I received an invitation to attend a conference in the PCA in January called Embers to a Flame. It is focused on church revitalization. I attended several years ago and, while I can't attend this year, I would encourage others to attend, whether you're involved in a church plant or in helping to lead a long-established church. 

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I wrote a post here about the mystery of suffering in a world that is claimed to be made by a good and loving God of order and power and love.

I wrote a short essay about the "witness trees" my family and I saw when visiting Gettysburg National Cemetery over this past Labor Day weekend. Check it out here.

I love the Lord of the Rings slogan, "precious," made famous by Gollum:

We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little hobbitses. Wicked, tricksy, false! 

He had the ring taken away by Bilbo and when Frodo had it, ever tried to recapture it. But Gollum was the evil alter-ego of Smeagol, the more high minded man whose appetite for the good was slowly swallowed up by the ring.

A more profound and powerful modern example of something taking over a person's heart--and life--would be hard to find.

Few are as ugly or as grotesque about their idolatry as Gollum/Smeagol, but all people struggle and fail in this area of affections gone wild.

Everyone is tempted to call things "precious" that are in fact killing them.

What do you find precious?

Hurricane Irene is on its way up the eastern seaboard and headed toward New Jersey as I write.

I know people tend to exaggerate storm impacts. I know that there are politics involved in declaring states of emergency. I know that poverty is often caused by people's own poor choices. I know these things and many others.

But, when I heard about the more than a thousand people who had been evacuated from Atlantic City and have taken up temporary quarters at Rowan University's Esby Gym I felt I had to respond.

Spending time with these evacuees last night and this morning and seeing how short staffed the Red Cross was when they needed help serving meals, caring for people, getting supplies, I was reminded about what suburban precious often means: time and money. But especially time.

Let me explain.

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I learned recently that a relative of mine has been afflicted with cancer. Both my parents have battled cancer and (so far) survived. My mother-in-law is in a pitched battle with the cancer devil as I write, and in her tug-o-war match, she’s holding her own so far. 

But only so far.

In writing to my uncle, I encouraged him with some basic inspiration I take from my own faith: because Jesus died and rose again, all subsequent sufferings I experience are guaranteed to be part of his mysterious but profound and guaranteed love for me IN CHRIST. 

True enough.

But for some, the sadness of growing old can be almost overwhelming. Especially for those who have been successful in this life, are accustomed to the rewards of health for a body well-cared for, and for time and energy spent trying to do good work for others.

The suffering of age, in such cases, can be an outrage (“Why me?!”) or it can be a melancholy (“Life is so unfair, it is so hard.”)

Where is the justice when such intruders like cancer come barging in--during dinner, even?

This is just another version of the age-old question of “how are we to interpret the suffering of our lives?”

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I have made a point to dip into to the dizzying array of TED lectures offered at TED.com from time to time and I’m always challenged and stimulated in my thinking; rarely do I find myself agreeing with all the assumptions of the speaker, but true to their motto, they do call to the plate discussions and dialogues that are worth having. 

The latest example of this, David Deutsch’s lecture on A New Way to Explain Explanation, was no exception, both in terms of how I appreciated the push back and stimulus to my thinking, and in terms of how I disagreed with his assumptions.

Below are several observations and challenges to Deutsch’s argument. To make sense of what I write below, listen to what Deutsch has to say here. 

Otherwise, you can read a partial transcript in the appendix of this essay to hear Deutsch in his own words.

At the heart of what Deutsch attempts to do (and this is only a mediocre attempt to summarize his twenty minute presentation) is explain why we have become so good at explaining the world since the scientific revolution.

His answer? It is not just because our science has gotten better. Nor is it simply because we’ve rejected our myth-makers (priests, ancient texts, etc.) It is because we have learned that the hard-to-vary assertion is the one which best explains reality.

First of all, it is the height of arrogance to assume that our knowledge today is so vastly superior to the knowledge of yesteryear, esp. that knowledge which precedes the scientific revolution. 

Deutsch states: “Discoveries like fire happened so rarely that from an individual’s point of view, the world never improved, nothing new was learned. “

But let us take a more reasonable approach. Consider the following three areas of concern:

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