Blog - Page 263 of 318 - John H Armstrong

Happy Blogiversary

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:00-05:00July 16th, 2007|Categories: Personal|

The advent of the bog turned ten this week! The Wall Street Journal headlined the event with the caption: Happy Blogiversary! The Journal invited various commentators to weigh in on this new medium for writing. Most liked it. A few were strongly opposed, even derisive, such as the infamous social critic Tom Wolfe. My mind is not made up entirely, though I confess there are several things that I have found to be true about blogging that both thrill me and trouble me. I have been blogging for a little over two years now and at times I love it and at other times I just endure it or even hate it.

The first blogger was apparently Jorn Barger who began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy with comments of his own added. On his site he wrote, in December of 1997, “I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis.” The Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the root meaning of blogging, thus the […]

How Appropriate is Aggressive Confrontation for Jesus?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:00-05:00July 13th, 2007|Categories: Religion|

A friend sent me a 68 second video clip from CNN that I invite you to view. I found it stunning for several reasons that I will later explain. I would love to provoke a "serious" dialog about this video clip and see if some of you can help us all find better ways to reach our culture with the gospel of Christ. Without further comment from me watch the clip.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2007/07/12/vo.senate.prayer.arrests.cnn

Now, my questions. Are these three Christians in the Senate chamber acting courageously? Are they right in what they actually pray? Should they have been there taking these actions in this place? What do their actions say about who we all are as Christians today. How should we appropriately respond to the presence of numerous non-Christian religions that now share the public religious platform with us in modern America? What should a genuinely missional Christian do in the face of modern pluralism and the various false teachings that confront the one true faith as it is revealed in Jesus Christ alone?

I find […]

Terrorism Will Likely Trump the Hot Issues List Politically

By John Armstrong|2007-07-12T22:18:23-05:00July 12th, 2007|Categories: Politics|

There are dozens of issues that energize American voters in every election. We can hear several of them in the present long build-up to the 2008 elections. 70% of America thinks “we are on the wrong track” right now. I have a great deal of sympathy with some of this feeling. Yet at the same time we have strong to moderate economic growth, a low 4% unemployment rate and a stock market that has been going upward for about three years.

Polling of voters who are not firmly committed Republicans or Democrats, i.e., those voters who will decide the next election, tell us that these voters have “deep concerns” about virtually everything on the political radar screen. When “extremely important” and “very important” are combined in the total poll numbers then well above 50% of these independent voters say issues like health care, the economy, terrorism, immigration, taxes, corruption and, quite obviously, “the situation in Iraq,” are all major issues.

Daniel Henninger called this “the worry wart vote” in his July 5 Wall Street Journal editorial. New York Mayor Michael […]

The Good German

By John Armstrong|2007-07-11T23:07:54-05:00July 11th, 2007|Categories: Film|

American journalist Jake Geismer (George Clooney) returns to postwar Berlin, prior to the famous Potsdam Conference—with Churchill, Truman and Stalin putting together the postwar plan—to find that things have changed much more than he could have imagined. Would he find peace? Or maybe a particular story angle for his American magazine? What he did not expect to find was his former lover Lena (Cate Blanchett), a Jewish lady who has used some very unusual methods to avoid her own detection living inside of Germany during the last years of the war.

Geismer is thereby led to a murder case that he tries desperately to solve. In the process he is led to uncover a plot that involves Americans who are seeking to secure the freedom and services of a German bomb expert who they now want to help them in the postwar era, foreseeing a struggle with Russia. There is one problem—the desired expert was guilty of serious atrocities that led to the death of thousands of Jews and other minorities during the war. Lena is connected to it all because her […]

How Prayer is Fed By A Right Perspective on the Last Day

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:00-05:00July 8th, 2007|Categories: Biblical Theology|

I preached this morning at First Reformed Church in South Holland, Illinois. My text was Philippians 1:1-11. I tried to show how Paul’s expression of prayer and thanks for the church at Philippi was deeply grounded in his theology of hope, which itself is profoundly connected to how he understands the day of Christ. I argued that American evangelicalism has little or no perspective on this because: (1) We have a theology about the day of Christ that focuses on issues like the the rapture question, the millennium, and the "last days" as in guessing how close we really are to the end and, (2) Our arguments about various explanations regarding the "end times" has little or nothing to do with true Christian living and vital prayer, much less with really giving thanks.

Paul frames his whole prayer for the church in Philippi around his hope about the end. He is, as I argued this morning, a "biblical optimist." This is not some kind of emotional optimism here, rooted in human personality. No this is rather an optimism rooted in the nature […]

The Half-Way Point in the Season

By John Armstrong|2007-07-07T20:31:23-05:00July 7th, 2007|Categories: Baseball|

Baseball enthusiasts all know that July 4 is the half-way point in the season. The All-Star game, often called the mid-summer classic, takes place next Tuesday, July 10, in San Francisco. This is the time of the year teams take stock and decide to become buyers or sellers in terms of the talent they need for the second half of this season or for their future talent if they think they can’t win this year.

I saw the White Sox last evening. It was my eighth game of the season. I am now 4-4, thus not a total jinx. But my record is going backward lately. The Sox are done I believe. I hate to see them trade a few stars but they need to go younger sooner than later. They have next to no chance at the post-season this year. It is amazing but they went from World Series Champions two years ago to a major disappointment in one and a half years. Their pitching has failed, their bats are cold, and the team looks terrible right now. No fire in […]

The iPod Revolution

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:01-05:00July 5th, 2007|Categories: Current Affairs|

I finally did it. After seeing the value of owning an iPod for some months I broke down and actually bought one this week. I have previously commented on the iPod revolution based upon seeing how they are used among those in the emerging generation. I have asked a lot of questions to almost everyone under 35 who owns one. I have been podcasting the ACT 3 Weekly articles since January 1, 2007. A lot of my readers would rather listen to me present this article orally so I began to see the value of this technology firsthand.

I also began to realize that there is a lot of truly good stuff that I could hear in the car as well as when I walk, fly, or just rest, so it became more important for me to get my own iPod. I am not an easily convinced consumer so I waited for the technology to work our some of the bugs for several years and then for the price to come down considerably. The Scots blood in me is still pretty obvious […]

Happy Birthday America

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:01-05:00July 4th, 2007|Categories: Politics|

America is a much about an idea as it is a nation-state. In fact, so long as this idea is what drives this nation-state we have a future as a republic. But when we give up this idea it really doesn’t matter since we are not that different from any other nation. Yes, we have a beautiful continent but there is beauty in South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Anyone who has traveled to such continents can tell you that people are people, many such places are beautiful and cultural diversity is often charming and attractive. There are people who are virtuous in every place and there are people who are mean and self-centered in every place. We are not fundamentally better than other people, since we and they are made in the imago Dei and we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And wonderful Christians live in almost every place on the earth so as believers, with our citizenship first in heaven, we have a home elsewhere in the end. Love of country must never take the place […]

Constellation: A Film on Race and Family

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:01-05:00July 3rd, 2007|Categories: Film|

Constellation is a deeply moving film that graphically chronicles the lives of an extended African-American family that grew up the deep South. Since I too grew up in the deep South, and saw the bitter impact of the kind of racism the film portrays, I particularly fell in love with this film when I saw it on DVD this week. (Constellation was released in theaters in 2005 but had a limited and unsuccessful showing, like so many redeeming and valuable films do these days. It is rated PG-13.)

The film explores the difficult and tumultuous past of the Boxer family of Huntsville, Alabama. When the much loved matriarch Carmel Boxer dies the family gathers to attend her funeral in Huntsville. There they are forced to confront the struggles of both their past and present. In the midst of this deep and agonizing struggle race plays an obviously big part in the story. Indeed, few films that feature the theme of race in the deep South address the pain of this period like Constellation. It is built around the story of a fifty-year […]

Blending Tradition with Innovation

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:01-05:00July 2nd, 2007|Categories: Church Tradition|

It seems to me that the path the church must always follow, and her leaders must therefore seek follow as they lead the church, is to learn how to stay rooted in the Christian tradition, which is both a living and historical reality, while also using innovation when it comes to mission and ministry. This is what my late friend Bob Webber meant by "ancient-future faith" I believe. Protestantism has tended to allow for the innovation part of this equation while Catholicism and Orthodoxy have both remained rooted in tradition and struggled with the innovation part. This is particularly so with many ethnic churches, especially ethnic Orthodox Churches. But it is not limited to these churches. Many Protestant congregations are more defined by the culture than the gospel, in fact most likely are.

Modern evangelicals, on the other hand, have so rejected the role of tradition that they have little or no place for the living and breathing life-giving power of the historic church. Confessional life is held in suspicion. Everything is up for grabs, all the time, in all places. The […]