Andy Naselli

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How Reliable Is Your Memory? 3 Practical Lessons

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Unlike God, we are finite and sinful.

And our limitations and sinfulness apply even to our memory, “the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary).

Lesson 1: Your memory might not be as accurate as you think.

See Oliver Sacks, “Speak, Memory,” The New York Review of Books (February 21, 2013).

This stands out:

Frequently, our only truth is narrative truth, the stories we tell each other, and ourselves—the stories we continually recategorize and refine. Such subjectivity is built into the very nature of memory, and follows from its basis and mechanisms in the human brain.

Last month I shared that article with a sharp biblical scholar in his mid-60s, and he replied, [Read more…] about How Reliable Is Your Memory? 3 Practical Lessons

Our Home Is Under Contract!

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I recently posted that our family had put our home up for sale, so I’ll praise God by sharing an update:

Eight days after putting our home on the market, someone put an offer on our home, and we soon agreed to terms. As of today the home is officially under contract (with a closing scheduled in May to fit our timetable).

We are so grateful to God. Grace.

A Waterproof Bible Worth Owning

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A good friend gave me a waterproof New Testament before I rafted through the Grand Canyon in summer 2011, and several of my friends have been loving these Bibles for reading in the shower and bathtub. (I won’t name them!)

blue  tree_bark  pink

I remember freaking out when one of my friends demonstrated that it really is waterproof: he walked over the sink, turned the water on full blast, and stuck his Bible under the faucet! No harm done. Amazing.

Here’s how the publishers describe these Bibles: [Read more…] about A Waterproof Bible Worth Owning

Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown

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fearlessJenni and I finished listening to this audiobook last week:

Eric Blehm. Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team Six Operator Adam Brown. Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook, 2012.

It’s a gripping story.

It led me to

  • treasure my family more,
  • hate sin and its effects even more, and
  • appreciate and respect the Navy SEALS more.

Cf. the book trailer.

(Thanks, Chuck Hervas, for the recommendation.)

By nature editors hate error, but by vocation they are called to deal with it daily

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I’ve been doing a lot copy-editing over the last seven years. This made me laugh:

By nature editors hate error, but by vocation they are called to deal with it daily. And painfully enough, it is sometimes their own.

Daniel G. Reid, “Commentaries and Commentators from a Publisher’s Perspective,” On the Writing of New Testament Commentaries: Festschrift for Grant R. Osborne on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Eckhard J. Schnabel; Texts and Editions for New Testament Study 8; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 464.

We’re Moving to Minneapolis: 5 Reasons We’re Excited to Serve at Bethlehem College and Seminary

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bcsLogoColorBethlehem College & Seminary (BCS) just announced that I’ll be joining their faculty in August 2013 as Assistant Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology.

Jenni and I are grateful to God and excited to join the BCS family. We’re planning to move to Minneapolis this summer.

If you don’t know much about BCS, these links are a good place to start:

We’re excited to serve at BCS for at least five reasons:

1. Doctrine

The doctrine BCS affirms and celebrates is what we affirm and celebrate. [Read more…] about We’re Moving to Minneapolis: 5 Reasons We’re Excited to Serve at Bethlehem College and Seminary

Top 20 Posts in 2012

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These 20 posts from 2012 received the most views this year (my favorite is #20):

  1. John Frame’s Advice: 30 Suggestions for Theological Students and Young Theologians
  2. 3 Ways to Nourish and Cherish Your Wife: Practical Advice C. J. Mahaney Would Give You If He Met with You at Starbucks
  3. Why People Hate the Sermon on the Mount
  4. Don Carson’s Three Secrets of Productivity and Godly Efficiency
  5. HCSB vs. ESV vs. NIV
  6. Ten Narnia Resources
  7. Must a Wife Always Follow Her Husband’s Leadership?
  8. Videos of All 44 Stories in The Jesus Storybook Bible
  9. Ten Resources for Enjoying Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
  10. Covenant Eyes
  11. My New Book: From Typology to Doxology
  12. 22 Mistakes Pastors Make in Practicing Church Discipline
  13. Progressive Covenantalism: A Via Media between Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism
  14. This Is How We Pray for Our Children
  15. A New Systematic Theology by an Eccentric Genius
  16. Falsifying Views on the Extent of the Atonement
  17. Limited Atonement in the Bible, Doctrine, History, and Ministry
  18. Tom Schreiner’s Top Three Commentaries on Each of Paul’s Letters
  19. Critiquing William Webb’s Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic
  20. Announcing Emma Elyse Naselli

Related: These ten posts from 2011 received the most views in 2011:

  1. Why John Piper Doesn’t Own a TV
  2. iPad Resources
  3. Courageous
  4. How to Manipulate People to Make (Fake) Professions of Faith
  5. Is C. S. Lewis the Patron Saint of American Evangelicalism?
  6. Bible Memory for Young Children
  7. Evernote or OneNote?
  8. The Importance of Dignified Translations
  9. The Myth of Mutual Submission
  10. Mirror Reading