I recently received a letter from a lady on the other side of Moscow’s own little version of the national cultural divide. We had been scheduled to meet, and she was writing to cancel that meeting. According to the letter, the thing that concerned her was something that had to be addressed (by me) before …
Jeremiah the Babylonian Tank Gunner
I don’t know what the deal is with World magazine, but the most recent issue has gummed something up again. Just before a very good summary of an article that I co-wrote with Doug Jones (“Owning the Curse”), Gene Veith destroys the value of that accurate summary by his introduction to it, which goes like …
Toward That Recovery We Labor
Brian over at the Banty Rooster wrote me privately, and believing his question to be quite a reasonable one, I am taking the liberty of answering him publicly. Here is Brian: “I appreciate the clarification of your position re: homosexuality. I notice, however, that in reminding readers of what your original article actually said, you …
Christ in the Public Square
The Banty Rooster is glad for my clarification on “owning the curse” the other day, and has no real problem with my position now, as clarified. But he still thinks this amounts to a rhetorical reversal from what we published last year in our “Sodom As Yawnsville” issue of Credenda. So I thought I would …
World Battles Zondervan
The good folks at World magazine have been fighting the good fight with the Bible-mongers over at Zondervan. This fight has revolved around the efforts of the latter to market a version of the Bible (the TNIV) that has “gender-accurate” pronouns. This, apparently to distance themselves from the gender-inaccurate translation they did earlier, called the …
Adultery
We must always remember that sin muddles. Even though we live in a sex-crazed society, it does not follow from this that we understand sex, or sexual morality. The “openness” advocated by so many actually blurs the understanding. In such a situation, God’s law illumines; disobedience results not only in sexual immorality, but also sexual …
One Confused Puppy
A few days ago, I reviewed a volume of poetry by Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury. I knew a little bit about him before writing this, but a kind UK reader of that post sent me a couple links. One was the text of an address that Williams gave to a gay/lesbian organization. …
The Politics of Sodomy: Remember Lot’s Wife
INTRODUCTION How do we as individuals respond to the situation we find ourselves in? How can we be faithful in our generation? These very practical questions, and they require answers that are equally practical. What are we to do? How are we to live? THE TEXTS And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all …
Part of the Problem
President Bush was recently in Turkey, and while there he commended that nation for having secular laws and simultaneously being a people of faith. This kind of compartmentalization that we are exporting around the world (entrenched as a way of life here) is precisely the attitude that is crippling the American church. The fact that …
Owning the Curse
Owning the curse is not applauding the curse. Insisting that we deal with the manifold problems within the church first is not the same thing as saying we are abandoning the civil realm to the secularists. Insisting that the ship be made seaworthy is not to abandon the voyage. To illustrate what we are talking …