Very good exchange:
Episode 100: On Remembering Death (with Ligon Duncan & Matt McCullough)
REMEMBERING DEATH
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Stuck in the Present
RESILIENT FAITH
DELIGHT IN LEARNING
From my forthcoming book on history, Making Connections: Discovering the Riches of the Past:
According to neuroscientist, Daniel Levitin, we are hardwired (he thinks due to evolution, I think due to God) to name our world. Not only are we hardwired to do so, but we delight in doing so:
This innate passion for naming and categorizing can be brought into stark relief by the fact that most of the naming we do in the plant world might be considered strictly unnecessary. Out of the 30,000 edible plants thought to exist on earth, just eleven account for 93% of all that humans eat: oats, corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, yucca (also called tapioca or cassava), sorghum, millet, beans, barley, and rye. Yet our brains evolved to receive a pleasant shot of dopamine when we learn something new and again when we classify it systematically into an ordered structure.[1]
With respect to history, it is easy to see that classification (knowing some of the differences between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment) provides a necessary scaffolding to keep learning and delighting in one’s understanding of the world.
[1] Daniel J. Levitin, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in an Age of Information Overload (New York, NY: Dutton, 2014), 32.
THINKING BIBLICALLY ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR
CYNICAL ABOUT THE CHURCH?
LAND OF HOPE (LATEST INTERVIEW)
NEXT BOOK?
A publisher voiced interest in my primer on history. He has asked me to increase it considerably. I think there is plenty to add so the process begins!
WHAT BOOKS CAN DO!
Coleridge, convinced he will die soon, plans to spend £100 on books so his library will be appropriately impressive.
(He died 26 years after writing this in his notebook)
WHICH GOSPEL?
I had my regular meeting with my friend, Warren, today. I told him that many of us Christians believe the gospel is summarized in the following line:
God gives us inspiration for what we already want to do.
Basically, it is the “American dream” with some Christian terminology thrown in.
The real gospel invites us to a story that is not being written by us. We have to submit to the Storyteller to be part of the story He is telling. It is a ghastly idea to autonomous Americans, but the best thing going in the universe even if marked by a life of suffering. Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world where open hostility to Jesus is the norm know this is the REAL story worth being part of!