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A batch of the best highlights from what Todd's read, .

**consider how you would solve your immediate problem without adding anything new**. First, posing this question should detect the situation where the “problem” is that someone really wants to use the technology. If that is the case, you should immediately abort.

Choose Boring Technology

Dan McKinley

The revolutionary nature of the church was that it didn’t focus on specific locations of oppression. The church didn’t focus on chipping away at a Roman injustice here or a Roman injustice there. The church had a more radical approach—and I use that word intentionally. The word radical comes from the Latin word radix meaning “root.” The church was radical in that it was pulling up the roots of Roman society, calling into question the sacred foundations upon which imperial Rome was built. The church challenged the sacred and patriotic truths that justified Roman oppression and the belief that the empire was divinely ordained and, thus, beyond critique. Because, you know, god and country always go hand in hand. Once again, it’s the spiritual and the political, two sides of the same coin. Thus the revolutionary proclamation that Jesus of Nazareth was “Lord of all” (Acts 10:36), even over Caesar. And while Jesus did not consider his isa Theo “equal to god” status as something to be taken by force—choosing kenosis over harpagmon—the Lordship of Jesus did invalidate the spiritual legitimacy and authority of Caesar and imperial Rome. Ideologically speaking, Christianity made the empire subject to critique and dissent. Once Christ was confessed as Lord, blind obedience to empire was no longer automatic and assumed. Christianity had shrunk empire down to size. The emperor, the Christians pointed out, had no clothes. And standing naked and exposed before the eyes of their subjects, the empires of the world, then as now, lashed out. This is why the Romans coined a word to describe the early Christians. The Romans called the early Christians atheists—people who denied the gods of the empire, people who rejected the sacred foundations upon which their society had been built. And while the early church might have been nonviolent, this spiritual revolt and revolution made them dangerous.

Reviving Old Scratch

Richard Beck

it impossible for me to comprehend how a Christian can kill a non-Christian who is thereby prevented from turning to Christ, just as it is also beyond me how any Christian can kill another Christian at the orders of state military leaders.

A Farewell to Mars

Brian Zahnd

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