Any good Christian magazine recommendations?

Hi gang.

A correspondent asks if I can recommend any good Christian magazines. Nothing too heavy, just good sound Biblical content.

WORLD is out, Christianity Today's long gone.

So what would you recommend, and why? What do you read?

Soliciting suggestions for streaming TV series

Howdy gang.

The missus and I are in the market for streaming TV shows to fill in the gaps preferably from Netflix streaming.

We loved the BBC's Sherlock and Foyle's War, but the former releases slowly and just a few eps, and the latter is ~90 min and we'll run out soon. We tried MI5, and lost interest about at the ep about the murderous pro-lifers.

"Life on Mars" has been recommended, but the short-lived US version is the only one on TV.

We've tried "Revolution" from live TV, and it was too stupidly-written for our brains to survive happily. We also tried "Touch" and, while we like Kiefer Sutherland, one can only take so much of him chasing an expressionless boy while shouting "Jake! Jake! Jaaaaaaaaake!"

We also tried NCIS, but when we found that the character DiNozzo wasn't euthanized and didn't grow in any way, and the Pauley Perrette character (unlike every non-burqa'd woman who ever lived) never changed her attire or character, we realized the writers were uncreative and lost interest.

So: any good mysteries? Sci-fi? Anything? What's good out there, and why?

Grammar brainiacs: Help me get my sermon title right

Grammarians, homeschooling moms, anyone.

This Sunday, I plan on preaching Romans 1:16-17, and how they express the five "solas" (sola's?). My first form of the title is:

Five “Alone’s” that Changed Everything 

What I mean is

Five Uses Of The Word "Alone" That Changed Everything

but that's a hopelessly unwieldy title.

But should it be "Alone's"? Or should it be instead

Five “Alones” that Changed Everything 

But that feels ;like I'm saying five occurrences of the word "alones." And I'm not.

Which is it? And why? Link to an authority? I don't even know how to Google this.

Have at it, and thanks.

Facebook, Twitter, hash tags, and WTG

I am about to dive back into training a new guy at work, which makes blogging hard to access. Before I do, I offer this to the brain trust.

First, just an invitation. I notice a number of my beloved readers aren't Facebook friends (not even close to figuring out Google+ yet) or Twitter followers. So I invite you: Friend or follow me — or both! — and join the party in progress. It isn't mandatory, but it is encouraged and encouraging, and I love the company.

Second, the smarter-than-I's have suggested that I adopt a hash-tag for The World-Tilting Gospel, so that tweets on that subject will go viral and take over the world before the robots do, or something like that.

So on that subject, I tweeted this:

Moving Dave Miller to reply:

To which that inimitable force of nature, Frank Turk, responded:

This was seconded:

While Daniel Abbey replied:

While one of my suggestions has been echoed twice:

So, weigh in. Which hash should it be? I suppose if we had fifteen or sixteen, we could tilt the world by surrounding it. But it makes sense to focus our efforts. And Frank's, while... colorful, don't leave room to say much more than "Eep!"

UPDATES:

Three questions about Britain, for the BibChr Brain Trust

Accomplished world-travelers that (many of) you are, I ask this:

1. Where do I go to prepare for iPhone usage in Great Britain, so I can use my iPhone without being charged $4793.00 for it? Is there a link, or...?
2. Thinking of plugging my GPS into the rental car, I am wondering whether the voltage in British cars (like the voltage in their outlets) is different, or the same? What is it?
3. Anyone have leads on finding places to stay in London at won't-empty-the-bank prices?

Thanks!

Lectio Divina analysis?

Hi gang.

As I said, busy week isn't leaving me the time I usually have, but you all are still on my mind.

A reader emailed me, asking if I know of any good resources assessing "Lectio Divina." I don't offhand, and really haven't the time at the moment to do research for the brother... but it occurs to me that I do have some of the Biblically savviest readers in Christendom so, I figures, why not ask them?

Which I am.

Can you point to any sound, sober, Biblical assessments of what is seen as a mostly Roman Catholic practice of Lectio Divina? I say "mostly," because I heard none other than Bruce Waltke rehearsing it positively in a series of talks on Proverbs at Dallas Theological Seminary's chapel. In fact, Waltke even says Calvin and Luther used a similar method.

Have at it.

...and, completely unrelatedly but in classic BibChr^TM style: Fred Butler alerts us that today is Star Wars day.

As you were.

iPad2, Xoom and other similars: a BibChr colloquium

My questions are few and brief:

1. Did any of you get an iPad2? If so, what do you think of it?
2. What do you actually use an iPad for?
3. We're thinking we don't want to lug a full laptop around Europe. So what do you get, that is smaller, can do email and web surfing, can do word processing, and (preferably) can carry BibleWorks and Logos? In Europe?
4. What about Xoom? Anyone have one o' dem?

Gospel-centered Japan relief organizations: whom to support, and why?

At the end of this post, I invited readers to detail which Christian Gospel-oriented relief organization they would recommend, and why. I'm afraid that it got lost as an update, so I am singling out that question.

Anyone use and love Spanish textbooks?

I speak Spanish after a fashion, and am supposed to teach my family. We have the texts from Bob Jones Abeka, which have many strengths... and I don't love them. I don't love it all being split up into several books, instead of one. Rosetta Stone did not work for my family. Confusing.

So, have any of you taught or studied with a Spanish textbook and loved it? My preference would be that it be Christian, and that the idiom be Mexican.

Any point in doing a Hither and Thither this week?

Seems like commenting readers vanish around holidays.

Have you seen Dawn Treader? Share your impressions

Roger Ebert likes it — though once again he gets something very wrong: "Aboard the sailing vessel, Lucy (Georgie Henley), her brother Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and young Eustace (Will Poulter) ask no questions. They're too blissful to be back in Narnia...." Um, yeah, Roger... Eustace has never been in Narnia, and certainly does ask questions.

Michael Medved loved it, and says it is "easily the best" of the Narnia movies thus far.

We're just too packed this weekend, and likely won't be able to see it.

If you do, what did you think? Please be sure to add whether or not you've read the book.

TSA's grope-'n'-porn: your experiences, plans, proposals?

I may have miscalculated the ratio of President Obama's political self-interest vs. his breathtaking arrogance.

It seemed a sure-thing to me that he'd decree that TSA agents in airport terminals stop sexually assaulting and taking nudie pictures of citizens, surely in advance of the Thankgiving travel surge. Yet so far, he has just doubled down against the will and horror of the American people, as he did in nationalizing a couple of private industries. Similarly, the gentleman in charge over the TSA has repeatedly said that they would not cease assaulting the innocent in the name of pursuing the (wannabe) guilty.

In fact, TSA head John Pistole has declared that, if passengers will not submit to humiliation at the hands of the government, they do not have the right to fly. Yep, you heard that correctly.

Meanwhile, apparently all the "rights" belong to TSA porn-directors. They apparently

• have the "right" to pull down the pants of septuagenarians who've had knee replacement surgery
• have the "right" to strip-search, cuff and arrest a woman for carrying on applesauce (which she'd cleared in advance) to feed to her disabled, 90+-year-old mother
• have the "right" to force breast-cancer victims to remove their prostheses and prove they are missing a breast
• have the "right" to graphically and thoroughly feel up mothers while government goons mind their babies
• have the "right" to grope three-year-olds as they scream "Don't touch me"
• have the "right" to leave aged bladder-cancer sufferers to travel soaked in their own urine

This is the liberal's dream-world, where the State has all the "rights," and the serfs have none. Police officers have to have reasonable cause; TSA agents do not.

So what do you plan to do? Let me be more specific:

1. If you have a flight, are you going through with it?
2. You husbands, in particular: it's our job to protect our wives, to guard their modesty and honor. This isn't a medical situation, and these are not actions undertaken with our permission. Should it OK with us for strangers of either sex to feel up our wives' breasts, groin, rear end? Is it okay for strangers — anywhere — to look at nude pictures of our wives? If it isn't our duty to assure our wives that we'll stand up for them and protect them, then whose is it?
3. HSAT, what do we do? Cancel, with a call to the airlines? Call ahead to assure that it isn't going to happen? Submit, while complaining in a calm yet audible voice? Take the names of everyone performing the grope?

I remind you of what I pointed out after our last disastrous Presidential election: the "king" in America is the Constitution. We should submit to it insofar as we are able.

And so (to say the least) should the government, including TSA.

So you have to wonder: where is the ACLU? What is being done about this? There are some signs of action here and there, which is encouraging.

Meanwhile, though it sounds cliched to say so, the terrorists have scored massive victories. Conditioned by state re-education agencies to see the State as our benevolent, omnicompetent overlords, thousands of sheep simply queue up and submit to the indignities, convincing themselves that Big Brother knows best.

As the terrorists laugh and chalk up cheap, sweeping victories with barely a shot fired.

UPDATE: here's one fellow with time on his hands who claimed to get through without getting groped or death-rayed.

Focusing on Christ through Advent season

The Dear Wife suggests that I ask all y'all what you do to focus on Christ through the weeks leading up to (and after?) Christmas. Why so early? To allow time to order, arrange, plan... after all, Christmas may be a ways off, but the start of the Advent season isn't.

For our part, over the decades, we have done many things:

1. We have read Christ in Christmas (very good book of essays by folks like Sproul, Boice, and Swindoll on different aspects of Christ's person).
2. We have read Jotham's Journey and Tabitha's Travels (interesting, suspenseful, clever; keeps the kids' interest).
3. I have led the family through a series of readings I select, which systematically go through the OT, narrowing down from "the Seed of the woman" (Genesis 3:15) to the tribe of Shem (Genesis 9) to Abram (Genesis 12), etc., until we end up pinpointing the Lord Jesus.
4. We have read Ruth Bell Graham's One Wintry Night (good book, exquisite illustrations).

How about you?

Election 2010: predictions, resources, etc. - engaging the BibChr Brain Trust

First: do you have any voter's guides you like, online? Make them good, I'll update this post.

Second: so, what are your predictions for tomorrow? Make them broad or specific.

I'm torn. Part of my brain thinks that the GOP tide will be even greater than virtually anyone thinks, that the MSM has been doing all it can to hold it back, and it will fail.

The other part of my brain notes that I have not seen a broad cultural shift towards rejecting totalitarian control by elite caregivers. That is what the Dems are and promise; to reject them is to reject that — and I'm not so sure that this generation of state-educated borglings are ready to reject that.

But hey, we live in a day in which Charismatics can make predictions in the name of God, be dead-wrong, and still be welcomed by their fellow loose-Canoneers. So why shouldn't I make predictions for which I claim no inspiration? What the hey?

So here are my almost totally unscientific wish/predictions:

HOUSE: GOP gains 72 seats. Heck, while I'm wishing-like-a-madman, let's throw in our own impregnable Demoborg Doris Matsui and make it 73!

SENATE: GOP gains 12, takes over Senate.  Angle, Fiorina, and O'Donnell all win. MSM refugees either jump off of bridges or enter convents in droves. MSM taken over by homeschoolers. World changes for better. My hair starts to grow back in.

Obama: says he's gotten the message, needs to communicate his goals better, talks even more, changes nothing.

So, what are you (and/or your church) doing for Reformation Day?

This year, October 31 falls on a Sunday, presenting a wonderful opportunity to preach a Reformation-themed sermon. I had that joy four years ago — or, well, I reached for it, since 29 is pretty close to 31. The sermon was called Five "Alones" That Changed Everything, taken from Romans 1:17.

For some 20 or so years, we've had a yearly family tradition. We....

Oh, first, I should say: we don't "do" Halloween. When I was a Dodgers fan, I probably wouldn't have gone to a victory party for the evil Giants. Even more, I just don't see the sense in a Christian joining in a party thrown by the other side. Your mileage may vary.

So anyway, what we do is the kids gather in the front room with a fire going and the lights down, and... so far every year, Dr. Martin Luther has appeared, told about his experience in thunderstorm, his misery as a monk, and the freedom he came to find through the truth of Romans 1:17. Then, so the klein kinder will remember the sweetness of the Gospel, he gives them some chocolate.

It's pretty neat, I guess. But, sadly, I always seem to miss him!

We have opened our house on some years to our church family, hosting a variety of Reformation-themed activities and games. The Presbyterian church we attended and served in for about six years came to embrace it as well, as we brought them our traditions of roasting the Papal bull" (tri-tips), singing The Reformation Polka, and various instructive activities.

You can see posts I've done on Reformation Day (always overlooked by raised-pinkie bloggers, for some reason):

Here
Here
Here
Here
Here
Here
Here

So, there's ours. What's yours?

Another for the geeks: once more to the brain trust about links

In this post I shared how another blog manages to put unrelated links on every post I put up. Rebecca probably nailed the cause.

Regardless, I passed it all along to Pastor Kratz, asking him to adjust. He replied that he does not know what to do, he has no idea why his site continually links to inappropriate and totally unrelated posts at my blog.

For instance, look at my last post. Scroll to the bottom. You see a link to a post at Kratz' blog. What's the connection? None. What mention does he make of my post? None. Yet his site, and no other site, does this continually.

Anyone have further advice for him as to how to stop the unintentional illegitimate linking?

Questions about 64-bit computing

My faithful old Dell desktop pc has come into bad times, and needs replacing. Months of BSODs and hardware issues, all defying hours of troubleshooting, indicate that It's Time.

So among my options, I am for the first time considering 64-bit pcs. (A Mac is not an option. Don't even try.) I like that it will support more RAM, primarily, and hope that will equate to more speed. But I have some questions which, perhaps, my geekier readers can answer.

Time to tap into the BibChr brain trust:

1. Generally, do you have any experience of 64-bit with Windows 7? How is it?
2. Specifically, any experience of Logos Bible software on 64-bit? It's very slow and clunky at present... does 64-bit speed it up any? Or is it worse, as I've read can happen with 64-bit?
3. How about my beloved BibleWorks? It isn't clunky at present. How is it on 64-bit?
4. Office 2003? (I do not like 2007, haven't tried 2010.)
5. Other comments?

Thanks in advance.

Bonus question: anyone have experience of and/or opinions about quad-core or six-core CPUs?

Bibles: know any text-only editions?

Reader Justin Durst wrote me asking if I know of any Bibles published without titles or headings beyond the minimum. I didn't, so I ask you.

What Justin is referring to is those "helpful" (?) chapter and section titles that editors insert, such as "Jesus casts out a demon" or "Samson swings a jawbone," or whatever. He wonders if there's an edition of the Bible free from such editorializations in the text.

Anyone know of any?

Justin says that, if he's unable to find such an edition, he'll try to publish one himself.

Pilgrim's Progress study guide recommendations?

A missionary friend family is driving back to the States from, like, Australia or somewhere. They'd like an online Pilgrim's Progress study to work through as they do.

Anyone have a recommendation?

Family prayer: brainstorming

"The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our hearts."

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Psalms: the Prayer-book of the Bible, 9-10)

So,  you're challenged in this. In your prayers, you incorporate Scripture, you pray for your prayers, you seek to have ardent and deep encounters with God. But then in family-prayer, what you hear often never rises above a laundry-list. "Dear heavenly Father, thank you for doing/giving this thing, this thing, this thing. Please do this, and this, and this."

You exhort, you try to model praying otherwise, praying for Kingdom-related, spiritually-oriented things, praising and petitioning; you urge your kids, you point it out in the Bible again and again, you dwell on the 9's (Ezra 9, Nehemiah 9, Daniel 9)... but it defaults to the laundry-list, the "heavenly-Father-do" list.

It feels ugly and wrong to even seem to be criticizing your children's prayers. That is not where your heart is, it is not what you want to do. But do all the above, the more indirect things, and nothing happens. Try to be more pro-active, and you run the risk of being accused of legalism, of forcing your children to pray prayers that please you.

What is there between or beyond laissez-faire and legalism?

Have you found anything effective in turning that around? Share. I'm sure that even those of my readers with perfect families could use pointers and ideas.