Sunspots 852

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to others*:

Christianity "Resurrecting Orthodoxy" explains what the Bible says about demons. It's complicated.

(and Computing) Relevant reports that the most-viewed Christian Facebook feeds, so-called, are almost all run by troll farms in Eastern Europe. (For what it's worth, I'd never seen or heard of any of them, except the Guideposts feed, which is apparently not run by such a troll farm.)

Relevant also has an article examining the idea of modesty. It's complicated, and many of us have been operating as if it's simple.

Environment: Gizmodo reports that a bee swarm killed over 60 endangered penguins in South Africa.

Gizmodo also reports that summer 2021 wildfires, mostly in the US and Siberia, emitted more carbon dioxide than the country of India did.:

Politics: An audit of Arizona's fall Presidential election ballots, by a firm picked by the GOP legislators, found that, is anything, President Biden got more votes than were reported in November, according to Fox News and other outlets.

FiveThirtyEight on why bipartisanship in the Senate is so rare.

Science: Gizmodo tells us about tiny parasitic, nearly transparent fish found in the Amazon.

NPR reports that Mars may have been too small to hold its water from gradually escaping Martian gravity.

Gizmodo reports on the creation of new languages -- there have been some such, recently.

The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, it is free to use like this.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 640

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: Relevant has an article on modesty. It points out that becoming lustful after seeing a woman is a man's choice, that what men are sexually attracted to varies from man to man, and is also different in different cultures, and that the only use of the word, modesty, in the Bible, in 1 Timothy 2:9, refers to ornaments, not to how much leg or whatever may be revealed.

David Drury urges so-called evangelicals to repentance.


Computing: Gizmo's Freeware recommends the Problem Steps Recorder, a free tool, built in to Windows computers, which records exactly what happened, and when.

National Public Radio reports that experts have changed their recommendations on choosing passwords. Their recommendations should make things simpler.

Gizmo's freeware also reports on a web site that will tell you what passwords have been compromised in the past (millions have).

Education: Listverse describes the right and wrong usage of 10 common words.

Food: NPR reports that men may be more attractive to  women if they eat certain foods.

History: Relevant points out that Robert E. Lee, himself, was not in favor of displaying confederate sympathy in statues, and in other ways, after the Civil War.
 
Politics: FiveThirtyEight presents a short, calm primer on the histories of black and white identity politics, and the role of President Trump.

The New York Times presents data on the frequency, by race, of killings by police being ruled justifiable.

Science: Statnews reports on the interesting things that have happened when white nationalists have genetic tests to examine their ancestry.

FiveThirtyEight reports that, with the exception of Saturn, solar eclipses would not be visible on any other planet in our solar system, and eclipses on earth are much better viewing than the possibility from Saturn.



Image source (public domain)

Sunspots 523

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: Some interesting, and thought-provoking, thoughts on modesty, from Relevant.

Computing: Gizmo's Freeware tells us about a free MP3 editor.


Politics: Benjamin L. Corey believes he knows what a truly Bible-based nation would look like. Maybe not like you think.



Science:  Wired tells us about a woman who has deliberately let 200,000 bedbugs bite her.


 
National Public Radio reports that lots of human genes work just fine in yeast organisms.



Image source (public domain)

How much does the Bible say we should spend on sunglasses?

There seem to be some things that the Bible makes clear -- we should do them, or we shouldn't. Examples: love your enemies; don't commit adultery. But there are all sorts of areas where we have to make decisions on our own. There's no scriptural guidance.

One example: how should we dress? I happen to belong to a denomination (it's not the only one like this) that has a history with some legalism in it. People believed that they should wear certain types of clothing, usually no jewelry, and their hair should be prepared in a certain way, especially when they came to church. We're pretty much over that now, thank God. But why was it so appealing to some, in the past?

I don't know all the answers. One possible answer is that the Bible does say that we should dress modestly. But modesty is mostly a state of mind. It's possible to appear in public without being mostly covered, but with a modest attitude -- that is, without wanting to draw attention to yourself, or how you are dressed, made up, hair fixed, and otherwise ornamented. It's possible to cover yourself up rather thoroughly, but have a desire to show off your body, or your clothes, or your new watch, in a proud manner.

Another reason is that we like to conform. Even people who call themselves nonconformists like to conform.

But there's a third reason. Having a set of standards that can be followed, by anyone, regardless of the state of their relationship to Christ, is tempting. It tempts people to follow those standards, and not engage in the deeper walk that comes to us as the Holy Spirit draws us deeper and deeper into the attitude of conformity to Christ. And it tempts people to even think that there is no such conformity with Christ's attitude, but just a set of external standards. I'm not saying that those who did, or do, dress a certain way, and leave off some ornamentation, as part of their religious culture, cannot be also conformed to the mind of Christ. Some of them were, and some of them are. But it's too easy to think that conformity to a human standard is all that is expected of us, when it isn't.

What does all this have to do with the title of this post? Good question. Here's my answer. God leaves us to make decisions on all sorts of things, without explicit scriptural guidance? Why is that? Well, one reason has to do with the culture of Bible times. If Paul had spelled out what kind of sunglasses to wear, if any, and how much to pay for them, his contemporaries would probably have thought him crazy, and he wouldn't have understood what he was writing about, himself. But there's another, more important reason, spelled out above. If there was a 21st Century rule book on dress, and spending money, and how we can and can't entertain ourselves and eat, and it was comprehensive, we would think that we could redeem ourselves by our adherence to that rule book. But we couldn't. We can only redeem ourselves by accepting Christ's sacrifice for sin, and following Him as our Lord. Uncertainty on what to do in these matters should drive me to keeping a warm and living relationship with God, who can help me make such decisions.

Deciding how to spend money, what to wear, what to eat, and the like, should be informed by our relationship with Christ. We should pray, and try to think what He would do. And we should realize that we may get such matters wrong, or disagree with fellow believers about these things. (And we need to be tolerant of the behavior of other Christians.) Being wrong, or being different, should remind us that we aren't redeemed by following rules. We are redeemed by Christ's sacrifice!

Although I have spoken only of individual decisions on behavior, group decisions also should be made in this way. We should pray, and seek the mind of Christ, and Biblical guidance, if there is any, on important issues as groups of believers. And, when we do, we should recognize that different groups may come to different conclusions about ritual, doctrine, how a church building looks, church government, and many other things, without either one being sinful in their belief and practice.

Thanks for reading!