Another week gone by

and here's what I've been reading (well, some of what I've been reading anyway).

First off, Roger Olson explains what he means by his version of Evangelical. Personally, I'd just drop the label; no matter what you do, people will still think if means Trump-supporting fundamentalist.

Political Theology Network takes a look at guns and Christianity. Balanced approach, but right now it just raises more questions than answers. But that's good. Read it.

Anxious Bench argues for women theological education, but for a novel reason. Read it to find out. And speaking of ministry, Mike Glenn on Jesus Creed talks about our lack of capacity in the church. Nope, not physical space, but—well, read it. Here's a good taste:

Right now, we must grasp this idea of giving ministry away. The first Reformation gave the Word back to the people. The second Reformation will give ministry back to the people. Pastors will have to be the first ones to understand this. As long as we think we’re the only ones who can do the ministry of the church, our churches will be hampered in their effectiveness and limited in their impact. As we’ve mentioned before, Christ-followers are called from their sinfulness and called to a partnership with Christ in the service of His kingdom.

And speaking of capacity, how about our capacity to forgive? Fr. Stephen Freeman broaches that subject:

Of course, our experience of those who are truly enemies is that we do not want to forgive them. We do not trust them; the wound has been too deep; their offense is not against us but against someone we love who is particularly vulnerable. I could enlarge the list but we are all too familiar with it. The reasons we find it hard to forgive our enemies is endless.

But the commandment remains – not as a counsel of how to live a healthier, happier life – but with the added reminder that we will only find forgiveness as we forgive. Forgiveness is not optional – but a fundamental spiritual action which we must learn to use as though our salvation depended upon it – for it does.

Speaking of forgiveness, David Fitch is back with part 2 of the enemy-making machine:

If the enemy-making machine works to keep us locked in a zero-sum game, where only one person wins and the other person must lose, this passage in Matthew [18:15–20] moves us to a new place altogether. Here in this space of mutuality, “what is bound on earth is bound in heaven, what is loosed on earth is loosed in heaven.” We are being taken into God’s future, releasing the power of the kingdom to heal, transform, create something new.

He then shows how Jesus models conflict management in John 8. Yes, he knows the text-critical problems of the chapter (as do I); get over it!

Meanwhile, down under, Stephen McAlpine has a pair of posts, the first one looks at the great toilet paper run and how COVID-19 reveals the lack of foundation in our lives. The second one looks at the fallout from the willingness of society to encourage gender change in teen-agers. Hint: It ain't pretty. Remember, Ideas have consequences! If I were a lawyer, I'd say there is a marvelous opportunity to make a few bucks there. But, aside from that, all I see is ruined lives.

A little closer to home, on the Anxious Bench they tackle "political hobbyism"—a term I had never heard of before.

And so, for Lent, the solemn season of reflection and repentance, I have vowed to give up political hobbyism. I’m striving instead to trade shallow political engagement for deep political engagement, which focuses on building relationships, serving my community, and effecting real change that has an impact on my neighbors. I know from my research on religious communities and their involvement in immigration and refugee issues that this type of work matters immensely—not simply for meeting the real, immediate needs of people, but for creating enduring and impactful political change.

She then goes on to list some actual concrete examples. Good stuff.

Meanwhile, Bob on Books would settle for a bit of modesty. I'm with him.

I love my country. But as a Christian I love a God who loves the world (John 3:16), and so I need to see my country within the world God loves. To share God’s heart is to share his love, and to love the United States alone is too small to share the heart of God. I love a God who is holy, just and true, and this requires me to look at my country through these lenses as well.

When I look at things this way, it leads me to far greater modesty about my country. While not denying the goods, there is another kind of history about which I’ve learned since I was in school. Much of it isn’t pretty.

Again, read it!

John Hawthorne is retiring at the end of this year after 39 years in Christian higher ed. He muses over it in two parts part 1, looking back, and part 2, looking forward. Good insights.

The Atlantic compares the COVID-19 virus to the Spanish influenza a century ago. Hint: it was much worse that this one. In fact, there's no real comparison. But there are some lessons to learn from it.

The BBC looks at the death of the apostrophe. I doubt it's dead, but it is certainly misused/abused. Fun read, though.

Rounding out this week, is a look at James Daunt, the guy who is now running Barnes & Noble. I hope he can bring them back from the brink of bankruptcy. One thing is certain, he's on the right path in emulating the independent bookstore. And for the first time in years, B&N is being run by an actual bookseller.

Final note: Incoming college students—you know, the digital natives—would still rather use a physical textbook! And not just a majority, but 76 percent. So that's good news for the booksellers, isn't it?

And no, I didn't read a post about Amazon this week. But, I did see an interesting note on Bicycling about a NASCAR racer who is apparently pretty famous but is also a bicyclist, Jimmie Johnson. Maybe he can raise awareness so I don't have to worry as much about getting run off the road. Well, I can wish, can't I?

OK; I really am done here. Read the links and have a healthy week.

Print versus digital

I'm reading a report about the differences in comprehension and analytical thought between digital and print (ironically, I'm reading it digitally on a MacBook Pro!). After pages of conflicting studies and evidence of reader preferences, here's what he says:

How is the current threat of digital distraction any greater when reading an e-book versus a print codex? Isn’t it just as easy to put down a print book and pick up a tablet or smartphone as it is to close out your e-reading app and start browsing Facebook? The answer, in my view, is no, and again I return to neuroplasticity. The digital environment is literally rewiring our brains to seek stimulative, short-­term gratification at the expense of our ability to think and read in depth. In this situation, how much more challenging is it to read at length on the very same screen from which your brain expects quick scanning, 140-­character tweets, and amusing cat videos than it is to read from a printed page or on a dedicated e-reader that does not offer such opportunities for distraction?

Thus the digital reading environment offers not a difference in degree but a difference in kind, one that is transformational in nature rather than evolutionary. As the digital age unfolds, it is likely to substantially alter both the nature of reading and the nature of the book itself as deep linear reading fades in importance and functional tabular reading becomes more widespread than ever. This will in turn alter the way people write and even the ways they think, leading to a likely decline of deep analytical thought for the purpose of forming broad conceptual frameworks in favor of a more immediate, purely functional form of decision-­oriented thinking based on rapidly acquired snippets of information.—Reading in a Digital Age doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9944117 (emphasis original)

<idle musing>
I agree. I read voluminously—both digitally and in print—and I know it is much easier to get distracted when I'm reading on a screen. Take this study as an example. I keep getting distracted by incoming email. I get tempted to check this or that. Not so when I grab a book. Consequently, I remember better what I read in print than what I read digitally.
</idle musing>

The book is dead! Long live the book!

Just ran across this today, about the "death" of the book. The final paragraph sums it up (although I encourage you to read it all):

All the handwringing that the book is dead is really directed to the “books that are really not books,” the kind of things enumerated above that were published as books at a time when that was, however inadequate, the most viable format. The long-form text, on the other hand, has no real competition outside of the entertainment area, where Netflix and HBO compete with the commercial novel (but not, for the most part, with the literary novel). For all our talk about reduced attention spans, some ideas require space to stretch out in, some areas need extended syntheses. It is a mistake to make a book more like the Web, valuable as Web-like publications are. But they are different kinds of publications. The future of the long-form text, the core meaning of a book, is in making it more like itself.

<idle musing>
I would take issue with reference materials being better digitally. There’s still a lot to be said for the paper dictionary/lexicon. I still reach for BDAG/LSJ/HALOT/BDB/DCH—there’s something about a paper version that makes it easier to pick up a lot of info in a quick glance and then go deeper. I have electronic versions of most of those, but find I rarely use them as opposed to the paper version.

That also goes for text editions. I find navigating a text with an apparatus criticus to be easier on paper—although I'm sure others would disagree with me there.

Sure, the hyperlinking is nice—and I take advantage of that. But, the initial look-up (for me) is easier via paper. Mind you, that's not because I'm a amateur at things digital—I built my first computer back in 1982 and have been on the Internet since 1995. I even ran an IT department for five years and had a network running Linux, BSD, and Windows in my basement for several years. But, there are things that are better on paper, just as there are things that are better digitally.
</idle musing>

The problem of e-books

I love books—hardback, paperback, yes, even e-books. I love the ease of carrying a large number of books that the e-book option gives me. I read them on my iPad, my MacBook, and my desktop computer. I read them as iBooks, Kindle books, Nook books, PDFs, Google books, even CBD's e-reader. I still prefer physical books, and I prefer PDFs in e-books.

But I've been running into a problem lately. I depend heavily on interlibrary loan (ILL) for lots of the books I read. I don't want to purchase books that I will only read once and never refer to again. And our local library isn't likely to purchase things like Pardee's The Ugaritic Texts and the Origins of West-Semitic Literary Composition or Rowe's Acts commentary World Upside Down! After all, we only have 1500 residents and maybe 3 people would even consider reading them. Not a wise use of library funds. So I use interlibrary loan.

But lately I've been running into a problem: e-books. Specifically, academic e-books. One of the big benefits of e-books, so they say, is that they can be accessed anywhere, that the Internet is leveling the economic barriers to a good education. Well, kind of. There is no doubt that some of the offerings through places like iTunes U are great. I've listened to some of the lectures from places like Yale; good stuff.

But have you ever tried to access an electronic book (EBSCO or ebrary) from a computer that is not located on campus? Have you ever succeeded if you aren't a current student/faculty member? Probably not.

That's a problem. If it were a physical book, I could request it via ILL and have it in a couple of weeks. Not so with an electronic one. For example, I recently tried to request a copy of Bloomsbury [formerly Continuum] Companion to Historical Linguistics via ILL. There are three copies available in Minnesota—two via the U of Minnesota and one in a library consortium. Not bad for an esoteric book like that...

So I tried to request it via ILL on the Internet. No success. So I went into the library to ask them to request it (they know me quite well...). This was about a month ago. I received the book yesterday. From the University of Oklahoma! A quick look at Worldcat shows that there are only 32 libraries with the physical book! Granted, that was a quick look; I'm sure I could uncover more if I looked more carefully...but the point remains the same: how can an independent scholar get a copy? The tendency, especially in linguistics and other more "esoteric" subjects, is toward e-books.

I understand the logic. Space is expensive and limited in a library. It makes sense to use that space on books that will be accessed by more than a handful of people. But what about access for those who aren't the privileged few? What about access for those of us who are 2.5 hours from an academic library and 5 hours from a really good one?

Just an
</idle musing>

It's true

I just finished reading a new book (relaased February 1). I rarely read popular Christian literature, and even more rarely read a new release. But, Olive Tree offered a free book last Friday. Now come on, who can resist a free book?! But the funny thing is, I actually read this one! (Be honest now, how many of you have at least a hundred free books stashed in your computer/tablet/phone that you've never even opened!?)

And you know what? It was actually a good book!

Yep. A popular Christian paperback that I liked. And has good theology. And is practical. And is readable.

OK. Enough hype : ) You get that I liked it...

The name of the book is The Truest Thing about You, written by David Lomas and published by David C. Cook. That's right, the Sunday School people. Well, that's how I always thought of them anyway, but they've been doing some good non-Sunday School stuff in the last 10 years or so. When I worked at Eisenbrauns, one of the reps who called on me (Jerry Gortmaker—a great rep!) also represented them; we didn't carry their stuff—not academic enough—but he would periodically offer me an advance reading copy. One I remember especially is The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning.

Anyway, the thesis of the book is that there are many true things that can be said about you, but only one is truest—who you are in Christ. The whole book is an outworking of what that means and what it should look like in your life. Good stuff, and I'll be excerpting from it for the next few weeks or so. But, right now, I'm going to jump to the very end and throw in the last few paragraphs, because this is usually where books like this fall apart. Ready? Here we go:

At this point in the book you might expect application points. A “to-do list” of identity. Some journal questions. Five things you can do in the next five weeks to actualize your new identity.

But that’s not what this book is about. Unless you drive the single message of this book to the core of your being—beyond belief, to the place of your deepest trust—no application will stick.

So here it is.

You will not find your identity in what you have, but in who has you. You will not find your identity in what you do, but in what has been done for you. And you will not find your identity in what you desire, but in who has desired—at infinite cost to Himself—a relationship with you.

Christ is your life. He gives you a new identity and will work that new identity out in your life until the day when He appears. On that day you will finally see clearly, as Christ sees you now. You will know as you are known.

And you will understand that the truest thing about you—that in Christ God called you His beloved in whom He is well pleased—has been true all along.

And is now true forever.

Believe. Trust. Base your entire identity and worth on that fact.

Isn't that great? No long (or short!) list of "things to do to make this real" or other such garbage! You get the idea that he actually believes what he's writing! Once you know who you already are in Christ, you will begin to live like it! In the words of Augustine, "Tolo! Lege!" (Pick it up and read it!)

Understatement of the week

From Behind the Books:

It turns out that making books into ebooks isn't as easy as you might think.

E-books

Just saw this from Shelf Awareness:

...the Joan Ganz Cooney Center's research on digital reading comprehension and retention in children, which found that "reading comprehension and reader engagement for children between print books and e-books was similar. However, between print books and enhanced e-books, it was a different story.

"While children engaged more actively with enhanced e-books versus print books, their reading comprehension went down. The study found that when enhanced e-books featured interactivity that wasn't directly tied to the narrative or the text, it distracted both the children and parents from the story and thereby affected comprehension and retention."

<idle musing>
Maybe that is the reason repeated surveys of college students say they prefer their textbooks as books—less distractions. I have to admit, when I'm reading an e-book on the computer, I get distracted by the options...
</idle musing>

Of e-readers

I have a guilty secret. I have an e-reader—no, not really. I have two of them!

Yep. I have a Kindle™ and a Nook™ on my desk. And, I use them—regularly. Last week, I had a Kindle Fire™, too. And, we have an iPod™ and access to an iPad™, as well.

What in world am I doing with all those e-readers? Testing, of course. I know far more about the displaying of Hebrew on e-readers than I want to. And, I can tell you how PDFs look on them, too.

Wanna know more? I thought so. Let's start with PDFs, that old standby format that we all use and have a love/hate relationship with.

A PDF displays on all of them. But, it does best on a Nook™. It reflows, you can change the font size, non-pointed Hebrew shows up perfectly, all the funky transliterations, such as š show up correctly, too. But, pointed Hebrew doesn't do as well. Sometimes it shows up perfectly; other times, you get a character or two on a line, then some blank lines and a few more characters. Strange...

What about the Kindle™ with PDFs? Not so good. It just allows a page view. You can re-size it, but, it doesn't re-flow. You have to use the buttons to move the screen. Talk about a pain!

But, you didn't buy an e-reader to read PDFs, did you? I didn't think so. So, how does our Hebrew fare on the Nook™? It doesn't. Period. It doesn't show up; it doesn't even leave funky squares to let you know it's missing. Frustrating!

The Kindle™ fares a bit better. The Hebrew font displays fine; the character size is correct and readable. One problem, though. It's backwards. Yep. It goes left-to-right! So, I thought maybe that was a function of the stripped down operating system in the Kindle™, so I borrowed a Kindle Fire™, which is Android™ powered, thinking it would do better...Nope. Still backwards...

So, what's a scholar to do? Well, enter the iOS devices. We dumped one of our books onto an iPad™. Sure enough. It was all there—and right-to-left even!

So, how is it that some books with Hebrew are showing up in Kindles™ and Nooks™? Well, it's easy—sorta. You take the file and turn all the Hebrew into a graphic. But, there are several problems with that: 1. It doesn't scale well when you change the font. 2. It isn't searchable! 3. It takes extra labor and therefore costs more.

So, don't be looking for a huge flood of academic books into the e-book market anytime soon...

By the way, most of the cost of a book is in the editorial and prepress (typesetting) process. The physical books are a small part of it—at least if you still edit your books, which Eisenbrauns does. Not sure about some other publishers.

I was reading a book this weekend and came across a sentence that used "then" where they clearly meant "than." Ouch! This was an academic book, too...

Amazon strikes again

Yesterday, Amazon decided they weren't making enough money off an independent publisher (IPG), so they cut off all their Kindle books. The response from authors and other publishers has been very positive—I think they did the right thing by not caving to the monster—and Melville House is posting some of those responses to the web here. Definitely worth the read...

Big brother really is watching you

if you own a Kindle™, that is:

...I'm reading a new book I downloaded on my Kindle and I noticed an underlined passage. It is surely a mistake, I think. This is a new book. I don't know about you, but I always hated underlined passages in used books. They derail my private enjoyment.

When somebody offers perception of what's important, something moronic, usually, which is why I always prefer buying books new so I could make my own moronic marks. But moronic or not, it was all between me and my new book.

And this thing on my Kindle is supposed to be new. And then I discovered that the horror doesn't stop with the unwelcomed presence of another reader who's defaced my new book. But it deepens with something called view popular highlights, which will tell you how many morons have underlined before so that not only you do not own the new book you paid for, the entire experience of reading is shattered by the presence of a mob that agitates inside your text like strangers in a train station.

<idle musing>
Isn't that nice? You get the privilege of having them get access to all your notes and thoughts. Just think of the advertising information they can sell! And, think of the future court subpoenas for access to that data! Such a deal! I suspect you can hardly wait to be the victim—oops, I mean, consumer—of a Kindle™!
</idle musing>

Varia

Andy Le Peau is running a nice little series on electronic reading, especially hyper-inked electronic reading, versus print. This from yesterday's post:

Studies show that those who were presented with electronic hypertext documents retained and understood less than those presented with the same documents in print form. The more the links, the less the comprehension. The medium obscured the message.

<idle musing>
This shouldn't be a surprise; the medium as the message was pointed out a long time ago by Neil Postman in Entertaining Ourselves to Death.
</idle musing>

Charles Halton has taken up blogging again. One of his recent posts tackles the hazards of interpreting—get ready for it—maps! After showing a map from the 14th century, he asks:

So, how do we assess this map? Is it worthless because it does not accurately represent the geography of the world?

When we interpret and assess mappae mundi we need to understand their genre which includes their intended purpose. The purpose of these maps was not to guide travelers, in fact, when sailors started using maps as aids for navigation maps changed dramatically (it was at this point that maps changed their orientation to the North, represented geographic features more accurately, etc.). Instead, these maps were intended to convey theological messages–the relationship between earth and paradise, the effects of the Fall and the exiles to the East, the theological importance of Jerusalem, etc. If we judged a mappa mundi on the basis of how accurately it represented the actual geography of the world we would be missing its entire point, the reason why it was made in the first place. It is like this with biblical genres. Before we interpret a text, any text for that matter, we need to understand its genre and concomitantly the reading expectations that we should bring to it.

<idle musing>
Read the whole thing. He even includes a 20th century example. Good stuff to remember when you are reading an ancient text...
</idle musing>

Over at Alan Knox's blog, he has a nice post about going to church:

So, Sunday morning, he found himself pulling his sedan into the parking lot. The attendants flagged him through the parking lot and into a space. The man at the door smiled and handed him a folded piece of paper. As he was going to say something to the man, the man turned toward the family behind him to hand them some folded pieces of paper.

As he paused inside the door, he marveled at the hive of activity that he found. The family behind him pushed past and found a pew. He sat beside them by the aisle. The husband of the family nodded, then turned toward his folded piece of paper. So, he looked at his paper, too. At the top of the paper were the words, “The Blessing of God.”

Good. He needed a blessing...

Then, everyone was leaving. He turned to the husband of the family. The husband shook his hand, and said, “It’s great to meet you.” As he was preparing to ask about being blessed by God, the family made their way past him and out the door. He stood there for a moment and a few people nodded at him. One man shook his hand.

Slowly he made his way back out the door and to his car. He drove back home. He did everything they asked. He went to church. He sang the songs. He gave his money. He listened to the speech. He said the prayer. Was he blessed?

He cried himself to sleep that night in his empty bed.

The next morning, the sign in front of the church building read, “Come here for a new life.” He wondered if that was a lie too.

<idle musing>
Sad, isn't it? I guess the reason it is so sad is because it rings too true. I'm not throwing stones; I've been guilty, too. But, God didn't call us to bring people to a building; he called us to bring people to himself. That may or may not happen in a building; the location is irrelevant. The life-changing encounter with God is what matters—and the following interaction with believers on a daily basis...
<idle musing>

E-readers, again

How about this little tidbit from the Christian Science Monitor:

So, are paper books an endangered species? Quite likely in the long run, but perhaps not as quickly as techno-enthusiasts imagine. After all, we’re still waiting for the paperless office to arrive, decades after it was forecast. (The typical office worker still consumes about 10,000 sheets of paper per year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.)

It’s true that sales of e-books have grown dramatically, to 8.5 percent of the market this year from 2.9 percent last year, according to the Association of American Publishers. But that’s still only a fraction of what’s being sold on paper.

<idle musing>
I went to the insurance agent yesterday to sign a couple of forms for insurance renewal changes. She had me sign it on regular paper and gave me a copy. She said they will now scan the original into their computer and destroy the hard copy. So, they are paperless, right?!!

She told me that the companies won't accept digital signatures, but want a hard copy signature. Of course, they don't want to store the paper, so they scan it. How backwards is that?
</idle musing>

E-readers

I have to admit that I'm of two minds about e-book readers. I like being able to copy, paste, and post. But, I love the feel of a hard book. I also tend to read more quickly, with better comprehension and retention with a "real" book. That's not just anecdotal, either; the studies agree with me.

I saw this post today, by a bookseller in North Carolina, giving five good reasons not to get a Kindle™. Enjoy!

1) You read slower on a Kindle...

2) You almost certainly read stupider on a Kindle...

3) The Kindle flunked out of Princeton...

4) Amazon can play Big Brother with your books...


5) Governments can play Big Brother with your books...

They back up each statement with evidence; go there to see it. Great stuff—or scary stuff depending on your viewpoint.

E-books and studying

Interesting article on USA Today yesterday about e-textbooks. Here's a snippet, but read the whole thing:

...some evidence suggests students see a downside to 24/7 interactivity when it comes to preparing for exams or doing homework. During visits last fall to libraries, coffee shops and other campus hangouts to analyze how students study, a test-prep company noted that, when it was time to study, cellphones, laptops and Kindles were put away.

"In today's ADD society, textbooks are pleasantly single-dimensional and finite," says Jeff Olson, vice president of research for Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, whose team conducted observational studies. "When I asked study participants why they didn't use their laptops to look something up, I heard some version of 'because that's my distraction.'"

<idle musing>
I was reading a book recently (hard to believe, isn't it!) where they were commenting about the difficulty in writing a book on the computer. The distractions of e-mail, RSS feeds, etc., were keeping them from their task. A week or two earlier, I had read someone comment that a coffee shop didn't have wi-fi; he felt they should charge extra for the privilege of being unconnected!

I call it the cult of connectivity. I ride my bike to work everyday, as you probably know. Almost everyday, I see people walking with their head down, reading their e-mail or text messages. And this is through a beautiful woods along a creek! Call me old fashioned, but I'd rather watch the woods and creek than read a text message the has about 2 fleeting seconds of relevance...
</idle musing>