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Author: Ben Smith

The Tech-Wise Family

Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place. We live in a world saturated with technology. From the moment most of us wake to the moment that we go to bed there is at least one screen calling for our time and attention. While there are many good things about technology, in The Tech-Wise Family Andy Crouch encourages his readers to consider the impact that these devices have on our lives, our families, and our children. Now before we get too far, it must be made clear that Crouch is not anti-technology. In fact, early in the book he refers to himself as “a certified geek” so this book is not about getting rid of technology from our lives but merely putting it in…

Christless Christianity

Early on in Michael Horton’s 2008 look at the state of Evangelical Christianity in America he states his case clearly by saying “My argument in this book is not that evangelicalism is becoming theologically liberal but that it is becoming theologically vacuous.” From this beginning he takes the reader on a journey through mainstream evangelicalism and shows where Christ has not been explicitly denied but simply ignored. The first stop is to look at what has replaced Christ-centred Christianity, namely Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism. This is essentially the belief that there is a god who wants us to be good people and wants for us to be happy. While this is an attractive belief system – after all who doesn’t want a god who just wants…

Joy: The Third Sunday of Advent

Having spent the last two weeks considering that Jesus is both our hope and our peace, we come to the third Sunday of Advent and remember that Jesus is our joy. We live in a society that is pulled between two poles when it comes to joy. Either life and the world pull us down so much that we have no joy or we find our joy in our life and the world. To both of these positions Christmas reminds us that Christ is our joy. For many people this year has been tough; it seems like everything has gone wrong and to top it off the world around us is becoming increasingly unstable. Culturally the Church has become largely irrelevant at best and hated…