Linked Together: Questions About Creation

Two suggestions for weekend reading.

Why Did God Create the World?
There’s new book by Ben Stevens—a reworking of a dissertation by Jonathan Edwards—that seeks to answer this question. Here’s a quote from it.

Creation must have arisen because of the way it accomplishes something God values. God values things like goodness, truth, and beauty. And yet those words are simply labels we have come up with to describe things that were, before creation, all him. So I think we are logical to conclude that if God could have created the universe to expand and increase himself—and, implicitly, all the things that we have come to know in the abstract as goodness, truth, and beauty—then that best explains the logic behind his decision to create a universe in the first place.

If you want to know more, read the rest of this excerpt (The Gospel Coalition), or better yet, read the book. 

What’s the Point of All This Futility?
Romans 8 tells us that God subjected creation to futilty. Why would he do that? The answer is counterintuitive, but is shouldn’t surprise us. 

God does things very differently from us (Isaiah 55:8). But there is a pattern. This is a God who chooses death as the means to life (Hebrews 2:14-15), foolish things as the means to shame the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27), humility as the means to exaltation (1 Peter 5:6), and poverty as the means to riches (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Is it any surprise that he also chooses futility as the means to hope?

Read the rest (John Bloom at Desiring God Blog).

Linked Together: Wildlife

Bear Up
Did you know that grizzlies can use tools? Or maybe the headline should say one grizzly can use a stool? (CBC News)

Shooting Salmon
Here in my town, we use a fish ladder to get the returning salmon up and over the dam.

But some dams are too big to be scaled with a ladder, so they’ve invented a salmon cannon that can propel salmon 100 feet into the air and (hopefully) over the dam. 

(Update on the Whitehorse Rapids Fish Ladder: This year 1555 Chinook salmon have passed through. The run is winding down, so there won’t be many more. Thankfully, that’s a few hundred fish more than last year and the year before. Hopefully, it’s the start of an upward trend.)

Linked Together: Questions About Salvation

Recommended reading for your weekend.

Who Is Salvation About?
“Salvation is for us … but it’s not mainly about us” (Jared Wilson).

What Does Salvation Include?
It includes both imputed and imparted righteousness (Rick Phillips).

What Did He Mean?
In 1 Timothy, Paul writes, “women will be saved through childbearing.” What in the world does that mean? (Denny Burk).