I agree with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Not one more second of media attention should be granted to the Koran-burning pastor in Florida. I’m surprised that he has received as much attention as he already has. I was also surprised to receive an e-mail from a reader asking why evangelical bloggers have been so silent on the controversy. I can’t speak for other bloggers, but here’s why I haven’t said much about it until now.
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Burning the Koran
Albert Mohler weighs-in on the Koran burning controversy. In short, his concern is not mainly that the act is un-American, but that it does not serve the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a publicity stunt that hinders the preaching of the good news. In the book of Acts, we don’t see the church deliberately trying to offend others, but rather we see them trying to preach the gospel. Listen to the rest below. The Briefing – September 8, 2010[audio:http://albertmohler.com/media/audio/totl/Podcast/The_Briefing_September_8.mp3]
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Speak for the Unborn
Our church recently began a new pro-life outreach that I’ve been taking part in over the last two weekends. The outreach is called “Speak for the Unborn,” and the idea behind it is very simple. A group of us shows up to Louisville’s abortion clinic on Saturday mornings from 7:00-8:30am. As women arrive for their abortion appointments, we try to engage them in conversation as they walk from their car to the clinic. Our goal in talking to them is twofold. One, we are trying to convince them to choose life by directing them to “A Woman’s Choice Resource Center” a crisis pregnancy center located just across the street from…
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David Platt in NY Times
David Brooks’s column in today’s NY Times is all about David Platt’s book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream. Brooks tries to set Platt’s book in the context of nation’s sluggish economy and of citizens who are seeking to find “noneconomic ways to find meaning.” He concludes: “Platt’s arguments are old, but they emerge at a postexcess moment, when attitudes toward material life are up for grabs. His book has struck a chord. His renunciation tome is selling like hotcakes. Reviews are warm. Leaders at places like the Southern Baptist Convention are calling on citizens to surrender the American dream.
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Hardball on Hagee and Beck
Chris Matthews takes umbrage with John Hagee’s appearance at the Glenn Beck rally. I don’t think the conversation here is all that helpful or illuminatng—except in one sense. This is the most theology I think I have ever heard discussed on “Hardball.” The discussion touches on theodicy, sin, judgment, and the nature of God. That’s pretty unusual for this program, but it does show where some of these characters are on the most important questions in the world. One more thing. Even though Matthews is a Roman Catholic, he regularly opposes Roman Catholic teaching on his program. It seems a bit inconsistent to defend the church against the likes of…
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Andrew Peterson on Poverty
Do you have to take a vow of poverty to be a Christian? Is money the root of all evil? Andrew Peterson says no, and I agree. You need to read all of this one, but here’s the conclusion: “The point: being poor is not the only way to radically follow Christ. Some people are called to it. I have long felt a tension between all that I learned from the Kid Brothers and Rich Mullins about identifying with the poor and the weak, versus my holy responsibility to tend to my family’s spiritual and physical needs.
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Ezell to NAMB
This is the happiest SBC news I’ve heard in a long time. I can’t imagine a better leader for NAMB. Pastor Kevin Ezell has been nominated to be the next President of the North American Mission Board (the domestic missions agency of the Southern Baptist Convention). Jim Smith has the story here.
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Beck’s Revival
Russell Moore has Glenn Beck’s number—or at least that of Beck’s erstwhile “evangelical” following. Moore is rightly scathing in his rebuke of evangelicals who would confuse genuine revival with Mormon-American-pie-populist politics. That’s exactly what was on display this weekend at Beck’s rally at the Lincoln Memorial. It was a mash-up of civic religion and syncretism that had some evangelicals looking to Glenn Beck as some kind of a spiritual leader. It exposed the fact that far too many evangelicals still can’t tell the difference between heresy and the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3). Moore writes: “It’s taken us a long time to get here, in…
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Giberson Shows His Hand
Karl Giberson really showed his hand in his response to Albert Mohler’s open letter. He acknowledges that he is not a theologian, but he nevertheless makes a weighty theological pronouncement. But I don’t sense that he realizes how weighty it really is. Here he is in his own words. “Is it not here that we find the central truth of our faith? Our sinful nature is a simple reality… But is it not possible that we might have different ideas about how we came to have that nature? Does the saving power of Jesus vanish if sin becomes something that developed through natural history, rather than appeared all at once…
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Christian Hosoi: I Am Second
About a year ago, I found out about the conversion of one of my childhood heroes—Christian Hosoi (read about it here). He was a professional skateboarder, and I thought he was the best in the world. He was big-time in the 80’s, but the 90’s were a different story. He got all strung-out on drugs and eventually landed in jail. But that wasn’t the end of his story. Hear the rest of the story in the “I Am Second” video above. I think it’s amazing how the Lord works. For Hosoi, the text God used to quicken his heart was 1 Kings 2:1-9—the story of David’s exhortation to Solomon as…