Dealing with spousal and child abuse in the church

I found this weeks episode of the Mortification of Spin podcast helpful and thought-provoking. It gave me some suggestions that I'll be passing on to the pastors and session of the church in which I serve as an elder. In fact, I think this is pretty much required listening if you are a pastor, elder, or church leader of any kind.

You can find it on iTunes or listen here.

Something to hang your hat on

"Folks, CNN has it's own headlines. In the West history is divided into periods -- ancient, medieval, modern, postmodern. Most recently it's been said that September 11, 2001 changed everything. But really, that's not true. The most decisive turning point was the year 33 when a Jewish rabbi, the Messiah, was raised from the dead in Roman-occupied Palestine -- vindicating his claim as God incarnate, Savior and Lord of the world. All authority on heaven and on earth has been entrusted to him. This turning point is not only celebrated, but is deepened and widened in its effects every Lord's Day. Whenever this gospel is taken, and wherever this gospel is taken, a piece of heaven, the age to come, begins even now to dawn in the dusty corners of this passing evil age."

- Michael Horton (from last week's White Horse Inn podcast The Gospel of the Kingdom)

Listening to Brian

I first heard Jake Warga's taped conversation with his college friend Brian on This American Life. It's one of the most haunting things I've ever heard on the radio. Here's TAL's description:

This story wasn't originally made to broadcast on a radio show. It's a tape made by a guy named Jake Warga, who'd never put anything together for radio. He made it to give to his friend Brian, who wanted to kill himself. After Brian tried to overdose, Jake took him out to a park bench to talk, and brought along a recorder. Later, Jake decided to edit the conversation down and give it to Brian as a gift, hoping that if Brian heard what he was saying, if he heard how he sounded, it might stop him from trying again.

I tracked down the original piece which is slightly different than the version aired on TAL. The link is below. Among other things Brian talks about his Lutheran upbringing, his fears about life after death, views on sin and forgiveness, and the limits of self-motivation. "As my therapist says -- it has to come from within. There doesn't feel like there's much within. You know."

Listen here

Interview with Don Reid of the Statler Brothers

I know there are some country music fans out there. Here's an interview with Don Reid about his legendary gospel and country music career, as well as his service as an elder in the Presbyterian Church.

Google goes bebop

I love what the doodlers at Google came up with to celebrate jazz legend John "Dizzy" Gillespie's birthday. Get a taste of Dizzy's artistry here.

David Simon on WNYC

Here's a 15-minute interview with David Simon, creator of The Wire, chatting about Paths of Glory (novel and film), politics, the future of journalism and the American city. The interviewer is Brian Lehrer. Simon is in New York to introduce a special screening of Kubrick's masterpiece tonight at Film Forum. Oh to be there.

D.A. Carson on the Psalms

I love the Psalms, and I love hearing them taught by gifted expositors of scripture. That's why I was eager to listen to the incredibly gifted Don Carson preach from the Psalms at a recent conference in Australia. Carson chose Psalms 1, 2, 40, 48 and 110. These are dynamite! Click on the link below to access the audio.

http://www.ridley.edu.au/ridley-resources/2010-preaching-the-psalms1/

God's Technology

One of the blogs I read regularly is Head Heart Hand by David Murray. Murray is a professor at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and has been creating some terrific online resources. His latest project is God's Technology: Training our Children to use Technology to God's Glory. The title says it all. If you're a Christian parent of young children or teenagers you'll want to check this out. Here's the trailer:




You can listen to an interview with Dr. Murray here.

Marilynne Robinson interview

Michael Horton talks with Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson about many of the themes she explores in her writings, such as the dehumanizing affects of Darwinism, the significance of John Calvin, and the complexity of grace. Robinson is the author of Home, Gilead, and The Death of Adam. This is a fascinating and wideranging conversation! She likes Dietrich Bonhoeffer too. Robinson is an author I'll be reading in 2010.

LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD HERE

The psychology of driving

Taking a road trip for Thanksgiving? Author Tom Vanderbilt explains Why You're Not The Great Driver You Think You Are.

Stoning the rebellious son

I've written previously about J.V. Fesko's very helpful treatment of the ten commmandments The Rule of Love. In a recent chapel message Fesko unpacked Deuteronomy 21:18-23 -- the passage that sanctions the stoning to death of a stubborn and rebellious son. Fesko's teaching demonstrates that a Christ-centered approach to the Mosaic law is a better alternative than dismissing this as barbarism, or claiming as some do, that the judicial laws of OT Israel are normative for civil society today.

Listen here

From the printing press to Google

Carl Trueman on Luther and mass media:

@ Christ the Center

Keeping Christ in the Decalogue

The Old Testament law is a huge and complex subject. There are as many views on it as there are Christian traditions, and even within the same tradition there can be a wide divergence of opinion. The New Testament can seem to not offer us much help here. What does it mean that Jesus came not to abolish, but to fulfill the law? How can the law be good, and at the same time a source of death? If we're not under the law, then what role does the law have in the life of the Christian? Does it have any role? How do we avoid the error of legalism or the opposite error of antinomianism?

Historically, Reformed theology has sought to answer these questions and others by speaking of the three uses of the law. To summarize -- the first use of the law is as a "harsh taskmaster", teaching us about the righteousness of God and our unrighteousness, revealing our sin, showing us our inability to attain God's holy standard, and causing us to flee to Christ for rescue.

Secondly, the law has the common grace function of restraining public wickedness and promoting public righteousness by informing human laws and customs. How far this should go has often been a source of disagreement within Reformed circles. Google "theonomy" to see what I mean.

Thirdly, the law functions for the Christian as a guide to growing in Christlikeness. For those "in Christ" the law loses it's power of death and becomes instead a gracious tool of the Holy Spirit for our sanctification.

Reformed theology also teaches that the moral law of God is summarized in the ten commandments, and further that "the sum of the ten commandments is, to love the Lord our God, with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind; and our neighbor as ourselves." (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A 42) This brings me to The Rule of Love: Broken, Fulfilled, and Applied by J.V. Fesko, a minister in the OPC and professor at Westminster Seminary California. The Rule of Love is a clear and concise Reformed treatment of the ten commandments that grew out of a sermon series on Exodus. This is a practical little book that I'll undoubtedly refer to often. I recommend it.

Fesko begins by writing that part of the motivation for the book was his vexation at Christians who get more upset about the absence of the Decalogue from the public square than from the public worship of the church, or parents more concerned to have the ten commandments on the wall of the public school than impressed upon the hearts and minds of their covenant children. Also, much discussion of the ten commandments today completely omits Christ. The result? "They go from the Ten Commandments straight to its application to life, never asking the question: What about Christ? That inevitably leads to legalism, or the belief that we are able to fulfill the Law." (p. 3)

Fesko attempts to remedy this in two ways -- by stressing the importance of keeping the Decalogue linked to its prologue, and by considering each commandment in light of its historical, covenantal, and redemptive contexts. I found this a very fruitful way of opening up the ten commandments in new ways that I'd never seen before. The author contends that too often the commandments are decoupled from their prologue in Exodus 20:1-2. They thus become merely a set of abstract ethical principles, neither Jewish nor Christian. The prologue is essential for it "reminded Israel of her gracious redemption and directed her to the coming redemption of Christ. . . . Divorced from the prologue, the Ten Commandments are disconnected from their historical (the Law delivered at Sinai), covenantal (the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant), and redemptive contexts (the deliverance from Egypt)." (p. 15)

With the prologue in place we can better see the ten commandments in these three complementary contexts. I'll be sharing some excerpts from the chapters on specific commandments over the next days or weeks, but I hope you'll check out for yourself Fesko's Christ-centered treatment.

You can listen to the author interviewed about the book here.

Whit Stillman on WNYC

For someone who's made only three films—the last one coming 10 years ago—writer/director Whit Stillman still generates a lot of discussion. I've never actually seen his last film (The Last Days of Disco) because it hasn't been easily available on home video for years. Thanks to Criterion that's now changed. Stillman was recently a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show talking about the revival of interest in Last Days.



This isn't the first time Stillman and his movies have been featured on Friday is for film. See here and here.

White Horse Inn has a new website

Click on over!

A Baptist and a Presbyterian walk into a recording studio . . .

Mark Dever interviews D.G. Hart

Don't leave out the preface...

to the ten commandments.

@ Daily Confession

While we're on the subject check out this week's episode of Christ the Center with special guest John Fesko author of a new book on the ten commandments -- The Rule of Love. Fesko and company discuss the role of the law in redemptive history and the Christian life. I found it an interesting and helpful discussion of a complex and often confusing topic as witnessed by the wide array of opinions within the church.

What's the opposite of urban sprawl?

NPR's Morning Edition ran an interesting story today on the incredible shrinking American city. The piece focused on Flint, Michigan where more than one-third of the houses are abandoned. Among the more creative responses to the problem? Community gardens where abandoned houses once stood.

Click here to listen

John Calvin the preacher

Calvin preached with only an open Greek or Hebrew Bible in front of him. No notes. No manuscript. He did this at the rate of 20 sermons a month. Astounding! Learn more about Calvin as servant of the Word of God on this week's Christ the Center podcast. I discovered this program a couple of months ago and have really enjoyed it. It's kind of like NPR for Reformed Presbyterian types (note the jazzy piano intro).

In all seriousness, speaking of preaching, if you think of it pray for me this Sunday as I'll be preaching at our 8:30 service. I most definitely will be using a manuscript.

How does a Calvinist preach John 3:16?

Answer: the same way an Arminian would preach it. As a glorious statement of God's love for humanity and the free offer of the gospel to every man, woman, boy, and girl.

But the Calvinist doesn't ignore the rest of the book of John, and what it teaches about an even greater love than the love of John 3:16--an electing love that's often rendered as steadfast love in the Hebrew Scriptures. The kind of love that chose, or elected, Israel when she was the least of the nations, and that elects many to eternal life apart from any merit in the ones chosen.

The Calvinist recognizes that God's Son didn't come to a neutral world full of moral free agents in which some would decide for Jesus and some wouldn't. But he came to a world of people condemned already--lovers of darkness and haters of light--who would require nothing less than a supernatural new birth to believe in him. A birth over which we have no more control than we had over our natural birth. It's all there in John.

"In the rest of the Gospel of John here’s the surprising discovery for most American Christians. The relationship between being a sheep of Christ--and believing on Christ--is not that we believe in order to become a sheep, but that God makes us a sheep so that we can believe. That surprises people. Because thousands teach against it to the great detriment of the church." (John Piper)

Not convinced? Have you been listening to Piper's recent sermons on John 3:16? I dare you to listen.

God So Loved the World, Part 1

God So Loved the World, Part 2