I wanted to take just a minute to offer a few “yeah, buts” to David Bahnsen’s recent assessment of the average Ron Paul fan, which you can read here. David’s a good guy, and I sympathize with a lot of what he is saying here — but not with all. I have no reason to …
Chasing Suitors With Snow Shovels
Given how accessible porn is nowadays, it has inevitably caused certain dislocations in contemporary courtships. I do urge fathers to bring the subject up when prospective suitors first seek their permission to court their daughter. A father may feel it is an awkward subject for him to bring up, but it is certainly not going …
With All the Gravel Frozen Over?
Here is a link that looks promising. At that place, Justin Taylor quotes Greg Forster as saying, among other things, this: “No doubt America’s church leaders are as concerned as anyone else about the grave news emerging from the European financial crisis. It threatens a disruption so serious that every economy in the world would …
Vaclav Havel, Christopher Hitchens, and Kim Jong Il
On the death of Kim Jong Il, one wit tweeted that he liked to think that God had let Havel and Hitchens decide who would be the third one to go. That’s funny, but if ideas have consequences, and they do, then there are a few other considerations. We often say, when someone passes away, …
The Death of His Saints
“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (Ps. 116:15). Denise Sproul, the wife of R.C. Sproul, Jr., went to be with the Lord this morning. Please be praying for her family and her friends in their time of grief. But as the apostle Paul said, to be absent from …
A Theology of Christmas Gifts
INTRODUCTION:One of the most obvious features of our Christmas celebrations is the gift-giving. How are we to understand this as Christians? What are the pitfalls? Are all the pitfalls obvious? Because our lives are to be lives of grace, and because charis means grace or gift, this is something we have to understand throughout the …
Christ Is Not at the End of a Supply Chain
The Puritan William Bridge noted that it is “man’s disposition to come to God at the second hand.” As we approach the Supper, we are sometimes tempted to think of God as the wholesaler, and the minister of the particular church as the retailer. But that is not how this is at all. God is …
Herod’s Soldiers at the Family Reunion
Being convicted of a sin is not the same thing as feeling vaguely bad about it. In Scripture, conviction is described as being “cut to the heart,” it is a heart-piercing. Jesus was born into this sinful world in order to deal with sin—to really deal with it. He is no false prophet, that we …
Reflections on Christopher Hitchens
Scripture says that it is better to go down to the house of mourning than to the house of laughter (Ecc. 7:2). The reason given in that passage is that this enables the living to “lay it to heart.” The death of Christopher Hitchens should in the first place remind us of our own mortality. …
Just Me Being Silly
Yesterday the House approved the National Defense Authorization Act, and the Senate is likely to do the same today. There is a possibility that the president will sign it, but he might veto it, and things have come to a pretty pass when I am hoping that Obama will protect us from the Republicans. What …