Miscellany – Gregory Scott Blog

What Are You Reading?

Last year I fell short again of my goal of reading 50 books in a year.

It’s a lofty goal I have reached only a few times, but one that stretches me, which is a good thing. One of the reasons I fell short last year was I spent entirely too much time reading the news. I sometimes spent an hour consuming the news on my iPhone before I got out of bed in the morning.

Sure, some of that reading was focused on COVID-19 and the pandemic, which was useful in my job, but much of my reading was also about current events, and sometimes about celebrities, the Kardashians included.

And here’s the thing, when I finished reading the news, I never felt I had accomplished anything of any importance. I was up-to-date on the events of the day, but the next day there would be a new set of events, and I would repeat the process, taking the click bait of interesting and usually misleading headlines, and gleaning facts of no particular usefulness.

Best Books I Read in 2020

1. The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton. G.K. Chesterton is the greatest writer you’ve never heard of, and if you have never read him you cannot imagine what you are missing. Tagged “The Prince of Paradox,” Chesterton has a way of turning a sentence back on itself while clearly expressing a thought you never thought and you never would have thought to write. Chesterton is at his best in this book, which C.S. Lewis called the best apologetic he had read and which influenced Lewis’s conversion.

2. Beyond Bullet Points, Cliff Atkinson. What, might you ask, does a book about Powerpoint have to do with the kingdom of God? Well, it has to do with work—my work as an attorney—and work has everything to do with the kingdom of God. This book swims against tide, arguing that text on a slide does not a powerful presentation make. In fact, Atkinson argues that text actually divides the reader’s attention between the speaker and the slide, making the communication less effective. His suggested solution is worth the price of the book.

3. The Destruction of Jerusalem, George Holford. Written in 1809 by a British lawyer and member of parliament. This book shows how Jesus’ prophecy about the destruction of Jerusalem was fully realized in 70 A.D. The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. is one of the most important historical events for Jews and Christians alike. For Jews it marked the end of the Jewish sacrificial system; for Christians it marked the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 24 and puts much of what many Christians worry about as a future event firmly in the past.

Chesterton on Changing the World

On a Christian’s attitude toward the world:

“Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?”

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Will This Be The Church’s Covid-19 Legacy?

The news coming out about church services becoming super-spreader events for COVID-19 would be comical if they weren’t so tragic.

In a previous post, I tried to rationally rebut some of the reasons pastors have for insisting on holding worship services in the midst of the pandemic.

In reconsideration, I should have just given one reason in response to the arguments: You could kill people!

Jesus was right; people are like sheep. And they will follow their pastors right off a cliff…or in this case, into a petri dish of deadly virus.

Here is a list of just some of the churches in the news for holding services in the midst of the pandemic that allegedly led to infections: Continue reading “Will This Be The Church’s Covid-19 Legacy?”

On Cheating in Baseball and Marriage

I watched last fall with some fascination the scandal that engulfed the Houston Astros after their sign-stealing scheme was exposed.

My fascination arose not from the fact they cheated at baseball but the public’s reaction to their cheating.

I didn’t realize we held such high standards.

In the kingdom of God–that is to say, when the world functions as it was created to function, and does so under voluntary submission to King Jesus–baseball is a form of entertainment. That’s it.

That is not to diminish baseball. I’ve come to love Major League Baseball. But notwithstanding the salaries of the athletes, the merchandising and commercialization of the sport, ultimately it is merely a form of entertainment, not unlike a Bruno Mars or Beyonce concert. Continue reading “On Cheating in Baseball and Marriage”