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Howdy!

Welcome to this week's Christian Carnival. Thanks to Tyler for hosting last week.  It's not Tyler's first time hosting a carnival (he actually began and runs the Biblical Studies Carnival), but it's his first time hosting the Christian Carnival.

Lots of great posts this week. Here they are in the order I got 'em...

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UPDATE: Please visit Annette's post about Abel, Enoch and Noah over at her Fish and Cans blog.

Noah obeyed God without seeing the cause for it. In reverent fear he built an ark. This huge boat and he built it because God told him to. He saved his household but condemned the world. Laughed at, mocked, for years (100 or so they think it took him) he simply obeyed God and built an ark. That's perseverance, that's faith, that's holy fear of the Lord.

Have there been just a few books that have made a tremendous impact on your life? Barry Wallace would like to hear about them. His post, The Potentially Damning Danger of Theology (or, Why I'm Thankful for Packer's "Knowing God") is over at who am i?.

Wanna know what the Bible has to say about generosity? FMF presents Who's the Most Generous? posted at Free Money Finance.

When someone asks you why you believe in the bible, you should be able to offer a clear explanation. Angela Williams Duea has more at Why I believe the bible is the inspired word of God « angelawd posted at angelawd.

Do followers of Christ have a responsibility to publicly denounce obnoxious things said in our name by other Christians in the public eye? John asks Must I Confront "Bad" Christians? at Brain Cramps for God.

Greg Chaney presents Walking in the Light posted at the practical CHRISTian.

Scott presents Create a Godless Nation? YES! WE! CAN! posted at FIRE BREATHING CHRISTIAN.

Ridge Burns presents Wonder posted at Ridge’s Blog.

Chris offers a look at biblican and Christian numerology. Check out Biblical and Christian Numerology at MJJ Party.

Here's a story of not giving up hope, based on 1 Samuel 1. Tim King's When Nothing Goes the Way It Ought is posted at J. Timothy King's Blog.

Michelle has this week's Thoughts and Confessions of a Girl Who Loves Jesus… posted at her blog of the same name.

Here are some thoughts on the feeling that we're losing the fight. ChrisB presents Outnumbered and Overwhelmed? posted at Homeward Bound.

Rey Reynoso examines Romans 5:12 and suggests that it leans more towards Corporate Solidarity than it does towards Federal Headship. More at Federal Headship vs. Corporate Solidarity in Romans 5:12 at The Bible Archive.

Does inerrancy require believing in an individual, historical Adam? Jeremy Pierce dives into this controversial issue at Longman, Literalism, and Genesis 1 over at Parableman.

NCSue presents I hate math. posted at IN HIM WE LIVE AND MOVE AND HAVE OUR BEING.

Helping Moms keep better control of household finances through negotiation - that's the subject of Jonathan Martin's post Negotiating for Moms over at The Negotiation Board.

Thanks for dropping by! Submit your blog article to the next edition of christian carnival ii using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Grace and peace,

Don

Got the galleys to Ginny Vroblesky's new book (a collaboration Nick Spencer and Bob White) Christianity, Climate Change, and Sustainable Living. "Firmly rooted in the good news of the Christian faith, this is, above all, a constructive and hopeful book that offers a realistic vision of what the future could and should look like." Ginny's one of the good ones - she was with A Rocha USA for years.

Looks like a good read. Should be out in time to put under the Christmas tree.

Heh.

• "Deuteronomy"—Average Reader's Rating: Three stars. I don't get it. I've read most of the books in this series, and they totally kick butt, but this one leaves me scratching my head. Is there a story here? Am I missing something? Why so much talk about clean and unclean beasts? The author really got on a roll with Genesis and Exodus, and I was on the edge of my seat when I read The Book of Numbers. But this one runs out of gas early. Now I'm glad I skipped Leviticus!

British archaeoastronomer Alun Salt reviews "The Various Christian Ethics of Species Conservation” by Kyle S. Van Houtan and Stuart L. Pimm, a book that explains why fundamentalists are resistant to environmental campaigns.

Fundamentalists identify one of the evils of science in general is the lack of a moral imperative. Whether or not you’d describe Christian fundamentalists as is irrelevant here. Their perception of science is that it is, at best, a moral vacuum. This contrasts with ecologists who see their work as having a strong moral base. The first difficulty identified by Van Houtan and Pimm is language. If you’re in a narrow mindset where only Christianity is moral then identifiably unchristian language is clearly used to describe immoral activity. It’s a small step from Evolution, which is obviously the work of the Devil, to Ecology. This puts Ecology firmly on the side of the apes. If you believe in angels this is a dealbreaker

Salt pans the book for a couple reasons. His blog post is kind of a tough read, but interesting.

From Serve God, Save the Planet:

Imagine meeting God and answering the question, "What did you do with your time on earth?" You are handed a time sheet that details the seconds and decades of this precious gift called life. What will you say you have done? In a world full of trees, mountains, oceans, birds, people in need and people to love, did you spend ten years watching the news, sitcoms, ball games and reality shows on a cathode-ray tube?

Or as I like to ask, "How much money do you pay the cable company so you can sit in your own living room?" More:

The three hundred million TV sets in the United State consume a lot of energy - five times more than is produced by all the geothermal, biomass, solar and wind sources in the United States. They take energy and materials to manufacture. They are difficult to get rid of and to recycle. They convince us to buy things we don’t need...Television separates us from our Creator while killing his creation.

-D

Steve Bishop reviews Environmental Stewardship Critical Perspectives - Past and Present edited by R. J. Berry.

After touching on the often-overlooked influence of Thomas Malthus on Charles Darwin, Bishop notes:

Christians cannot be culture transformers and shapers if they follow such cultural ebbs and flows. We have a responsibility to God's good creation irrespective if it fashionable to be green or not. Unfortunately, the shadow of Lynn White's seminal paper 'The historical roots of our ecologic crisis' Science 155 (10 March 1967) has loomed large over Christian discussion of the environment. Until recently most Christian writing has been to defend Christianity against the accusation of Lyn White that Christianity with its emphasis on dominion has been to blame for the environmental crisis. The debate, however, must move on. And that is exactly what these essays do. Christianity is not merely environmentally benign but it has something vital to contribute to a robust theocentric environmental ethic. An ethic that avoids the excesses of anthropic approaches and the sloppy mysticism of biocentric approaches.

The role of humans as stewards is a crucial issue and it is this that volume, Environmental Stewardship, seeks to address. Stewardship has been the 'default position' for most Christians. However, not many stop to consider it and examine its implications. What does it mean to be a steward? As Gandalf once said we are all stewards now. But is stewardship dominion and technological imperialism by another name?

Looks like a good read. 

God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. His Word, taken daily, is the asprin for environmental doublemindedness.

Break Point founder (and former Nixon employee) Chuck Colson interviewed Nancy Sleeth last month on her new book Go Green Save Green. Didn't know he was blogging on green stuff, yet here's a post on CO2 regulation, and the planet and the poor.

He doesn't do much on his initial review of Nancy's book, but some thoughts seemed to finally emerge over the weekend:

A recent discussion on our blog, The Point, demonstrated how uneasy many Christians feel about environmentalism. The subject was the book Go Green, $ave Green by Nancy Sleeth (who founded the organization Blessed Earth along with her husband, Matthew). Some of our commenters were bothered by our bringing up a subject that’s largely considered to belong to the left wing.

I can see where they’re coming from. I’ve said before on BreakPoint how appalled I am at the apocalyptic language some people are using to scare us into the green agenda. And Christians ought to oppose any environmentalist agenda that would ignore or even scoff at the plight of the poor and the sanctity of human life.

But Christians don’t have to let concern for the environment—that is, concern for God’s creation—be hijacked by those who are hostile to our beliefs. [snip]

In the end, Sleeth shows us that environmentalism doesn’t need to be about a radical political agenda. It can be about our own behavior, informed by values like good stewardship, protecting family time, self-restraint, and helping others. That’s not radical. It is common sense and, most important, thoroughly Christian.

BUMPED:  Nancy will be on Alan Colmes tonight, 21 April, at 11:00 EST (Fox News). Feel free to call in (1-877-367-2526 ) and listen....

The Sleeth family's newest book is on the street just in time for Earth Day (or Mother's Day). More here.

Chapter titles: 1. Home (Read Online!) 2. Lawn and Garden 3. Work 4. Transportation 5. Food 6. Sabbath 7. Holidays 8. Entertainment 9. School 10. Church 11. Community

Features: • Hundreds of simple, easy-to-implement money-saving tips for going green at home and at the office. • Simple cost-saving formulas that allow readers to calculate their energy/financial savings as they go green. • Helpful "try this instead of that" charts offering money-saving green solutions for everyday living. • Inspirational Scripture and quotes from church leaders (both historical and current) that support the biblically mandated stewardship component of going green.

Always lots of practical stuff from them.

From Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods:

 ...children [in schools] "will learn that by recycling their Weekly Readers and milk cartons, they can help save the planet," [says David Sobel] and grow up to be responsible stewards of the earth. Or maybe not. The opposite may be occuring, says Sobel. "If we fill our classrooms with examples of environmental abuse, we may be engendering a subtle form of dissociation"...Lacking direct experience with nature, children begin to associate it with fear and apocalypse, not joy and wonder...Children learn about the rain forest, but usually not about their own region's forests, or, as Sobel puts it, "even just the meadow outside the classroom door."

I've been reading Louv's book and it's hard to put down. A very important read for those concerned about health, nature and children. More excerpts later. -D

What good are greenhouse gases? Hugh Ross explains that they are part of God’s design in More Than a Theory: Revealing a Testable Model for Creation :

The end products of greenhouse gas removal [through water cycle, plate tectonics and biological processes] - coal, oil, natural gas, limestone, marble, gypsum, phosphates and sand - are all valuable resources for launching and sustaining human civilization...

Fine-tuning this removal to compensate for the increase in solar luminosity demands fine-tuning of all seven factors governing silicate erosion plus all the factors governing the abundance, diversity, growth, decay, extinction and burial of organisms. Furthermore, all this fine-tuning had to be exquisitely timed and regulated throughout the past 3.5 to billion years.

This continual planning and fine-tuning over an extended time period challenges any reasonable naturalistic explanation.

Ross' excellent new book spells out a testable scientific design model. Something that the intelligent design movement at large as been weak on. -D

More from From Dr. Don Colbert's Eat This and Live! :

Almost all nonorganically grown produce may be tainted by pesticides, herbicides, parasites and chemicals...Pesticides are absorbed in the intestinal tract froam an animal's feed...When you eat meat, it eventually goes into your fatty tissues - including your brain. If you eat processed foods, you welcome a host of chemicals into your body, including synthetic dyes, flavoring agents, chemical preservatives...Chemical food additives are usually made from...petroleum or coal tar products.

Basically, the same kind of chemicals that poison our environment, also poison your body. So even if you aren't concerned much about the environment, how about your health? The government always asks "How can we pay for everyone's health care?" That's the wrong question. The right question is: "How can we reduce sickness and in turn the resulting costs?" The simplest, and most obvious way, is by living healthier. Which, as we have seen, is closely related to eco-concerns. -D.

From Dr. Don Colbert's Eat This and Live! :

I used to recommend fish much more heartily than I do now, but new studies keep emerging about the high mercury content in fish...Because the oceans, lakes and rivers have suffered from the toxic onslaught of chemicals...fish are no longer free of toxins...But if you are careful about which fish you eat, they can be your best source of healthy omega-3 oils...

What fish does the Dr. recommend as being safer? Wild Alaskan or Pacific salmon, sardines, Tongol tuna, Mahimahi (from Florida), tilapia, halibut, grouper and striped sea bass. Avoid shark and swordfish as "they have some of the highest levels of mercury and pesticides of any fish in the sea." Also look for fish from cleaner waters in the seas surrounding Chile, New Zealand and Greece. -D