9Marks just released its new eJournal on helping young pastors. I highly commend it to you–it looks very, very helpful. I had a thought on this topic. It strikes me that young pastors, which I hope will one day include me, need to emulate our leaders and heroes, but only to a point. We need to proceed with care and caution in a way that men with outsize personalities and gifts do not, in many cases. If you don’t have... Read more
1. Neo-Calvinists, restless young theologians, we have been discovered by the secular media. Time magazine just included “The New Calvinism” as one of its ten world-changing ideas (HT: JT). This makes sense. We are a weirdly fascinating bunch. We defy a lot of the stereotypes held by non-Christians. We’re thoughtful, culturally attuned, fun, and even cool (gasp). Sure, we’ve got the whole Draconian predestination thing going on, but hey, we were predestined to believe it, right? In all seriousness, someone... Read more
The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina has just released an excellent podcast on natural-law thinking featuring an interview conducted by Doug Baker with constitutional law scholar Robby George and systematician Greg Thornbury. It is called “Morality: Past its Prime”, and it will prove profitable to the listener. For those who are new to this discussion of natural-law theory, I would highly commend this podcast. I was able to sit in on it and found it very helpful. Pastors and... Read more
I found this NYT article by Jennifer Medina, “Schools Try Separating Boys from Girls”, interesting. The following are some of the highlights from this article on same-sex education: Different Approaches to the Sexes: “Michael Napolitano speaks to his fifth-grade class in the Morrisania section of the Bronx like a basketball coach. “You — let me see you trying!” he insisted the other day during a math lesson. “Come on, faster!” Across the hall, Larita Hudson’s scolding is more like a therapist’s.... Read more
Westminster Seminary historical theologian Carl Trueman just posted a Reformation 21 piece on political messiahism called “Messiahs Pointing to the Door” that includes the following salvo on Christian culture: “[A]s in politics, so in religion. The American political process, as I argued above, is simply the most dramatic example of the `great man theory of history’ which pervades American society. I had often wondered why certain British figures – Jim Packer, N.T. Wright, Alister McGrath etc., were much bigger this... Read more
1. Christian Audio is giving away Don Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines Audiobook during this month. Find it here. If you have not read this book, it is an absolute classic. I’ll never forget learning from it what meditation of Scripture entailed. Very, very helpful, especially for young Christians, though it would also help a long-time Christian wanting to refresh their practice of faith. 2. The live-blogging of the Southern Seminary & the History of American Christianity conference is now compiled. Audio... Read more
As Carl Trueman recently said, I am about to switch my blogging flamethrower to ‘Total Righteous Destruction’. Before I do so, allow me to list a few quotations from a VOA news piece by Sahar Sashar entitled, “Skateboarding Class at New York School Empowers Teen Girls.” My take on this educational disaster has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with education. The “empowering bond of skater culture”: “[A]t East Side Community High School in New York City,... Read more
The New Yorker has just published a piece about the writer David Foster Wallace entitled “The Unfinished.” It details a depressed man who grasped for a moral vision and a lasting joy. Sadly, it seems, he found neither, as the following quotations show. On his depression and seeming addiction to medication: “The writer David Foster Wallace committed suicide on September 12th of last year. His wife, Karen Green, came home to find that he had hanged himself on the patio... Read more
This from a sobering story on the downturn from the NYT called “Forced from Executive Pay to Hourly Wage” by Michael Luo that follows a former six-figure executive in his daily work: “Some unemployed professionals said they decided not to seek even part-time work because it might interfere with their job searches. But Mr. Cooper rises every day at 4 a.m. and, after a time of prayer, devotes two hours to his job hunt on the computer. He prints out... Read more
In a moving and surprisingly orthodox (even evangelical) piece on the downturn called “Faith and Deficits,” literary theorist and anti-foundationalist Stanley Fish of Florida International University offers the following words on debt and forgiveness: “The same message, of debts forgiven before you ask, is delivered (with less cheer) by George Herbert’s great poem, “Redemption,” a word that means the payment of an obligation. Herbert’s speaker finds himself in a situation many would recognize today: he has been “a tenant long... Read more
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