After the royal wedding this past weekend, there was a lot of celebratory discussion about Bishop Michael Curry, who delivered the sermon during the ceremony. It was a sermon on the love of God, and Bishop Curry even referred to Christ as the exemplar of this kind of love. Nevertheless, there are many bible-believing Christians who are less than enthusiastic about this message. I am one of them, and here’s why. The way I see it, there were at least two major problems with Bishop Curry’s address.

A thought experiment: What if you had a child who experienced feelings of gender confusion? You are a Christian, so as your child grows you try to teach him what the Bible says about how God made us male and female and how the distinction between male and female is therefore a good thing (Gen. 1:31). You teach him that our maleness and femaleness is first of all biologically defined according to our binary reproductive capacities (Gen. 1:26-27). You also teach him that it is good and right to embrace that biological reality and the responsibilities and duties that go along with it. You love your child and wish to…

The New York Times published an article this week about teenagers and porn-use, and the first hand accounts contained in the piece are devastating. I am not going to link to the piece here or even describe it because it is too vile to share. In fact, I regret reading it myself. It’s that bad. For those that have read it, however, I want to pass along some items that might be a little more helpful and hopeful. 1. The video above is a message preached in the chapel of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It’s an exposition of “Flee youthful lusts” in 2 Timothy 2:22 and how that applies…

I want to share with you two things that have been occupying my attention this afternoon, one of them expected and the other quite unexpected. First, I spent early afternoon completing a training program designed to help protect Christian ministries from child-predators. The program is the second one I have completed in the last month, and both programs are pre-requisite for serving in ministries that I am involved with. I am so very grateful for both programs. They were informative, helpful, and practical. But they were also gut-wrenching. I learned so much. Both programs describe how child predators single-out and groom children. Both programs explain how predators manipulate “gatekeepers” to…

Jesus says that the world will recognize his followers by how his followers love one another. If people look at us and see us resolving our disputes and putting one another’s needs before our own, if they see us trying to outdo one another in honoring one another, if they see us weeping with those among us who weep and rejoicing with those among us who rejoice; if they see that, they will know that we love one another. And they will know that we are who we say we are—disciples of the King Jesus. But if they see us fighting with one another, gossiping about one another, complaining about…

In A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge has a startling conversation with the ghost of his dead business partner, Jacob Marley. Jacob is damned in death for his misdeeds in life, and he appears to warn Scrooge that he is headed for the same fate. Scrooge resists the suggestion that Jacob’s life was damnable. Scrooge understands that if Jacob’s life is damnable, then so is his own. So this exchange ensues: “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business;…