Okay, so I haven't posted for a while. That may possibly have something to do with traveling a lot over Christmas and New Year's, and then upon returning home having to immediately get our house ready to stage for putting on the market.

And yes, I am currently reading two books. The first (which I've had "on the night table" for an embarrassingly long time), They Like Jesus but not the Church, has been quite interesting and thought-provoking. I think it is a great book for all Christians to read, especially those who want a better perspective on what those outside the church think of us. It is so refreshing to find a deep Christian thinker and pastor who admits that many are critical of the church for good reasons, and who doesn't write them off as people who just don't understand because they are lost, going to hell, etc. We need to take an honest look at ourselves and the image that others have of us and learn from this. Maybe there are some things we need to change, and can change, while not compromising our faith.

The other, Solomon Among the Postmoderns, is a book I couldn't wait to get my hands on since I first heard the Mars Hill Audio Journal interview with Peter Leithart a few months back. And it hasn't disappointed! Leithart draws a fascinating comparison between Solomon's sentiment that life is vanity, a chasing after the wind ("vapor"), and some of the key attitudes of postmodernism: "Modernity is the civilization that attempted, with quite astonishing successes but also blatant failures, to manage and shepherd the vapor of time, society, and nature. Postmodernity is vapor's revenged, the recognition of modernity's failures and an embrace of the fragmentation and dissolution of politics, selves, language, life." (39) Perhaps there are some biblically-founded elements within the postmodern recognition that we do not ultimately control the universe and should not attempt to, no matter how advanced we become technologically or otherwise.