Christ Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.
Category Archives: Religion
Dark Days Ahead?
A law professor talked privately to Rod Dreher about his fears for the future in the context of religious freedom bullying.
“In California right now, judges can’t belong to the Boy Scouts now. Who knows if in the future, lawyers won’t be able to belong to churches that are considered hate groups?” he said. “It’s certainly true that a lot of law firms will not now hire people who worked on cases defending those on the traditional marriage side. It’s going to close some professional doors. I certainly wouldn’t write about this stuff in my work, not if I wanted to have a chance at tenure. There’s a question among Christian law professors right now: do you write about these issues and risk tenure? This really does distort your scholarship. Christianity could make a distinct contribution to legal discussions, but it’s simply too risky to say what you really think.”
The emerging climate on campus of microaggressions, trigger warnings, and the construal of discourse as a form of violence is driving Christian professors further into the closet, the professor said.
“If I said something that was construed as attacking a gay student, I could have my life made miserable with a year or two of litigation — and if I didn’t have tenure, there could be a chance that my career would be ruined,” he said. “Even if you have tenure, a few people who make allegations of someone being hateful can make a tenured professor’s life miserable.”
“What happened to Brendan Eich” — the tech giant who was driven out of Mozilla for having made a small donation years earlier to the Prop 8 campaign — “is going to start happening to a lot of people, and Christians had better be ready for it. The question I keep thinking about is, why would we want to do that to people? But that’s where we are now.”
These teachers, students–Christians of all professions–will have to ask themselves whether they believe Christ Jesus, whose kingdom will never end, was joking when he told us to seek his kingdom first and look to God to provide what we need.
How Easter Shows Britain’s Value Shift
“In the confused mishmash which constitutes religious education in our schools, it is considered fine to concentrate on what cakes different faith groups eat and what flags they wave. But to suggest Jesus was a unique figure in history would be seen as dangerous brainwashing, and to say ours was a basically Christian culture would be elitist.”
#ThingsJesusNeverSaid
Love is what you make it. Whatever you call love, it’s all good.
Love your neighbors, like the Samaritans, except the hateful ones.
RT @rcsprouljr: #thingsJesusneversaid When the culture despises you/when perversion is protected & celebrated/when your political clout is gone all is lost.
I don’t know when this Twitter hashtag was started, but it’s been revived for the clash with Indiana Armies of Intolerance, who say they want to defend religious freedom, but we all know what they really want, right? It’s obvious. Let’s rally to drive them all out of business in the name of freedom and respect.
Last year, people were talking #ThingsJesusNeverSaid with images like these. I just shared #11.
Clearly a tag like this cuts both ways. Jesus didn’t say many things, and everyone has put words into his mouth, but those who disrespect him may have done this more than anyone.
Jesus never said, “Put my name on something fun. Draw people to the Christian brand, and I will be honored.”
He didn’t say, “Watch yourself. If you get out of line, the Father will hammer you.”
Or this, “Stop thinking about my teaching. Just believe what I say.”
Feel free to add to the list.
‘U-Turn’ Paints Conflicted Picture of America
Throckmorton describes an odd conflict of research in a recent book by George Barna and David Barton, U-Turn: Restoring America to the Strength of its Roots. “U-Turn examines current cultural trends and historical patterns,” the publisher states, “to reveal that America cannot sustain its strength if it remains on its current path. Combining current research with the authors’ trademark insight and analysis, the book gives readers a unique view of the moral and spiritual condition of Americans and provides specific insights into how we can turn our nation around.”
Apparently the research isn’t current enough, because the group that still bears Barna’s name refutes some of it. “Barna in 2011 rebuts the Barna of 2014 (which is really an amplification of Barna of 2006),” Throckmorton explains. “The 2014 Barna says ’61 percent of Christian youth who attend college abandon their faith as a result.’ The 2011 Barna said that statement contains two myths.” Read on to learn about those myths.
Lifeway Pulls Heaven Tourism Books
Last year, the Southern Baptist Convention resolved that the Bible tells us enough about the afterlife and that experiential claims can’t trump it. In light of recent bestsellers and movies, their influence on even biblically literate believers, and Scripture refusal to tell us personal experiences with the afterlife, SBC messengers “reaffirm the sufficiency of biblical revelation over subjective experiential explanations to guide one’s understanding of the truth about heaven and hell.”
Yesterday, Lifeway softly announced it would follow suit, saying it is taking a new direction. A spokesman said, “We decided these experiential testimonies about heaven would not be a part of our new direction, so we stopped re-ordering them for our stores last summer.”
I hope the business tactics used to obtain the Malarkey family book will not be part of this new direction as well.
Talking Hymns with Kevin Twit
Kevin Twit of Indelible Grace, at Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham, Alabama, with Matt Schneider.
Spurgeon on Reading
More from Spurgeon on 2 Timothy 4:13, in which Paul asks for someone to bring him his books.
Even an apostle must read. Some of our very ultra Calvinistic brethren think that a minister who reads books and studies his sermon must be a very deplorable specimen of a preacher. A man who comes up into the pulpit, professes to take his text on the spot, and talks any quantity of nonsense, is the idol of many. If he will speak without premeditation, or pretend to do so, and never produce what they call a dish of dead men’s brains—oh! that is the preacher.
How rebuked are they by the apostle! He is inspired, and yet he wants books! He has been preaching at least for thirty years, and yet he wants books! He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books! He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books! He had been caught up into the third heaven, and had heard things which it was unlawful for a men to utter, yet he wants books! He had written the major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books!
The apostle says to Timothy and so he says to every preacher, “Give thyself unto reading.” The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. Brethren, what is true of ministers is true of all our people. You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers, and expositions of the Bible. We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master’s service.
Martin Lloyd-Jones as an Evangelist
Jeff Robinson says many people who praise Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones seem to forget his strengths as an evangelist who prayed earnestly for revival. Pastor Tim Keller says he was wonderful influenced by Lloyd-Jones style of preaching to unbelievers, such as what Robinson describes:
In an age where it sometimes seems that John 3:16 is the earliest verse in the canon that ought to be marshalled for winning lost souls, Lloyd-Jones’s approach to evangelism might seem curious. But [Iain] Murray lists three primary reasons why the Doctor chose to use the Old Testament so often in seeking the conversion of sinners:
1. It reveals sin in its true nature. Murray writes, “Lloyd-Jones believed that the true difference between moralizing preaching on the Old Testament and true evangelistic preaching is that moralizing deals only with sin in terms of symptoms and secondary features. The essence of sin, the true seriousness of sin, can only begin to be understood when it is seen in terms of a wrong relationship and attitude to God himself.”
‘Christianity Is Not a Metanarrative’
“[Michael] Horton shows how the Christian meganarrative is a ‘counterdrama’ to all of the meganarratives and metanarratives of this passing age,” blogs Justin Taylor.