The Dawn Treader

This interesting story about the is making the news.   This tribe has not had contact with modern civilization until now.  A photographer captured in a recent low altitude fly over.  The story reminded me of Nate Saint and Jim Elliot, the martyred missionaries whose story was told in the movie The End of the Spear.

The pictures have kicked off an interesting ethical conversation about whether to contact this tribe or not.  There is a danger in contacting groups that have not built up immunity to childhood diseases or something as simple as a cold.  But there is a greater danger in not contacting them.  How will they hear of Jesus Christ if we don't?   This is what drove Saint and Elliot to their premature deaths in the Amazon jungle.  It was their love for Christ and their knowledge of God's love for the Waodoni Indians that compelled them to climb into that famous yellow Piper Cub in January of 1956 and fly off to contact the Waodonis.  I strongly encourage you to go watch the trailer for The End Of The Spear.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
~ Isaiah 52:7

P.S. My father, inspired by the deaths of Elliot and Saint, decided to leave his comfortable career with Bell Labs in the late 1960s and take our family to the Amazon basin to do linguistic work with tribes.   We never arrived.   Shortly before we left, God redirected our path.  I'll save that story for another time.

What is the gospel?

Seems like an easy question.  Or at least, it used to.

Happy 134th birthday to G.K. Chesteron! (well, ok, May 29th is Chesterton's birthday).

Given that Chesterton takes a baseball bat to Calvinism in his book Orthodoxy, why are so many Calvinists such big Chesterton fans ... like Mr. D, for example.

Well, because Chesterton takes mystery and truth so seriously.  He brings out the poet in us Calvinists.  And we all know that it is the logicians that go mad first, not the poets!

“Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.”

~ GK Chesterton

Go read John Piper to learn more about the growing movement of happy Calvinists who enjoy and celebrate Chesterton.

Jonathan Kaufman argues, in his Wall Street Journal piece High School's Worst Year?, that the junior year in high school is the worst.  Why?  Stress about getting into the right college.  In other words, about succeeding.

"Wake Forest University will no longer require applicants to take the SAT and ACT exams, boosting a movement to lessen the importance of standardized tests in college admissions."
~

"We in admissions have put up a barrier to these students to say all of your hard work and all of your academic achievement is being negated by one test, and we don't feel like that is fair," Allman said. "And it's not fair, especially if the studies are showing it's not a good predictor."
~ Director of Admissions Martha Allman

Amen and amen.  Wake Forest joins the growing movement of intelligent schools who realize that SAT scores oftentimes are poor predictors of academic success.

Perhaps, just perhaps, other schools will follow suit toward a holistic evaluation of an individual.  We, as a society, have grown far too in love with testing.  The goal of education is not learning how to take tests, folks.  It just isn't.

Geneticist, physician, scientist, author, evangelical, theistic evolutionist ... many titles befit Dr. Francis Collins.

The latest is ... of U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute.

I bought his .  Haven't read it yet.

My heart and prayers go out to the family of Steven Curtis Chapman after I learned of this.  Chapman's music has impacted my life, as well as his book (co-written with Scotty Smith).

May the God of peace comfort the Chapman family at this time.

Spoiler alert.  Don't read further until you have seen the movie.

Prince Caspian opens today.  Next to the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, probably the best story in the Narnia series.  Don't miss it.  I will be getting off work early to take my family.  See you there!

UPDATE: What a great movie.  I agree with John M.   The best scene is Lucy on the bridge facing down the Telmarines with her dagger.