12 Theses on a Christian Understanding of Economics

Regrettably, many American Christians know little about economics. Furthermore, many Christians assume that the Bible has nothing at all to say about economics. But a biblical worldview actually has a great deal to teach us on economic matters. The meaning of work, the value of labor, and other economic issues are all part of the biblical worldview. At the same time we must recognize that the Christian worldview does not demand or promote a particular economic system.

Because this is the case, Christians must allow the economic principles found in Scripture to shape our thinking while simultaneously recognizing that we can act in light of those principles in any economic, cultural, or generational setting.

Read the Full Article: http://www.albertmohler.com/2016/10/12/12-theses-christian-understanding-economics/

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Generation Adderall

Like many of my friends, I spent years using prescription stimulants to get through school and start my career. Then I tried to get off them.

The first time I took Adderall, I was a sophomore at Brown University, lamenting to a friend the impossibility of my plight: a five-page paper due the next afternoon on a book I had only just begun reading. “Do you want an Adderall?” she asked. “I can’t stand it — it makes me want to stay up all night doing cartwheels in the hallway.”

Read the Full Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/magazine/generation-adderall-addiction.html

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Will the Left Survive the Millennials?

Midway through my opening address for the Brisbane Writers Festival earlier this month, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a Sudanese-born Australian engineer and 25-year-old memoirist, walked out. Her indignant comments about the event might have sunk into obscurity, along with my speech, had they not been republished by The Guardian. Twenty minutes in, this audience member apparently turned to her mother: “ ‘Mama, I can’t sit here,’ I said, the corners of my mouth dragging downwards. ‘I cannot legitimize this.’ ” She continued: “The faces around me blurred. As my heels thudded against the grey plastic of the flooring, harmonizing with the beat of the adrenaline pumping through my veins, my mind was blank save for one question. ‘How is this happening?’ ”

I’m asking the same thing.

Read the Full Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/opinion/will-the-left-survive-the-millennials.html

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The Virtues of Reality

Since the 1990s, we’ve seen two broad social changes that few observers would have expected to happen together.

First, youth culture has become less violent, less promiscuous and more responsible. American childhood is safer than ever before. Teenagers drink and smoke less than previous generations. The millennial generation has fewer sexual partners than its parents, and the teen birthrate has traced a two-decade decline. Violent crime — a young person’s temptation — fell for 25 years before the recent post-Ferguson homicide spike. Young people are half as likely to have been in a fight than a generation ago. Teen suicides, binge drinking, hard drug use — all are down.

Read the Full Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/opinion/sunday/the-virtues-of-reality.html

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It's not important if the Bible is true. What matters is that it's real.

For an altar boy, Easter Sunday was the closest thing you had to the Super Bowl. The Mass was longer. The rope belt you wore was fancier. Everyone’s clothes were nicer. Even the chalices and trays, freighted with their divine payloads of wine and wafer, seemed heavier. While suiting up for Easter Mass, my little hands would shake with game-day nerves.

Whose Morality?

In a recent interview for the BBC2 series “Inside Obama’s White House," President Obama sounded somewhat wistful as he spoke to an interviewer about how he has tried to use his voice "to move things toward a more ethical and moral outcome."

The question of morals and ethics has been debated since the dawn of humanity. It won't be settled by the shifting winds of politics, because not everyone can agree on what is moral and what is not.

The Reductive Seduction of Other People's Problems

Let’s pretend, for a moment, that you are a 22-year-old college student in Kampala, Uganda. You’re sitting in class and discreetly scrolling through Facebook on your phone. You see that there has been another mass shooting in America, this time in a place called San Bernardino. You’ve never heard of it. You’ve never been to America. But you’ve certainly heard a lot about gun violence in the U.S. It seems like a new mass shooting happens every week.

You wonder if you could go there and get stricter gun legislation passed. You’d be a hero to the American people, a problem-solver, a lifesaver. How hard could it be? Maybe there’s a fellowship for high-minded people like you to go to America after college and train as social entrepreneurs. You could start the nonprofit organization that ends mass shootings, maybe even win a humanitarian award by the time you are 30.

Liberal Love for Antonin Scalia

Antonin Scalia was my hero. He was deeply conservative. He belittled lawyers. His opinions, especially in dissent, could be downright nasty. No justice in the Supreme Court’s history insulted his colleagues more, or more memorably. He was as aggressive and outspoken as I am reserved and cautious. He was a smoker. He was, in short, everything I am not. But I have looked up to him for years.

A Designer Universe?

I have been asked to comment on whether the universe shows signs of having been designed.1 I don't see how it's possible to talk about this without having at least some vague idea of what a designer would be like. Any possible universe could be explained as the work of some sort of designer. Even a universe that is completely chaotic, without any laws or regularities at all, could be supposed to have been designed by an idiot. 

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

A statement made by a professor at a leading evangelical college has become a flashpoint in a controversy that really matters. In explaining why she intended to wear a traditional Muslim hijab over the holiday season in order to symbolize solidarity with her Muslim neighbors, the professor asserted that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.

Knowing the Invisible, Inaudible, Untouchable God: Between the Garden, Galilee, and Glory

I hate false advertising. You are promised wonderful experiences and end up being repeatedly disappointed. Sadly, some evangelism is like that. You are promised that when you become a Christian, your problems will be over and you will be filled with joy, love and peace because you have a wonderful, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But the reality of the Christian life in a fallen world is usually different and many struggle not to become cynical and disillusioned.