Yesterday, news leaked that David French is Bill Kristol’s mystery candidate. He has not yet declared himself a candidate, but he is Kristol’s man. French is a veteran of the Iraq war, a recipient of the Bronze Star, and a constitutional lawyer. He’s the author of seven books, an adoptive father, and a stalwart conservative. He is not a career politician. He also happens to be one of my favorite writers—which is why I link to his National Review articles continuously. In 2014, French delivered a commencement speech for a Christian home school group. The address says everything you need to know about why French would volunteer for the meat…
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David French and wife planned for fidelity… Sad!
Earlier this evening, news leaked that David French is Bill Kristol’s mystery candidate. David French is a veteran of the Iraq war, a recipient of the Bronze Star, and a constitutional lawyer. He’s the author of seven books, an adoptive father, and a stalwart conservative. He is not a career politician. He also happens to be one of my favorite writers—which is why I link to his National Review articles continuously. As I said several months ago, he’s always right. David French is always right. https://t.co/fCRd5tqN5K — Denny Burk (@DennyBurk) February 7, 2016 I think he’s a fantastic candidate. A long-shot? Yes. A spoiler? Hopefully. But I don’t want to…
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The zoo was right to kill the gorilla to protect the boy
There’s a scene in the movie Man of Steel when Clark Kent’s dad sacrifices his life to save a dog. It’s very dramatic, and it’s portrayed as heroic. But despite all the pathos and drama, there’s nothing heroic about treating a dog’s life as the moral equivalent of a human life. In fact, it’s an evidence of pagan decadence to think like that, which is why that scene made sense to American movie-goers in 2013 but would have made no sense to Americans of previous generations.
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Memorial Day in the twilight of a great republic
Four months after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, President Lincoln dedicated a national cemetery where many of the fallen Union soldiers were buried. At the dedication, Lincoln gave a speech for the ages, the one we now know as the Gettysburg Address. The speech is short, but the conclusion is one worth revisiting this Memorial Day weekend:
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“I think you are an ignorant bigot, lady.”
A friend in Washington, D.C. sent me a link to the above video just a little while ago. Don’t watch the whole thing. Fast forward to the 1:27 mark and watch for about 3 minutes. What you will see is a congresswoman of the United States berating a witness for disagreeing with the Obama administration’s transgender directive. The congresswoman says to the witness, “I think you are an ignorant bigot, lady.” And then she shouts her down until the committee chairman tells her to stop attacking the witness. What is chilling about this video is that the congresswoman has no compunction whatsoever about attacking the witness. Her animus and contempt…
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God loves you. We love you. Tell us what it’s like to be you.
Andrew Wilson recently preached a message at King’s Church Eastbourne on “Transgender and Intersex.” His text is Matthew 19:1-12, and he does a faithful job with it. He is a really fantastic communicator, and he clearly sets forth the teaching of scripture and how it applies to our thinking about transgender and intersex. This message is not mainly polemical but pastoral. I like his line about how we ought to communicate with those wrestling with gender identity issues: “God loves you. We love you. Tell us what it’s like to be you.” Of course there’s more to say than that, but we certainly shouldn’t be saying less than that, right?…
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Eleven states say “no” to Pres. Obama’s transgender “directive” for public schools
The New York Times reports: In a forceful challenge to the Obama administration’s stand on transgender rights, officials in 11 states sued the federal government on Wednesday, arguing that it had no authority to direct the nation’s public school districts to permit students to use the restrooms that correspond with their gender identity. The lawsuit, filed in a Federal District Court in North Texas, said the Obama administration had “conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over common sense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.” The lawsuit came 12 days after civil…
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Why the list of 10 judges does not placate the concerns of #NeverTrump
Donald Trump has released a list of conservative justices that he would consider appointing to the Supreme Court were he to be elected president. The list is an obvious attempt to win-over conservatives who are reluctant about his candidacy. But this list does not alleviate the concerns that many of us have about his candidacy. First, Trump did not commit to pick anyone from the list! In fact he said he might pick someone who is not on the list. So the list means nothing. It’s no different from what he has previously said. And we are again being asked to trust the judgment of a man who changes his…
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A one-legged man trapped inside a two-legged man’s body. Amputate?
At the heart of the transgender revolution is the notion that psychological identity trumps bodily identity. In this way of thinking, a person is whatever they think themselves to be. If a girl perceives herself to be a boy, then she is one even if her biology says otherwise. If a boy perceives himself to be a girl, then he is one even if his biology says otherwise. Gender is self-determined, not determined by the sexual differences that the Creator has embedded into every cell of our bodies. Have Americans thought through the implications of believing that one’s psychological identity should trump one’s biological identity when the two seem to…
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What does the Bible teach about homosexual desire and identity?
Heath Lambert and I did a series of interviews with Family Life Today about our book Transforming Homosexuality. For many of you readers, the content of our book is no mystery. Still, in these recent discussions we do go into a little more depth. Dennis Rainey and Bob Lepine are great interviewers, and they are pros at teasing-out the practical implications of things. One of the things that comes out in these interviews is how much this book applies to all people. Yes, we are trying to ask and answer pressing questions about homosexuality. But in doing so, we are really just talking about the way sin and desire work…