Adjust Your Batting Average

“Remember that God gave Adam and Eve a perfect garden: there was a world full of yes, and there was only one no. Minimize the number of no’s in your home. This is another way of saying that you should pick your battles carefully as parents. Suppose that over the space of a month, you have issued a hundred commands, and the kids have been constantly disobeying them. It would be far better for you to reduce those hundred commands to ten commands, and enforce every one of those ten, than to keep it at a hundred and enforce a fifth of the time”

Why Children Matter, pp. 39-40

Covering the Waterfront

“I remember when I was a child, my father delivered three rules to me. Not only that, I remember where I was standing in the front yard when he delivered them to me, and I remember the fond and affectionate demeanor with which he delivered it (he had his fist in front of my face). His three principles were 1) no disobedience, 2) no lying, and 3) no disrespecting your mother. Now, what is not covered by that?”

Why Children Matter, p. 38

Dealing with Nuisance Lust

This post originally ran September 6, 2010. Note: this is an imaginary Christian couple, assembled as a composite from various counseling situations. Dear Tony, Thanks for the email and the follow-up phone call. I am glad you decided to get help with this, and I am glad that you and Suzanne are talking about it. A …

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Their Blood Sacrament

This post originally ran September 26, 2018. Of course everyone recognizes that the battle over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh is a battle—all understand that there is a fight going on. And more than a few understand that the battle is over Roe. But this understanding is greater on the side of the secularists, their …

An Open Letter to the Vice-President of the United States

This post originally ran February 13, 2017. Mr. Vice-President, I am writing you as one who has appreciated your work, and as one who has been most grateful for your presence and influence in the new administration. Your impact has not gone unnoticed, and we thank God for you. I am extraordinarily mindful of what …

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7 Reasons Young Men Should Marry Before Their 23rd Birthday

This post originally ran April 11, 2016. I want to argue that the war on marriage has many fronts. And while evangelical Christians have done a decent job in resisting some of the more outlandish attacks (e.g. Obergefell), in other areas we have tended to go along with the secular flow completely. One area where acquiescence …