Tag Archives: Bible

Badly Broken: Walter White and the Corrosive Effects of Sin

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Badly Broken: Walter White and the Corrosive Effects of Sin

Badly Broken: Walter White and the Corrosive Effects of Sin
by Chris McCirney and Daniel Lee

A great article about a televised story of how sin starts small and eats away at us.  Also, spoilers alert.

“With each calcified deposit, what starts off as an instinct to provide for his family mutates into a monstrous obsession to preserve the empire that Walt has established with his own two hands. Walt has been so engulfed by the darkness that he is no longer fully human. And that’s because sin is a force that refuses to let up; like gravity, it relentlessly pulls us inward into itself. As Walt himself says, ‘If you believe that there’s a hell . . . we’re already pretty much going there. But I’m not gonna lie down until I get there” (from episode 5.07, “Say My Name”).'”

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Digest part 6: Resolving Our Food Dilemmas

Posted by Caleb Coy on

A Digest of  The Omnivore’s Dilemma Part 6: Resolving Our Food Dilemmas
or
“What is the perfect meal, anyway?”

“The blessing of the omnivore is that he can eat a great many different things in nature.  The curse of the omnivore is that when it comes to figuring out which of those things are safe to eat, he’s pretty much on his own.” -M.P.

Humans are able to eat so many things, and yet so much that we eat (or can eat) is also harmful.  We have natural instincts that keep us from dying, like taste, disgust, and the feeling of a full belly.  But we also like to refuse to listen to our body, or our mind.
Continue reading →

Introducing: The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Digest

Posted by Caleb Coy on

“Whatever native wisdom we may have once possessed about eating has been replaced by confusion and anxiety[…we are] a notably unhealthy people obsessed with the idea of eating healthy.” –Michael Pollan

This is my first “foodie” book.  Oh, and really, why do people use the word “foodie”?  We should start calling people who don’t smoke “oxygenies”, and people who try to dress modestly “clothesies”.
Continue reading →

Abstaining from the “Appearance” of Evil

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Christians may hear from time to time the admonishment to “abstain from all appearances of evil“.

What you hear is a quotation of a passage from Paul’s first letter to Thessalonica (1 Thess. 5:22).  Only, we usually hear a misquote of sorts, or rather a misuse of a quote.

“Abstain from all appearances of evil” is the most commonly used quotation of the passage, from the King James Bible.  Many people shoot off this quote as if it were some sort of proof to Christians that they should not do something because it “looks bad” to others.
Continue reading →

Twitter and Little Birdies

Posted by Caleb Coy on

“A little birdie told me…”

Heard that colloquialism before?

Nobody knows exactly where this phrase comes from but I heard it through the grapevine that the oldest and most likely source is Ecclesiastes 10:20.

“Do not revile the king even in your thoughts, or curse the rich in your bedroom, because a bird in the sky may carry your words, and a bird on the wing  may report what you say.”

Or it could just be a reference to carrier pigeons.  Perhaps Solomon (or whoever wrote the wisdom he collected) was also thinking of carrier pigeons.  Or parrots.  Solomon acquired a lot of exotic things.  Maybe parrots also.
Continue reading →

“How Could Both Statements Be True?” by Eric Lyons

Posted by Caleb Coy on

“How Could Both Statements Be True?” by Eric Lyons

“How Could Both Statements Be True?” by Eric Lyons
As they say in MacBeth, “the battle is lost and won.”
Eric Lyons of Apologetics Press on the myth of contradiction:
“Why is it that in the 21st century we can use words and expressions in so many different ways and have little trouble understanding each other, but when Jesus or the Bible writers used words in different senses, so many people want to cry “foul”? Could it be because modern-day skeptics refuse to allow Jesus and the inspired writers the same freedoms to use words and phrases in different ways? Could it be due to unfair bias on the part of Bible critics?”

For the Love of $

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Loving $

“Money is evil”

“Money is the root of all evil”

“The Love of Money is the root of all evil”

“The Love of Money is the root of all sorts of evil”

You’ve heard several versions of this phrase before.  Yet only one of them is technically a correct wording of the warning given in the Bible.  The difference may seem trivial, and indeed it is trivial compared to the understanding of the warning, but the subtleties do make a difference.
Continue reading →

My Week at the Full Armor Lectures: Wednesday, part 2 by Jeremy Marshall

Posted by Caleb Coy on

My Week at the Full Armor Lectures
by Jeremy Marshal
Wednesday, part 2

From the harrowing climax that is called Wednesday part 2:
I remembered that Sharp and MacDoogan had called the Bacon Lane elders the night before and sowed seeds of doubt about my mental stability. I could tell that my assertion that they were attempting to extort me, combined with the tape of my meltdown at the breakfast table, wasn’t helping my case. On the other hand, Brother Dean is one of those tin-foil-hat conspiracy theorist guys. He believes the world is ran by the Club of Rome, that the government is trying to poison us with fluoride in our drinking water, that the Holocaust and themoon landing never happened, and that the real culprit behind 9/11 was the Jews. How could a fellow who believed all that stuff not believe that I was being railroaded? Seems like it’d be right up his alley, really. “Were they also trying to blackmail you when you cussed out Mack Snipes?” he asked.

“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall Day 3 (pt. 2)

Posted by Caleb Coy on

“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures”
by Jeremy Marshall
Day 3 (pt. 2)

From day 3.2:
“After my talk with Beauregard Jones Tuesday morning, I decided to skip the pre-lunch lectures and go to the Memphis Zoo. It dawned on me that the Full Armor Lectureship—indeed, our entire fellowship—was its own menagerie, a stationary Noah’s ark whose inhabitants refused to leave, all blaming one another for the stench in there. We are not exotic breeds from faraway lands in the First United Primitive Christian Church, however. We are more like stubborn relics of the recent past, looking at the world through nauseatingly garish Technicolor lenses. We live on in the rubble of Modernism, proudly making no concessions to the rest of the world as it evolves without us, flinging our filth at each other. I felt quite at one that day with the animals in the zoo, for it came to me that I, too, had been bred in captivity.”