Florida will not emerge as the number one ranked team in the country next week. Nevertheless, I think they may be the best team in the country right now. After their embarrassing loss to Ole Miss, something snapped inside Tebow and his teammates (click here to see what Tebow said after the loss). Since that loss, the Gators put up 51 points against the number 4 team in the nation (LSU) and 49 points against the number 6 team in the nation (Georgia). I think the Gators are likely to win their remaining regular season games. Their last big test will likely be Alabama in the SEC championship. If they…
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John Piper on Barack Obama
John Piper released a short video today with some wise observations about the presidential election. Among the other things he talked about, his assessment of Barack Obama is particularly helpful. “Abortion is an evil the scope of which and depths of which very few people in our culture feel. The magnitude of it’s just horrific. . . 12 million black babies dead since 1973. I don’t think Barack Obama will touch that with a ten foot pole. And he should. . . He’s the most radical abortion proponent in the United States Congress, and that’s tragic.” You can see the rest of Piper’s remarks in the video above.
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Remembering the Courage of Martin Luther
Today is Reformation Day. It was on this day in 1517 that Martin Luther nailed the “95 Theses” to the castle door at Wittenberg, Germany. Thus began a movement of which we are still feeling the effects today, some 491 years hence. Luther’s stand against the Roman Catholic Church was ostensibly about indulgences. But really, it was about the gospel—how sinners are justified before God on the basis of Christ’s redemptive work. In every generation, the Christian church is called on to herald and to defend the gospel before a watching world. That is what Luther did, and that is what we must do as well. My favorite quote from…
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Flame
The best thing about being the Dean of Boyce College is the students. Since coming to the college in August, I have met some of the most Christ-centered, committed students that I have ever known. I am grateful to be here and so very thankful to have the opportunity to serve them. If I could share the blessing that they are to me with you, I would. There is at least one student, however, that I can share with you. His name is Marcus Williams (with the stage-name “Flame”), and he is a hip-hop artist with Cross Movement Records. He has released four albums since 2004 and has been nominated…
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Was Junia an Apostle?
The identity of Junia (named in Romans 16:7) has become an item of contention in the evangelical debate over gender roles. Was Junia a female apostle? Many maintain that she was an apostle and that her life therefore becomes a basis for affirming an egalitarian view of gender roles in the ministries of the Christian church. In an important book on this question, New Testament scholar Eldon Epp makes the case that Junia was in fact a woman and that she was the first female apostle.
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A Word for Post-Moderns
Abraham Piper has a clever line that I think describes the post-modern ethos of our day: “If you ask questions but you reject answers, you’re not actually asking anything. You’re just festooning tired, old propositions with trendier punctuation.” This is a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but it is actually a very serious point. The post-modern proclivity for interminable questions is very much like Paul’s description of the women at Ephesus who had been deceived by false teachers. Paul says that they are “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7).
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Abortion and Racism
From Anne Hendershott at the Witherspoon Institute: “It’s never been a more dangerous time to be a black baby. . . The figures are shocking: Nearly half of all African American pregnancies end in abortion. Since 1973, the number of abortions by African American women has totaled more than twelve million. In some localities, including Mississippi, Louisiana, Maryland, and Georgia, more than half of all abortions are performed on black women. Similar rates are found for black women in New York City. . . The black community has already been changed by abortion. At a time when 50 percent of their unborn children are aborted, many within the black community…
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Pro-life and Pro-Obama? Hardly.
Many Catholics and Evangelicals have been making the case of late that supporting Barack Obama for President represents another way of being pro-life. The argument goes something like this. (1) The constitutional battles are over, pro-lifers have lost, and Roe vs. Wade is settled law. (2) There are other evils that Christians are bound to oppose besides abortion that Republicans tend to ignore—like the war in Iraq, torture, etc. (3) Liberalized social-welfare policies will lessen the need for abortions among poor women. Since Obama is a liberal on such matters, the abortion rate will therefore go down under an Obama administration. On this reasoning, Roman Catholics like Doug Kmiec and…
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J. Budziszewski on Prioritizing the Abortion Issue
J. Budziszewski has penned a helpful piece illustrating the transcendent nature of the abortion issue. The short narrative is a fictional conversation between himself and two students asking about abortion. The question is this. Who do you vote for when you think both candidates would enact “evil” policies? How can you vote at all when your only choices are a pro-abortion candidate and a pro-unjust war candidate? He concludes that in the current case, abortion-on-demand in America is a far worse evil than the so-called unjust war in Iraq. “Ballot Box Blues” – by J. Budziszewski (Boundless Webzine)
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Connecting the Dots: Bill Maher and John Piper?
You have probably seen by now one of the ads for Bill Maher’s new documentary “Religulous.” If you haven’t seen it, it’s a movie that was produced for the expressed purpose of denigrating religion. The fundamental point seems to be that having faith in any religion is ridiculous—thus “Religulous.” In the trailer for the movie, the following exchange takes place between Maher and a person dressed up like Jesus.