Jesus and Paul on the Hermeneutics of Sexuality: The Recent Boy Scouts Decision, Part 1

According to a news report on Yahoo

The Boy Scouts of America, one of the country’s largest and oldest youth organizations, decided on Thursday to break 103 years of tradition by allowing openly gay members into its ranks.

The controversial move was approved by more than 60 percent of the approximate 1,400 votes cast by the BSA’s national council. According to the new resolution, beginning Jan. 1, 2014, “no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.”

I’m not interested in the related question re gay scoutmasters. Rather, the vote relates solely to whether a gay kid should be able to join the Boy Scouts. Continue reading

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DNS Shift Coming — Blog May Be Briefly Inaccessible

I’m about to redirect the DNS pointers so that going to OneInJesus.info will take you to the new cloud proxy server. (Not sure that means, but sounds so cool to say it!)

The theory is that this will protect the site from hackers much better than before.

The reality is that there may be some glitches in the transition. Here goes nothin’ …

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Adult Bible Classes: What Should Be the Goal of Teaching?

From Gary Gutting, “Why Do I Teach?” in the New York Times Opinion Pages —

I’ve concluded that the goal of most college courses should not be knowledge but engaging in certain intellectual exercises.   For the last few years I’ve had the privilege of teaching a seminar to first-year Honors students in which we read a wide range of wonderful texts, from Plato and Thucydides to Calvino and Nabokov.  We have lively discussions that require a thorough knowledge of the text, and the students write excellent papers that give close readings of particular passages.  But the half-life of their detailed knowledge is probably far less than a year.  The goal of the course is simply that they have had close encounters with some great writing. Continue reading

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In re Hacking, Part 2

My webhost had a hardware problem starting last night, making this and several other sites inaccessible. (At least it wasn’t another hack …)

The site is now back up, and I’m working with Sucuri to convert to a cloud proxy, which should (a) make for faster downloads and (b) make it nearly impossible to be hacked.

In the meantime, there will be glitches. That’s the nature of the computer world. I appreciate your patience. Hopefully, by some time tomorrow — maybe even sooner — the conversion will be over and the site will remain hack free for a long time.

(WordPress has been the target of a worldwide hacking scheme lately.)

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In re Hacking

The malware was cleaned from the site by Sucuri.net yesterday. Google reports that the site has been cleaned, but a Google search for the site may well report the presence of malware. It’s old news, awaiting an update. Such is the price of caching data for speed.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to upgrade to Sucuri’s proxy service, which should provide yet another level of protection. But the transition has been rough — and I’ve put it on hold until Monday.

The Sucuri proxy service should end the problem, by hiding the actual website from hackers.

I appreciate your patience. Fortunately, I’m on break and so this hasn’t blocked any posts of consequence.

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Landfill-Harmonic

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Hacked Again

There’s recently been a worldwide attack on WordPress sites. I did everything I was warned to do to avoid the attack. Still got hacked.

It’s been cleaned up by the fine folks at Sucuri. But while they were cleaning, Google flagged the site as dangerous. We’ve asked Google to retest and remove the flag. That should happen by morning.

Thanks to everyone who emailed to let me know about the problem. Since I was on the road, I would not have known otherwise. The warnings are greatly appreciated.

I’m investigating other protections against hackers — more expensive methods, I’m sure. I’ll keep you informed.

Meanwhile, I’m still on break while I deal with this dang piriformis syndrome. The direct injection into the piriformis muscle to stop the spasms has helped. I’ll get an injection tomorrow for bursitis.

Then more visits to doctors’ offices to put together a long-term strategy.

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“This Is Water”

I’m on break. Enjoy.

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“How to Write a Worship Song”

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“The Three Kinds of Churches”

Agree? Disagree? Are “worship” and “singing” really the same thing? Of course, not. We, of all people, know that there are four other acts of worship.

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