“Tyndale House confirmed to The Daily Beast that it does not plan to reprint Driscoll’s 2013 book, A Call to Resurgence, and have put his forthcoming book, The Problem with Christianity, on hold. Once slated to be released this fall, The Problem with Christianity now has no publication date scheduled.” (via Prufrock)
Category Archives: Religion
Happy 180th Birthday to Charles H. Spurgeon
“God’s mercy is so great that you may sooner drain the sea of its water, or deprive the sun of its light, or make space too narrow, than diminish the great mercy of God.”
“A Jesus who never wept could never wipe away my tears.”
“If you are to go to Christ, do not put on your good doings and feelings, or you will get nothing; go in your sins, they are your livery. Your ruin is your argument for mercy; your poverty is your plea for heavenly alms; and your need is the motive for heavenly goodness. Go as you are, and let your miseries plead for you.”
Relevant has 20 Spurgeon quotes for today. I think I’ll tweet Spurgeon quotes all day. (via Jared C. Wilson)
Francis Schaeffer on Sharing the Gospel
“Francis Schaeffer was asked what he’d do if he had an hour to share the gospel with someone. He responded by saying he’d listen for 55 minutes and then, in the last 5 minutes, have something meaningful to say. In other words, he listened in order to speak the gospel.
Our evangelism is often unbelievable because we don’t listen at all. All too often the gospel we share is an information download, not a loving articulation of how the good news fits into the needs, fears, hopes, and dreams of others’ lives.”
— Jonathan Dodson, Unbelievable Gospel: How to Share a Gospel Worth Believing.
It Wasn’t an Affair. It Was Rape.
To anyone who flirts with the idea that words are meaningless, I ask you about the difference between the words rape and affair.
Did you see the article in Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal several days ago from a convicted rapist who described his crime as a warning to others? He was a youth pastor at the time, and his victim was a minor. This detail wasn’t revealed until the end of a long piece on how hard his temptations were and how badly he feels now. He gave little, if any, time to the pain his victim feels or her family and friends. More than this, he cast his sin in terms of adultery.
“The anonymous article was saturated with a self-pitying tone, some horrifying reframing of his sin (statutory rape is not an ‘affair’), and a stunning lack of concern for the young woman upon whom he preyed,” Michelle Van Loon explains in an article about how sexual abuse is common in places it should be rare.
The editors of Leadership Journal noted at one point: “Some of the language in the article did appear to portray the ‘relationship’ he had with his student as consensual. We regret any implication of that kind and strongly underscore that an adult cannot have a consensual sexual relationship with a minor. This was not an ‘affair.’ It was statutory rape.” They have removed the article completely now and apologized for posting it.
I can’t find the full article now, but it’s probably somewhere. Author Mary DeMuth gives you all the information and response to it you need.
If the convict had taken the full blame for his crime, the article would have been better. If the convict had considered his victims instead of himself, it would have been better. But importantly, if he or his editors had pushed themselves to call things by their proper names, the reaction would not have been as harsh as it was.
In their apology, the editors state, “The post, intended to dissuade future perpetrators, dwelt at length on the losses this criminal sin caused the author, while displaying little or no empathic engagement with the far greater losses caused to the victim of the crime and the wider community around the author. The post adopted a tone that was not appropriate given its failure to document complete repentance and restoration.”
Perhaps if the man had cast his words in terms of how he excused himself at the time, he could have kept half of what he’d written, but on his suffering of consequences, he has no room to complain. No one wants to listen any more.
Life as a Hermit Isn’t What It Used to Be
Solothurn, Switzerland, needs to hire a resident for its hermitage who doesn’t mind a constant stream of tourists. The last one quit after five years because she got too many visitors.
Book Auctions for Missions
Scattering Seed Ministries sells great, vintage Christian books at auction to support the spread of the gospel to unreached people. These aren’t reprinted books. These are actual first editions of doctrinally sound works.
The Methods or Miracle of Revival
Is revival in a church or area a work of methodology or the Holy Spirit? Charles Finney says, “It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means—as much so as any other effect produced by the application of means.” Martin Lloyd-Jones says, “It is a miraculous, exceptional phenomenon.” Take for example the Welsh Revival of 1904. Men and women prayed, and the Lord responded with great favor. You can’t plan that, except by planning to hold closely to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Pastor Tullian Apologizes. Thank You, Sir.
I noted earlier that Tullian Tchividjian had separated from The Gospel Coalition (TGC) over what I understood to be somewhat doctrinal, somewhat pastoral issues. That didn’t bother me much, despite my appreciation for Pastor Tullian and the many people at The Gospel Coalition. I usually like to think of everyone I like being on the same team, so a deliberate separation like this is a little disturbing. But what irritated me far more was the dialogue and comments about it I heard this week.
Chris Fabry ran a prerecorded show on Monday (Memorial Day) with Tullian, essentially throwing Tim Keller, Don Carson, and others (none of them by name) under the bus of the disagreement. They didn’t discuss the issues directly. They talked around it and suggested some of the people at TGC were becoming a denomination unto themselves. These unnamed critics were quick to complain about other people’s theological missteps and slow to see any missteps of their own.
Add to that someone on Patheos.com saying when your purpose is to contend for the gospel, then you have to make sure you have enemies to contend with. TGC is a fight club now, picking out the splinters in everyone else’s eyes.
I know good people disagree on important things, but the people named above are very godly men. How can these common complaints be true of these men, even Chris Fabry, our humble radio host and fiction author? I have a very hard time believing they would deliberately misrepresent the facts or “flat out lie,” as one accusation put it.
So I am relieved to read Tullian’s apology on his blog today:
I’m sorry for saying things in my own defense. One of the things that the gospel frees you to do is to never have to bear the burden of defending yourself. Defending the gospel is one thing. But when a defense of the gospel becomes a defense of yourself, you’ve slipped back under “a yoke of slavery.” I slipped last week. I’m an emotional guy. And in my highly charged emotional state, I said some things in haste, both publicly and privately, that I regret. I never want anything I say to be a distraction from the mind-blowing good news of the gospel and last week I did. I got in the way. When you feel the need to respond to criticism, it reveals how much you’ve built your identity on being right. I’m an idolater and that came out last week. Because Jesus won for you, you’re free to lose…and last week I fought to win. I’m sorry you had to see that. Lord have mercy…
There’s more to it, but this is a critical part. Thank you, sir. The Lord is faithful and merciful. May he continue to bless your ministry for the expansion of his kingdom throughout the world.
9 Things You Should Know About John Calvin
On the 450th anniversary of his death, Joe Carter gives us 9 things we should know about the great reformer, John Calvin.
God-blogging Is Replacing Deep Thinking
Bart Gingerich writes that young people are being led by untrained writers who claim to understand the deep wisdom of God better than anyone who came before them:
[W]e are starting to observe firsthand that the radical democratization of knowledge has led to what John Luckacs calls “an inflation of ideas.” Everyone has been given just enough knowledge and literacy to get them into trouble and yet none of the patience or discipline to get them out of it. Everyone with a blog or Twitter account can shoot out lots of small ideas that lack depth, grounding, and merit. Thus, American Christians are confronted with more and more theological ideas that have less and less worth.
Seminaries are both suffering from this and contributing to this problem. (via Anthony Bradley)