Mar

29

Simply Christian by N. T. Wright

Filed Under Books, Philosophy, Theology | Leave a Comment

Many fellow Christians of my generation have found C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity a very helpful and thoughtful expression of their faith. In a way, this phenomenon is a testimony to the quality of Lewis’s thought and writing. The book was edited from radio talks he gave in the 1940s. Since then, arguably no one has made as good a case for Christianity.

In 2006, N. T. Wright published Simply Christian. Critics have lauded it as a worthy successor to Mere Christianity. It is. Wright reintroduces many of Lewis’s arguments, but comes at the issues from a different perspective, providing helpful clarifications and some novel thoughts as well.

In fact, the perspective of the book is one of its greatest virtues. Wright, like Lewis, comes at the topic of Christianity in a fairly non-Christian way. The book’s subtitle is “Why Christianity Makes Sense.” It reads like a grand (if brief) tour of biblical theology intended for those who have little knowledge of Christian ideas. Wright tries to demonstrate that Christianity is more than a run-of-the-mill religion, and that it makes a compelling case for belief. However, as Christian readers of Mere Christianity have seen, sometimes a thoughtful examination of Christianity from the outside (or what seems like the outside) can be immensely helpful.1 By the end of the book, it is sometimes hard to decide who Wright’s intended audience actually is. He still targets unbelievers, but an honest believer will find plenty of food for thought. In fact, if a Christian reader has never considered Wright’s ideas, he might think that Wright is trying to convince him.

Wright begins by addressing four areas that modern ideas of life and the world fail to adequately address. Read more


  1. Wright himself has reviewed Mere Christianity and his thoughts are quite helpful. back↩

Mar

24

Long-term Sub

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I went to substitute teach at Hillcrest High School on Thursday and got more than I bargained for. I was asked to be a long-term sub for a ninth grade social studies class. The teacher quit Wednesday afternoon, and they needed someone for the rest of the year. It gets better. I would be the third social studies teacher these kids have had in the past two months. Apparently their first teacher (who was a good teacher) left to work somewhere that paid better (saying her family needed the money). So a long-term sub was called in. This teacher was very relaxed and let the kids do whatever they wanted to do. After about a month the teacher left. So they asked me to take over and warned that the behavior of the kids is not very good.

On Friday I went back and decided to take the job. I won’t actually teach through the end of the school year since Andrew and I will be in Wyoming by then. It’s going to be a lot of work to get some of the classes under control. Thankfully all the ninth grade social studies teachers collaborate and have the same lesson plans, tests, etc. That will definitely help me.

I am reminded of something I said after my long-term job last semester…I’m not interested in doing another long-term subbing job.

Mar

20

Humanities and specialization

Filed Under Education, Random Thoughts | 1 Comment

The last few days I’ve been checking out job postings in a couple of potential grad school locations. It seems me that basically anything above entry level requires a degree in a particular field. My major was humanities, which means I didn’t train for some particular job — I trained for all of them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like many employers see it that way.

My suspicion is that I could do just about any of the jobs I’ve looked at. There might be a slight learning curve as I became acquainted with the jargon of a particular profession. Nonetheless, my liberal education would probably give me an immediate advantage over everyone who didn’t major in the field, and a long-term advantage over many who did.

Several of the jobs I looked at were for teaching in public schools. Though I understand the advantages of having certified teachers, certification, like most other screening processes, has its flaws. It can allow in people who aren’t really capable, and bar some who really are. Basically, in order to be certified, you have to have taken certain classes. It doesn’t matter much whether you can actually do the stuff they teach in those classes — you have to take them. As I was lamenting this fact earlier, Lincoln helpfully shared something he had told a friend with a similar problem: Look for a job teaching gym; then you can teach whatever you want. Ha.

I could go on about my ideas on education, but maybe I’ll save them for a later post. I guess the lament of this post is that our world seems to have no place for the generalist. The liberal arts are confined to a small corner of academia. Classic ideas have no currency in our society. Does anyone else think this is a problem?

Mar

14

Blog features

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I’ve recently added some new features to the blog. This post will try to fill you in on a few of them.

Pictures
First, I’ve added some pictures to the gallery. None of them is particularly new, but you can see how they look. Please let me know if it doesn’t work like you think it should. We will continue to add pictures to the gallery as we have them.

Categories
Second, I realize that many of you are interested in news and updates, but don’t necessarily enjoy the other things we might write about. In order to help you out, we have some categories. You can see them in the sidebar to the right. If you click on one of the titles, it will take you to a page that has only those posts which have been filed in that category. So, if you’re interested only in news, click the news category (you can even bookmark it).

Feeds
For those of you who are more technologically inclined, I have added a category-specific RSS feed to each category. If you click the feed icon next to the category name, it will give you the link to the feed for only that category. You can insert the link into your RSS reader (like Google Reader) and get only those posts.

Of course, if you want the RSS feed from all the posts, you can find that link under the Meta heading on the sidebar.

Finding Posts
If you are looking for a particular post, you can search for it using the search field in the sidebar. If you know the title and the category, you can just type andrew-mel-garland.com/”category”/”post-title” into the address bar. If you know the date (or the approximate date) on which it was posted, you can click that date on the calendar to the right and find all posts from that date. If there are no posts, you won’t be able to click the number.

I’ll probably continue to add features as I find them and have time to work out their kinks. If you have a suggestion, please let me know.

Mar

10

Welcome to points of view

Filed Under News | 11 Comments

Melanie and I want to welcome you to our blog.

We have started this blog to help keep you informed as we move away from our family and friends. This summer we will be working at Red Cliff Bible Camp, and next semester we hope to be in graduate school away from Greenville. Rather than send out e-mails to a large list of people, we decided to take a step forward in the world of technology and offer our news on a blog. One of the other advantages of the blog is that we can put pictures on it. The gallery format will hopefully allow you to view pictures as your connection speed allows.

We want you to be able to comment on the blog, especially as we have news items, prayer requests, and funny stories to share. You can experiment with that on this post.