Inspiration...November 10, 2012

Truth without emotion produces dead orthodoxy and a church full (or half-full) of artificial admirers (like people who write generic anniversary cards for a living). On the other hand, emotion without truth produces empty frenzy and cultivates shallow people who refuse the discipline of rigorous thought. But true worship comes from people who are deeply emotional and who love deep and sound doctrine. Strong affections for God rooted in truth are the bone and marrow of biblical worship. ...John Piper image

Richard Dawkins Led Many to God With 'God Delusion' Book, Christian Minister Says
..."I actually know of people who have been converted through reading The God Delusion and interacting with the discussion. Dawkins has opened the door. We now have to walk through it," said the Christian minister...

What's So Great About 'The Common Good'?
I'm not sure when I started hearing more about "the common good" from fellow Christians. But I'm pretty sure Christianity Today had something to do with it. This magazine spent 2005 exploring pastor Tim Keller's proposal that Christians be "a counterculture for the common good." Now we're in the midst of This Is Our City: two years' worth of articles, documentary films, and events for leaders in cities around North America. Our team has realized that what we're really looking for are what we are calling "common-good decisions"—times when Christians make choices, some small and relatively easy (say, volunteering in a neighborhood school), others major and costly (say, moving into a tough school district), to seek the good of their neighborhoods.

The phrase also comes up in the perennial but newly vigorous conversation about the role Christians should play in American culture. Gordon College president Michael Lindsay titled his 2011 inaugural address "Faithful Leadership for the Common Good." Gabe Lyons, who convenes diverse church and civic leaders every year at the Q conference, describes its mission as "ideas for the common good." (Full disclosure: Lindsay and Lyons are friends, and their organizations have been the recipients of my family's financial support and have paid me for speaking engagements.) The phrase appears three times in the National Association of Evangelicals' (NAE) 2001 "call to civic responsibility" titled "For the Health of the Nation," which CT editor in chief David Neff helped draft. After longtime vice president Richard Cizik left the NAE, he founded a new group called the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good...

An Icon of God’s Love: Bella Santorum
...Society’s failure to embrace such people is why Bella’s beautiful presence in the campaign was so refreshing. One ad featured scenes of Bella with her family as Senator Santorum reflected upon how they have come to understand her presence in their lives: “Bella is an icon of God’s face, and is filled with his love as he reveals himself through her and all people with disabilities. Bella is a teacher of unconditional love, an education in the dignity of every person.”...

Deliberating on Digital: The Curious Case of the Mountain School
...Yee describes the Mountain School experience this way:

The school offers high school juniors, many from elite private institutions in the Northeast, a semester to immerse themselves in nature. The students make solo camping trips to a nearby mountain for a day or two of reflection, and practice orienteering skills without a GPS device. Between English and environmental science classes, they care for farm animals, chop wood and read the works of Robert Frost. And in the process, many say, they stop scouring the campus for its sparse bars of reception and lose the habit of checking their Facebook pages at every opportunity....

Special team
How about a little good news?

In the scrub-brush desert town of Queen Creek, Ariz., high school bullies were throwing trash at sophomore Chy Johnson. Calling her "stupid." Pushing her in the halls.

Chy's brain works at only a third-grade level because of a genetic birth defect, but she knew enough to feel hate.

"She'd come home every night at the start of the school year crying and upset," says her mom, Liz Johnson. "That permanent smile she had, that gleam in her eye, that was all gone."

Her mom says she tried to talk to teachers and administrators and got nowhere. So she tried a whole new path -- the starting quarterback of the undefeated football team. After all, senior Carson Jones had once escorted Chy to the Special Olympics.

"Just keep your ear to the ground," Liz wrote to Carson on his Facebook page. "Maybe get me some names?"

But Carson Jones did something better than that. Instead of ratting other kids out, he decided to take one in -- Chy...