Pastor Josh Buice says that God hates Westboro Baptist Church. He bases his argument on Proverbs 6:16-19, which reads: 16 There are six things which the LORD hates, Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: 17 Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood, 18 A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that run rapidly to evil, 19 A false witness who utters lies, And one who spreads strife among brothers. He shows that Westboro meets every one of these characteristics. Read the rest here. (HT: Tim Challies)

The inimitable Doug Wilson argues that celebrating Christ’s advent should not be turned into an introspective dirge. There should be feasting and joy. In an essay for Christianity Today, he writes: Celebrate the stuff. Use fudge and eggnog and wine and roast beef. Use presents and wrapping paper. Embedded in many of the common complaints you hear about the holidays (consumerism, shopping, gluttony, etc.) are false assumptions about the point of the celebration. You do not prepare for a real celebration of the Incarnation through thirty days of Advent Gnosticism. At the same time, remembering your Puritan fathers, you must hate the sin while loving the stuff. Sin [is] not…

I commend to you Ross Douthat’s column in The New York Times in which he compares the realism of the evil in a Dostoevsky novel and the reality of the evil in Connecticut. Douthat writes: The only thing that my religious tradition has to offer to the bereaved of Newtown today — besides an appropriately respectful witness to their awful sorrow — is a version of that story, and the realism about suffering that it contains.

I’ve hardly been able to turn away from the reporting on the tragedy in Connecticut. I want to understand what happened there as much as anybody. There’s a feeling that somehow by watching I might be able to share the grief at least a little bit. I am grateful for the extensive coverage and reporting. Yet the 24-hour coverage does come up short in one crucial respect. They can tell us what happened, but they can’t tell us why.

The cover story for the December issue of Newsweek features another anti-scripture polemic from Bart Ehrman. Albert Mohler has an article today responding to Ehrman which is worth your time to read. In my view, Mohler’s last line is the most devastating. Mohler concludes: In the waning days of Newsweek as a print magazine, the editors decided to take on the New Testament. Readers should note carefully that it is Newsweek, and not the New Testament, that is going out of print. Read the rest here.

On his new Christmas album, Steven Curtis Chapman sings a song about returning to his hometown of Paducah, Kentucky for Christmas. One might expect a song named “Christmas in Kentucky” to be sappy nostalgia along the lines of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” or “Tennessee Christmas,” but it’s not. This is not the song of a child, but the song of a grown man who’s walked long enough with God to know that Christ came not just for folks like him but for the whole world. It’s the best news in the world. I love this song. In the video above, you can hear the song in its entirety as…

The guys from Igniter Media seem to have a ceaseless flow of creative material. Some devotional, some humorous, but all really well done. Here’s their newest.