Letters Were to be Expected

You gloss over it but it is quite disturbing that the editors of P&R would have even given this a second look let alone a first.

Jeff

Your Great Grandmother on Roller Blades

This post was gold!

“She is not interested in making the Bible fit 1950s ideals of what men and women should be; rather, she wants to help the reader to think about what the Bible actually means in the present.” Carl Trueman

I find the last part of that quote revealing also. “what the Bible actually means in the present.”

What the Bible means in the present? The same thing it has always meant. The problem is the people who want to change the meaning to fit the present age they live in.

Tim

Man Rampant Stuff | I loved this show! I was wondering if y’all have plans to do multiple seasons of it? Thanks!

Trey

I’m a regular reader of your blog, and would like to be able to watch the Man Rampant series on Amazon Prime. However, for Amazon has made that unavailable for Brazil, where I serve as a missionary.

Is there any way you can have them change that? I’m sure many of my English-speaking Brazilian brethren would be interested in what you have to say as well.

Thanks,

Andrew

I am a frequent visitor to your blog for your theological and thoughtful insights on biblical and cultural issues (as well as for its cleverly captioned comics). On Blog & Mablog as well as on your podcast, I have heard you made mention of Corrie Ten Boom in a positive light, regarding your family’s connection to Miss Ten Boom and her ministry and regarding your appreciation of her writings and incredible testimony.

In light of the recent Twitter fallout over John MacArthur’s comments on Beth Moore, I wondered where you fit a figure like Corrie Ten Boom into the complementarian/egalitatarian discussion and the role of men and women in the church near and abroad. She certainly did a fair bit of traveling, writing, and public speaking in religious realms. If she did not regard herself as a missionary (in being “A Tramp for the Lord”), she certainly had the inclination of an evangelist and was a powerful communicator with her and her family’s story, so well captured in “The Hiding Place.” As a theological student, I have occasionally heard criticism leveled against complementarianism for the somewhat different standards applied to missionaries, who as both males and females seem to adopt pastoral roles and teaching responsibilities in church planting, leadership, and discipleship.

While I certainly cannot ask you to speak for all complementarians, I am curious what the Wilsonian perspective on the matter of how such a framework applies to missions and evangelism–the apparent frontier work of the church. In more mercy-based ministries such as Gladys Aylward and Amy Carmichael, there certainly does seem to be a sharper contrast or clearer distinction against the role of an overseer. But other Christian women such as Elisabeth Elliot and Corrie Ten Boom who gained greater visibility and opportunity took various and sundry places and spaces to speak. How does a complementarian conviction function in such situations, if at all?

I will keep my eyes and ears peeled for a response, whether in a long-form essay on the blog or in ruminations on the Plodcast podcast. Thus far, I have been unable to unearth a particular response to either in the existing electronic resources, but maybe I am using the wrong search terms. Thank you for your time and your consideration.

P.S. Looking forward to another No-Quarter November!

Frederick

Like you, I was born in 1953 (yet I am only 39 YO) however, I must confess how terrible it was for most children to grow up in a household with both of their biological parents. I know I suffered by having a hot breakfast served by my mother before school – a total waste of time when I could have been sleeping; or having my mother at home when I returned from school. Not to mention dinner with the entire family around the table. I think the worst part was the low crime rate that encouraged my parents to leave the doors of our house unlocked at night. Furthermore, all that free time my mother had was wasted by Bible study and prayer in preparation for teaching high school Sunday School plus her weekly Bible studies for women. She finished it all off with needless sewing of adorable dresses for my sister and me. No wonder we turned out to be so miserable. Thank God for feminism

Melody

Beyond authority and submission:

Hi, thank you first for writing Reforming Marriage, which I found to be helpful even as a single person. I imagine it’ll be read again when God willing I get married.

My question today: where have you encountered the best, most biblical arguments for egalitarianism? I’m hunting for honest exegesis. My bias leans me toward a literal and universal reading of verses like 1 Tim 2:12. Who among egalitarians out there actually lands a punch? Thanks much, and may God continue to bless you and yours.

Rachel

Great piece yesterday (“Our Jaunty Little Peacock”). In the early ‘70s, I attended a boys summer camp that, grabbing hold of all the cultural stupidity of that era, decided to go co-ed to keep itself ‘hip’ (and stay afloat financially). They did the former. The latter they managed for only two years—for a host of predictable reasons. The experience now seems a harbinger.

The main reason I write though is to relate two far more recent vignettes that may add non-fictional color to your hypothetical. Until last year, I had, for years, coached a large girls’ athletic team at a large and very wealthy public high school in an extremely liberal suburb of very liberal Boston. Typical stuff you might expect—until two years ago.

Vignette #1: Two other coaches, and I, plus my Athletic Director (all male) were chatting during practice. Grown-ups—you’d think. None are Christian, but each held some conservative positions on other issues. Transgender topic comes up. I voice my view. My AD and head coach almost lose it with anger. How could you… bigot… equal opportunity, etc. (I’ve seen each get plenty angry on stuff anyone would be angry about, but this episode rang the bell.) I slide into the “conversation” the fact that the suicide rate for transgenders who have surgery is 19X that of the general population. (The school had recently experienced a wave of suicides; you’d think they would care.) But that hard fact sent them into an even higher orbit of apoplexy.

I took note and re-upped because there was at least one real Christian kid on the team whom I wanted to encourage, and others we were trying to evangelize.

Vignette #2, the following year: Team captains led the other girls through the annual name game. Most years it had been simple: “Hi, my name is Susie and I’m a freshman and my favorite color is blue.” (Next day: favorite food; next: favorite animal; next: TV show, etc.) Last year, for the first time, it was, “What’s your preferred gender pronoun?”

Um, it’s August. They’re dressed to run in the heat. ‘nuf said.

So I ask my head coach: “What do you think of all this?” He (and I) have been decades in the sport. We’ve had many detailed discussions about all kinds of biological, performance-related arcana: hip width, heart volume, lung capacity, diet, hormones, sports psychology, VO2 max, resistance training, deltas between men’s and women’s world records, etc. You name it and we’ve discussed the latest technical papers on subjects related to performance in women’s sports. Net/net: he should know better. He does know better. His response: “But they really transition! They change completely! I’ve had some of them in class!” I ticked off on two hands all the reasons he knew that I knew that he knew why that was utter nonsense. He got angry.

“So,” I asked, after we both took a breath, “what would you do if a transgender boy applied to be on our roster?”

His response: “I’d coach him.” (Interestingly, he said him.)

Me: “I would too… if I were the coach of the boys’ team.”

More ensued, but the bottom line was that he stated explicitly that he would, without question, sacrifice the large roster of legit females on our team for the sake of one misled, mischievous boy. I worked the rest of the season then quietly resigned. Alas, I was not the head coach else I might have waited to take a stand and go out with a bigger bang.

Sad. Very sad.

Art

Thanks for your thoughtful research on this topic.

Regarding your original post, I think the best argument is whether you would opt to receive a kidney transplant in China, due to it’s possible forced extraction. Me: no. The human cells used in vaccine production are clones, they are genetically identical to their unwilling donor; thus, their property. They should not be used.

I found Lawrence’s comments instructive but perhaps a bit unintentionally misleading. In the comments, he made this vague, qualifying statement: “My company vaccine products do not leverage the utilisation of human derived cells as cell substrate for the propagation of the virus.” Even though he personally is not using human derived cell lines in his work (I think?), there is, unfortunately, great growth in this area (especially in China, as the commenter Chris pointed out). This is a problem that will not go away quietly.

Lawrence says that the “legacy” vaccines contain more residual host DNA than is currently recommended (10 nanograms per dose, or 10 -9 grams/dose). To be clear, 10 ng of host DNA is still over 1400 copies of the entire human genome! (my numbers are 10 x (10 -9) / (1.66 x 10 -24) / 660 / 6.4 billion ).

The “legacy” vaccines, which are what we all now have to use, have 10 times that.

Questions:

If there is no problem with host DNA in the vaccine, why are the companies going to such great expense in trying to limit it?

Are vaccines produced with human derived cells so much less expensive and more effective than cells from chickens?

Why do we not read in our media articles like this one, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26103708/ Epidemiologic and Molecular “Relationship Between Vaccine Manufacture and Autism Spectrum Disorder Prevalence,” which openly discuss the fact that the “human genome naturally contains regions that are susceptible to double strand break formation and DNA insertional mutagenesis” and that “fetal DNA fragment integration into a child’s genome” is a possibility?

Ginny

Another vaccine question. How does using vaccines that were cultivated on cells from murdered children differ ethically from funding idol worship by eating a burger offered to Baal?

“Another way of saying this is that there is no moral necessity for Christians to detach themselves from a sinful economic system. We can see this important truth in how Paul handles the question of meat offered to idols. He teaches us there is nothing wrong with the meat; the meat is not demon-possessed. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof (1 Cor. 10:26).”

And in the post, “The Challenge of Unethical Vaccines,” could you clarify one of your analogous situations? You pose: “If you were visiting China and had a medical crisis there, one that required a kidney transplant, would you agree to receive one if you knew that the donated kidney was taken from a political prisoner who was executed for the sake of the kidney?”

Would it make a difference if the prisoner were executed without any knowledge or intention of providing a kidney? In my understanding, the babies were not murdered because they were going to be used for research and development. My knowledge of the case is very limited, and I’m willing to suspect foul play beyond the abortion itself, but do we know that? And again, does that make a difference in the ethics of using vaccines cultivated using the derived cell lines?

Thanks!

Ty

This has nothing much to do with anything you’ve written other than your just being a public intellectual and literary critic: Have you read any Cormac McCarthy, and if so what do you think about his books? In my experience, his books are an addiction for which Faulkner and Melville were gateway drugs. Harold Bloom and others have called McCarthy’s writing “Neo-Biblical” and “Neo-Gothic.” Personally, I call it “Americabre” (a term I coined myself, all rights reserved). I wonder what a Canon Worldview Guide for Blood Meridian might look like. Anyway, just wondering if you’d read any McCarthy and what you thought about him.

Joe

I have a question about Church discipline, but it may require some context, if I may.

I am in the Military, and this causes me to move my family. Currently we are in Europe, and finding a Church was difficult. We ended up going to, what we knew to be, the only evangelical church within a driveable radius. To explain limited options: we did not want to go to the Church with the rainbow flag flying out front, or the “Reformed Reformed” Church that had seemed to find the opposite ditch on the road.

As we were praying about making the evangelical Church our home Church, we went to a meet-and-greet with the pastor and elders. The pastor shared the focus of the Church, and while they serve grape juice with communion, and are not paedo-baptist, the pastor shared a very gospel-focused, Word of God trusting vision, and we believed that this is where God had for us to attend. The Church is not in English, but they do have English translators, and most people speak English to us during fellowship.

A few months in (we still do not have membership in the Church), we found out that three of the elders and the pastor had been having a disagreement. This led to the Church having three older men (not elders) assessing the pastor’s performance. The elders complaint had been that the pastor was not spiritual enough, his sermons were too simplistic, and preached the gospel too much. As we tried to look into what was going on, we found out that it appears that the elders wanted more female leadership and openness to inviting people living a life condemned as sinful into the congregation, i.e. homosexuals.

We stayed at the Church during the months that it took to make the decision. The three older men came to the conclusion that the pastor could not be kicked out due to this not being an appropriate method of termination of his contract.

So here is the belated question: what do we do? I am currently in contact periodically with the pastor, and we pray for them almost daily. Should we be more outspoken at Church (if so, how), continue to pray about it with no action, leave the Church, or something else?

Ian