In the Fall of 1992, I began my sophomore year in college. I had just experienced a watershed moment in my walk with Christ the previous summer as I had just realized a call to ministry. As the new term began, I was hungry for the word like I’d never been hungry before. It was that year that my good friend from high school, Steve Graves, introduced me to the ministry of Louie Giglio. I can hardly believe that it was nearly twenty years ago. Steve had begun attending a Bible study on the campus of Baylor University called Choice. Louie Giglio preached to about a 1,000 students every Monday…
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Postscript on Hell
Kevin DeYoung wrote a really helpful essay earlier this week on the doctrine of hell. In particular, he deals with the all too familiar meme heard from many Christians who say, “I don’t like the doctrine of hell, and I wish I didn’t have to believe in it. But it’s in the Bible, so I grudgingly accept it as truth.” I think Kevin’s response to this refrain is right on point, and I encourage you to read it if you haven’t already. I would also like to add my own little postscript to Kevin’s remarks. When I was in seminary, I wrestled with my own emotional response to the doctrine…
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Shannon Stone: Husband, Father, Hero, RIP
Last week, Shannon Stone took his six-year old son Cooper to watch the Texas Rangers play the Oakland A’s at the Ballpark in Arlington. During the second inning, Mr. Stone fell from the stands while trying to catch a foul ball that Rangers’ star Josh Hamilton had thrown to him. One hour later, Stone was pronounced dead at a local hospital. He was 39. There aren’t many pure things in the world, but one thing that comes close is a father and a son at a ballgame together. Yet out of nowhere, a most unexpected tragedy shoots a dart right into the heart of this family and leaves a boy…
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Iranian Pastor Told To Renounce Faith or Be Executed
Yousef Nadarkhani is a Christian pastor in Iran, and he has been charged by Iranian authorities with apostasy and evangelizing Muslims. Pastor Nadarkhani was sentenced to death, though some reports have claimed that this sentence has been annulled. Mark Kelly of Baptist Press reports that this is not the case: “Christians in Iran have challenged news reports that the death penalty for pastor Yousef Nadarkhani has been annulled, saying that in reality the country’s supreme court appears to have added a precondition requiring him to renounce his faith or face execution.” Read the rest of this story here and pray.
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The Necessity of Social Media
Patrick Pexton says that the metro editor for The Washington Post has made social media a requirement for all his reporters. Why? A case in point is the recent news that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner might be resigning. Pexton writes: “If you’re a print reader, you probably read about Geithner’s possible departure over your Friday morning coffee. But if you’re an online reader, you knew about it about 14 hours earlier. And that could be important if you’re an investor in New York, Tokyo, or Shanghai or if you’re a Senate staffer thinking about confirmation hearings or a Republican staffer planning on how to counter President Obama’s eventual nominee.” What…
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Carl Trueman Takes a Shot at City Theology
Carl Trueman has a brief but trenchant critique of “city” theology at Reformation 21. He writes: “One thing… I did discuss was the current nonsense about cities being special which so dominates the popular evangelical imagination. Not that cities are not important: as areas where there are the highest concentrations of human beings, they are inevitably significant as mission fields. Rather, we were thinking of the `from a Garden to a City’ hermeneutic which jumps from scripture to giving modern urban sprawl some kind of special eschatological significance. Was there ever a thinner hermeneutical foundation upon which so much has been built? OK, there probably has been, but this is…
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The Assault on Marriage Continues
Dan Savage is a sex-advice columnist and a leading gay activist. He is probably best known for spearheading the “It Gets Better Project”—a YouTube campaign encouraging gay teenagers that being gay gets better after high school. He has received a great deal of favorable press from mainstream media outlets, even though his work as a gay activist includes a fair amount of morally dubious activities. Mark Oppenheimer recently profiled Savage in a lengthy piece for The New York Times Magazine. Oppenheimer’s article focuses on Dan Savage’s prescription for healthy marriages—non-monogamy. Savage argues not only that gay marriage should be legal but also that monogamy should be discarded as a marital…
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How To Disagree Agreeably
Here are Tim Keller, Michael Horton and Matt Chandler telling us how it’s done. One piece of advice is particularly helpful. They highlight the importance of limiting criticism to positions actually held by your opponent. Don’t confuse your opponent’s view with what you see to be the necessary entailments of his view. For example, you may think that consistent Arminianism leads to open theism, but it is uncharitable and unfair to describe all Arminians as open theists. (HT: Justin Taylor)
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Gay Marriage and the Slippery Slope
Gay marriage supporters tend to have little tolerance for slippery slope arguments that compare gay marriage to other illegal relationships like incest and polygamy. I know that I have seen impatience with that kind of argument on this blog numerous times, and I have seen it countless times elsewhere as well. Despite protestations to the contrary, the slippery slope is a reality in today’s New York Times.
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Albert Mohler on Homosexuality in WSJ
Albert Mohler has an opinion piece in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal about the moral revolution we have been witnessing concerning homosexuality. Speaking of evangelicals, he writes, We cannot accept the seductive arguments that the liberal churches so readily adopt. The fact that same-sex marriage is a now a legal reality in several states means that we must further stipulate that we are bound by scripture to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman—and nothing else.