cooling off
from Jonathan Dodson, Tim Chester’s 4 G’s:
In You Can Change, Tim Chester helpfully points us to four basic promises. The 4 Gs:
1. God is great – so we don’t have to be in control
2. God is glorious – so we don’t have to fear others
3. God is good – so we don’t have to look elsewhere
4. God is gracious – so we don’t have to prove ourselves
These 4Gs are helpful summaries of God’s various promises, so better yet, find the promises in your Bible that back them up. Find truths to fight lies and start talking back to your idols. Start mortifying your sin! As you do, you’ll find that train of graces that attends God’s promises. You’ll find that God is glorious, good, gracious and great! You’ll find middle-of-the-road repentance.
Go read Jonathan’s full post to find out what he means by “middle-of-the-road repentance.”
cool stuff (I don’t know why vimeo videos won’t embed for me. either I am doing it wrong or wordpress doesn’t support it, but click through the link before or the one after to see it.)
Ben Rector – Free from TK McKamy on Vimeo.
In Britain, an employment tribunal has officially ruled environmentalism to be a religious belief justifying protection by employment laws.
Senior executive Tim Nicholson claimed he was unfairly dismissed by a property investment company because his views on the environment conflicted with other managers’ “contempt for the need to cut carbon emissions”.
In the first case of its kind, an employment tribunal decided that Nicholson, 41, had views amounting to a “philosophical belief in climate change”, allowing him the same legal protection against discrimination as religious beliefs.
there you have it. and check this out, his beliefs affect his behavior choices:
“[My belief] affects how I live my life including my choice of home, how I travel, what I buy, what I eat and drink, what I do with my waste, and my hopes and fears,” he said. “For example, I no longer travel by plane, I have eco-renovated my home, I compost my food waste and encourage others to reduce their carbon emissions.”
Judge David Sneath said at the employment tribunal: “[Nicholson] has certain views about climate change and acts upon those views in the way in which he leads his life. In my judgment his belief goes beyond a mere opinion.”
HT to Mark Steyn
Here is Dolan Cummings on Calvinism here in Calvin’s 500th year. Its effect on Scotland and modern manifestations. It doesn’t appear that Mr. Cummings is a Christ follower which makes his bit on Mark Driscoll especially interesting.
One of the most successful and dynamic emerging churches in the US today is Mars Hill in Seattle, founded by pastor Mark Driscoll, who stands firmly in the reformed tradition. As he explains in his book Confessions of a Reformission Rev, ‘If you don’t know what that means, the gist is that people suck and God saves us from ourselves’ (5). Driscoll is a twenty-first century Calvinist. Seattle is far from being a traditional bastion of the Christian right, however, so the success of Mars Hill is significant. Driscoll started the church in his own home in 1996, but has since built it up into a multi-campus megachurch with a congregation of thousands, drawn in large part from Seattle’s grungy art and music scene, and now including many young and not-so-young families. Driscoll describes the church as culturally liberal and theologically conservative, and there seems to be an appetite for that.
Driscoll has written a series of books branded ‘A book you’ll actually read’, each designed to be read in an hour, but he could not be accused of dumbing down or softening the message. He begins his book on church leadership by warning the reader, ‘You will not read a bunch of cute stories about bunny rabbits giving their lives to Jesus and such, because I do not want to waste any of my words or any of your time’ (6). That book is an attempt to explain the idea of religious authority to a generation more used to thinking of Jesus as a hippy than an authority figure, and likely to be uncomfortable with the idea. Meanwhile his book on ‘Who is God?’ explains, ‘Because there is both a Lawgiver and Law, we are able to rise above the incessant postmodern pluralism that says there is no Law but only cultural perspective on morality’ (7).
Driscoll offers a sense of moral surety in a society more often characterised by prevarication and obfuscation. More than that, his church offers moral leadership to a generation used to being flattered by authority figures. While schools and even other churches seek to boost self-esteem by telling kids they can achieve whatever they want (or conversely that they should be happy not to achieve anything), Driscoll’s Calvinism tells them what they already know: deep down they’re not so great, and that’s not good enough. In fact it’s a message that appeals to all ages, because whatever you achieve, it never stops being true.
from Joe Carter at First Things blog who adds:
For the past twenty years the seeker-sensitive model—making church more appealing to the un-churched—has been the dominant approach to church growth in evangelicalism. But as Mars Hill and other Calvinistic churches are proving, the old “You’re a sinner and need Jesus” can be quite effective too.
Jennifer Rubin points to an important Wall Street Journal editorial on who Van Jones was and his important standing in the leftist community in this country.
the editorial makes two points very well and is well worth a read in its entirety.
1. that Van Jones was well known and celebrated in the far left precincts of this country.
However, Mr. Jones wasn’t some unknown crazy who insinuated himself with the Obama crowd under false pretenses. He has been a leading young light of the left-wing political movement for many years. His 2008 book—”The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems”—includes a foreword from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and was praised across the liberal establishment.
Mr. Jones was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, which was established, funded and celebrated as the new intellectual vanguard of the Democratic Party. The center’s president is John Podesta, who was co-chair of Mr. Obama’s transition team and thus played a major role in recommending appointees throughout the Administration. The ascent of Mr. Jones within the liberal intelligentsia shows how much the Democratic Party has moved left since its “New Democrat” triangulation of the Clinton years.
and 2. that the President who portrayed himself as a moderate during the campaign is actually of a piece with the far left precincts where Van Jones was celebrated.
As a candidate, Barack Obama was at pains to offer himself as a man of moderate policies, and especially of moderate temperament. He said he would listen to both the right and left, choosing the best of each depending on “what works.” He sold himself as a center-left pragmatist. When his radical associations—Reverend Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers—came to light, Candidate Obama promptly disavowed them. Now comes Mr. Jones, with a long trail of extreme comments and left-wing organizing, who nonetheless became the White House adviser for “green jobs.” This weekend he too was thrown under the bus.
…..
Mr. Jones’s incendiary comments about Republicans and his now famous association with a statement blaming the U.S. for 9/11 had to have been known in some White House precincts. He was praised and sponsored by Valerie Jarrett, who is one of the two or three most powerful White House aides and is a long-time personal friend of the President.Our guess is that Mr. Jones landed in the White House precisely because his job didn’t require Senate confirmation, which would have subjected him to more scrutiny. This is also no doubt a reason that Mr. Obama has consolidated so much of his Administration’s governing authority inside the White House under various “czars.” Mr. Jones was poised to play a prominent role in disbursing tens of billions of dollars of stimulus money. It was the ideal perch from which he could keep funding the left-wing networks from which he sprang, this time with taxpayer money.
Here from Justin Taylor is another reminder of the importance of an essentially literal approach to Bible translation. Quoting Robert Alter:
My notion of effective translation of the Bible involves a high degree of literalism–within the limits of reasonably acceptable literary English–both in regard to representing the word choice and the word order of the Hebrew. . . . [T]he precedent of the King James Version has played a decisive and constructive role in directing readers of English to a rather literal experience of the Bible, and . . . this precedence can be ignored only at considerable cost, as nearly all the English versions of the Bible done in recent decades show.
Amy Holmes is wondering if there is a price for men to pay in their pursuit of perpetual adolescence. Inher post on The Corner she says about the death of DJ AM [Adam Goldstein]:
But consider: He died a 36-year-old millionaire with luxury homes on both coasts. No wife. No children. The quintessential boy-man. He lived in the perpetual late-night swim of celebrity culture. The Philadelphia native successfully engineered his life to bankroll his high-flying courtships of rich, aimless celebutantes. He was written up endlessly for his cleverness in doing so, including in that high tabloid of celebrity culture, Vanity Fair. And it appears he may have ended his life last week by choice.
Is it a stretch to say that these pursuits of modern boy-manhood failed him? That male adulthood without responsibility in the traditional sense is disorienting, anchorless, and potentially fatal?
Much ink has been spilled on the damage done to the women who are embraced and then rejected by these perpetual adolescents. But what about the perpetual adolescents themselves? Does the embrace of modern boy-manhood wither, mislead, and ultimately destroy them too?
Seems to me like Amy is on to something. What do you think?
Shared via AddThis
iMonk quotes Scot McKnight’s breakdown of which evangelical tribes prefer which translation of the Bible. Interesting stuff. I don’t know if he meant for it to be amusing, but it kind of is that too.
Scott Mcknight recently came right out and said it: We do translations by tribes:
“NRSV for liberals and Shane Claiborne lovers;
ESV for Reformed complementarian Baptists;
HCSB for LifeWay store buying Southern Baptists;
NIV for complementarian evangelicals;
TNIV for egalitarians;
NASB for those who want straight Bible, forget the English;
NLT for generic brand evangelicals;
Amplified for folks who have no idea what translation is but know that if you try enough words one of them will hit pay dirt;
NKJV and KJV for Byzantine manuscript-tree huggers;
The Message for evangelicals looking for a breath of fresh air and seeker sensitive, never-read-a-commentary evangelists who find Peterson’s prose so catchy.”
I like and use the ESV mainly, but very much like and use the NIV and the HCSB as well.
Never have liked or used the NASB very much. I tried to, but it only gets looked at on hard verses where I want another perspective on the text.
neutral on KJV and NKJV. grew up with them, have verses memorized in KJV and enjoy quoting it, but really don’t use it much.
I actively dislike the NLT, the TNIV and the Message.
before the “Green Jobs Czar” who resigned in the middle of the night on Saturday/Sunday of Labor Day weekend disappears into the memory hole, take a moment to consider that his hiring was not accidental. His radical views did not “slip past” the White House vetters.
Here is Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett talking about Van Jones at the netroots conference recently:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud_yNFnfrSI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
they had been following his wonderful career since he began in Oakland. No way to claim surprise now, is there?
The point is that Van Jones’ views fit in very nicely thank you at this White House. No one apparently had a second thought about hiring him.
here is another video celebrating the greatness that is Van Jones.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEtyn_Ps-R0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
If you don’t know anything about Van Jones, then check out this page for a quick start
interview with Matt Redman about the modern church being over-mothered and under-fathered.
HT to Timmy Brister
See also, God is not your girlfriend
Trevin Wax has the same problem with The Shack that I do. I really like his approach to the “it’s just fiction” argument.
Check this out:
Let’s say you meet an author who wants to use your grandparents as the main characters in a novel. The author tells you that the narrative will be fictional, but that your grandparents will have the starring roles. Sounds great!you think.
But when the manuscript arrives in your hands, you discover that the story does not accurately represent the personalities of your grandparents. The relationship between them is all wrong too. Grandma berates Grandpa. Early on, they run off and elope (which is totally out of character). At one point, they contemplate divorce.
When you complain, the author responds, “Remember? I told you it would be fictional.”
“Yes,” you say, somewhat exasperated, “I knew the story would be fictional, but I thought you would get my grandparents right. The grandparents in your story aren’t anything like my grandparents.”
“Who cares?” the author responds. “It’s a work of fiction.”
“Well, I care,” you say, “because people will put down this book thinking that my grandparents were like the way you portrayed them.”
My biggest problem with The Shack is its portrayal of God. I understand that the book is a work of fiction, not a theological treatise, and therefore should be treated as fiction. But the main characters are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are actual Persons. To portray God in a manner inconsistent with his revelation to us in Scripture (and primarily in Jesus) is to misrepresent living Persons.
When people put down The Shack, they will not have a better understanding of the Trinity (despite the glowing blurbs on the back cover). They will probably have a more distorted view of God in three Persons.
What he says nicely is exactly what I said not nearly as graciously.
I am afraid that if someone reads the Shack and falls in love with Papa, then all they have fallen in love with is a fictional African American woman who likes to cook and give hugs. They have not been led to God. They have not fallen in love with the biblical Jesus.
They have instead been distracted by an anthropomorphic three headed idol created by Wm. Paul Young.
Do not read The Shack and think that you have gained insight into the Trinity as it is portrayed in Scripture.
Trevin goes on to point out some other problems with the book as well as things it does well. Definitely worth a read.
HT to Justin Taylor.
portrait from last Sunday’s wedding
ninth grade football. nephew Joshua (be strong and courageous) playing linebacker for Midway Panthers.
twin brother Nathan (thou art the man) sidelined with an ACL tear.
the lovely and gracious Congressman Pete Stark takes questions on economics and the deficit from Jan Helfeld. Hilarity ensues. Highly recommended viewing for congressional arrogance in action. the best part is at the very end so stick with it through the cross talk. Content warning for an inappropriate four letter vulgarity from the Congressman as he completely loses his cool
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjbPZAMked0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
HT to Jonah Goldberg who helpfully explains that this will hurt your brain.
The National Health Service in Britain is being criticized by “palliative care experts” (doctors who care for terminally ill patients) because of prematurely pushing patients out the door by withholding medicine and intravenous fluids while drugging them up.
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.
Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.
But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.
As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.
“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.
“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients.”
…..
The scheme, called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), was designed to reduce patient suffering in their final hours.
….
It has been gradually adopted nationwide and more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England currently use the system.
…
Dr Hargreaves said that this depended, however, on constant assessment of a patient’s condition.He added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.
He said: “I have been practising palliative medicine for more than 20 years and I am getting more concerned about this “death pathway” that is coming in.
“It is supposed to let people die with dignity but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Patients who are allowed to become dehydrated and then become confused can be wrongly put on this pathway.”
He added: “What they are trying to do is stop people being overtreated as they are dying.
“It is a very laudable idea. But the concern is that it is tick box medicine that stops people thinking.”
He said that he had personally taken patients off the pathway who went on to live for “significant” amounts of time and warned that many doctors were not checking the progress of patients enough to notice improvement in their condition.
Prof Millard said that it was “worrying” that patients were being “terminally” sedated, using syringe drivers, which continually empty their contents into a patient over the course of 24 hours.
Now why in the world would Sarah Palin be concerned about “end of life counseling” panels under Obamacare becoming vehicles for rationing care and prescribing pain killers to ease passage? Silly Sarah.
When Government gets involved, this is the result. “Tickbox medicine that stops thinking.” It is inevitable. When the incentive is to cut costs, then errors in judgment will almost always be against continuing care.
Is this what we need to do to our health care system in this country? Really?
The Resurgence Blog is and has been in the blogroll. I encourage you to check it regularly. Lots of good articles and series by Acts 29 church planters all over the country.
Recently, Mark Driscoll announced that he and his lovely wife were coming to Hill Country Bible Church here in Austin to talk at a two day conference about dating marriage and sex.
here is the announcement:
On October 2–3, my high school sweetheart and I will be teaching in Austin, Texas, for the Song of Solomon Bible Conference at Hill Country Bible Church. Our topics will be dating, marriage, and sex, in that order.
I have had the pleasure of speaking at a few of the Song of Solomon Conferences around the country, but this will be the first one where Grace joins me. I will be preaching Friday night and Saturday morning. Everyone in attendance will be welcome to send in anonymous questions via text message, and Grace will join me on stage to help answer them. The price is super cheap, ranging from $25 for students and soldiers, to $35 for those who register by 9/21, and $45 for those who decide to join us at the last minute. Additional discounts for groups of 10 or more can be arranged by calling 800-729-0815. Complete information can be found here.
We truly are looking forward to coming out, meeting lots of folks, and seeing the Holy Spirit do a gracious work in the lives of many people. So, I’ve polished my boots and will see you in one of the world’s greatest nations, Texas.
and here is the conference page with more information and registration information.
and here is a video from Mark making the announcement
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hteXaD4ZqbE&hl=en&fs=1&]
I put a link in the blogroll to Desiring God Blog over on the right. I have it bookmarked in Safari, but Tim N. pointed out that it wasn’t in the blogroll, so there it is.
here is a recent video that Abraham Piper posted of his dad talking about the protestant work ethic.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD1Z1iJhhtU&hl=en&fs=1&]
and here is one from a couple of days ago, where John Piper talks about whether someone led astray by the prosperity gospel can be a true believer.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoXgaZ19NPw&hl=en&fs=1&]
Timmy Brister posted this video “Choosing Thomas” and like he says it is worth the next ten minutes of your time.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToNWquoXqJI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
somewhat related, Randy Alcorn talks here about the absolute necessity for Christians to have a well developed theology of suffering to avoid falling into serious error when something like the events in the video above come into our lives.
I wrote If God Is Good because the question of suffering and evil is the most commonly raised and perplexing problem there is. It’s unusual to have serious prolonged interactions about believing in God, with either believers or unbelievers, without them raising it.
I am also deeply concerned with how radically unbiblical viewpoints are being assimilated into the thinking of evangelical Christians. In If God Is Good, I wrote four chapters critiquing the attempts of misguided theologians to resolve the problem of evil by minimizing the divine attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, or love.
….
I also wanted to address the issue of mystery and faith, and our need to trust God even when we can’t see his purposes. That used to be a central part of faith, but somehow it seems more difficult for modern Christians. I argue that while the nature of faith is to trust God for what we do not see, we may base our trust in him on many things we have seen—His Word, His creation, and how he has shown himself in others in our lives and throughout history. I point out that if you write down the worst things that have ever happened to you and then write down the best things, there is often, especially when sufficient time has passed, a shocking overlap of the lists, confirming the workings of God’s sovereign grace.
first from Iain Murray a nice economic fisking of a you tube government health care video
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPq6_7AFsp4&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
and next an uplifting musical piece from allahpundit
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO2eh6f5Go0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
the inability to reconsider (or even see) built in assumptions is something that is very interesting to me about people. @texaszman pointed to this interesting article on twitter this morning.
check out this bit here:
My theory—call it the “Oakley effect”—is that really smart people often don’t know how to accept and react constructively to criticism. (A neuroscientist might say they “have underdeveloped neurocircuitry for integrating negatively valenced stimuli.”) This is because smart people are whizzes at problems that only need one person to figure out. Indeed, people are evaluated from kindergarten through college prep SATs on the basis of such “single solver” problems. If you are often or nearly always right with these kinds of problems, your increased confidence in your own abilities would be accompanied by an inadvertent decrease in your capacity to deal with criticism. After all, your experience would have shown that your critics were usually wrong.
But most large-scale societal issues are not single solver problems. They are so richly complex that no single person can faultlessly teach him or herself all the key concepts, which are often both contradictory and important. Yes, smart people have an advantage in dealing with such problems, because they’ve got natural brain-power that allows them to hold many factors in mind at once, bringing formidable problem-solving skills to bear. But smart people have a natural disadvantage, too: they’re not used to changing their thinking in response to criticism when they get things wrong.
In fact, natural smarties—the intellectual elite—often don’t seem to learn the art of soliciting the criticism necessary to grasp the core issues of a complex problem, and then making vital adaptations as a result. Instead, they fall in naturally with people who admire, rather than are critical, of their thinking. This further strengthens their conviction they are right even as it distances them from people of very different backgrounds who grasp very different, but no less crucial aspects of complex problems. That’s why the intellectual elite is often branded by those from other groups as out of touch.
I think the tendency to fall in with people who agree with us and admire our thinking is common to all humans.
Having our assumptions/worldview challenged is an unpleasant experience. If we really know/like/admire/respect the challenger, we will put up with it a few times, but eventually we will stay out of range of the challenge. If we don’t know/like/admire/respect the challenger then he or she will get one unsuccessful crack at getting us to reexamine our worldview.
It is a rare person who can stand getting their assumptions challenged on a regular basis. It is an even rarer person who can even bear the thought of recalibrating their assumptions/worldview in light of new evidence. It is an exceedingly rare person who can change their way of thinking about even the smallest of things.
what would the application be for a person who wants to persuade people to take a particular course of action or support a particular idea?
does it matter if the course of action or idea is counterintuitive?
does it matter if the course of action or idea is extremely unpopular?
does it matter if following the course of action or supporting the idea will lead to personal discomfort or danger to the follower and their family?
Obviously, something supernatural would have to be at work for anyone to choose to follow that course of action or support that idea, wouldn’t it?
the daughter of a good friend of ours was married yesterday.
it was an outdoor wedding at Kindred Oaks in Leander/Georgetown/way north area. It was lovely and fun. the weather cooperated in a big way and it wasn’t too hot.
here is Matt Chandler talking about the necessity of the centrality of the Gospel and the danger when it is assumed.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzTm3W2Ai7s&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
Love that last line.
“But you don’t put God in your debt. I know this because really really faithful men in the Scripture have it go really really bad for them.”
hat tip to Timmy Brister.
Andrew Naselli takes a long look at the question of free will over here. Fascinating stuff. take some time this weekend to explore it.
Here is the introduction to get you started:
Non-Christians and Christians alike often give the same answer to difficult questions like these: Why did God allow sin in the first place? Why does God save some people and not others? Why does God send people to hell? Why can living like a Christian be so frustrating? The immediate solution often suggested is simple: “free will.” To many people, it’s a satisfying answer: “Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, God does x because he has to preserve my free will. Yeah, OK. Next question.” I’d like to suggest that we re-think this important issue.
The title of this short essay is a question: “Do We Have a Free Will?” That question may be jarring to you because it asks if something exists that most people assume exists. My short answer to that question is that it depends on what you mean by “free.” The longer answer is the rest of this essay.
ok and just because I can’t let it go, here is another section to tease you over there for all of it.
Is libertarian free will the reason for the origin of sin?
Short answer: No.
When addressing this hugely difficult question, it is helpful to consider the following:
1. God is not the author or agent of evil, and he is not culpable for evil.
2. Satan is not God’s equal opposite (i.e., a God-versus-Satan dualism).
3. God, who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will, ordained that sin would enter his universe. (See the short essay in this series entitled “How Could a Good God Allow Suffering and Evil?”) God sovereignly works through secondary causes (such as humans) such that he is not culpable for evil but the secondary causes are.
4. Satan and then Adam and Eve sinned because they wanted to sin, and they are morally responsible to God for it. (The ability of humans to sin has four historical stages. First, Adam and Eve were initially able to sin. Second, after their fall, all unregenerate humans [i.e., those who are spiritually dead] are not able not to sin. Third, regenerate humans [i.e., those whom God has given spiritual life] are able not to sin. Fourth, glorified regenerate humans are not able to sin.)
5. Tension remains because compatibilists cannot explain exactly how God can ordain all things without being the author or agent of evil. It is at places like that that your head will start spinning if you try to put all the puzzle pieces together (we don’t have all the pieces!). Rather than deny explicit statements of Scripture that support compatibilism, a far better option is to acknowledge that this is a mystery that we finite and fallen humans simply cannot comprehend exhaustively.
6. There is no easy answer to explaining why God ordained the origin of sin in the first place. John Piper offers a helpful pastoral perspective in Spectacular Sins and Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008). (This is available online for free as a PDF: http://www.desiringgod.org/media/pdf/books_bss/bss.pdf. See esp. pp. 39-64.) Why doesn’t God simply wipe out Satan? Piper concludes, “The ultimate answer . . . is that ‘all things were created through [Christ] and for [Christ]’ (Col. 1:16). God foresaw all that Satan would do if he created Satan and permitted him to rebel. In choosing to create him, he was choosing to fold all of that evil into his purpose for creation. That purpose for creation was the glory of his Son. All things, including Satan and all his followers, were created with this in view” (p. 48).
emphasis added.
I read Spectacular Sins earlier this year. it was really very good indeed.
Now it is on sale for 5.00
Do yourself a favor, and if this stuff interests you, spend five dollars on Spectacular Sins and read it too. Then you will see why I was so offended by Wm Paul Young on page 165 of The Shack.
Hat tip to Challies who says this one is not for skimming so set aside a few minutes to read it.
afternoon bokeh
Black and White sunstar
Black and White dandelion
Matt Chandler gives the top ten reasons he selected to teach through the book of Philippians for a small group video Bible study. I especially liked reasons 1, 2 and 9 below, but go check out the whole list.
How the church began. Acts 16: Lydia is a wealthy Asian (Thyatira); the slave girl is an oppressed Greek, and the jailer was a middle class Roman. All were transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. I love the diversity of that cast. The book teaches that the gospel advances regardless of circumstance (Phil. 1:12-18). In an age where it is not uncommon to hear that you can put God into your debt by behaving, I thought this was extremely important. ……
It gave me a chance to remind everyone that Philippians 4:13 isn’t about playing sports, making the team, or being successful in business.
