Tim Challies is sharing excerpts from John Eldredge’s strange new book Beautiful Outlaw. What’s strange about it? It’s the stories Eldredge tells about the various ways God communicates with him through signs and visions. But these aren’t your run-of-the-mill charismatic expressions; they’re pretty weird. In one vision, Eldredge claims that Jesus was wearing a pirate hat. In one sign, Eldredge claims that God gave him a heart-shaped piece of manure to show how much He loved him. I’m not making this up. You can go follow all of this at Tim Challies’ blog. I’ll print the first to excerpts below.
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A Helpful Definition of Pornography
Defining what constitutes pornography has always been a bit of a struggle. It was Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who once illustrated the difficulty by giving his own subjective definition: “I know it when I see it.” I just read today that Carl Trueman has found as good a definition as I have ever seen, and he got it from The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Here it is: 2354: Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to…
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Tim Tebow To Start for the Denver Broncos
After falling to 1-4 last Sunday, the Broncos decided to make a change. When they step on the field a week from Sunday against the Dolphins, Tim Tebow will be their new starting quarterback. And I’ll be pulling for him. (HT: @BarnabasPiper)
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Wayne Grudem’s Endorsement of Mitt Romney
In 2007, Wayne Grudem wrote an article for Townhall.com endorsing Mitt Romney’s bid for the 2008 Republican nomination for President. In the article, Grudem considers whether or not Evangelical Christians should vote for a Mormon, and I think his reflections are apt for the conversation we are having in 2011. He writes:
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Carson and Keller Weigh-in on Elephant Room
D. A. Carson and Tim Keller have written a statement on The Elephant Room controversy on The Gospel Coalition website. There is much good, thoughtful material here. They begin with this: Recent discussion, mostly in blogs, regarding the forthcoming Elephant Room conference, sponsored by James MacDonald and Mark Driscoll, provides an opportunity to write a few clarifying paragraphs on confessionalism, boundaries, and discipline. Whatever else The Gospel Coalition has or has not done, it has not prohibited mutual criticism among Council members… The richness and detail of our Confessional Statement and our Theological Vision of Ministry demonstrate that we wish to avoid lowest-common-denominator theology. But how do we negotiate the…
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Rachel Held Evans’ Year of Living Unbiblically
Rachel Held Evans is an egalitarian and has set aside the last year to obey every command in scripture pertaining to women. Her aim is to show what “biblical womanhood” really looks like when it is practiced consistently. She has been blogging about her year at her website, and Thomas Nelson has agreed to publish her narrative for a book set to be released in 2012. When I first heard about this, I was skeptical about the usefulness of such a project. Sarah Flashing is also skeptical, and she has a hard-hitting piece about it over at the First Things blog. She writes:
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Why the Media Disinterest in Romney’s Mormonism?
The media have spent a lot of time the past couple of days not on Mormonism, but on one pastor’s critique of it. David Murray is asking why the media have been so disinterested in the religion itself. He’s writing as an outsider looking in, and I think he’s on to something here. He writes: I’ve been reading Latayne Scott’s The Mormon Mirage over the past few days, as I prepare to interview her on the Connected Kingdom podcast. I must confess that, with most of my Christian life and ministry having been spent in the Scottish Highlands, I’ve not needed to know much about Mormonism and I’ve had very…
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A Good Critique of Political Reporters on the Religion Beat
Sarah Pulliam Bailey has an insightful critique of how political reporters drove the coverage the Values Voter Summit last week. In short, she argues that political reporters took old news and turned it into big news. She writes: If you have been paying attention to religion and politics for at least the last four years, you know that Jeffress’ belief that Mormonism is a cult isn’t terribly newsworthy to religion reporters. I tweeted about the endorsement because I thought it was something to note but not something to write a story about. Jeffress has been saying these things for quite a while now and political reporters are just now taking…
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Martin Luther, Mitt Romney, and the “Wise Turk”
Martin Luther is eminently quotable. He had a way with words and could wield them with force and power. I was very disappointed, therefore, to learn a couple of years ago that my favorite Luther quote didn’t actually derive from Luther. Ever since then, I have been skeptical about Luther quotes. Whenever I hear one, I verify it. I bring this up because all the talk about Mitt Romney’s Mormonism in the news is bound to summon forth another famous line that has been falsely attributed to Luther. Here’s the quote:
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Robert Jeffress Speaks to Church about Perry Endorsement
I blogged last week about Pastor Robert Jeffress’ endorsement of Rick Perry for the Republican presidential nomination at the Values Voter Summit. As you no doubt have seen by now, the endorsement and his remarks about Mormonism caused an explosion of media attention. In the Sunday morning service at the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, he addressed the congregation about what he had done. You can see his remarks above.