One Resolve

Maintain the Truth in Love

2012-01-16T23:17:00.000-06:00

John Stott on what Christians should do when they disagree with each other:

The proper activity of professing Christians who disagree with one another is neither to ignore, nor to conceal, nor even to minimize their differences, but to debate them.

We are “to maintain the truth in love,” being neither truthless in our love, nor loveless in our truth, but holding the two in balance.

—From John Stott, Christ the Controversialist (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1970), pp. 22, 19.

[Posted by Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds]

Does God Care Whether Tim Tebow Wins Tonight?

2012-01-14T16:07:00.001-06:00

From an article in The Atlantic by Owen Strachan, professor of theology and history at Boyce College, titled, "Does God Care Whether Tim Tebow Wins on Saturday?"

What does this mean in light of a possible Broncos loss on Saturday? It means that there is no reason to believe that God has failed Tebow, that the light of the divine in Tebow's life is extinguished. God's Spirit, directed by God's will, blows like the wind where it wishes (John 3:8). It may be that Tebow will succeed in spectacular fashion; it may be that he will have the worst game of his life. Either way, the Bible assures us that God loves his chosen, God is orchestrating every detail of their lives, and God will lead them through success or failure to the end of all things. Sometimes God grants believers great victories, and sometimes he asks them to walk through the fire. This is true whether it is experienced on the football field, in the office, or in a country that rewards outspoken Christianity with a sword to the throat.

Perhaps this sounds like a cop-out, as weird as the mystical, linebacker-thwarting wood elves I introduced earlier. But if it does, remember the one whom Christians worship. Jesus Christ was the Son of God in human form. He did not come to earth to be lauded, though, but to serve and to suffer (Mark 10:45). It was the will of God to bruise him, and through his vicarious death and life-giving resurrection to make a way to heaven for fallen mankind.

There is no greater reminder than this that God uses suffering in the lives of believers to accomplish his will. Whether, as with Joseph, he grants Christians incredible accomplishment and wealth, or whether, as with Job, he leads them steadily through the valley of the shadow of death, he loves them all the same. Sometimes, we remember, it is through tremendous hardship, suffering even to the point of death, that his people gain the greatest victories.

That is the message of the cross, where an innocent man was crucified, naked and gasping, on behalf of the guilty. It is the lodestar of every Christian, the confession that no one can stymie, whether we make our way through life as a mailman, a child with Down's syndrome, or a football star.

Mumford & Sons Play "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing"

2012-01-02T11:21:00.001-06:00

Here is a video of Mumford & Sons performing Sufjan Stevens' arrangement of "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing."

A Theology of Productivity

2012-01-02T11:15:00.001-06:00

Greg Forster, an author and the program director at Kern Family Foundation, wrote an article on theology and economics in light of the European debt crisis titled "Productive for the Glory of God, Good of Neighbors." Here is a portion of that article:

Christians believe human beings are made in the image of a Father who creates from nothing; this explains why human work creates wealth rather than just moving it around. Christians believe in a divine Son who joined in mystical union with temporal and material humanity. Material activities like economic work are not separate from, and inferior to, "spiritual" activities. And Christians believe in a Spirit who liberates us from selfishness; this explains why life works best when people orient their daily lives around serving others.

The problem is, too many Europeans now take wealth for granted. Some have forgotten where it came from---productive work---and feel like they're entitled to it by birthright. More to the point, the people and institutions in authority have irresponsibly indulged this attitude (for various reasons, such as vote-buying) and have thereby anointed it as culturally accepted.

Where this happens, economics is reduced to the purely material. If the proper economic goal for individuals is to enjoy leisure rather than to be productive, then of course voters should demand endless, unsustainable entitlement programs. If the fundamental purpose of business is to make money rather than to serve customers, then of course businesses should game the system to enrich themselves---and nations can try to get rich by playing games with the money supply.

The idea that policy should encourage financial rewards for productivity, and culture should set the expectation of productive work from all who are able, simply makes no sense in this context. Once you forget the Creator, you quickly forget that wealth needs to be created.

Social Networking in the Church

2012-01-02T11:08:00.001-06:00

Christianity Today posted an interesting article titled "How to Think about Social Networking in Churches." The entire article is good. Here are the opening thoughts:

The benefits of social networking are many but require judicious and responsible use to be enjoyed. When done well, social networking can enhance the fellowship of the church by providing congregants a window into each other's lives. It can mobilize congregants to serve their neighbors and enhance the church's mission by embedding the community of church relationships in the broader community.

But social media can merely offer a short-term, technological solution to deeper, more fundamental problems. Social networking can give the appearance of intimacy and community without enabling the substance of embodied friendship.

The more we wed ourselves to social networking as a strategy for building community, the more we risk forgetting that the problems in our communities do not hinge upon lack of access to shared information about each other's lives. They result from our own reluctance to share space and meals together, and to enter into environments and social situations that require our embodied presence. The comforting arm around a shoulder that comes when we "weep with those who weep" will never have an equal virtual substitute.

In that sense, while not immediately harmful to fellowship, we should ask whether social media undermine our intuitions about what is distinctive and unique about the gathered, embodied fellowship of the people of God.

Marriage at a Record Low

2011-12-19T13:24:00.001-06:00

From NPR:

The share of all U.S. adults who are married has dropped to a record low 51 percent, according to a new report. If the trend continues, the institution will soon lose its majority status in American life.

The report being released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center finds new marriages dropped a sharp 5 percent last year, which is very likely related to the bad economy. Pew senior writer D’Vera Cohn says it fits with a larger trend.

“The most dramatic statistics to me are when you look at the share of younger adults who are married now compared with in the past. That’s really been where you’ve seen the big decline,” Cohn says.

Half a century ago, nearly 60 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds were married. Today, it’s just 20 percent. But the Pew report finds fewer married people across all age groups.

In their place: more singles, single parents, couples living together — many having children without marrying. In fact, some 40 percent of all U.S. births are now to unmarried mothers. But the driving force in the dropping marriage rate? People who do tie the knot are waiting longer than ever.

The Pew report finds the median age when people finally walk down the aisle is at an all-time high — 26 for women and nearly 29 for men. And it’s higher still for the college educated.

HT: Scot McKnight

Accomplish More by Doing Less

2011-12-19T13:03:00.001-06:00

Tony Schwartz, "How to Accomplish More by Doing Less," Harvard Business Review:

It's not just the number of hours we sit at a desk in that determines the value we generate. It's the energy we bring to the hours we work. Human beings are designed to pulse rhythmically between spending and renewing energy. That's how we operate at our best. Maintaining a steady reservoir of energy — physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually — requires refueling it intermittently.

If you have been told that you are a workaholic then read the entire article. For those of you who procrastinate, read the article another day.

The Meaning of Marriage

2011-12-19T12:33:00.001-06:00

Tim Keller gives a talk on his book The Meaning of Marriage at Google.

Critiquing Atheism, Naturalism, and Scientism

2011-12-18T16:23:00.001-06:00

The New York Times posted some articles that critique atheism and naturalism. The first article is by Jennifer Schuessler who presents the ideas of Alvin Plantinga in "Philosopher Sticks Up for God." Here is a portion from that article:

Theism, with its vision of an orderly universe superintended by a God who created rational-minded creatures in his own image, “is vastly more hospitable to science than naturalism,” with its random process of natural selection, he writes. “Indeed, it is theism, not naturalism, that deserves to be called ‘the scientific worldview.’ ”

Mr. Plantinga readily admits that he has no proof that God exists. But he also thinks that doesn’t matter. Belief in God, he argues, is what philosophers call a basic belief: It is no more in need of proof than the belief that the past exists, or that other people have minds, or that one plus one equals two.

“You really can’t sensibly claim theistic belief is irrational without showing it isn’t true,” Mr. Plantinga said. And that, he argues, is simply beyond what science can do.

Another group of articles show an exchange between Timothy Williamson and Alex Rosenberg. Mr. Williamson first wrote "What is Naturalism?" and Mr. Rosenberg responded with "Why I am a Naturalist." Mr. Williamson gives the final response with "On Ducking Challenges to Naturalism." Here is a portion from "On Ducking Challenges to Naturalism":

For Professor Rosenberg, it may turn out that “reality contains only the kinds of things that hard science recognizes.” By “hard science” he seems to mean something like physics. He doesn’t explain how that could turn out. How could physics show that reality contains only the kinds of things that physics recognizes? It sounds embarrassingly like physics acting as judge and jury in its own case. That physics does not show that there is such a thing as a debt crisis does not mean that physics shows that there is no such thing as a debt crisis: physics simply does not address the question. That is no criticism of physics; it has other work to do. For it to turn out that reality contains only the kinds of things that hard science recognizes, where they exclude things like debt crises, it would have to turn out that a radically reductionist metaphysical theory is true. That in turn would require industrial-scale argument at a characteristically philosophical level of reasoning. But I doubt that Professor Rosenberg counts philosophy as hard science.

We can formulate the underlying worry as a sharp argument against the extreme naturalist claim that all truths are discoverable by hard science. If it is true that all truths are discoverable by hard science, then it is discoverable by hard science that all truths are discoverable by hard science. But it is not discoverable by hard science that all truths are discoverable by hard science. “Are all truths discoverable by hard science?” is not a question of hard science. Therefore the extreme naturalist claim is not true.

For those who may be interested in reading more, see Ian Hutchinson, Monopolizing Knowledge: A Scientist Refutes Religion-Denying, Reason-Destroying Scientism. Scientism is being defined as a philosophical belief about science that hold science being the only approach to truth in the world.

HT: for Ian Hutchinson's book from Justin Taylor, Chronicle of Higher Education blog

The Early Church Caring for the Poor

2011-12-08T16:29:00.001-06:00

From BibleMesh:

Justin Martyr was a pagan philosopher who converted to Christianity. Once a prominent thinker who taught in many of the great urban centers of the Roman Empire, he was eventually executed because of his faith. In his “First Apology,” Justin defends Christian truth and practice in a letter to the Emperor Antoninus Pius. In this passage, he describes in detail the activities involved in the weekly worship of the early Church community. For modern readers, it may be astonishing to see both the simplicity and the priorities of these forerunners as seen in their weekly Christian gatherings. They read Scripture, the pastor (here translated as “president”)1 gave a brief homily of application, they celebrated the Eucharist, and took up an offering. What is interesting about that offering, however, is where the money went. It was primarily intended to care for the poorest and weakest members of society.

And we afterwards continually remind each other of [our common faith]. And the wealthy among us help the needy; and we always keep together; and for all things wherewith we are supplied, we bless the Maker of all through His Son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Ghost. And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.2

——————————————-
1 The word “president” in this passage almost certainly refers to the chief elder or pastor of the congregation.
2 Justin Martyr, “The First Apology of Justin,” Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, eds. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids, MI: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1985), 185-186. In other translations see chapter 67.

Secular God-Centeredness

2011-12-08T16:22:00.001-06:00

"God is not so distant or even so 'religious' that he only cares about what happens at church and during devotions. Every square inch of this earth is his and every minute of our lives is a loan from his breath. He is much more secular than we often think." - John Piper, The Pleasure of God in Public Justice.

Puritans & Sex

2011-11-22T17:42:00.001-06:00

From a CNN article by Stephen Prothero, "My Take: On Thanksgiving, Puritans gave thanks for sex and booze."

In a classic article called “The Puritans and Sex,” Edmund Morgan demonstrated not only that New England’s Puritans whooped it up in the marriage bed, but also that they dealt with the sex offenders in their midst with sympathy rooted in their view of human frailty.

These Puritans looked upon the Catholic preference for sexual abstinence as abnormal and unscriptural, pointing to Old Testament patriarchs such as Isaac who “sported with Rebecca his wife.” And sex wasn’t just for men either.

New England’s Puritans disciplined church members who refused to have sex with their wives, including one James Mattock, excommunicated from his church in Boston in 1640 because he “denied conjugal fellowship unto his wife” for two years.

These passionate Pilgrims also allowed women to sue for divorce if their husbands were unable to satisfy them sexually.

Creed - by Steve Turner

2011-11-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

Here is a satirical poem called “Creed” by Steve Turner:

We believe in Marx, Freud and Darwin
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before, during, and
after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
And you can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there's something in horoscopes
UFO's and bent spoons.
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,
Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher though we think
His good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same-
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of creation,
sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.

We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens
they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then its
compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps
Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn

We believe in Masters and Johnson
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between warfare and
bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors .
And the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth that
is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth
that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.

If chance be
the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear:

State of Emergency!

Sniper Kills Ten!

Troops on Rampage!

Whites go Looting!

Bomb Blasts School!

It is but the sound of man worshipping his maker.

________________

I heard this poem for the first time during the talk "Is Becoming a Christian Committing Intellectual Suicide?" that Mark Dever gave at Georgetown University.

This poem is quoted in "Can Man Live Without God" by Ravi Zacharias.

What of it?

2011-10-31T14:53:00.001-05:00

"So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: "I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where he is there I shall be also!" - Martin Luther

Happy Reformation Day.

[HT: Matthew Barrett]

Bible Cloud

2011-10-25T18:42:00.000-05:00

Brad Thomas, the graphic designer behind Six-Six Clouds, put the video below together using Wordle.net. Here is a description of the images from Six-Six Clouds: "Sixty-Six Clouds is a stunning combination of biblical content and design. The 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament have been beautifully visualized as individual word clouds, presenting viewers with the gist of all 66 books at a glance. The greater the frequency of a word in the text, the larger it appears in the word cloud. The Sixty-Six Clouds shop offers a variety of items available for purchase."

[HT: Bible Design Blog]

Ministry Shifts at Universities

2011-10-06T17:32:00.001-05:00

Doing ministry on a college or university campus can be difficult. It is important not only to be passionate about faith in Jesus but also to be sensitive to a changing culture.Stephen Lutz wrote a good article called "5 Necessary Shifts for Missional College Ministry." Here is his outline:

Shift #1: From Religion and Relationship to Gospel
Shift #2: From Building a Large Group to Reaching a Large Campus
Shift #3: From Head Counting to Seed Spreading
Shift #4: From Bible Studies and Small Groups to Missional Communities
Shift #5: From Compartmentalizing Faith to Full-Life Engagement

Why men are in trouble

2011-10-06T17:20:00.001-05:00

CNN Contributor William J. Bennett wrote a troubling article titled "Why men are in trouble." Here is a portion of the article:

The warning signs for men stretch far beyond their wallets. Men are more distant from a family or their children then they have ever been. The out-of-wedlock birthrate is more than 40% in America. In 1960, only 11% of children in the U.S. lived apart from their fathers. In 2010, that share had risen to 27%. Men are also less religious than ever before. According to Gallup polling, 39% of men reported attending church regularly in 2010, compared to 47% of women.

If you don't believe the numbers, just ask young women about men today. You will find them talking about prolonged adolescence and men who refuse to grow up. I've heard too many young women asking, "Where are the decent single men?" There is a maturity deficit among men out there, and men are falling behind.

How do you spend your time?

2011-10-06T17:13:00.002-05:00

The New York Times put together a visual way to understand how people spend their time each day. The information comes from The American Time Use Survey. It looks like work and T.V. dominate our lives.

Morality of Self

2011-09-13T22:55:00.002-05:00

David Brooks from the New York Times shares a study from Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith concerning the moral worldview of this generation. Here are a couple of key paragraphs:

Smith and company found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism — of relativism and nonjudgmentalism. Again, this doesn’t mean that America’s young people are immoral. Far from it. But, Smith and company emphasize, they have not been given the resources — by schools, institutions and families — to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be degrading. In this way, the study says more about adult America than youthful America ...

In most times and in most places, the group was seen to be the essential moral unit. A shared religion defined rules and practices. Cultures structured people’s imaginations and imposed moral disciplines. But now more people are led to assume that the free-floating individual is the essential moral unit. Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.

A Spiritual Crisis in China

2011-09-13T22:47:00.000-05:00

The BBC has an intersting report by Tim Gardam called "Christians in China: Is the country in spiritual crisis?" The article highlights the growing movement of Christianity in China. Here is a portion:

The official Protestant Church is growing faster than Catholicism.

On Easter morning, in downtown Beijing, I watched five services, each packed with over 1,500 worshippers. Sunday school was spilling on to the street.

However, these numbers are dwarfed by the unofficial "house churches", spreading across the country, at odds with the official Church which fears the house churches' fervour may provoke a backlash.

What the authorities consider non-negotiable is the house churches' refusal to acknowledge any official authority over their organisation.

The State fears the influence of zealous American evangelism and some of the House Church theology has those characteristics, but, in many other respects, it seems to be an indigenous Chinese movement - charismatic, energetic and young.

Erosion of Religious Freedom

2011-08-24T17:28:00.001-05:00

USA Today has posted an article by Thomas S. Kidd titled, "Religious freedom under assault." Here are the opening thoughts to the article:

[...] a new report by Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life has revealed a disturbing pattern: Nearly a third of the globe's population — 2.2 billion people — live in countries where religious persecution increased between 2006 and 2009.

Observers have often assumed that over time, the world would progress toward what political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously called "the end of history," when Western liberal democracy would triumph over all ideological competitors. But instead, we are seeing a marked erosion of what America's Founding Fathers considered the "first freedom": the liberty of religious conscience. Even in America, there are signs that our historic commitment to this freedom is wavering.

The countries with the largest populations in the world, India and China, are among the worst offenders in social harassment or government restrictions on religion. No surprise, there. In China, the government commonly imprisons dissidents, ranging from those of the Falun Gong spiritual movement to pastors of Christian house churches. Even now, Beijing authorities are seeking to shut down the evangelical Shouwang Church, which has dared to hold outdoor assemblies.

The Christian Mission in the Suburbs

2011-08-21T11:08:00.000-05:00

Forbes recently published an article by Joel Kotkin titled "Why America's Young And Restless Will Abandon Cities For Suburbs." It is an important read for those who are interested in church planting. Here is a portion:

Some demographers claim that “white flight” from the city is declining, replaced by a “bright flight” to the urban core from the suburbs. “Suburbs lose young whites to cities,” crowed one Associated Press headline last year.

Yet evidence from the last Census show the opposite: a marked acceleration of movement not into cities but toward suburban and exurban locations. The simple, usually inexorable effects of maturation may be one reason for this surprising result. Simply put, when 20-somethings get older, they do things like marry, start businesses, settle down and maybe start having kids.

An analysis of the past decade’s Census data by demographer Wendell Cox shows this. Cox looked at where 25- to 34-year-olds were living in 2000 and compared this to where they were living by 2010, now aged 35 to 44. The results were surprising: In the past 10 years, this cohort’s presence grew 12% in suburban areas while dropping 22.7% in the core cities. Overall, this demographic expanded by roughly 1. 8 million in the suburbs while losing 1.3 million in the core cities.

Recently, the push to plant new churches has been drawing attention to urban centers. This emphasis is good and I have embraced it. However, in our pursuit of the cities, let us not abandon a more nuanced and holistic approach to church planting in suburban, rural, and other areas and demographics.

[HT: DeYoung]

The Christian Crusade Against Pornography

2011-08-21T10:59:00.001-05:00

A CNN article by Ashley Fantz called "Can the Christian crusade against pornography bear fruit?" highlights the growing responsibility of Christian ministries to address sex and porn. Here is a portion:

Not long ago, it was unheard of for a pastor to talk about sex from the pulpit.

Today, clergy are talking about porn.

Many evangelical pastors say they don’t have a choice. The Internet has made porn unavoidable; it’s everywhere. And porn, they say, leads to a lack of intimacy in marriage, threatening the biblical mandate to get and stay married.

The article then goes on to highlight stories, different Christian approaches, and some criticisms.

Extroverts - Care for Introverts Properly

2011-07-29T17:10:00.001-05:00

The Atlantic has an interesting article by Jonathan Rauch called "Caring for Your Introvert." Extroverts, take some time off from talking to your friends, sit down by yourself and give this article a read. If some of your friends are introverted then they may enjoy the break. Here is the introduction to the article:

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

If so, do you tell this person he is "too serious," or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands—and that you aren't caring for him properly.

The Death of an "Evangelical Pope"

2011-07-29T11:01:00.004-05:00

The New York Times has two good articles that reflect on the life and death of John Stott. David Brooks wrote an article titled, "Who is John Stott?" Here is a portion:

It could be that you have never heard of John Stott. I don't blame you. As far as I can tell, Stott has never appeared on an important American news program. A computer search suggests that Stott's name hasn't appeared in this newspaper since April 10, 1956, and it's never appeared in many other important publications.

Yet, as Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center notes, if evangelicals could elect a pope, Stott is the person they would likely choose. He was the framer of the Lausanne Covenant, a crucial organizing document for modern evangelicalism. He is the author of more than 40 books, which have been translated into over 72 languages and have sold in the millions. Now rector emeritus at All Souls, Langham Place, in London, he has traveled the world preaching and teaching.

As the article mentions, it is unfortunate that more people were not exposed to John Stott because of his role in shaping evangelicalism. As Mr. Brooks explains: "This is why so many people are so misinformed about evangelical Christians. There is a world of difference between real-life people of faith and the made-for-TV, Elmer Gantry-style blowhards who are selected to represent them. Falwell and Pat Robertson are held up as spokesmen for evangelicals, which is ridiculous. Meanwhile people like John Stott, who are actually important, get ignored."

For more on John Stott, see the New York Times article by Wolfgang Saxon, "Rev. John Stott, Major Evangelical Figure, Dies at 90."

Finally, if you want to read some of John Stott's work, I would recommend the following two books:

Churches and Public Schools

2011-07-21T10:06:00.000-05:00

Here is an interesting, and somewhat disconcerting, read from USA Today titled "'Instant churches' convert public schools to worship spaces" by Cathy Lynn Grossman and Natalie DiBlasio. Here is a portion of that article and video:

There's no tally of how many churches, synagogues and mosques convert public school spaces into prayer places for the nominal cost of permits and promises to make no permanent changes in the school setting. What's clear is that there has been a steady rise in numbers as congregations find schools are available, affordable and accessible to families they want to reach.

Critics, including some courts, are concerned that these arrangements are an unconstitutional entanglement of church and state. They say these bargain permits effectively subsidize religious congregations who would have to pay steeply higher prices on the open market. They also note that the practice appears to favor Christian groups, which worship on Sundays — when school spaces are most often available.

Social Media and Laziness

2011-07-20T16:08:00.000-05:00

Here is a quote from a CNN article by Dean Obeidallah titled, "Are social media creating the laziest generation?"

In the past, people would recount where they were when an historic event occurred such as the Kennedy assassination, the space shuttle exploding or the 9/11 attacks. In the future, we will instead recall what we tweeted, posted or read on social media platforms about such events.

Yes, it's fun, and I'm guilty of doing the same thing. But here is my growing concern: Are we becoming the laziest generation?

Is social media becoming our opiate of the masses seducing us into being slacktivists, believing that simply because we make a cyber comment, we are somehow actually affecting our world? Will our generation leave a lasting legacy or just millions of snarky tweets?

Best God Joke Ever

2011-07-17T17:28:00.000-05:00

At some point, the Internet named a joke by Emo Philips the "best God joke ever." It is funny. Here it is:

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"

He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"

Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.

Recanting Natural Family Planning?

2011-07-17T17:24:00.000-05:00

The New York Times recently posted an article titled "An Evolving View of Natural Family Planning" by Mark Oppenheimer. The article details a family who once practiced and wrote in support of natural family planning. Later in life the couple, after having four children, unfortunately divorced. In addition, they now disagree with their former stance on family planning for these reasons:

Among other challenges, Ms. Patchin, now 30, had unplanned pregnancies. “I got pregnant nursing twice,” she told me. “So my first two kids are 15 months apart, then there is a three-year break, then the younger two are a year and a half apart. That was intense. Beyond hormonally intense, it was relationally intense. It was nothing I would ever want anyone else to have to experience.”

In their 2006 statement on the Web, the couple wrote that natural family planning could harm a marriage, even when it worked.

“Wanting to make love to your spouse often is a good thing, but NFP often lays an unfair burden of guilt on men for feeling this,” the Torodes wrote. And it is “a theological attack on women to always require that abstinence during the time of the wife’s peak sexual desire (ovulation) for the entire duration of her fertile life, except for the handful of times when she conceives.”

New York and Redefining Marriage

2011-06-30T15:32:00.001-05:00

Many of you have heard the news about the New York State Senate legalizing same sex marriage. Here are a couple good responses to this news.

The first comes from David Blankenhorn, a self-described "liberal Democrat," writing an article titled "Protecting marriage to protect children" for the LA Times. Here is an important quote from the article:

I spent a year studying the history and anthropology of marriage, and I've come to a different conclusion.

Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving, and many of its features vary across groups and cultures. But there is one constant. In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. Among us humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition. It is primarily a license to have children.

In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation. Marriage (and only marriage) unites the three core dimensions of parenthood -- biological, social and legal -- into one pro-child form: the married couple. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and a father, accountable to the child and to each other.

In addition, the National Review Online interviewed Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and Princeton University, about the news coming out of New York. Here is part of his response to the question "What’s your reaction to what New York did to marriage on Friday night?"

As Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson, and I argue in our Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy article, once one buys into the ideology of sexual liberalism, the reality that has traditionally been denominated as “marriage” loses all intelligibility. That is true whether one regards oneself politically as a liberal or a conservative. For people who have absorbed the central premises of sexual liberation (whether formally and explicitly, as liberals tend to do, or merely implicitly as those conservatives who have gone in for it tend to do), marriage simply cannot function as the central principle or standard of rectitude in sexual conduct, as it has in Western philosophy, theology, and law for centuries. The idea that sexual intercourse (the behavioral component of reproduction) consummates and actualizes marriage as a one-flesh union of sexually complementary spouses naturally ordered to the good of procreation loses its force and even its sense. The moral belief that sex belongs in (and only in) marriage, where it is of unitive as well as procreative significance, and where the unitive and procreative dimensions are intrinsically connected (though not in a mere relationship of means to end), begins to seem baseless — the sort of thing that can be believed, if at all, only on the authority of revealed religion. As a result, to the extent that one is in the grip of sexual-liberationist ideology, one will find no reason of moral principle why people oughtn’t to engage in sexual relations prior to marriage, cohabit in non-marital sexual partnerships, form same-sex sexual partnerships, or confine their sexual partnerships to two persons, rather than three or more in polyamorous sexual ensembles.

Moreover, one will come to regard one’s allegiance to sexual liberalism as a mark of urbanity and sophistication, and will likely find oneself looking down on those “ignorant,” “intolerant,” “bigoted” people — those hicks and rubes — who refuse to get “on the right side of history.” One will perceive people who wish to engage in conduct rejected by traditional morality (especially where such conduct is sought in satisfaction of desires that can be redescribed or labeled as an “orientation,” such as “gay” or “bisexual,” or “polyamorist”) as belonging to the category of “sexual minorities” whose “civil rights” are violated by laws embodying the historic understanding of marriage and sexual ethics. One will begin congratulating oneself for one’s “open-mindedness” and “tolerance” in holding that marriage should be redefined to accommodate the interests of these minorities, and one will likely lose any real regard for the rights of, say, parents who do not wish to have their children indoctrinated into the ideology of sexual liberalism in public schools. “Why,” one will ask, “should fundamentalist parents be free to rear their children as little bigots?” Heather’s two mommies or Billy’s two mommies and three daddies are the keys to freeing children from parental “homophobia” and “polyphobia.”

Dr. George references the article "What is Marriage?" published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. This article is a must read for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the philosophical and historical foundation of marriage. Anyone who does not agree with the definition set forth in this article must respond with their own definition of marriage, which seems to be a challenge that those who are trying to redefine marriage are avoiding.

The Dad Life on Father's Day

2011-06-18T20:45:00.002-05:00

Also, here is a good post from Pastor Mark Driscoll on "5 Godly Ways to be a Good Dad." You can also read his free ebook called Pastor Dad.

Top Five Deathbed Regrets

2011-06-14T22:11:00.001-05:00

Here is a list of the top five deathbed regrets from Bonnie Ware, who is a palliative care expert:

I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I didn't work so hard (expressed by every male patient)
I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.

[HT: Challies]

Justice in a Brothel

2011-05-30T09:05:00.000-05:00

Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a powerful op-ed for the New York Times titled "Raiding a Brothel in India." He writes about his experience with International Justice Mission in India where they rescued five girls from sex slavery. The age of the girls ranged from 5 to 15. The article explains that "Unicef has estimated that worldwide 1.8 million children enter the sex trade each year."

N.T. Wright and Stephen Hawking on Heaven

2011-05-30T08:56:00.000-05:00

Stephen Hawking, a leading physicist and cosmologist, recently said that "I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark." Here is a wise response from N.T. Wright, a leading New Testament scholar, on a Washington Post blog:

It’s depressing to see Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant minds in his field, trying to speak as an expert on things he sadly seems to know rather less about than many averagely intelligent Christians. Of course there are people who think of ‘heaven’ as a kind of pie-in-the-sky dream of an afterlife to make the thought of dying less awful. No doubt that’s a problem as old as the human race. But in the Bible ‘heaven’ isn’t ‘the place where people go when they die.’ In the Bible heaven is God’s space while earth (or, if you like, ‘the cosmos’ or ‘creation’) is our space. And the Bible makes it clear that the two overlap and interlock. For the ancient Jews, the place where this happened was the temple; for the Christians, the place where this happened was Jesus himself, and then, astonishingly, the persons of Christians because they, too, were ‘temples’ of God’s own spirit.

Hawking is working with a very low-grade and sub-biblical view of ‘going to heaven.’ Of course, if faced with the fully Christian two-stage view of what happens after death—first, a time ‘with Christ’ in ‘heaven’ or ‘paradise,’and then, when God renews the whole creation, bodily resurrection—he would no doubt dismiss that as incredible. But I wonder if he has ever even stopped to look properly, with his high-octane intellect, at the evidence for Jesus and the resurrection? I doubt it—most people in England haven’t. Until he has, his opinion about all this is worth about the same as mine on nuclear physics, i.e. not much. . . .

[HT: The Resurgence]

Getting the End Times Wrong

2011-05-30T08:45:00.000-05:00

By now, you have all heard about the false predictions (and theology) of Harold Camping. A couple of articles struck me during this ordeal that detail how this teaching tragically impacted the lives of those who believed it (1) New York Times "Rapture Prophesy Tests Families Split on Belief" by Ashley Parker; and (2) LA Times "In the end, rapture believers weren't going anywhere" by Christopher Goffard.

In case it is not obvious, Mr. Camping held to a unbiblical and fringe view. That is why other Christians responded with this ad.

[picture above from chadestes.com]

Faith and Human Nature

2011-05-30T08:30:00.001-05:00

CNN reported on a huge study by a three year long Oxford-based project that "incorporated more than 40 different studies by dozens of researchers looking at countries from China to Poland and the United States to Micronesia." The study concluded that human nature is inclined towards seeking purpose and a religious worldview. The study does not seek to prove or disprove the existence of God. They do apply the study to religious freedom. Here is how the article concludes:

"If you've got something so deep-rooted in human nature, thwarting it is in some sense not enabling humans to fulfill their basic interests," Trigg said.

"There is quite a drive to think that religion is private," he said, arguing that such a belief is wrong. "It isn't just a quirky interest of a few, it's basic human nature."

"This shows that it's much more universal, prevalent, and deep-rooted. It's got to be reckoned with. You can't just pretend it isn't there," he said.

And the Oxford study, known as the Cognition, Religion and Theology Project, strongly implies that religion will not wither away, he said.

"The secularization thesis of the 1960s - I think that was hopeless," Trigg concluded.

Beer Only Fast and a Bacon Smootie: The Story of a Lenten Fast

2011-04-28T14:08:00.000-05:00

Here is a story from CNN of a guy from Iowa who fasted 46 days during Lent by drinking only beer and water. The idea came from a "Lenten tradition carried out by German monks hundreds of years ago." Here is an interview with the J. Wilson below:

CNN followed up on the story by highlighting what Mr. Wilson broke the fast with - a bacon smoothie.

Christiane Amanpour Interviews Tim Keller

2011-04-26T22:58:00.000-05:00

ABC News 'This Week' takes a look at religion and politics. Various people are interviewed but below is her interview with Pastor Tim Keller from New York City.

How Easter Undermines Atheism

2011-04-26T22:45:00.002-05:00

USA Today has an article by Anthony DeStefano titled "How Easter and Christianity Undermines Atheism." Here is a portion from the conclusion of the article:

If human beings were going to invent a religion based on wishful thinking, they could come up with something a lot "easier" than Christianity. After all, why not wish for a religion that promised eternal life in heaven, but at the same time allowed promiscuous sex, encouraged gluttony, did away with all the commandments, and forbade anyone to ever mention the idea of judgment and punishment?

Wouldn't that make a lot more sense? And yet, atheists persist in this ridiculous notion that human beings "invented" God merely because we're afraid of death and want to see our dead relatives again. Amazing.

But atheists can scoff all they want. They can write all the bestselling books they want. No matter how hard they try, they will never succeed in making Christianity "a thing of the past." And they will never succeed in snuffing out that faith in God that all human beings naturally possess; a faith that is ingrained in our minds, hearts and souls forever. Why?

Because aside from all the logical arguments for God's existence and all the miracles and all the truths contained in Scripture, one simple fact remains: 2,000 years ago, on that first, quiet Easter Sunday morning, Christ did rise.

NYC a Church Planting Incubator

2011-04-26T22:44:00.000-05:00

The New York Times has an article by John Leland titled "Evangelical Group See N.Y.C. as Incubator to Plant Churches" that highlights the increase of church planting in New York City. Trinity Grace Church, a church plant of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, is highlighted throughout the article. Here is an encouraging part that explains the impact that Redeemer is having through church planting:

Mr. Wasko was following a strategy taught by Redeemer Presbyterian Church, which opened in New York in 1989 and has fueled the city’s evangelical renaissance. Most Sundays, Redeemer and its pastor, Timothy Keller, draw 5,000 people to five services in three locations; its church-planting arm, Redeemer City to City, has helped start 170 churches in 35 cities, according to its Web site.

Was Easter Borrowed from a Pagan Holiday?

2011-04-24T23:00:00.002-05:00

Christianity Today has an intriguing article by Anthony McRoy called "Was Easter Borrowed from a Pagan Holiday?" Mr. McRoy contends that the historical evidence points to the conclusion that Easter did not borrow from a pagan holiday. Here is the introduction:

Anyone encountering anti-Christian polemics will quickly come up against the accusation that a major festival practiced by Christians across the globe—namely, Easter—was actually borrowed or rather usurped from a pagan celebration. I often encounter this idea among Muslims who claim that later Christians compromised with paganism to dilute the original faith of Jesus.

The argument largely rests on the supposed pagan associations of the English and German names for the celebration (Easter in English and Ostern in German). It is important to note, however, that in most other European languages, the name for the Christian celebration is derived from the Greek word Pascha, which comes frompesach, the Hebrew word for Passover. Easter is the Christian Passover festival.

Of course, even if Christians did engage incontextualization—expressing their message and worship in the language or forms of the local people—that in no way implies doctrinal compromise. Christians around the world have sought to redeem the local culture for Christ while purging it of practices antithetical to biblical norms. After all, Christians speak of "Good Friday," but they are in no way honoring the worship of the Norse/Germanic queen of the gods Freya by doing so.

But, in fact, in the case of Easter the evidence suggests otherwise: that neither the commemoration of Christ's death and resurrection nor its name are derived from paganism.

Transforming a City with the Gospel

2011-04-04T12:33:00.009-05:00

Tim Keller writes an article for the Leadership Journal called, "To Transform a City." Here is part of the introduction followed by the main points.

Introduction:

What it takes to reach a city is a city-wide gospel movement, which means the number of Christians across the city is growing faster than the population, and therefore, a growing percentage of the people of that city are connecting with gospel-centered churches and are finding faith in Jesus Christ. That will eventually have an impact on the whole life of the city. That's what I mean by a city-wide gospel movement.

A city-wide gospel movement is an organic thing. It's an energy unleashed across not only the city but across the different denominations, and therefore, there's no one church, no one organization, no one leader in charge of it all. It's bigger than that. It's the Holy Spirit moving across the whole city and as a result the overall body of Christ is growing faster than the population, and the city is being reached. And there's an impact for Christ made in the whole city.

Main Points:

There are three layers to this kind of influence. At the core of this kind of movement is the first layer: a contextualized biblical gospel theology. Where do I get this? From the Book of Acts, from reading the history of revivals, and from my own experience here in New York.
Around that core, for this to be a city-wide gospel movement, there's a second layer. We need a number of church multiplication movements within different denominations: new churches being planted and churches being renewed among the Baptists and Presbyterians and Pentecostals and Episcopalians and Lutherans and so on. (Sorry if I left somebody out, but there are about 26,000 Protestant denominations …) Cities are diverse, and for reasons that only God knows, not everybody in New York who wants to become a Christian will want to be a Presbyterian. Hard as that is to believe! And not everybody is going to be Pentecostal. Or Baptist.
The third layer around the two inner rings is the most complex layer, and I call it an ecosystem of ministry networks. An ecosystem is a biological system by which various life forms feed on each other and life grows. And if you take out one element, the whole system suffers.

New York Times Highlights Sexting

2011-04-04T12:12:00.002-05:00

The Sunday, March 27, 2011 edition of the New York Times highlighted the modern day problem of sexting. Here are the articles:

These parts of the article "A Girl's Nude Photo, and Altered Lives" really stood out:

Around the country, law enforcement officials and educators are struggling with how to confront minors who “sext,” an imprecise term that refers to sending sexual photos, videos or texts from one cellphone to another.

But adults face a hard truth. For teenagers, who have ready access to technology and are growing up in a culture that celebrates body flaunting, sexting is laughably easy, unremarkable and even compelling: the primary reason teenagers sext is to look cool and sexy to someone they find attractive.

Indeed, the photos can confer cachet.

“Having a naked picture of your significant other on your cellphone is an advertisement that you’re sexually active to a degree that gives you status,” said Rick Peters, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney for Thurston County, which includes Lacey. “It’s an electronic hickey.” ...

That is because culturally, such a fine distinction eludes most teenagers. Their world is steeped in highly sexualized messages. Extreme pornography is easily available on the Internet. Hit songs and music videos promote stripping and sexting.

“Take a dirty picture for me,” urge the pop stars Taio Cruz and Kesha in their recent duet, “Dirty Picture.” “Send the dirty picture to me. Snap.”

In a 2010 Super Bowl advertisement for Motorola, the actress Megan Fox takes a cellphone picture of herself in a bubble bath. “I wonder what would happen if I were to send this out?” she muses. The commercial continues with goggle-eyed men gaping at the forwarded photo — normalizing and encouraging such messages.

“You can’t expect teenagers not to do something they see happening all around them,” said Susannah Stern, an associate professor at the University of San Diego who writes about adolescence and technology.

“They’re practicing to be a part of adult culture,” Dr. Stern said. “And in 2011, that is a culture of sexualization and of putting yourself out there to validate who you are and that you matter.” ...

ut a double standard holds. While a boy caught sending a picture of himself may be regarded as a fool or even a boastful stud, girls, regardless of their bravado, are castigated as sluts.

Photos of girls tend to go viral more often, because boys and girls will circulate girls’ photos in part to shame them, explained Danah Boyd, a senior social media researcher atMicrosoft and a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

In contrast, when a boy sends a revealing photo of himself to a girl, Dr. Boyd noted, she usually does not circulate it. And, Dr. Boyd added, boys do not tend to circulate photos of other boys: “A straight-identified boy will never admit to having naked photos of a boy on his phone.” ...

One of the last to speak was Margarite’s father, Dan, an industrial engineer.

“I could say it was everyone else’s fault,” Dan said. “But I had a piece of it, too. I learned a big lesson about my lack of involvement in her use of the phone and texting. I trusted her too much.”

He had not expected the students to be punished severely, he continued. But they needed to understand that their impulsive actions had ramifications.

“When you walk out of here tonight, it’s over, you’re done with it,” he said, looking around the room.

“Keep in mind that the only person this will have a lasting impact on,” he concluded, is his daughter.

The photo most certainly still exists on cellphones, and perhaps on social networking sites, readily retrievable.

“She will have to live with this for the rest of her life.”

Rural Divorce Rates

2011-04-04T12:01:00.001-05:00

Sabrina Tavernise writes an article for the New York Times with this headline "Once Race in Rural America, Divorce Is Changing the Face of Its Families." Here is a portion:

In the 1970s, the divorce rate was so low in this rural northwest Iowa County that it resembled the rest of America in the 1910s. Most of its 28,000 residents were churchgoers, few of its women were in the work force, and divorce was simply not done.

So it is a bitter mark of modernity that even here, divorce has swept in, up nearly sevenfold since 1970, giving thecounty the unwelcome distinction of being a standout in this category of census data.

Divorce is still less common here than the national average, but its sharp jump illustrates a fundamental change in the patterns of family life.

Forty years ago, divorced people were more concentrated in cities and suburbs. But geographic distinctions have all but vanished, and now, for the first time, rural Americans are just as likely to be divorced as city dwellers, according to an analysis of census data by The New York Times ...

Since 1990, class has become an increasingly reliable predictor of family patterns, Professor Carbone said. College-educated Americans are now more likely to get married and stay married than those with only a high school diploma, a change from 20 years ago, she said, when differences were much smaller.

That trend has been particularly important for rural areas, which have fallen further behind urban ones in education, according to census data. Just one in six rural residents have college degrees, far fewer than in cities, where one in three do. Nationally, there were about 121 million married adults and 26 million divorced people in 2009, compared with about 100 million married and 11 million divorced people in 1980.

The Extinction of Organized Religion?

2011-03-28T11:00:00.001-05:00

Richard Allen Greene, writing for CNN.com, observes that organized "religion 'will be driven toward extinction' in 9 countries, experts predict." Here are some portions from the article:

Organized religion will all but vanish eventually from nine Western-style democracies, a team of mathematicians predict in a new paper based on census data stretching back 100 years.

It won't die out completely, but "religion will be driven toward extinction" in countries including Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, they say.

It will also wither away in Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland and Switzerland, they anticipate.

They can't make a prediction about the United States because the U.S. census doesn't ask about religion, lead author Daniel Abrams told CNN.

On another note, it is important to observe that 1 in 3 people in the U.S. claim to be evangelicals, and there is exponential growth of the Christian faith in other areas of the world (see The Next Christendom by Philip Jenkins and God is Back by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge). My sense is that the divide between the secular and the religious is widening in the U.S., and the growth of religion is thriving in other parts of the world despite its pending death in these 9 countries.

A Bias Against Single Pastors?

2011-03-23T17:02:00.001-05:00

In the New York Times, Erik Eckholm writes and article called, "Single and Evangelical? Good Luck Finding Work as a Pastor." Here are some interesting parts:

Women seeking positions in mainline Protestant denominations like Episcopal and Presbyterian have seen the doors widen: By 2009, 28 percent of senior pastors in mainline churches were female, according to a survey byU.S. Congregations, a nonprofit research group in Louisville, Ky. But a preference or firm requirement for male pastors persists among conservative churches (mainly evangelical), with fewer than 2 percent of senior positions held by women.

Single pastors remain uncommon, especially among conservative churches, where the figure is one in 20, according to the same survey. Among mainline Protestant denominations, roughly one in six senior pastors are single.

Amy Mark is, like Mr. Almlie, ordained by the Evangelical Covenant Church, and like him has searched widely in the evangelical world for a permanent position. After seven years with only some temporary pastoral stints, she finds herself working in a crafts shop to get by.

Her denomination’s policy of accepting women as leaders has not been taken to heart by many local churches, she discovered to her chagrin. Being single was a major second obstacle.

"Why Do We Let Girls Dress Like That?"

2011-03-23T16:33:00.000-05:00

Here is a portion of the article "Why Do We Let Girls Dress Like That?" by Jennifer Moses in the Wall Street Journal:

In recent years, of course, promiscuity has hit new heights (it always does!), with "sexting" among preteens, "hooking up" among teens and college students, and a constant stream of semi-pornography from just about every media outlet. Varied sexual experiences—the more the better—are the current social norm.

I wouldn't want us to return to the age of the corset or even of the double standard, because a double standard that lets the promiscuous male off the hook while condemning his female counterpart is both stupid and destructive. If you're the campus mattress, chances are that you need therapy more than you need condemnation.

But it's easy for parents to slip into denial. We wouldn't dream of dropping our daughters off at college and saying: "Study hard and floss every night, honey—and for heaven's sake, get laid!" But that's essentially what we're saying by allowing them to dress the way they do while they're still living under our own roofs.

The New Face of American Evangelicalism

2011-03-23T15:59:00.002-05:00

Video from ABC News.

The Catastrophe in Japan

2011-03-17T21:25:00.003-05:00

It has been several days since the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan. My heart breaks for the suffering. In order to keep this event in our prayers, here are some places to donate, stories to read and videos to watch:

Donating

Articles and Audio

Here is a good article from The Gospel Coalition about how to pray.
Here is a prayer from John Piper.
Here is an old audio interview between John Piper and NPR after the 2004 tsunami in southeast Asia.

Video

Rob Bell Getting Heat About Hell

2011-03-16T18:02:00.002-05:00

I know many of you have heard about the lively conversation about Rob Bell's new book that we released today called Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.
The questions that this book raises are important and serious. Here are some helpful articles, interviews and reviews on the book. As you will see, this discussion is less about hell and more about who God is and the heart of the Christian message.

An interview between MSNBC journalist Martin Bashir and Rob Bell:

Kevin DeYoung reviews the book. It is a 20 page review, and here is the most important part:

At the very heart of this controversy, and one of the reasons the blogosphere exploded over this book, is that we really do have two different Gods. The stakes are that high. If Bell is right, then historic orthodoxy is toxic and terrible. But if the traditional view of heaven and hell are right, Bell is blaspheming. I do not use the word lightly, just like Bell probably chose “toxic” quite deliberately. Both sides cannot be right. As much as some voices in evangelicalism will suggest that we should all get along and learn from each other and listen for the Spirit speaking in our midst, the fact is we have two irreconcilable views of God ...

Bad theology hurts real people. So of all the questions raised in the book, the most important question every reader must answer is this: is it true? Whatever you think of all the personalities involved on whatever side of the debate, that’s the one question that cannot be ignored. Is Love Wins true to the word of God? That’s the issue. Open a Bible, pray to God, listen to the faithful Christians of the past 2000 years, and answer the question for yourself.

Delight or deception, suffering or salvation—yes, even heaven or hell—may hang in the balance.

Mark Galli from Christianity Today reviews the book. Here is an important part:

But it's here that we run up against Bell's hermeneutic, that is, the principle by which he decides if a biblical teaching is relevant. Why, for example, is blood atonement a time-bound explanation of the Cross, but the divinity of Christ is a deep mystery we shouldn't shun? Why are Paul's statements about the universality of salvation taken literally, but his teaching on substitutionary atonement as mere creative writing?

If there is a criterion driving these distinctions, it seems to be based on what Bell thinks contemporary people can swallow. I couldn't see any other criteria at play. Given the complete lack of quotes from any other writer or tradition, one is led to the unfortunate conclusion that what makes one extraordinary biblical claim a time-bound metaphor and another literal truth is that Bell says so.

Look for a review from Scot McKnight to come out on April 1st. He is a a New Testament professor at North Park in Chicago, and one who can be sympathetic to the theology of someone like Rob Bell on the one hand, but on the other hand is not afraid to call theology unorthodox.

This book has also created press from the New York Times, USA Today and CNN (two times: see first article and second article).

Christianity in fraternities and sororities

2011-03-07T15:44:00.000-06:00

Erik Eckholm writes an article for the New York Times called "Hard Partying and Bible Study, at the Fraternity House." Here is a portion:

Why would students who may not drink or believe in sex before marriage, and who read the Bible for recreation, want to join groups often known for hard partying, alcohol and hazing violations, and casual sex? Many said they enjoyed the companionship a house could provide and liked having friends of different or less ardent faiths. But many also said they relished the opportunity to spread the Gospel.
“Our goal is to help students lead a Christian life inside the Greek system, as contradictory as that may sound,” said Eric Holmer, the communications director for Greek InterVarsity.
The group is fighting a long-term decline in the share of students who say they are religious, as well as a tendency for church attendance to drop off during college. But it still sees fertile ground: in a 2007 national survey, 20 percent of college juniors identified themselves as evangelical Christians, according to Alexander W. Astin, professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The organization, a branch of a nondenominational campus ministry, has a foothold at 60 universities around the country, with 50 full-time staff members organizing on campuses. It counts about 2,800 active members from 367 Greek houses.

Shadows of Slavery

2011-03-07T15:31:00.000-06:00

Wayne Drash from CNN has an article called "Shadowy figures lurking on the fringe" that looks slavery, in particular, modern day slavery. Here is a portion of the article:

The number of people ensnared in modern-day slavery ranges from 12 million, according to the United Nations, to 27 million, according to leading anti-slavery activists like Kevin Bales. Another prominent activist, Siddharth Kara of Harvard, estimates the number could be as high as 30 million. The broad range is the result of challenges associated with tracking a practice hidden in shadows and finding a consensus on how best to define and measure it.
Experts agree the vast majority of slaves today live in Asia and the Pacific, where they are held against their will as a result of debt bondage in agriculture and domestic work. Millions of others across the globe are used for sexual exploitation.
"To me, slavery means one person who is completely under the control of another person, that they use violence to maintain that control, they exploit them, make money out of them and that the [victim] just can't walk away," says Bales.
"Those are the fundamental criteria really for what slavery has always been about throughout all of human history."

Here is a video as well from CNN's Freedom Project:

Why Hell is Important

2011-03-05T22:15:00.000-06:00

A couple of posts that focus on the importance of the doctrine of hell or God's just judgement. Here is a summary of each article.

Tim Keller, "The Importance of Hell."

It is important because Jesus taught about it more than all other Biblical authors put together.
It is important because it shows how infinitely dependent we are on God for everything.
It is important because it unveils the seriousness and danger of living life for yourself.
The doctrine of hell is important because it is the only way to know how much Jesus loved us and how much he did for us.

Kevin DeYoung, "To Hell with Hell."

First, we need God’s wrath to keep us honest about evangelism.
Second, we need God’s wrath in order to forgive our enemies.
Third, we need God’s wrath in order to risk our lives for Jesus’ sake.
Fourth, we need God’s wrath in order to live holy lives.
Fifth, we need God’s wrath in order to understand what mercy means.
Sixth, we need God’s wrath in order to grasp how wonderful heaven will be.
Seventh, we need the wrath of God in order to be motivated to care for our impoverished brothers and sisters.
Eighth, we need God’s wrath in order to be ready for the Lord’s return.

CNN Belief Blog Exchange on Scripture and Homosexuality

2011-03-05T22:02:00.000-06:00

The CNN Belief Blog has an exchange on what the Bible says about homosexuality. Here are the two articles:

Robert A.J. Gagnon, "The Bible really does condemn homosexuality."

Jennifer Wright Knust, "The Bible's surprisingly mixed message on sexuality."

The History of Universalism

2011-03-04T22:11:00.003-06:00

Universalism is a belief that everyone will ultimately be saved and a denial of eternal punishment. Scripture teaches, and the bulk of church history agrees, the reality of eternal punishment.

Here is a good article on the history of universalism by Richard Bauckham, professor of New Testament Studies at the University of St. Andrews, title "Universalism: a historical survey." Here is the introduction:

The history of the doctrine of universal salvation (or apokastastasis) is a remarkable one. Until the nineteenth century almost all Christian theologians taught the reality of eternal torment in hell. Here and there, outside the theological mainstream, were some who believed that the wicked would be finally annihilated (in its commonest form. this is the doctrine of 'conditional immortality').¹ Even fewer were the advocates of universal salvation, though these few included same major theologians of the early church. Eternal punishment was firmly asserted in official creeds and confessions of the churches.² It must have seemed as indispensable a part of universal Christian belief as the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation. Since 1800 this situation has entirely changed, and no traditional Christian doctrine has been so widely abandoned as that of eternal punishment.³ Its advocates among theologians today must be fewer than ever before. The alternative interpretation of hell as annihilation seems to have prevailed even among many of the more conservative theologians.⁴ Among the less conservative, universal salvation, either as hope or as dogma, is now so widely accepted that many theologians assume it virtually without argument.

The Myth of Christian Divorce

2011-02-21T14:04:00.003-06:00

Glenn T. Stanton writes a good debunking article called "The Christian divorce rate myth (what you've heard is wrong)." Here is a portion of the article:

Professor Bradley Wright, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, explains from his analysis of people who identify as Christians but rarely attend church, that 60 percent of these have been divorced. Of those who attend church regularly, 38 percent have been divorced [1].

Other data from additional sociologists of family and religion suggest a significant marital stability divide between those who take their faith seriously and those who do not.

W. Bradford Wilcox, a leading sociologist at the University of Virginia and director of the National Marriage Project, finds from his own analysis that "active conservative Protestants" who regularly attend church are 35 percent less likely to divorce compared to those who have no affiliation. Nominally attending conservative Protestants are 20 percent more likely to divorce, compared to secular Americans [2].

Professor Scott Stanley from the University of Denver, working with an absolute all-star team of leading sociologists on the Oklahoma Marriage Study, explains that couples with a vibrant religious faith had more and higher levels of the qualities couples need to avoid divorce:

"Whether young or old, male or female, low-income or not, those who said that they were more religious reported higher average levels of commitment to their partners, higher levels of marital satisfaction, less thinking and talking about divorce and lower levels of negative interaction. These patterns held true when controlling for such important variables as income, education, and age at first marriage."

_______
The article quotes:

[1] Bradley R.E. Wright, "Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites …and Other Lies You've Been Told," (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2010), p. 133.

[2] W. Bradford Wilcox and Elizabeth Williamson, "The Cultural Contradictions of Mainline Family Ideology and Practice," in American Religions and the Family, edited by Don S. Browning and David A. Clairmont (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007) p. 50.

God's Work at the Office

2011-02-21T14:00:00.002-06:00

A good article by Rob Moll called "Doing God's Work-At the Office" that is available online at the Wall Street Journal. Here is a portion:

Christian business professionals have long had an uneasy relationship with the church. Not only does the church tend to privilege church and missionary service over business, but it often condemns business practices and implies the guilt of any participants. Yet there are signs that this dynamic is changing—not least because churches rely on the donations of business professionals.

Many pastors now visit their congregants at work to better understand their professional lives. Justin Buzzard, pastor of the Garden City Church in San Jose, Calif., wrote last year about ministering to professionals in his congregation. "It shows them that I care about their callings, how they spend 50-plus hours of their week."

Organizations such as Corporate Chaplains of America and Marketplace Ministries have sprung up in the last 20 years to offer chaplaincy services and Bible studies to offices. And among a younger generation of Christians in business, working as financial analysts and engineers is itself Christian service.

The single most dangerous thing in the world to be

2011-02-08T21:00:00.003-06:00

Joseph Bottum writes an article titled Who will defend Mideast Christians? for USA Today. Here is a portion:

Of course, Egypt's Christians are hardly alone in their suffering. Here's a headline from 2010: "Catholic Bishop Stabbed to Death in Turkey." And here's another: "Islamist hard-liners in Indonesia target Christians." And another: "Iraqi Christians mourn after church siege kills 58." The Christmas season saw 48 killed in Muslim attacks in Nigeria.On Christmas Day, Iran opened its campaign against conversions by arresting dozens of evangelicals. Bombs left on the doorsteps of Christian homes in Iraq killed two and injured 14 on Dec. 30.

On and on the list goes. The single most dangerous thing in the world to be, right now, is a Christian in a Muslim country

One-third of Americans are evangelical/Protestant

2011-02-08T20:49:00.003-06:00

From The Good News About Evangelicalism by Byron Johnson, who is Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University:

Leading religious observers claim that evangelicalism is shrinking and the next generation of evangelicals is becoming less religious and more secular, but (as we social scientists like to say) these are empirical questions, and the evidence shows that neither of these claims is true.
Those who argue that a new American landscape is emerging—one in which the conservative evangelicalism of the past few decades is losing numbers and influence—are simply ignoring the data.
Membership in the mainline denominations declined 49 percent from 1960 to 2000; membership in evangelical denominations increased 156 percent in the same period.
Fully one-third of Americans (approximately 100 million) affiliate with an evangelical Protestant congregation. Indeed, evangelicals remain the numerically dominant religious tradition in the United States.

{HT: Desiring God]

See also Russel D. Moore, dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, who writes Where Have All the Presbyterians Gone? in the Wall Street Journal.

Are American Evangelicals Stingy?

2011-02-01T16:36:00.002-06:00

A current article in Christianity Today asks the question above based on the following research:

The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that donations dropped 11 percent at the nation's 400 biggest charities, yet donations to ECFA member charities stayed strong. An empty tomb, inc. report found that evangelicals give churches about 4 percent of their income (and all Christians only 2.43 percent), far less than the biblical 10 percent tithe.

Communion with God

2011-02-01T16:26:00.002-06:00

A quote from J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness (Crossway, 1994), 215 (chapter 12):

Whereas to the Puritans communion with God was a great thing, to evangelicals today it is a comparatively small thing.
The Puritans were concerned about communion with God in a way that we are not.
The measure of our unconcern is the little that we say about it.
When Christians meet, they talk to each other about their Christian work and Christian interests, their Christian acquaintances, the state of the churches, and the problems of theology—but rarely of their daily experience of God.
Modern Christian books and magazines contain much about Christian doctrine, Christian standards, problems of Christian conduct, techniques of Christian service—but little about the inner realities of fellowship with God. Our sermons contain much sound doctrine—but little relating to the converse between the soul and the Saviour.
We do not spend much time, alone or together, in dwelling on the wonder of the fact that God and sinners have communion at all; no, we just take that for granted, and give our minds to other matters.
Thus we make it plain that communion with God is a small thing to us.
But how different were the Puritans! The whole aim of their ‘practical and experimental’ preaching and writing was to explore the reaches of the doctrine and practice of man’s communion with God.

[HT: Between Two Worlds]

High Stress Found in College Freshmen

2011-01-29T17:49:00.002-06:00

From the New York Times:

The emotional health of college freshmen — who feel buffeted by the recession and stressed by the pressures of high school — has declined to the lowest level since an annual survey of incoming students started collecting data 25 years ago.

In the survey, “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010,” involving more than 200,000 incoming full-time students at four-year colleges, the percentage of students rating themselves as “below average” in emotional health rose. Meanwhile, the percentage of students who said their emotional health was above average fell to 52 percent. It was 64 percent in 1985.

Church Buildings and Foreclosure

2011-01-26T12:36:00.003-06:00

From the Wall Street Journal:

Residential and commercial real-estate owners aren't the only ones losing their properties to foreclosure. The past few years have seen a rapid acceleration in the number of churches losing their sanctuaries because they can't pay the mortgage.
Just as homeowners borrowed too much or built too big during boom times, many churches did the same and now are struggling as their congregations shrink and collections fall owing to rising unemployment and a weak economy.
Since 2008, nearly 200 religious facilities have been foreclosed on by banks, up from eight during the previous two years and virtually none in the decade before that, according to real-estate services firm CoStar Group, Inc. Analysts and bankers say hundreds of additional churches face financial struggles so severe they could face foreclosure or bankruptcy in the near future.

If U.S. states were countries

2011-01-17T14:44:00.006-06:00

A map from The Economist that shows how U.S. state economies rank with countries with similar sized economies:

[HT: 22 Words]

Vacationaries

2011-01-12T10:48:00.001-06:00

An insightful article from The Mennonite called, "Vacationaries." Here is a portion:

"They’re turning my people into beggars." It was a painful accusation for Juan Ulloa to make. He was a churchman, after all. An elder. With loyalty to the household of faith. But when asked the question directly, he could not lie ...

Juan was not blaming his people for becoming beggars. He was faulting the affluent, well meaning U.S. church for its unexamined generosity. His accusations, now pouring forth with considerable force, were directed at naive “vacationaries” who spend millions of dollars traveling to his country, perform work that locals could better do for themselves and create a welfare economy that deprives a people of the pride of their own accomplishments—all in the name of Christian service. The unintended consequences of such mission work was undoing the very vision Juan had given his life to—helping his people emerge from poverty through training, entrepreneurship, saving and hard work.

For some reason U.S. churches, filled with results-oriented members, seem oblivious to the abysmal outcomes of many if not most mission trips. Perhaps because it feels so good to be giving to those so much worse off, or because unconditional serving seems so Christ like, the Western church embraces with great pride an unexamined form of charity that our nation as a whole rejected with the passage of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. We know that welfare creates unhealthy dependency, that it erodes a work ethic, that it does not elevate people out of poverty. Yet in the name of Christ we perpetuate this very welfare principle in the way we do missions. And the trend is growing.

A Princeton University study found that in one year (2005) 1.6 million church members took mission trips—an average of eight days—at a cost of $2.4 billion. And the number has grown every year since. “Religious tourism,” as some call it, has become a growth industry. The Web is full of agencies (denominational and parachurch) ready to connect churches to a “meaningful mission experience” in an exotic location rife with human need. The Bahamas, for example, receives one short-term missionary for every 15 residents ...

But in fairness to our U.S. churches, many of our motives are noble. We want to excite our members about missions. We want to expose youth and adults to the needs of a hurting world. We want to engage our people in life-changing experiences. We desire to obey the teachings of Christ to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, show compassion to the oppressed and spread the Good News. But because we view missions through the lens of our church—that is, what will benefit our people the most, what will be most rewarding for us, what will appeal the most to our members—we neglect to consider what is in the best interests of those we would serve.

Words Have Meaning

2011-01-12T10:46:00.002-06:00

Some thoughts from Kevin DeYoung in light of the Tucson tragedy:

Unfortunately, pundits shy away from explicitly personal and moral categories in precisely the moments we need them most (9-11 may be the one exception). Whenever a public tragedy like this occurs everyone on the right and the left struggles to find some cause, and that cause is almost always outside the self—video games, strange novels, mistreatment by friends, a culture of hate, the second amendment, heated political rhetoric. And when an internal cause is suggested it almost always points away from personal responsibility to some element of us that doesn’t really belonging to us—like a mental disorder or our own personal demons.
We instinctively resort to passive speech, unable to bear the thought (let alone utter the words) that a wicked person has perpetrated a wicked crime. The human heart is desperately sinful and capable of despicable sins. Of course, no one commends the crime, but few are willing to condemn the criminal either. In such a world we are no longer moral beings with the propensity for great acts of righteousness and great acts of evil. We are instead, at least when we are bad, the mere product of our circumstances, our society, our upbringing, our biochemistry, or our hurts. The triumph of the therapeutic is nearly complete.

Technology is not sinful

2011-01-05T18:44:00.002-06:00

From Douglas Wilson:

The constant and ever present temptation in the Church is the gnostic temptation of locating sin in the stuff, sin in the matter, sin in the wealth, sin in the technology . . . instead of locating it where it belongs, in the heart of man.

Top Ten Lists for 2010

2011-01-03T20:01:00.004-06:00

I enjoy sorting through top ten lists at the end of every year. Below I list some lists that highlight both 2010 and the last decade.

Time's "The Top 10 Everything of 2010," which includes lists for news stories, technology, viral videos, etc. Here is an example of the top ten world news stories for 2010:

Haiti Earthquake
WikiLeaks
Chilean Miners
Pakistan Floods
North Korea's Year of Bad Behavior
South Africa's World Cup
Yemen: New Front in the War on Terrorism
European Austerity Measures
Mexico's Drug War
Thailand's Red Shrits

"Ten Most Significant Cultural Trends of the Last Decade" by Andy Crouch:

Connection
Place
Cities
End of the Majority
Polarity
The Self Shot
Pornography
Informality
Liquidity
Complexity

"Top 10 News Stories of 2010," By Christianity Today:

Aid groups help Haiti
The Lausanne Conference in Cape Town
World Vision's employment case.
Midterm elections and pro-life Democrats
Ruling against the Hastings College of the Law Chapter of the Christian Legal Society.
Deepwater Horizon oil spill
American evangelicals and African Christians at odds about Uganda's proposed anti-gay bill.
Bruce Waltke resigns from Reformed Theological Seminary for comments about evolution.
Christian musician Jennifer Knapp announces she is gay.
Terry Jones and the burn a Qur'an ordeal.

"My Top Ten Theology and Church Stories from 2010," by Collin Hansen:

Francis Chan Steps Down from Cornerstone
Wright Clarifies Justification Views in ETS Debate
John Piper Takes Leave of Absence
David Platt Pricks the Evangelical Conscience with 'Radical'
Glenn Beck Grabs the Religious Right's Megaphone
Matt Chandler Fights Malignant Brain Tumor
Liberty Removes Ergun Caner as Seminary President
Philip Ryken Becomes President of Wheaton College
BioLogos Stirs Debate Over Evolution
Crystal Cathedral Files for Bankruptcy

What we tell our kids about Santa

2010-12-24T11:08:00.002-06:00

I enjoyed reading Mark Driscoll's article in the Washington Post on "What we tell out kids about Santa" because his approach is the same as my family's. Here are the main points:

When it comes to cultural issues like Santa, Christians have three options: (1) we can reject it, (2) we can receive it, or (3) we can redeem it.
Since Santa is so pervasive in our culture, it is nearly impossible to simply reject Santa as part of our annual cultural landscape. Still, as parents we don't feel we can simply receive the entire story of Santa because there is a lot of myth built on top of a true story.
So, as the parents of five children, Grace and I have taken the third position to redeem Santa. We tell our kids that he was a real person who did live a long time ago. We also explain how people dress up as Santa and pretend to be him for fun, kind of like how young children like to dress up as pirates, princesses, superheroes, and a host of other people, real and imaginary. We explain how, in addition to the actual story of Santa, a lot of other stories have been added (e.g., flying reindeer, living in the North Pole, delivering presents to every child in one night) so that Santa is a combination of true and make-believe stories.
We do not, however, demonize Santa. Dressing up, having fun, and using the imagination God gave can be an act of holy worship and is something that, frankly, a lot of adults need to learn from children.
What we are concerned about, though, is lying to our children. We teach them that they can always trust us because we will tell them the truth and not lie to them. Conversely, we ask that they be honest with us and never lie. Since we also teach our children that Jesus is a real person who did perform real miracles, our fear is that if we teach them fanciful, make-believe stories as truth, it could erode confidence in our truthfulness where it really matters. So, we distinguish between lies, secrets, surprises, and pretend for our kids. We ask them not to tell lies or keep secrets, but do teach them that some surprises (like gift-giving) and pretending (like dressing up) can be fun and should be encouraged. We tell them the truth and encourage them to have fun watching Christmas shows on television and even sitting on Santa's lap for a holiday photo if they so desire.

Six Megathemes for the Church in 2010

2010-12-22T10:05:00.002-06:00

The Barna Group has an article called Six Megathemes Emerge from Barna Group Research in 2010. These themes include:

The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate.
Christians are becoming more ingrown and less outreach-oriented.
Growing numbers of people are less interested in spiritual principles and more desirous of learning pragmatic solutions for life.
Among Christians, interest in participating in community action is escalating.
The postmodern insistence on tolerance is winning over the Christian Church.
The influence of Christianity on culture and individual lives is largely invisible.

Stories and Propositions

2010-12-19T20:06:00.001-06:00

From Douglas Wilson:

When we separate the propositions from the story, it does not matter which of the two we intend to keep. The conservatives want to keep the truth of the propositions, unencumbered with story. Liberals want to keep the story, unencumbered by any troublesome questions about whether it actually happened or not. But when we separate them like this, they both die. Liberals love story, but they cannot tell it any more because they have gutted it. Conservatives love abstracted truths, but they can’t defend them anymore because truth without a body has no immune system.

What is Marriage?

2010-12-19T19:47:00.001-06:00

From Between Two Worlds:

Last week Robert P. George, Ryan T. Anderson, and Sherif Girgis posted online a lengthy, detailed natural-law answer to the question “What Is Marriage?” to be published in theHarvard Law Review. It sets forth the best arguments and seeks to answer the best objections related to the nature of marriage.

Writing at Slate, NYU Law Professor Kenji Yoshino, a prominent gay-rights legal scholar, offered a response, “The Best Argument Against Gay Marriage.”

George, Anderson, and Girgis respond today: “The Argument Against Gay Marriage: And Why It Doesn’t Fail.”

In their response, they restate some of their argumentation:

Our article offers detailed responses to the most significant objections to our view: that it [1] has no principled grounds for recognizing infertile couples’ marriages, [2] ignores the needs of same-sex attracted people, [3] is morally similar to support for anti-miscegenation laws, [4] assumes the mutability of sexual desire, [5] relies on religious belief, or [6[ fails to show the concrete harm in redefining civil marriage.
We also show that those who would redefine civil marriage, to eliminate sexual complementarity as an essential element, can give no principled account of why marriage should be (1) a sexual partnership as opposed to a partnership distinguished by exclusivity with respect to other activities (including non-sexual relationships, as between cohabiting adult brothers); or (2) an exclusive union of only two persons (rather than three or more in a polyamorous arrangement). Nor can they give robust reasons for making marriage (3) a legally recognized and regulated relationship in the first place (since, after all, we don’t legally recognize or closely regulate most other forms of friendships).

The dialogue is detailed, but the arguments are relatively clear. The above will take you to the best arguments on both sides. And I think the conjugal view clear takes the day, even from a merely natural law perspective.

(see some more updates on this post here)

A Map for Church Planters

2010-12-19T19:38:00.003-06:00

The New York Times has a page called "Mapping America" where they are putting census data into an interactive map. It is a church planter's dream come true.

Jesus vs. Paul

2010-12-06T14:54:00.006-06:00

An article titled "Jesus vs. Paul" in Christianity Today by Scot McKnight asks: "Many biblical scholars have noted that Jesus preached almost exclusively about the kingdom of heaven, while Paul highlighted justification by faith—and not vice versa. What gives?" Here is a portion of his response:

My contention, then, is simple: If we begin with kingdom, we have to twist Paul into shape to fit a kingdom vision. If we being with justification, we have to twist Jesus into shape to fit justification. But if we begin with gospel, and if we understand gospel as Paul does in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, then we will find what unifies Jesus and Paul—that both witness to Jesus as the center of God's story. The gospel is the core of the Bible, and the gospel is the story of Jesus. (video) Every time we talk about Jesus, we are gospeling. Telling others about Jesus leads to both the kingdom and—but only if we begin with Jesus.

Who Needs Marriage?

2010-12-02T16:48:00.002-06:00

A sad report from Time Magazine titled "Who Needs Marriage?" by Belinda Luscombe. Here is a quote:

In 1960 ... nearly 70% of American adults were married; now only about half are. Eight times as many children are born out of wedlock. Back then, two-thirds of 20-somethings were married; in 2008 just 26% were. And college graduates are now far more likely to marry (64%) than those with no higher education (48%).

When an institution so central to human experience suddenly changes shape in the space of a generation or two, it's worth trying to figure out why. This fall the Pew Research Center, in association with TIME, conducted a nationwide poll exploring the contours of modern marriage and the new American family, posing questions about what people want and expect out of marriage and family life, why they enter into committed relationships and what they gain from them. What we found is that marriage, whatever its social, spiritual or symbolic appeal, is in purely practical terms just not as necessary as it used to be. Neither men nor women need to be married to have sex or companionship or professional success or respect or even children — yet marriage remains revered and desired.

The Storyline of Scripture

2010-12-02T16:42:00.003-06:00

Here is an amazing free resource from D.A. Carson's book The God Who Is There:

In February 2009, Don Carson presented a 14-part seminar entitled “The God Who Is There” at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. This series will serve the church well because it simultaneously evangelizes non-Christians and edifies Christians by explaining the Bible’s storyline in a non-reductionistic way. The series is geared toward “seekers” and articulates Christianity in a way that causes hearers either to reject or embrace the gospel. It’s one thing to know the Bible’s storyline, but it’s another to know one’s role in God’s ongoing story of redemption. “The God Who Is There” engages people at the worldview-level.

Full audio and video are now available for free for the
entire 14 part series:
1. The God Who Made Everything View Media
2. The God Who Does Not Wipe Out Rebels View Media
3. The God Who Writes His Own Agreements View Media
4. The God Who Legislates View Media
5. The God Who Reigns View Media
6. The God Who Is Unfathomably Wise View Media
7. The God Who Becomes a Human Being View Media
8. The God Who Grants New Birth View Media
9. The God Who Loves View Media
10. The God Who Dies—and Lives Again View Media
11. The God Who Declares the Guilty Just View Media
12. The God Who Gathers and Transforms His People View Media
13. The God Who Is Very Angry View Media
14. The God Who Triumphs View Media

One Tricky Football Play

2010-11-09T11:24:00.001-06:00

The Most Negative Campaign Season Ever

2010-11-03T09:24:00.006-05:00

Every year is the most negative campaign season ever. However, the media may use this language each year because it gets viewers, and not because it is historically accurate. Some would contend that the election of 1800 was the nastiest. Here is what the political adds may have looked during that election:

Why don't friends with kids have time?

2010-11-02T16:22:00.006-05:00

The article below is staring to circulate a bit on Facebook. It is a reality check to those who question the ambition of stay at home moms. (Click on the image to read larger version).

The Fear of Doing

2010-11-02T15:48:00.003-05:00

As a pastor and church planter, who gets his fair share of "dislikes" and criticisms, I think that this post by Donald Miller is good:

Today I read an article on a blog about a creative project, and how some people liked it and some people didn’t, and I kept wondering, when I was reading the comments from people who didn’t like it, why their response was to comment about not liking it rather than to create something better. Nobody stands around a negative comment and talks about how great it is, or how well it’s written, or how it’s going to change the world.
But then I also understand why people do and say such things. It’s hard to create things. It takes confidence and resources, two things that don’t come easily or naturally. And also, there is an appropriate season for finding our identities, for trying on movies and bands like clothes in an attempt to figure out who we are.
Perhaps we should not put our energy into criticism, we should accept the challenge to squash what we do not like by creating something better. And when we have done so, we will realize how hard it was to create the thing we dismissed so easily.
Sooner or later, though, we have to create. We have to go and make something with the collected likes and dislikes we’ve assembled, we have to turn them into stories and songs, into families and gardens, into companies and churches.
These things start small, though, just a kid rolling a tiny pile of snow into a ball until it gets so big somebody gets interested and wants to help him, after which the ball gets larger and larger, and then others get motivated by what they are seeing and bring out sticks and lumps of coal and a tophat and a scarf.
But then again, snowmen are stupid. They just melt. Why try.

Powerful Words From Abortion Survivor

2010-11-01T18:12:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine shared with me this video and summary: "Gianna Jessen, abortion survivor speaks at Queen's Hall, Parliament House, Victoria. Australia - on the eve of the debate to decriminalize abortion in Victoria. Gianna's visit was sponsored by the Ad Hoc Interfaith Committee." Watch both parts, it is a powerful call to justice:

[part 1]

[part 2]

Beijing Blocks Travelers To Christian Conference

2010-11-01T17:58:00.004-05:00

From NPR:

A massive global evangelical gathering known as the Lausanne Congress will begin Oct. 16 in Cape Town, South Africa. But it looks likely to take place without the participation of more than 230 Chinese delegates.
So far, at least 11 people planning to attend have been forbidden to leave China, and many others have come under pressure. Many fear Beijing is moving to exert control over underground Christians.

NPR also did a story about the explosion of Christianity in China.

The Gospel in the Chilean Mine

2010-11-01T17:52:00.003-05:00

Here is an amazing story that I heard through CNN.com:

As miners were being pulled from Chile's San Jose mine Wednesday, most were wearing tan T-shirts over their coveralls. The Chilean government told reporters the green coveralls were designed to help absorb the sweat as they ascended to the top.
But Wes Little, a CNN editor/producer in Atlanta, wondered why the miners were wearing the T-shirt over their coveralls. He noticed a logo on the T-shirt's left sleeve for the Jesus Film Project.
Here's what we found:
The Jesus Film Project is a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ International, the massive Orlando, Florida-based evangelical ministry.
The Jesus Film Project tells us they have translated the film into 1,105 languages and that it has been seen in every country. You can watch or listen to over a 1,000 of the translations here.
The main goal of TJFP's ministry is to create and distribute effective media in every language, says Berry Fiess, the group's director of field information services.
Seventeen days into the mine accident, CCCI country director for Chile, Christian Maureira, started contacting public officials to see if they could send the miners a copy of the film. Fiess said Maureira was able to reach a daughter and a brother of miner Jose Henriquez.
Through that family contact, the group was able to send an MP3 audio version of the Jesus film and an MP3 audio version of the New Testament in Spanish to Henriquez down in the mine.
The Jesus film explains that the New Testament tells how Jesus is laid in a tomb-like cave after his crucifixion. Three days later, Jesus is said to have risen from the dead. In the Jesus film, women come to the tomb and find the stone that blocked the entrance has been rolled away, the cave empty.
It is unclear if the miners saw the resurrection story as a parallel for their hoped-for rescue, but Jose Henriquez passed along a letter to CCCI's Maureira from inside the mine. Fiess shared the English translation with CNN:
Thank you for this tremendous blessing for me and my coworkers. It will be good for our spiritual edification. I am fine because Christ lives in me.
We have prayer services at 12 noon and 6 pm.
"At the end of the letter," Fiess said, "(Henriquez) said goodbye with Psalm 95:4, which says, 'In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him.'"
A few days later, Henriquez asked Maureira to get them special T-shirts.
"The T-shirts were a gift from Campus Crusade for Christ Chile," Fiess said. "In the front you can read, 'Gracias Senor' – 'Thank you Lord.'"
And on the back, Psalm 95:4.
"Apparently, all the miners liked them," Fiess said. "It kind of solidified them.

Google and Theology

2010-11-01T17:50:00.001-05:00

[picture from http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-458358]

U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey

2010-09-28T16:18:00.002-05:00

From Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life:

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.
On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education.
On questions about Christianity – including a battery of questions about the Bible – Mormons (7.9 out of 12 right on average) and white evangelical Protestants (7.3 correct on average) show the highest levels of knowledge. Jews and atheists/agnostics stand out for their knowledge of other world religions, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism; out of 11 such questions on the survey, Jews answer 7.9 correctly (nearly three better than the national average) and atheists/agnostics answer 7.5 correctly (2.5 better than the national average). Atheists/agnostics and Jews also do particularly well on questions about the role of religion in public life, including a question about what the U.S. Constitution says about religion.

Gospel Accommodation and Glenn Beck

2010-09-15T03:47:00.003-05:00

I ran across these thoughts by Russell Moore that I think nails the problem on the head (specifically the last line) concerning Glenn Beck and the church:

“Beck isn’t the problem. He’s an entrepreneur, he’s brilliant, and, hats off to him, he knows his market. Latter-day Saints have every right to speak, with full religious liberty, in the public square. I’m quite willing to work with Mormons on various issues, as citizens working for the common good. What concerns me here is not what this says about Beck or the ‘Tea Party’ or any other entertainment or political figure. What concerns me is about what this says about the Christian churches in the United States.
“It’s taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined ‘revival’ and ‘turning America back to God’ that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement.
“Rather than cultivating a Christian vision of justice and the common good (which would have, by necessity, been nuanced enough to put us sometimes at odds with our political allies), we’ve relied on populist God-and-country sloganeering and outrage-generating talking heads. We’ve tolerated heresy and buffoonery in our leadership as long as with it there is sufficient political ‘conservatism’ and a sufficient commercial venue to sell our books and products.
“Too often, and for too long, American ‘Christianity’ has been a political agenda in search of a gospel useful enough to accommodate it.”

In addition, my good friend Paul Ireland had these comments posted on Between Two Worlds:

In the whole discussion about Mormonism, I think we’re missing a big part of what is going on with Glenn Beck. The problem is not simply Mormonism. The problem is idolatry.
People who follow Glenn Beck may not become Mormon and reject the Trinity, but they will likely follow his Americolatry—his worship of our nation. His view of life rises and falls on the state of our country. Christians I know who follow Beck quickly get pulled into his idolatrous fervor that declares that our nation can be our savior.
Both the left and the right subscribe to this Americolatry. If our government does X, Y, and Z, then we will be joyful, satisfied, safe, and complete. Then we will live in heaven. But if the other guys get their way, it’ll be hell. In that equation, God is no longer our joy, our comfort, our satisfaction, our all. If God is brought into the conversation at all, it is to use God as a means for our own idolatrous ends. This kind of idolatry is very alluring and dangerous for Christians.

“Just Me and My Bible” Is Unbiblical

2010-09-15T03:12:00.004-05:00

A great list of quotes from Between Two Worlds:

“It seems odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves, should think so little of what he has revealed to others.”

—Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Commenting and Commentaries (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1876), 1.

“Tradition is the fruit of the Spirit’s teaching activity from the ages as God’s people have sought understanding of Scripture. It is not infallible, but neither is it negligible, and we impoverish ourselves if we disregard it.”

—J.I. Packer, “Upholding the Unity of Scripture Today,” JETS 25 (1982): 414

“The best way to guard a true interpretation of Scripture, the Reformers insisted, was neither to naively embrace the infallibility of tradition, or the infallibility of the individual, but to recognize the communal interpretation of Scripture. The best way to ensure faithfulness to the text is to read it together, not only with the churches of our own time and place, but with the wider ‘communion of saints’ down through the age.”

—Michael Horton, “What Still Keeps Us Apart?”

“There is rugged terrain ahead for those who are constitutionally incapable of referring to the paths marked out by wise and spirit-filled cartographers over the centuries.”

—Larry Woiwode, Acts (New York: HarperCollins, 1993).

(HT: Michael Haykin for the first two quotes)

45 Things for Young Pastors

2010-09-15T02:33:00.003-05:00

Kevin DeYoung gives young pastors like me some helpful wisdom:

1. Take advantage of opportunities to be taught by others. Get the most out of books, lectures, and special speakers in seminary, because soon you’ll be be doing all the putting out with few people to put it in to you.
2. Beware of closing your heart to people.
3. Be a pastor for the whole church, not just part of it (don’t be just one group’s champion).
4. Establish your priorities at the church early and clearly. I suggest: preach, pray, and people.
5. Work hard to foster deep spiritual fellowship with your closest leaders (e.g., staff, elders, deacons).
6. Don’t try to do too much too soon. Expect change to happen very slowly. Whenever possible, work for desired change by positive reinforcement, rather than by criticism.
7. While you shouldn’t attempt too much change right away, if you are forced to make a hard change or take a tough stand, do it decisively.
8. Expect people to leave your church when you come. Be kind when they do. Follow up, ask why they’re leaving, pray for them, then move on. Don’t let a few folks on the way out determine the plans for the rest of the church.
9. Be personal instead of academic. A conversation is usually better than a paper.
10. Beware of technology: wasting time on power points, frittering hours away on Facebook, getting bogged down in emails, doing all your pastoral communication by email instead of phone calls or personal visits.
11. If you are good at administration, don’t do too much. If you are bad, get someone to help you immediately.
12. Plan for prayer days.
13. Learn to think in 5 year, 1 year, 6 months, and 1 month increments. When you start out at a church you’ll feel three months behind everyone else; you need to be six months ahead.
14. Guard your day off and don’t let your work creep into your evenings at home. You’ll be miserable and ineffective if your life becomes a rhythm-less mush.
15. Spend more time getting to know your people and less time trying to figure out the culture of your city.
16. Remember: you are not the only special person in the church. Don’t get offended if you’re not invited to a wedding or they ask the other guy to do the baptism. It’s silly to feel threatened when congregants are closer to another staff member or lay leader than they are to you.
17. Don’t minister just to keep people happy. Don’t be the pastor who does all the counseling, all the teaching, and all the praying because “that’s what people expect” and you “don’t want to let them down.” You’ll burn yourself out, stifle the gifts of others, and keep your church smaller than it needs to be.
18. Don’t compare. There are dozens of factors that make a church successful. Many of them are out of your control–most notably, God’s sovereignty.
19. Christian maturity entails more than theological acumen. Don’t assume the dudes reading Bavinck will be the most fruitful, faithful, and effective leaders. Could be, but that’s far from certain.
20. God opposes the proud but gives grace to humble. Pray this into your soul before and after every sermon.
21. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Get in touch with seminary profs. Try to get a top notch speaker in once in awhile. Make contact with churches your respect. Build a network and learn from others.
22. Keep reading. Please keep reading. Boldly ask for a book allowance. The rule is not absolute, but I question a man’s call to ministry if he does not like to read.
23. Man is not justified by preaching. Some sermons are a home run. Other times you’re lucky to bunt your way on.
24. Don’t preach your issues from seminary. I can almost guarantee no one in your church doubts the Pauline authorship of Ephesians. It says “Paul” in their Bibles so they’re good to go.
25. Sometime in your first two years, preach about prayer, evangelism, giving, and the authority of Scripture.
26. Figure out what you believe about divorce and remarriage, and figure it out soon.
27. Build consensus whenever possible, but when you have to make an unpopular decision that will be unpopular don’t insist that everyone like it. Take your lumps and move on.
28. Be comfortable in your own shoes. Preach through your own personality. Learn from, but don’t try to clone, your heroes.
29. Accept the blessings God gives (and does not give) you. Some pastors have two talents. Some of five or ten. That’s just the way it is. Don’t be jealous of those with more or look down on those with fewer.
30. Develop warm relationship with other evangelical churches in your area. Pray for these churches. Direct people to their ministries when the situation fits. Be happy for their blessings. I realized early on I didn’t really want revival unless I was fine with it starting at the church down the street.
31. Pray that the Lord won’t give you success until you don’t want it anymore.
32. Don’t assume the worst about people, even if you’re suspicions are right. Better to be a little naive than a lot cynical.
33. Make time to make friends. In the long run neither you nor your church will regret the hours invested in personal relationships with other pastors, old friends from seminary, and kindred spirits in the congregation.
34. Have low expectations for people this year and high expectations for people in five years.
35. Figure out the membership class and member care. Set the bar high for both.
36. Train and evaluate potential leaders. You can endure a lot of hardship if you feel energized and supported by your closest leaders. Ministry will be a nightmare if your leadership team lacks unity and maturity.
37. Focus on the basics. Don’t get distracted with the church website or the newsletter layout. The pastor who works hard at his sermons, genuinely likes people, and really loves the Lord will be used by God.
38. Don’t expect the search committee to have any clue what they’re doing.
39. Love your wife. Spend time with your kids. Be very afraid if you no longer look forward to going home at the end of the day.
40. Be generous in giving credit to others and stingy in passing around the blame.
41. Learn to ignore some comments, some controversies, and, yes, some people.
42. Never use the pulpit to settle old scores. Do use it to honor faithful saints and co-laborers.
43. Tell your congregation you love them and are glad to be their pastor.
44. What your people need most from you is your own personal holiness. People want a pastor who has been with God.
45. Keep your passions in proportion. Not everything matters as much as everything else. Keep the gospel front and center.

The Gospel in the Ordinary

2010-09-15T02:18:00.003-05:00

TGC is launching The Ordinary Pastors Project, and they share this great quote with the announcement:

“We often let the big ideas, the majestic vistas of salvation, the grand visions of God’s work in the world, and the great opportunities for making an impact in the name of Jesus distract us from taking with gospel seriousness the unglamorous ordinary.”

Eugene Peterson in Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ

Three Trends in Church Planting

2010-09-15T02:12:00.003-05:00

Ed Stetzer highlights three trends in church planting from a post at TGC called "What's Next for Church Planting":

First, one of the trends is that church planting has increased.
Second, there is growing diversity in the ways people are planting churches.
Third, local churches are becoming the sending agency for church planting.

Ending Church Museums

2010-09-02T15:35:00.005-05:00

A video highlighting Darrin Patrick's new book, "Church Planter: The Man, The Message, the Mission."

Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe

2010-09-02T15:24:00.004-05:00

CNN gives a summary of Hawking's new book "The Grand Design," as well as some critiques from his colleagues.

See this review by The Economist as well.

8 Questions and Christian Liberty

2010-08-30T17:28:00.003-05:00

Here are eight questions about moral decisions from John Feinberg's second edition of Ethics for a Brave New World, due out in November:

Am I fully persuaded that it is right (Romans 14:5, 14, 23)?
Can I do it as unto the Lord (Romans 14:6-8).
Can I do it without being a stumbling block to my brother or sister in Christ (Romans 14:13, 15, 20-21)?
Does it bring peace (Romans 14:17-18)?
Does it edify my brother (Romans 14:19)?
Is it profitable (1 Cor 6:12)?
Does it enslave me (1 Cor 6:12)?
Does it bring glory to God (1 Cor 10:31)?

Here is also a memorable quote from Doug Wilson:

“The way others are to view your liberty is not the same way that you should view your liberty. Other Christians should let you do what you want unless the Bible forbids it. That’s how we guard against legalism. But you should use your liberty differently—you should be asking what the reasons are for doing it, and not what the reasons are for prohibiting it.”

[HT: JT]

The Bible is All About Jesus

2010-08-26T17:24:00.002-05:00

[HT: JT]

Wisdom for Busy Students

2010-08-26T17:07:00.002-05:00

I came across this good article from Christ on Campus Initiative at the Gospel Coalition. The article is called "Human Flourishing" by Danielle Sallade. Here is the introduction:

Many people are discussing what constitutes genuine human flourishing.2 One helpful definition comes from theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff, who ties the concept of human flourishing in the Christian tradition to shalom. A flourishing life will be a life lived in right relationship with God, with one’s environment, with neighbors, and with self. “A flourishing life is neither merely an ‘experientially satisfying life,’ as many contemporary Westerners think, nor is it simply a life ‘well-lived,’ as a majority of ancient Western philosophers have claimed.”3 It is a life that both goes well and is lived well.
I have the privilege through my vocation in campus ministry of serving current university students. My colleagues and I desire for our students to mature in their Christian faith during their college years. We long for them to flourish, borrowing from Wolterstorff, in right relationship with God (through justification in Christ), with their environment (caring for their habitat and working for justice as stewards accountable to God), with their neighbors (showing mercy in the name of Christ and spreading the gospel), and with themselves (proper self-understanding rooted in adoption by God in Christ). As we work toward this goal, we increasingly face challenges from the campus-culture that work against the students’ ability to flourish. And one challenge in particular seems to affect everyone: the problem of being too busy.
The students I work with are talented, creative, and intelligent. They are full of energy, working hard in their classes and in various extracurricular activities. They are community-minded, developing friendships, keeping up with family far away, and devoting time to service with genuine care. They are wonderfully inventive about ways to have fun and make memories. But they are also very, very busy. And often because of their “busyness,” the students are stressed, anxious, exhausted, and sometimes depressed. The combination of coursework, extracurricular activities, part-time work to cover the ever-increasing cost of their education, and having a social life makes their lives very full with little margin for rest or the unexpected.
In addition, today’s students are anxious to realize their personal hopes to “be all they can be,” having been taught to expect they could realize this from the beginning of their primary education. They are fearful about their future security, and they struggle to exert as much control over their lives as possible. As a result, they are often suffering from the weight of their various responsibilities and their fears for what lies ahead. Depending on a student’s temperament, they can either be caught up in frenzied activity or overwhelmed by their lives and thus unable to do anything. The pressure in their lives keeps them from flourishing as God intended.4
This essay proposes that living as a Christian, an alternative to the prevailing culture, leads to flourishing. First, I briefly sketch what the worldly culture of busyness looks like. I then discuss how our modern notions about the nature of work and success create the culture of busyness and keep it going. Finally, I attempt to show how the Christian faith offers an alternative way to understand work and success that, when believed and lived out, results in joy, peace, and genuine flourishing instead of stress, anxiety, and exhaustion.

5 Ways to Know If You're a Christian

2010-08-01T07:32:00.005-05:00

From Jonathan Edwards, Distinguishing Marks of a True Work of the Spirit of God:

You Love Jesus
You Hate Sin
You Love God's Word
You Love Truth
You Love Believers

If you want to read more about these marks, then read the original post at The Resurgence. The last mark is important to note now days, as it is often said "I love Jesus, but I hate the church" (see here for example). I am reminded of Derek Webb's song The Church: "you cannot care for me with no regard for her; if you love me you will love the church."

Biblical Balance and Criticism

2010-07-30T14:48:00.002-05:00

From D. Martyn Lloyd Jones:

"It seems to me that we have a right to be fairly happy about ourselves as long as we have criticism from both sides... For myself, as long as I am charged by certain people with being nothing but a Pentecostalist and on the other hand charged by others with being an intellectual, a man who is always preaching doctrine, as long as the two criticisms come, I am very happy. But if one or the other of the two criticisms should ever cease, then, I say, is the time to be careful and to begin to examine the very foundations." (From "Test the Spirits" in The Love of God: Studies in 1 John, Crossway, 1993, p. 18.)

[HT: Tim Keller]

8 Writing Tips from C.S. Lewis

2010-06-30T16:45:00.004-05:00

From Christianwritingtoday.com:

Turn off the radio [TV, iPod, etc.]
Read good books and avoid most magazines.
Write with the ear, not the eye. Make every sentence sound good.
Write only about things that interest you. If you have no interests, you won't ever be a writer.
Be clear. Remember that readers can't know your mind. Don't forget to tell them exactly what they need to know to understand you.
Save odds and ends writing attempts, because you may be able to use them later.
You need a well-trained sense of word-rhythm, and the note of a typewriter will interfere.
Know the meaning of every word you use.

More writing tips from Lewis at Between Two Worlds.

The End of Men

2010-06-24T16:47:00.002-05:00

Take a read of the cover article in The Atlantic by Hanna Rosin titled "The End f Men." Here is a brief description:

Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way— and its vast cultural consequences

Can we be the person God designed us to be?

2010-06-18T23:20:00.002-05:00

Good article from Donald Miller called, "What We All Have In Common." Here is a portion:

What Moses is saying is that we were designed to live in the presence of God, and in His presence, and His presence alone, self awareness fades away, and we are made complete in an exchange of love we can’t possibly imagine. Moses, then, summed it up pretty well: They were naked and felt no shame.
And so when we hear we can be the people God designed us to be by obeying a formula, we are being sold snake oil. If you were the person God designed you to be, you’d walk around naked and not know it. In other words, if you were the person God designed you to be, you’d be in an insane asylum singing Third Day songs only wearing a keytar.
It sounds like a slight thing to contend with, but believing you can become some sort of actualized human being before the wedding feast of the Lamb has negative emotional consequences. If you actually believe that, you aren’t going to be happy because you’ll spend your life believing you are missing out on some kind of life that isn’t accessible till you are reunited with God. No formula is going to reverse the affects of the fall of humanity. You don’t have that kind of power, and neither does a formula. God will bring you to Him when He chooses, and at that point you will be the person He designed you to be, namely, you’ll be with Him, which is what He designed you for.