and as White says, he kept his word. I've been holding off watching the documentary until this came along. It looks like Anderson is trying to position himself as the next Gail Riplinger or KJV-only darling. Frankly, I'll always fondly remember him as the perpetrator of the infamous "pisseth against the wall" sermon, or the crackpot who antagonized border guards and screamed like a little girl when he got detained and tazed. Fast forward to about 1:00, and enjoy:

Friday in the wild: August 8, 2014

In this week's edition of Friday in the Wild, our focus is on the ongoing ebola outbreak in Africa&mdash: particularly, the response to Ann Coulter's column this week, titled "Ebola Doc's Condition Downgraded to 'Idiotic'," in which she writes, in part:

Whatever good Dr. Kent Brantly did in Liberia has now been overwhelmed by the more than $2 million already paid by the Christian charities Samaritan's Purse and SIM USA just to fly him and his nurse home in separate Gulfstream jets, specially equipped with medical tents, and to care for them at one of America's premier hospitals. . . .

If Dr. Brantly had practiced at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles and turned one single Hollywood power-broker to Christ, he would have done more good for the entire world than anything he could accomplish in a century spent in Liberia. Ebola kills only the body; the virus of spiritual bankruptcy and moral decadence spread by so many Hollywood movies infects the world.

Coulter's argument is a utilitarian one: the right thing to do is the one that maximizes the good done to the greatest number of people. Dr. Brantly's time and effort (and Samaritan's Purse's dollars) are, supposedly, better spent on home soil where they will bring a better return on investment. But Christian missions are not founded on a utilitarian worldview, but on a Christian one: the glory of God and his Son, Jesus Christ, through obedience to his great commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19)—not just movie moguls in the United States. Coulter's column is not only utilitarian and cynical, but it smacks of xenophobia as well.

Friday in the wild: July 25, 2014

Like or hate Matt Walsh's opinions, you have to commend his rhetorical skills. His latest, about the impending release of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie, was a joy to read from start to finish.

My favourite part:

Today, someone on Facebook quoted a line from the novel:

"Finally, my medulla oblongata recalls its purpose, I breathe."

I thought this was a joke, so I looked it up.

Nope. Not a joke. Completely real. That line actually appears in a best selling piece of literature. That line was written by someone masquerading as an author, approved by someone masquerading as an editor, published by someone masquerading as a publisher, and then consumed by millions of people masquerading as literate.

I found some other excerpts that are almost as bad/good:

"That’s the bottom line. I want to be with him. My inner goddess sighs with relief."

"Her curiosity oozes through the phone."

"My scalp prickles as adrenaline and fury lance through my body, all my worst fears realized."

"My inner goddess is beside herself, hopping from foot to foot."

This is some very, very stupid material. It reads like a thesaurus procreated with a script from a soft core porn and then the baby fell into a vat of Lifetime Channel DVDs. My inner goddess is rolling her eyes, my inner brain is hurting.

[Read To the Women of America: 4 Reasons to Hate 50 Shades of Grey]

I think her inner goddess needs to take a leak.

I later learned—and was frankly unsurprised—that Fifty Shades of Grey began its life as a work of erotic Twilight fan fiction. It certainly seems tacky enough. In fact, judging by Matt's excerpts, even though erotic fiction isn't my cup of tea, I suspect that I owe it to myself (and my medulla oblongata) to read at least the first book just for the sheer amusement value that Bulwer-Lyttonesque doggerel can offer. I can't imagine that it's Minnow Trap, but it comes close.

Friday in the Wild: June 27, 2014

It's been a few weeks since the last Friday in the Wild, so why don't we save some time and get right to the links?

Apropos to my previous post, Amy at Stand to Reason also chimed in on that idiotic Slate piece:

Remember when I said that we should expect more attempts to erase the differences between men and women, and that the conflict in our culture over sexuality is, at root, a disagreement over "whether human nature is something in particular or a sea of possibilities bound only by what we can imagine for ourselves"?

Well, Slate has kindly illustrated that for me. . . .

[Read Slate: Don't Let the Doctor Assign a Gender to Your Newborn]

Friday in the Wild: May 23, 2014

This being Friday, once again it is my pleasure to present the various goodness from the Web that made me laugh, pay attention, agree heartily, or just think.

I don't agree with Douglas Wilson on the finer points of theology, but I enjoy reading his writing; he uses well-pointed sarcasm as an art medium. He makes a very good point in last Saturday's post about the whole Michael Sam gay-kiss thing, the revulsion of some at the kiss, and the revulsion of the leftist literati at the revulsion:

As to the charge that I am fighting for Christian privilege, the reply is “you bet I am.” When the Christian faith is privileged, then freedom for everyone becomes a possibility. When Christian privilege is made illegal, and its denunciation mandatory, as it has been in our time, the first thing that happens is that we see the essentially coercive nature of unbelief revealed. Unbelievers have never built a free society and they never will. They have been running this one for just a few minutes now, and they are already driving up and down the streets with their Coercion Trucks, loudspeakers blaring that it is past curfew and we are all supposed to go inside now, place our noses on the specially designated freedom wall, and think grateful thoughts about how much Uplift Congress will be able to generate next session. When we wake up in the morning, we can all have a breakfast of liberty gruel, designed by the first lady’s personal nutritionist and national sadist.

[Read The Gaylag Archipelago]

Friday in the wild (Contending for God remix): September 27, 2013

Howdy. This is a sort of "special edition" of Friday in the Wild—with a theme.

I recently became part of the blogging team of Canadian apologetics ministry Faith Beyond Belief. My contribution so far: a discussion of absolutist and incremental approaches to abortion legislation. New material is in the pipe, I promise! And some of it may be slightly reworked and reposted here if it is apropos.

FBB is part of the Canadian Apologetics Coalition of blogs, which is currently in the midst of a series titled "Contending for God." As David Haines puts it in his introduction to the series:

We will be looking at the question of whether or not God exists, and if God does exist, what are the implications for us humans?

Although I'm not taking part in the series personally, I can at least do my own small part to promote the series, by linking to and aggregating them. So, without further ado . . .

Saturday in the wild: February 25, 2012

Time once again for this week's roundup of the interesting parts of the blogosphere. So, without further ado . . .

dancingpastthedark listed 15 things about distressing near-death experiences (NDEs). Of particular interest to me was point 5:

NDEs do not play favorites: they appear across demographic bases including age, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual preference, education, occupation, socioeconomic status, religious background and beliefs, level of religious activity, expectations of afterlife. Despite limited demographic data about distressing NDEs, they appear to have the same universality.

[Read 15 Things We Know About Distressing NDEs]

In other words: Christians are just as likely to experience a hellish vision as anyone else, which suggests to me what I've suspected all along: NDEs aren't actually religious experiences as I would understand it. Psychological, perhaps, but I rather doubt they have any correspondence to a real afterlife.

Epicurious posted a video on making the perfect martini. Personally, I prefer more classic proportions of 2 ounces Bombay Sapphire gin to 3/4 ounces dry Noilly Prat vermouth, instead of the mixologist's proportions. But I share the mixer's lament that the martini has somehow morphed into a vodka drink. (For another, more interesting variation, substitute sake for the vermouth.)

Presumably in honour of the 50th anniversary of John Glenn's first spaceflight earlier this week, Cracked listed 5 famous space missions that almost ended in disaster. Good stuff, though as a fan of the early years of spaceflight, I knew about all but the STS-27 one. Glenn's own flight was hair-raising, as Friendship 7 lost its automatic control system during the first orbit, and then it was thought that the heat shield might be lost during re-entry. Fortunately a sensor was at fault, and Glenn finished the mission without incident.

John Bloom at Desiring God Blog writes about abolitionist William Wilberforce, one of my favourite historical Brits:

But if you had known him at age 20, you wouldn’t have predicted his end. William entered adulthood as a dilettante and socialite. He was naturally warm, gregarious, eloquent, and a great singer—the life of any party. He was an unmotivated student at Cambridge, not helped by the fact that through inheritance he was independently wealthy.

On a lark he ran for a seat in Parliament at age 21. He spent the equivalent of $500,000 of his own money on the campaign and won. Years later, his own assessment was, "the first years I was in Parliament I did nothing—nothing to any purpose. My own distinction was my darling object."

But in 1785, that all changed when William was powerfully converted to Jesus. It was nothing short of a revolution. Life and time and talent, and influence and wealth were to be stewarded and wielded for the cause of Jesus' kingdom. Everything took on a new weight and urgency. Jesus Christ transformed this dissolute aristocratic party boy into a resolute force against evil and for truth in the moral wilderness of his day.

[Read The Darling Object of William Wilberforce]

Finally, the O-Dot is a local satirical blog I recently discovered. It's not the comedic powerhouse that the Onion is, to be sure, but every so often it provides a chuckle. Thursday's story was particularly good:

Little Italy—The vibrant Italian neighbourhood that stretches along Preston Street from Carling to Somerset recently had new "Pay & Pasta" parking meters installed to help draw visitors to the area. A well known location for Italian cuisine, the City Of Ottawa in association with the Preston Street BIA, developed the concept of dispensing pasta last spring as a way to help boost enjoyment for paid parking.

[Read Little Italy Launches New "Pay & Pasta" Parking Meters]

Enjoy!

Saturday a little bit in the wild: February 18, 2012

For various reasons, I've had not much to do with blogging this week (either posting or reading), so today's instalment of x in the Wild (where Thursday < x < Sunday) has just one brief item.

Tim Challies has announced the selection for the next run of "Reading Classics Together," and it's a doozy:

It is time to embark on a new reading project and it only seems right that we should go to the bestselling and most enduring Christian classic of them all—The Pilgrim’s Progress. This is a book most of us have read at one time or another, or perhaps at many times, but if any book bears repeated readings, this is the one. It is, after all, the most widely-published book in the English language, not to mention one of the most influential and beloved books ever written.

[Reading the Next Classic Together]

I love Bunyan, so I'm definitely in. The fun starts on March 8, so if you want to participate, read Chapter 1 by then. If you don't have a print edition, Tim will be following the format of the version at Christian Classics Ethereal Library. All of Bunyan's major works are available at the Chapel Library site (Pilgrim's Progress can be found in Volume 3). You can also find other formats at Project Gutenberg, and there's a free audiobook at LibriVox, if you prefer to listen. Either way: Enjoy!

Saturday in the wild: February 11, 2012

Another weekend, another pile of bloggy goodness for y'all to work through. Better late then never!

Xkcd pulled off another laugh-out-loud moment. If this happened to Alex Jones, it would be like the purest of poetic justice.

Douglas Wilson caught the nominally pro-life Ron Paul on the Piers Morgan program recently, flubbing on the "hard case" of rape:

On the pro-life thing, he was asked about abortion in the case of rape. The answer to this, incidentally, is straightforward—when a woman conceives as the result of a rape, there is one guilty party, and two innocent parties. What the pro-aborts want to do is change the ratios—they want one victim instead of two, and they want two perpetrators instead of one. They want the man who took what didn't belong to him to be joined by a woman who imitates him by taking what doesn't belong to her.

In response to this question, Ron Paul said that a woman who is raped should go to an emergency room immediately, and get a shot of estrogen, which would prevent the implantation of a conceived child in the uterine wall. Further, he said that he would administer that shot of estrogen. Piers Morgan, astonished, said that he thought Ron Paul believed life begins at conception. Ron Paul said that he did, but that we don't know at that point whether the woman is pregnant.

This, in effect, was saying that if we don't know if someone is living in a room then it must be okay to fill it up with poison gas. This example might seem beside the point because, if we did that, we would eventually have to carry a dead body out. But, in the case of this small victim, nobody ever needs to know. But, speaking frankly, and just between us, "nobody need ever know" is not exactly a pro-life rallying cry.

[Read Four/Fifths of the Brimstone]

The transcript of this program is also available.

Friday in the wild: February 3, 2011

Friday again! Time to round up the stuff on the blogosphere that made me stop and take notice.

Tim Challies posted his parents' story of their encounter with Francis Schaeffer, whose hundredth birthday would have been this past Tuesday:

Schaeffer and the workers at English L'Abri helped us lay a new foundation for Christian living—the Bible, the Bible, the Bible—known from cover to cover, as the foundation of all life and thought. Unchanging. Absolute. Knowable. Mirroring the unchanging, absolute, knowable God. No more theological chaos. Rest for our souls.

I know many appreciated Francis Schaeffer's philosophical and cultural insights. They were penetrating, timely, and prophetic—certainly what he is best known for. But, for us—primarily, he was our first Sola Scriptura expositor. The absolute biblical certainty behind the philosophical and cultural insights was what changed our lives. And for this, we are eternally grateful.

[Read How Francis Schaeffer Saved My Saved Soul]

Friday in the wild: January 27, 2012

It's Friday! Here's a compendium of bloggy goodness from the past week.

Scott Adams describes how both Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich set off his "non-believerdar":

It's starting to look as if Newt Gingrich will be the Republican nominee. If so, this might be the first time two non-believers ran against each other for President of the United States.

What?

Oh, that's right: You still think Gingrich and Obama believe what's written in the Christian Bible. I understand why you think that. After all, both men say they believe in god, and they do churchy things. The trouble is that Gingrich and Obama both set off my non-believerdar. (That's like gaydar for non-believers.)

[Read Non-Believerdar]

Adams then goes on to say that he doesn't really believe in "non-believerdar" (or gaydar, or any other -dar)—it's just his feeling that both candidates profess some sort of Christian belief for its utilitarian value in getting votes. And you know what? He might be right. Though I'd probably concede that Gingrich, as a convert to Roman Catholicism, actually believes it to some extent: squishy evangelicalism would play just as well, if not better, in the Bible Belt.

Last week, Alan Shlemon asked on the Stand to Reason blog whether Jesus' apparent silence on homosexuality actually meant anything. This week, he continues the series, asking whether homosexuality really is the worst sin imaginable:

Christians don't just think homosexuality is the worst sin. We act like it too. Christians who rarely cite scripture suddenly invoke Bible verses when the topic comes up. We get uneasy when gay men come to church, but we gladly welcome post-abortive women. We’ll move a lesbian who sits next to other females at youth group, but we won’t separate girls who gossip.

It's no wonder the culture thinks Christians hate homosexuals. We give their behavior a unique status: the worst sin of all. And because homosexuals are committing the supreme evil, we treat them like pariahs.

[Read Is Homosexuality the Worst Sin of All?]

I'll just add that Jesus said there was a sin that was unforgivable (Matt. 12:31), but it's not the sin of which Paul said to the Corinthian church, "such were some of you. But you were washed" (1 Cor. 6:11).

Chris Rosebrough attended the Elephant Room conference this week. Rather, he tried to—but upon arrival was informed that he was no longer welcome and would be arrested if he didn't leave. Nonetheless, he posted on the theological weaselliness¹ of "Bishop" T. D. Jakes:

Jakes' full answer was this:

One God—Three Persons. One God—Three Persons, and here is why . . . there . . . I am not crazy about the word persons this is . . . most people who follow me know that that is really. My doctrinal statement is no different from yours except the word. . . .

Driscoll completes Jakes' sentence by filling in that "one word" and its [sic] the word "Manifestations."

[Read Theological Sleightof Hand at the Elephant Room]

"Manifestations" is, of course, the usual way that Oneness advocates try to avoid the traditional Trinitarian language of one God in three distinct Persons. Jakes is trying to play to his audience and sound properly Trinitarian, but he can't get away from his own sect's jargon. As Rosebrough adds: "See what a difference just one word can make?"

On Twitter, James White posed one good question that would settle Jakes' view of the nature of God unambiguously: "Did the Son, as a divine person, distinguishable from the Father, exist as a divine Person prior to the birth in Bethlehem?" I'm not holding my breath.

Credo provided a good reminder that two valuable resources are available for free for the download: an audiobook of J. I. Packer's Knowing God from ChristianAudio, and Timothy George's lectures on the theology of the Reformers. The Packer book, at least, is only available for the remainder of January. Grab it while you can: it tops the list of extrabiblical, Christian books that I recommend to friends.

Desiring God Blog pointed to an article by Richard Pratt on the Ligionier Web site, about how proverbs are not promises:

Now, we need to be clear here. The proverbs commend certain paths to family members because they reflect the ways God ordinarily distributes His blessings. But ordinarily does not mean necessarily. Excellent wives have good reason to expect honor from their husbands and children. Fathers with integrity often enjoy seeing God’s blessings on their children. Parents who train their children in the fear of the Lord follow the path that frequently brings children to saving faith. But excellent wives, faithful husbands, and conscientious parents often endure terrible hardship in their homes because proverbs are not promises. They are adages that direct us toward general principles that must be applied carefully in a fallen world where life is always somewhat out of kilter. As the books of Job and Ecclesiastes illustrate so vividly, we misconstrue the Word of God when we treat proverbs as if they were divine promises.

[Read Broken Homes in the Bible]

And so, until next week, I bid you adieu. Enjoy.

Footnote

¹ I have my doubts weaselliness is a word. But, dang it, it should be.

Sanctity of Life Sunday in the wild: Jan. 22, 2012

Today is the 39th anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision of the United States Supreme Court, which legalized abortion on demand citing a supposed right to "privacy." Thus it is also commemorated in many churches as Santity of Life Sunday, as normally the third Sunday of the month would be the one closest. National Sanctity of Human Life Day was originally proclaimed by Ronald Reagan, and the tradition has since been continued by both Presidents Bush, but not either Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama—which really tells you all you need to know about the powers-that-be of the Democratic Party when it comes to the issue of unborn human life. In Canada, our lack of abortion restrictions is due to the R. v. Morgentaler decision of January 28, 1988, not Roe, so Sanctity of Life Sunday may get a nod in Canadian churches, if that. Nonetheless, American policy and tradition tend to have an effect on Canada as well.

Typically at around this time of year, the blogosphere starts to buzz a bit with life issues, and so I've decided to highlight a few of the posts that attracted my own attention over the last few days.

Friday in the Wild: January 20, 2012

Welcome to the inaugural FitW of 2012! You may have noticed that my blogging output has increased somewhat over the last couple of weeks. Here's hoping that's permanent. Bringing back my weekly compendium of stuff frm the rest of the blogosphere is, I hope, a symptom of this "second wind." Since it's been awhile, this post goes back two weeks instead of the usual one.

Phil Johnston takes on Mark Driscoll, Ed Young, and the never-ending fad of risqué evangelical sex teaching:

[E]vangelicals have been complaining for decades that we don't talk enough or hear enough teaching about sex. From the point of view of many non-evangelicals, sex is about the only thing evangelicals have demonstrated a serious and sustained interest in for the past 40 years. As early as 1977, Martin Marty, a liberal religious scholar, referred to the trend as "Fundies in their Undies."

So the premise that evangelical churches are in desperate need of more and more explicit instruction on sex techniques is a risible falsehood.

But evangelical leaders who aspire to be at the vanguard in this trend have to keep looking for even kinkier ways to contextualize their Kama Sutras and spice up their "sexperimentation."

[Read Evangelical Exhibitionists]

I almost never know what to make of Mark Driscoll. He seems to alternate between periods of brilliance and stupidity. These days, he's more the latter than the former.