• Christianity

    How an Affair Begins

    Andrée Seu has a brief piece of warning about how an affair begins: A friend of mine told me that now she understands how adultery begins. She went to a woman’s house to drop off a package as a favor to someone, but the woman was not home. The husband was, and they exchanged pleasantries for a few moments. My friend noticed the carpentry project the man was working on and commented on his artistry. She asked him a few questions about it, and it didn’t take much to encourage him to spill forth for an hour and a half about every aspect of the work. It was fun. At…

  • Christianity,  News,  Politics

    Santorum’s Roman Catholic Faith and Opus Dei

    The Washington Post has a feature length article on Rick Santorum’s Catholic faith and, in particular, on his connection to the lay-renewal group called Opus Dei. I kept waiting for a reference to The Da Vinci Code, but thankfully it never came. Instead, the article tells the story of a man who began as a nominal Catholic but who has become committed to a conservative, Catholic position:

  • Christianity,  Theology/Bible

    A Jimmy Carter Study Bible

    Former President Jimmy Carter has just published a study Bible based on his decades of service as a Sunday School teacher in a Baptist Church. It’s titled NIV Lessons from Life Bible: Personal Reflections with Jimmy Carter, and it “takes Mr. Carter’s years of teaching Sunday school lessons at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, GA, and meshes them with the text of the NIV Bible.” A synopsis on Zondervan’s website describes the book this way: The legacy of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who has been teaching directly from the Bible for over 65 years and has taken the Bible’s teachings seriously, implementing them into his life’s work. Now he…

  • Book Reviews,  Christianity

    Be sure to read Ted Kluck’s footnotes!

    Just a brief follow-up to my earlier post about Ted Kluck’s new book . I am a professor, and I am therefore a big fan of footnotes. It is my stock-in-trade, if you know what I mean. So please take my advice when I tell you to read all of the footnotes in Ted Kluck’s book. They are the most entertaining footnotes that you will ever read. Here’s a sample from the introduction of Dallas and the Spitfire where Ted goes to a coffee shop and first meets Dallas.

  • Book Reviews,  Christianity

    Ted Kluck’s New Book Is a Great Read

    Ted Kluck has just come out with a new book titled Dallas and the Spitfire: An Old Car, an Ex-Con, and an Unlikely Friendship which he co-authored with Dallas Jahncke. I read this book a few months ago and thought it was fantastic. I highly recommend it to you. It’s a true story of discipleship, and in it Ted describes his relationship with a young ex-con named Dallas who has recently come to faith in Christ. Together they work on restoring a broken down car (a Spitfire), which becomes a metaphor for the rebuilding of a young man’s life. Here’s the blurb that I wrote for the book: Dallas and…

  • Christianity

    John Piper’s Senior Sermon at Fuller Seminary

    DesiringGod.org has just posted John Piper’s senior sermon from Fuller Seminary. The date is May 5, 1971 when Piper was 25 years old. He preached for nearly 19 minutes on Ephesians 1:6. What is remarkable about this sermon is its consistency with what Piper preaches now. It’s all about the glory of God. You can listen below or download here. [audio:http://cdn.desiringgod.org/resources/sermon/1971/John_Piper-Fuller_chapel_Ser.mp3]

  • Christianity

    A Lesson on Raising Boys To Respect Women

    If you are raising little girls or little boys, you should raise them as little girls or little boys. That means that you must be concerned to teach boys to become men, and girls to become women. Gender-neutral parenting is a fool’s errand and ignores the differences that God has created between the sexes. The implication of this is that if you want a son to grow up to treat women with respect and dignity, then you must teach him the lesson as a boy. He must learn from his parents that girls are different than boys and that little girls deserve special treatment.