NOLL _the scandal of the evangelical mind_ from uofa library: BR1642U5N651994main.

pg.35. In 1912, the Presbyterian Bible scholar J. Gresham Machen stated carefully the way that thinking affects practical life. His words are as prescient today as they were for the less complicated world that he addressed: "We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer, and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion...What is to-day a matter of academic speculation, begins to-morrow to move armies and pull down empires." J. Gresham Machen, "Christianity and Culture," Princeton Theological Review 11(1913):7;for discussion, see George Marsden, "Understanding J. Gresham Machen,"Princeton Seminary Bulletin, n.s., 11(1990):46-60

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if i don't respond to an online discussion and post my reply to the other writing blog, i intend to get a quote from my latest book and think about it outloud here. i like the way Stephen Jones has built up his library of quotable quotes and will strive to do something similar.

in my mind is a similar quote:
even the most hardboiled politican is victim of some long dead forgotten economist whose theory he has unconsciously adopted.

The quote really points to the importance of the world of the mind in human events. We depreciate intellectual activity because when we look at someone thinking he doesn't appear to be doing anything at all.

the joke about the efficency expert hired to shape up a small firm. He spends a few days talking to everyone and analyzing the flow of information and products in the organization, etc, etc. Finally he presents his report to the owners and management. Congratulations he announces, this is a well run company, i have only one problem, that is the guy in the back office who sits all day long with his feet up and the desk, doing nothing. I cant seem to figure out what he is doing there. Joe, that is exactly the same way he looked when he had the first idea that created our product line, was the reply. He's working on the next big idea now, just sitting there.

The implication being that you really can't see the mental activity by looking at the person doing it. Plus the added benefit of showing that underneath the entire operation there was a significant single idea that started it all. This is really the take home message i got from my studies of the Reagan revolution, 3 classic things go into economic enterprises: land, labour, capital. to that add creativity, human spirit, entrepenureal spirit.......

Back to Machen quote. He saw that ideas move armies, and it is the underlying collective thought that is important in a culture. We as Christians may not worship at the mall, cast our treasures before the feet of modern materialism, but we are part of the culture. If we do not consciously adopt beliefs consistent with our calling, we will act as if we believe those beliefs at the center of our society. We may deny that life is a game, where money is the way we keep score. We may assent to a life where the pursuit of holiness is primary. But we betray our true feelings with what we do with our time and our energies. If we spend our lives feeding our material body and its cravings, and neglect the greater needs of our souls, forget that we are two essences; body and soul/spirit. Just an hour or two Sunday mornings feeding our souls will not make up for 5 days pursuing wealth to feed our bodies.

I would hope that is why i have taken off these few years, consciously not involved in making money, to balance out those years where feeding the kids was primary importance.

i am afraid i am neglecting this blog. it has great potential. for i see how stephen jones over at CED has done great things with his quotation data base.....

finished _meaning of creation_ put short review up at amazon.
need to create better, longer, more complete reviews and post them to my home page. maybe that will encourage people to interact with me on the level of the books i am reading.

rereading kline's kingdom prologue, and looking at plantinga in faith and rationality....continuing to buy too too many books and xerox outofprint books from the uofa library. sure wish two things. remember everything i read forever and read much faster....