HT: Jeff Koterba, Omaha World-Herald

Bible/Theology
If you need a Romans re-cap, watch the video by Richard Bell, Professor of Theology at the University of Nottingham, which addresses the question Why Study St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans? (Youtube).

A couple of years ago, I was excited to learn that there was a book for those of us who are Christians and introverts (Introverts in the Church). This week, I discovered that there is a book for those Christians who are of a more cynical temperament: Faith Without Illusions: Following Jesus as a Cynic-Saint. Joel Willitts has a review (Euangelion).

A series of assignments by a teacher of a World Religions course at a community college revealed the experiences of his students with religion, their assumptions about religious claims, and how they viewed the role of religion in their lives.
The Religious Views of 20-Somethings, Part 1 (Out of Ur).

General/Other
Apparently the tradition that the captain goes down with the ship or, at the very least, is last to abandon ship, is of fairly recent origin and has no basis in maritime law. This may be of interest to many in light of the grounding last week of  the passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia.
Abandoning Ship: an Etiquette Guide (Slate).

The prevailing wisdom in education has been that high self-esteem leads to high achievement. But,  psychology and brain research has led some teachers to question the conventional wisdom in favour of finer-tuned praise that pushes students to work thrtough mistakes and take on more challenging assignments.
In schools, self-esteem boosting losing favor to finer-tuned praise (Washington Post).

The recent media attention on same-sex marriage for foreign tourists was “one of the more disgraceful episodes in the long history of phoney controversies” in Canada. That’s the opinion of the National Post’s Andrew Coyne. It was, he writes in a recent column, “a toxic mix of shrewd lawyering, shoddy reporting and partisan opportunism, all without the slightest reference to the relevant, and easily obtainable, facts.”
Full Comment: Andrew Coyne on Gay Marriage (National Post).

• Christianity Today announces the winners of its 2012 Book Awards.
• Prolific author and blogger Scot McKnight announces the winners of the Jesus Creed Books of the Year.
• ThinkChristian issues the TC Top Ten Albums and the Top Ten Television Shows.
• James K. A. Smith offers Favorite Reads 2011: Theology for Christian Scholars and Short Stories.

Here are another couple of lists that are of a different variety than the “best of” lists above:

• Top Ten Photoshop Disasters of 2011.
• Why Pray? Ben Meyers offers 10 reasons to do so from the Lord’s Prayer.

On a more serious note:

• David Fitch explores what he describes as “the subtle fear and resistance to church practices so common in today’s missional church” in Don’t Be An Ekklesaphobe and Ekklesaphobia Post #2: The Protestant Principle.
• A video lecture by Dr. Peter Williams of the Tyndale House Residential Centre for Biblical Research offers new evidence that the Gospels were based on eyewitness accounts.

Enjoy!

But right now it is hard for me to get into the mode of watching and waiting. In the last six weeks, I have sold a house, bought a new home, packed up, moved to a new city, and (nearly) unpacked. In the midst of this frenzy, I’ve grieved the unexpected death of my mother less than a week after the first anniversary of the passing of my brother.

I wonder if my current state of being is similar to that of the people of Palestine in the 1st century? Their lives were caught up in trying to eke out a living on the land or in the marketplace all the while under the watchful eye of an occupying army. Meanwhile, illness and disease made death an ever-present reality in their lives.

But out in the wilderness there was the crazy man John urging people to watch and wait because God was about to do something great. God was about to tear down mountains, raise up valleys, make the rough ground level, and the rugged place plain (Mark 1:2-3; Isaiah 40:4).

The metaphors from Isaiah are John’s way of saying that the season of watching and waiting for God,  requires some prep work in the human heart. We cannot experience Advent, that is, we cannot be ready to receive the coming Son of God, unless some preparations are made.

Maybe part of the preparation is that we need to head out into the desert where John is, and learn again how much of our life is in God. Perhaps out in the desert where John is, we can escape, at least momentarily, the everyday pace and haste where God has to compete for our attention and affection.

So this is Advent. It begins out in the desert with that crazy man, John.

But it seems to me that their complaint is more with the well-known and oft-cited Barna Research Group that provides the news media with statistics and trends that Stark and Johnson say are false alarms. Perhaps “media-hyped studies about religion” are due to studies about religion that are hyped for the media.