7/10/2012 Links

I've got two links for today:

1.  Whenever I go home to Indiana, I like to catch up on The Journal, which is a newspaper about churches within the Armstrongite movement.  I was reading The Journal online last night, and I found an insightful article by its editor, Dixon Cartwright, entitled Lo and behold, an elephant is in our room: Origins of the Bible can be a touchy subject.  The article is about how we can have a spiritual walk when the Bible appears to have a lot of problems: politics, portrayals of God as not-so-good, etc.  Cartwright also effectively dismisses common arguments for the Bible's inspiration: fulfilled prophecy, and II Timothy 3:16 saying that all Scripture is inspired.  While Cartwright rejects what he considers to be Bible-olatry, he still believes in God and miracles, thinks that the Bible contains profound material that can help people in their walk with God, and fellowships on the Sabbath and annual holy days.

To my surprise, a number of letters to the editor in The Journal were quite supportive of Mr. Cartwright's stance.  I have not read all of the letters responding to Mr. Cartwright, but you can read them here.

I applaud Dixon Cartwright's honesty as he grapples with difficult questions.  I, too, wrestle with the question of how I can have a religious or spiritual life, when I have problems with certain things in the Bible.


2.  My friend Felix has an Intelligent Quote of the Day on his blog, which features an insightful comment that Amaranth made on the blog, Confessions of a Former Conservative.  Amaranth is criticizing the tendency of some conservatives to sit in judgment of the poor without considering what it's like to be in their shoes.