A Few Good Reads

“My wife is not the same person I married“
Matt Walsh writes about being committed to marriage for the long haul in a culture where divorce is not treated as an evil anymore. “This is what we do in our culture. Not just with divorce, but with so many other brands of bad decisions. We first justify them, then we advertise and sell them, then we celebrate them, then we insist that everyone else celebrate along with us. In the case of divorce, it is now a literal celebration. With balloons and invitations and cake.”

“Stop helicopter-parenting other people’s kids”
You’ve heard of helicopter parenting where parents hover relentlessly over their children. Brendon Dougherty writes about a new phenomenon where random bystanders helicopter other people’s children, sometimes calling the police on their parents because their children are playing in the front yard unsupervised. “We’re rapidly approaching the point in which it’s not enough for helicopter parents to micromanage their own kids — they have to manage other parents’ kids as well. But in the latter case, they do it by strafing their peers with legal threats and putting them in the big “time-out” in a local jail.”

“When Our Sons Ask for Stones, Let’s Give Them Bread”
Another big story has come out in the last few weeks about the church and sexuality. This time it is the Pastor of a Southern Baptist Church in California who changed his mind about the traditional view of sexuality and decided to affirm same-sex relationships. When he told his son about his change of mind, his son responded by telling him that he was gay. The Pastor saw this as a providential affirmation of his changed views. Jared Wilson reflects on our propensity to honor our family’s choices above God and His glory. “This is a good word to all of us familyolaters. We take what most of us consider the most important thing in our lives and give it the weight of our worship in a way that is both dishonorable and unsustainable. And we end up living ‘Thus saith the family’ rather than ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ I know personally what happens when one worships his wife: he harms her. I know what happens when we make our children the center of our universe: we harm them. That is true hatred. Trading in the cross for the thin gruel of temporary satisfaction, appetites, compulsions, is the worst thing you could do to somebody. And when it comes down to seeking one’s happiness over their holiness, we aid and abet the theft of their eternal joy. This is what Danny Cortez and Brian McLaren have done.”

To the Ends of the Earth: Calvin’s Missional Vision and Legacy
John Calvin remains a controversial figure in the history of the church. For centuries people have argued that Calvin’s view of salvation hinders missionary impulse. Michael Haykin and Jeff Robinson present from Calvin’s own writings his view of missions, evangelism, and church planting. This is from Jason Allen’s blurb on the book. “Does a belief in sovereign grace stymie missions and evangelism? If that belief is rightly understood and rightly applied, the answer is an emphatic no. Haykin and Robinson skillfully present John Calvin’s evangelistic zeal and channel it toward a new generation of Great Commission minded pastors, teachers, and evangelists. I’m grateful for these men and this book, and pray that God will use it for the greater advance of the gospel and a greater harvest of souls.”