Christian Carnival CLXXXII (182)

There is no theme this week for the Christian Carnival - just enjoy the rides as they come to you in the order they came to me.

A little "meta" though:

• If you wish to be in the notification loop about upcoming carnivals, and when they are posted - go and join the Christian Carnival Google group; and make sure you sign up for some version of email notification. Typically, you will receive one email around Friday, one on Tuesday, and the notification the Carnival is up. This is not reserved for folks who have blogs and who intend to post - it is for anyone that wants notification about the Christian Carnival.



• You submit your posts, if you want to post, to either the Submission Gmail address, or through the Blog Carnival submission form. The latter is the most user friendly for you and the host.



• There is an under-used resource - the Christian Carnival Forum - that, I think, we need to explore how to use. This week I have placed in the Daily Carnival topic a couple of posts that was submitted that did not meet the criteria for inclusion in the Carnival. Whether that was a good idea or not you can tell us in poll, but let's do try to find a way to utilize the forum.

Now, on to the Carnival:

Martin at Sun and Shield submits "Why God created" based mostly on Psalm 136, which tells us, in poetic language.

Diane R., at Crossroads: Where Faith and Inquiry Meet, thinks we need to start "Thinking Postmodernly" to understand the great shift taking place today in the evangelical church.

Lingamish finished off a week of ranting about Biblical Greek and Hebrew with a tribute to the people God has chosen to impart his truth to the next generation: Not Pastor and Professor but Mom and Dad.

Jon Swift thinks "Harry Potter is a Brat" - a petulant, self-pitying brat who routinely breaks rules that he believes don't apply to him.

Jack Yoest presents "The Dreamer Goes To Peru...Without Her Mao Bag." posted at Reasoned Audacity:

I asked the woman why she wanted to work for us. "The Terrorists are trying to kill me." I knew this was not to be an ordinary job interview. Charmaine and I were hiring a...

Michael at Chasing the Wind knows it is too hard to do what God asks - which is precisely the point. It is too hard for us, but not for God - so when we live in "Dependence" on God's strength, God's purposes will be fulfilled.

J Archer presents "Liturgial reflection" posted at Tin and Copper considering the liturgical role of cultural engagement.

Tom at Thinking Christian looks at "P.Z. Myers's Neurons Give Talk" and argues

They claim to have disproved a position that they don't even address. If they intend to show there is no soul, they ought at least to pay attention to what they're trying to disprove. They are ignorant of it, or they blithely assume it's safe to ignore it

Ali presents "Jesus in Genesis - Creation" posted at Kiwi and an Emu. He thinks there are some interesting parallels in the Creation story with the Gospel.

Mark Olson presents "Habermas and Ratzinger" posted at Pseudo-Polymath. It is a short review/discussion of a fascinating book. Useful for anyone interested in apologetics

Ian presents "Notes for the Simply Christian Sunday School Class on Justice & Spirituality, God, and Israel" posted at Philosophical Orthodoxy. These notes are based on N.T. Wright's book Simply Christian.

Ched presents "The Storm Front moves in, and the King of Glory passes by" posted at Says Simpleton.

Richard H. Anderson presents "Access to Salvation" posted at dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos Theophilos.

Don Bosch at The Evangelical Ecologist continues his series called "The Uniqueness of Christian Ecology" This week's post is on "Tithing".

Scripture tells us we're to be just as careful with our world as we are with our wealth. Both are from Him and belong to Him. So how do we get that right balance between wealth and ecology? How do Christians avoid the same sort of environmental hypocrisy that Al Gore and Madonna are being accused of lately? As you might expect God's word goes straight to the root of things, and from a surprising source!

Brent presents "Simplistic Theology" posted at Everyday Liturgy. He thinks that theology should be normative and deal with consistencies instead of exceptions.

Leticia Velasquez presents "Our Special Children in Church" posted at cause of our joy.

We have had a couple of spam filter victims: for some reasons some submissions end up there; and the future hosts (and the moderators) need to keep a better eye on that folder - myself included.

The first is Doug at Bounded Irrationality. He has tried to submit for three weeks and we missed two of them - and almost this one. His post this week is "A Christian Definition of Human Rights" - looking at how Christians can view human rights Biblically.

Next is Weekend Fisher with "Psalm 19 and the Word of God" and ponders what Psalm 19 says about the Word of God -- from beauty and transforming power to its relationship to the presence of God.

Jeremy Pierce presents "The Problem of Waste" posted at Parableman where he examines an argument from Ken Miller against intelligent design that turns out to be just another instance of the problem of evil, and it happens to apply just as much to Miller's view as it does to intelligent design. Also, thanks to Jeremy for getting the submissions transferred to me - I have been brain dead with my two jobs; and for being the one to pull those two submissions out of the spam filter.

Adam presents "Psalms 1-50: The Links" posted at The Faughn Family of Four.

Henry Neufeld continues his series with "Notes on Mark 11:20-26" posted at Participatory Bible Study Blog.

Jody Neufeld looks at "Harry Potter Mania!" at Jody Along the Path, and has some ideas on how to set standards for your children's reading--and why you should!

Matthew Anderson is "Responding to Readers: Article 6 on 'The Romney Dilemma'" posted at Mere Orthodoxy. He contends that those who claim that asking whether Romney's religion affects his politics is bigoted are misguided.

William Meisheid presents "Borgislam" posted at Beyond The Rim... .

It is a hard look at Islam using an analogy that is well known to most modern blog savvy Christians. Some may not like this posting...so...

Rodney Olsen presents "The Gospel of Homer and Harry" posted at The Journey.

Some people are saying that they are seeing Harry Potter as some kind of 'Christ figure' in the latest J.K. Rowling book. How far should we go in drawing spiritual parallels from contemporary culture?

Jennifer in OR presents "The French Atheist Still Wanted Jesus on the Cross" posted at Diary of 1.

Finally, my post - and a suggestion for the next couple of weeks. At Street Prophets where I cross post quite a bit I kicked off a blogathon on the topic of forgiveness. My initial post - "Forgivenss in My View" - has been crossposted to Brain Cramps for God with a few alterations. Anyone want to have a Christian Carnival Focus on Forgiveness? It doesn't have to be everyone, but the next two hosts could set aside a section for posts on forgiveness from our various perspectives. We can establish an index to all the posts at the Christian Carnival Forum for future reference. Game? It could be the start of many such topical focuses.