More reading

Sandy has been reading books illustrated by Kestutis Kasparavicius, a Lithuanian illustrator. His drawings (click and scroll down a bit) are quite lovely.

I'm part way through Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul by J. P. Moreland (thanks to R. Boydston for the loan). The book is an attempt to remind (pardon the pun) Christians that a godly life involves the mind, as well as the heart, soul, and body. This may turn out to be an interesting companion to Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul, which observes bored men in the church and suggests they go do adventurous (for lack of a better word) things in response to the call of their wild hearts.

I thought the observations of boredom were interesting and reasonable enough, but I prefer the "active in mind" response to the "wild at heart" one. Suffice to say, Moreland urges us to take faith seriously by really working at the difficult intellectual tasks--thoroughly dissecting scripture, articulately explaining why we believe what we believe, understanding the quality of the reasoning behind what we believe, etc. Faith, after all, is believing those things we have good reason to believe...and we should be able to explain this.

Some interesting, though not intentional, contrasts with MacArthur's Why Government Can't Save You. For instance, Moreland makes casual reference to sharpening our minds for engagement in the culture wars. MacArthur rejects the culture war's terms. The two aren't really companion pieces, though I'll try to find the connections nonetheless.

Anyway, it promises to be an interesting read. I already plan to use a short section on virtue and its sources in my class discussion, so that's a helpful thing.

I'll have some photos of Kaunas soon--the ones after we recharged the battery.