Josh Sowin is the Website Manager at Desiring God. He also blogs at Fire and Knowledge.

1.1 billion people don’t have access to safe, clean drinking water. That’s 1 in 6 people alive today.

Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation causes 80% of all sickness and disease, and kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Many people in the developing world, usually women and children, walk more than three hours every day to fetch water that is likely to make them sick. (source)

Jesus said, “Whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward” (Matt. 10:42). These folks don’t have clean water, much less cold water.

What can we do? Going overseas and personally handing out cups of clean water is not practical for most of us. It’s also not very efficient compared with digging wells and teaching sanitation and ecological techniques. But one thing we can all do is give a $20 bottle of charity:

Charity:water is a non-profit initiative bringing clean water and basic sanitation into impoverished communities. Since [Charity:water] was founded and began activity in August 2006, we have funded the construction of more than 250 wells that, when completed, will provide clean drinking water to 150,000 people.

A $20 bottle of charity water can give a person in Africa clean, safe drinking water for 20 years. 100% goes to direct project costs.

That’s certainly worth $20 to me.

Tyler's post on news got me thinking about how to determine what kind of news is important. We live in an odd time — we have access to incalculable amounts of information with a few clicks of a mouse. This has led, at least for me, to internet information binges where I come out with a dazed confusion as to what exactly I’d been doing the last two hours. Being informed, I guess.

C.S. Lewis was not one to spend most of his time reading news. He said:

The most unliterary reader of all sticks to “the news.” He reads daily, with unwearied relish, how, in some place he has never seen, under circumstances which never become quite clear, someone he doesn’t know has married, rescued, robbed, raped, or murdered someone else he doesn’t know.¹

He might also have said, like Thoreau, that “news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.”² Of course Lewis and Thoreau were both curmudgeons, but the point remains that most news doesn’t really matter — it satisfies our curiosity but rarely affects anything we do.

So we should have a personal news filter — that is, something to determine what news is actually important to us. As I thought about this, I determined that for me, news is important to the extent that it (1) affects me or those I care about (from my family in Florida to wider areas of social justice), (2) applies to ideas I care or should care about, and (3) allows me to take action on it. With that in mind, I can seek out journals, magazines, blogs, etc. that filter news close to my critera. That way I don't waste my time looking at headlines like “Ex-lacrosse coach sues Duke” and “Is your handbag killing you?” which are just two samples from the CNN homepage on October 13, 2007.

But even reading important news is pointless if we don’t have context for interpreting and judging it. For instance, the minimum wage was raised 70 cents in July 2007. Someone without knowledge of economics might be excited about it, because it appears to help low-income and unskilled workers. But they would probably not be excited about it if they discovered that minimum wage laws actually increase unemployment for low-income and unskilled workers.³

That is, without understanding the context, knowing even important news is only going to make us people full of baseless opinions.

Reading commentary — from both sides⁴ — helps us learn and understand context. Scanning headlines and watching the evening news might enable us to chat around the water cooler, but it rarely gives us more than superficial opinions on issues. Commentary, on the other hand, challenges us to think deeply and differently about an issue and helps us make historical and ideological connections that would otherwise escape us.

Another way to say this is that all news is important to someone. But most of it isn't important to us. We must “sort the trivial from the profound,”⁵ judge it appropriately, and then, if needed, act on it. Without this, we may find ourselves overwhelmed with information — or, worse, giving opinions when it would be better to remain silent.

Our site search results just got better. We replaced our search engine software with Google, which means we get our custom tabbed interface combined with Google's search accuracy. We were even able to add new features like spelling suggestion, audio/video options for resources, and add to cart buttons for products.

Here are a few example searches:

• Marriage
• Biographies
• Prayer

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was born 304 years ago today (Oct. 5). In celebration, we've discounted our Edwards-related products by 30% through Sunday, Oct. 7:

• The Works of Jonathan Edwards (2-Volume Hardcover Set)
  Regular Price: $54.00
  Sale Price: $37.80
• God's Passion for His Glory (Softcover Book)
  Regular Price: $11.00
  Sale Price: $7.70
• A God Entranced Vision of All Things (Softcover Book)
  Regular Price: $8.60
  Sale Price: $6.00
• A God-Entranced Vision of All Things (Conference Audio CD Set)
  Regular Price: $30.00
  Sale Price: $21.00
• A God-Entranced Vision of All Things (Conference MP3 Audio CD)
  Regular Price: $12.00
  Sale Price: $8.40
• A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: Why We Need Jonathan Edwards 300 Years Later (Conference Audio CD)
  Regular Price: $5.00
  Sale Price: $3.50
• Sweet Sorrow: The Happy Root of Holy Living (Audio CD)
  Reflections on Seeing and Savoring God with Jonathan Edwards
  Regular Price: $5.00
  Sale Price: $3.50
  

(This offer is only available online.)

We also have many free resources about Jonathan Edwards. Here are a few highlights:

• A Divine and Supernatural Light Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God
  The Unrivaled Legacy of Jonathan Edwards
• The Pastor as Theologian
  Life and Ministry of Jonathan Edwards
• A Mind in Love with God
  The Private Life of a Modern Evangelical
• Jonathan Edwards: The Life, the Man, and the Legacy (by Iain Murray)
  
• Free Online Books
  • God's Passion for His Glory
    Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards
  • A God-Entranced Vision of All Things
    The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards
    

You can find other related resources in the Jonathan Edwards topic in our Resource Library.

Christianaudio.com is offering a free audiobook download of The Life of David Brainerd by Jonathan Edwards for the month of October. (October 5th is Edwards' birthday.) Something tells me this might be of interest to some of our readers...

(via A-Team)

We've made downloading our resources even easier. When browsing the Resource Library, you can download a message's audio or video by clicking "download" without having to start streaming the media. This has been a popular request, and we're happy to provide it.

(For an example, see the 2006 Sermons.)

Christians are people of the book: God purposely chose the medium of typography to deliver his revelation to us. In that book, we are commanded to love God with our hearts and our minds (Matthew 22:34-40). This gives Christians a clear command to use their intellects — to be, in other words, a kind of intellectual.

Reading is one of the best ways to develop our minds. It can help us to know God and ourselves, gain vicarious experience, increase our perception and imagination, train our minds to think critically and logically, and teach us self-discipline. (For more on this, see Neil Postman's excellent Amusing Ourselves to Death.)

But we have a problem: our culture is becoming aliterate. We have the ability to read but not the desire. Or maybe some of us have the desire but not the time. We make time to watch television and surf the Internet for the latest triviality, but we can't seem to make the time to sit down and read for an hour.

Christians should be readers. We should read and meditate on the Bible, of course, but we should also read theology. Good theology systematizes and explains the Bible in ways we would be pressed to come up with on our own. Few of us are a Jonathan Edwards, John Owen, J. I. Packer or John Piper, and we would be wise to learn from them.

Most of us know we should read the Bible and theology. But what about other subjects, like literature, history, biography, science, and culture? And what about books by non-Christians? I think we should read widely, and yes, that includes reading non-Christians. John Calvin thought so too:

Therefore, in reading [non-Christian authors], the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator. If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful, as we would avoid offering insult to him, not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears. In despising the gifts, we insult the Giver.... Nay, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without the highest admiration; an admiration which their excellence will not allow us to withhold. But shall we deem anything to be noble and praiseworthy, without tracing it to the hand of God? (Institutes II.ii.15-16)

God has set up the world so that even non-Christians can find truth. I've learned truth from Christians and non-Christians. We can't expect non-Christians to have sound theology, but they are some of the best authors in other subjects. If we reject their Spirit-given insights because they are non-Christians we, as Calvin says, "insult the Giver."

C. S. Lewis was a voracious reader. From reading Surprised by Joy, one has the impression that he read pretty much everything by the time he was fifteen. But this was the secret to his success. The reason he could communicate truth so clearly was because he lived many lives through reading. He considered subjects from a diverse perspective through reading widely. I can think of none better to give us a final exhortation to make use of God's great gift of reading:

Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented….

[I]n reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

For Further Reading

• Desiring God's recommended reading
• John Piper: "A Compelling Reason for Rigorous Training of the Mind"
• John Piper: "The Ripple Effect of the Word"
• John Piper: "Books That Have Influenced Me Most"
• Justin Taylor: "Recommended Reading on Christian Engagement in Culture"
• My recommended reading

Here are some more photos from the CDG conference:

Photography by Karen Feder.

Here are some photos from yesterday's CDG conference sessions:

Photography by Karen Feder.

Here are some photos from last night's CDG conference session:

Photography by Karen Feder.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, has written a short essay on CNN.com about the compatibility between faith and science. I find testimonies like this encouraging. Maybe you do too. Here's his conclusion:

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

Amen.

• You can now share audio/video easily with friends. Just click on "Email to Friend" while in the media player.
• For those who read our blog on the site, the media player now is a popup instead of a direct link to the audio file or the manuscript.
• For those who read our blog in a feed reader, the media links now go to our media player instead of directly to the audio file or the manuscript.
• Downloading the audio/video is now easier — no more "right clicking" and "saving as." Just click the download link.

We hope this will serve you well as you use our website.

We love finding new ways to provide resources that are cheaper, more convenient, and easier to spread. Not everyone has fast internet where they can download our resources for free (like some missionaries, for example). That's why we've created Audio MP3 DVDs. DVDs can fit far more MP3s than our Audio MP3 CDs. For instance, our new Complete Romans Series DVD has 224 messages on it. That's around 170 hours of preaching on 1 disc!

Here are our first two MP3 DVD products:

• The Complete Romans Series (1998-2006)
• Desiring God Conference for Pastors (1988-2007)

We will also be posting the Pastors Conference audio on the website for free soon.

We have added new video samples of our DVD, Brothers—Feel, Think, Preach God:

• What does it mean to get saved?
• What is the one thing people need from their pastor?
• Piper on the health and wealth gospel
• Pursuing our joy and loving others
• The joyless pastor is a loveless pastor