Today, I just happened to be reading Sarah Sumner’s essay on “Gender” in Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Sumner has a couple of paragraphs describing the complementarian and egalitarian spectrums. She says that while all complementarians believe that husbands are the leaders of their homes, there are differences among complementarians about the degree to which women may lead in the church. Although I might quibble with some of her description, I think she has basically described the complementarian spectrum correctly. But then she writes this about the egalitarian spectrum: “All egalitarians, by contrast, believe that husbands and wives are to relate together in mutual submission rather than a marital hierarchy.…
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Five words of hope in the face of horrific evil and pain
When horrific evil unfolds before our very eyes, there is a temptation to lose sight of the verities that ought to sustain and comfort us. For those watching the aftermath of the unmitigated evil of yesterday’s shooting in Florida, here are some words of hope to cling to. Hold them close. 1. God is good all the time. “O taste and see that the LORD is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” (Psalm 34:8). “For the LORD is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting, And His faithfulness to all generations” (Psalm 100:5). “Praise the LORD! Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; For…
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Is it okay for the state to take your child away because you won’t affirm his transgender feelings?
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…
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Pursue God, Not Pornography
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…
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Hatmaker explains why she rejected the “bad fruit” of the Bible’s teaching about sexuality
Last week, Pete Enns interviewed Jen Hatmaker about her recent exit from evangelical Christianity. You can download the interview here or listen below: The interview focuses on Hatmaker’s decision to embrace homosexual immorality as consistent with following Jesus. Among other things, Hatmaker describes all the consequences that have resulted from that decision—lost book contracts, cancelled speaking engagements, estranged friends and church members. She describes a harrowing emotional cost for her decision to walk away from the 2,000-year old teaching of the Christian church. I have previously heard her talk about a lot of this, but one item in particular stuck out to me this time. One of the interviewers asked…
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Ryan Anderson on the virtues of motherhood and homemaking
I’ve been working toward a review of Ryan Anderson’s forthcoming book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (Encounter Books, 2018). It really is a fantastic, must-read work. I will resist beginning the review here, but I do want to share a passage from it that extols the virtues of motherhood and homemaking. Anderson writes: G. K. Chesterton praised the vocation of mother and homemaker as greater than paid employment in the modern marketplace, noting especially the broad range of responsibilities it involves. In her own domain, a home- maker is like the Queen, “deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays”; she is like Whiteley, the great retailer, “providing…
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Kiss the Wave: Embracing God in Your Trials
Yesterday, I received a copy of Dave Furman’s new book Kiss the Wave: Embracing God in Your Trials. Dave is a husband, father of four, and a pastor at Redeemer Church of Dubai. I just received the book, so I obviously haven’t read it yet. But I wanted to share a little snippet from a letter that Dave wrote describing what the book is about. He writes: One month into our ministry in the desert, everything fell apart. The nerve pain in my arms went from bad to extreme and the accompanying depression was unbearable. I was (and still am) unable to drive, shake hands, and lift more than a…
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A gut-wrenching afternoon thinking about child sexual abuse
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…
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A mere complementarian reading of the most contested verse in the evangelical gender debate—1 Timothy 2:12
Evangelicals seem to be more divided than ever about the issue of gender roles in the home and in the church. On the one side, you have the egalitarians. They believe that Christ came to abolish gender norms. For them, true equality means that both men and women can serve in whatever roles they feel called to within the body of Christ. If a woman wants to be pastor, great. If she wants to preach the Bible to men, no problem. As long as the person is gifted for the work, then it doesn’t matter what the gender of the preacher is. At least that’s how the egalitarians have it.…
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Who can teach in a seminary? Men, women, both?
Last night Desiring God posted a new episode of the “Ask Pastor John” podcast in which John Piper answers the following question from a listener: “Dear Pastor John, I’m a seminary student at an orthodox but interdenominational school in the United States. I share your complementarian understanding of God’s design for male and female roles and relationships in the home and church. On that basis, I have recently doubted whether or not my seminary ought to allow women to teach pastors in training. What do you think? Should women be hired as seminary professors? What is your best case?” In response, Piper makes the case that women should not be…