Jesus Christ vs. American Christianity

Posted on March 4, 2012 | Leave a comment

“Christ calls men to carry a cross; we call them to have fun in His name. He calls them to forsake the world; we assure them that if they but accept Jesus the world is their oyster. He calls them to suffer; we call them to enjoy all the bourgeois comforts modern civilization affords…He calls them to holiness; we call them to a cheap and tawdry happiness that would have been rejected with scorn by the least of the Stoic philosophers.” A.W. Tozer

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Posted in Holiness

Why We Hate Fertility

Posted on February 28, 2012 | 2 Comments

“Although it is very easy to marry a wife, it is very difficult to support her along with the children and the household. Accordingly, no one notices this faith of Jacob. Indeed, many hate fertility in a wife for the sole reason that the offspring must be supported and brought up. For this is what they commonly say: ‘Why should I marry a wife when I am a pauper and a beggar? I would rather bear the burden of poverty alone and not load myself with misery and want.’ But this blame is unjustly fastened on marriage and fruitfulness. Indeed, you are indicting your unbelief by distrusting God’s goodness, and you are bringing greater misery upon yourself by disparaging God’s blessing. For if you had trust in God’s grace and promises, you would undoubtedly be supported. But because you do not hope in the Lord, you will never prosper.” Martin Luther, The Sermons of Martin Luther

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This Week in Sexuality

Posted on January 21, 2012 | Leave a comment

20120121-173425.jpgThis Saturday marks the starts of my “This Week in Sexuality” weekly feature. Every Saturday I will spotlight the “sexuality” stories I came across in the previous seven days.

Real Marriage
 
The biggest sexuality story hands down has been the release of Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage. The book has barely been out two weeks and it already has just shy of an hundred reviews on Amazon. Egalatarians hate the book because Driscoll is a complementarian and believes in “traditional” marriage. No shocker there. However, the book is even getting mixed reviews from people that are in basic theological alignment with the Seattle pastor. A lot of the controversey stems from the fact that the book has a seemingly inordinate amount of its content dedicated sexual intercourse and various sex acts. I have yet to read the book but I do recall Driscoll’s teaching on the Song of Solomon being fairly messed up. I do eventually plan to pick up since it will be a significant influence on Christians.
 
Here are some of the better reviews I came across:
  • Deny Burk has lengthy review here.
  • Tim Challies has a short review here.
  • Doug Wilson did a mutli-parter: pt. 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5.
Sidenote: The best book I’ve read on marriage so far is Doug Wilson’s Reforming Marriage. I’d recommend Ed Wheat’s Intended for Pleasure if you are looking for something that focuses on the sex act.
 
Babies are Good
 
Mark Oppenheimer’s latest article in the New York Times on Evangelicals shifting their views regarding contraception is worth checking. Here is a short quote:
“Since then, however, there has been a shift in evangelical thinking about contraception, and therefore about big families. You can see it in the Duggar family, the enthusiastic Santorum supporters who star on the reality television show “19 Kids & Counting.” You can read about it in books like “Quiverfull,” Kathryn Joyce’s 2009 account of Christians who forgo contraception to add children to the Lord’s army. And you can hear it in the teachings of theologians like Russell D. Moore, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary dean who warns evangelicals to be skeptical of the ‘contraceptive culture.’”

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Posted in Abortion, Parenting

Love and War

Posted on January 19, 2012 | Leave a comment

“The Bible is a cosmic love story, to be sure. At the end of The Book, Christ “gets the girl”–the bridal city that He desires. But history is also a war story. In it God proves Himself the best, the only one worthy to reign, by crushing all rivals and enemies in a just and righteous wrath.” William E.Mouser, The Story of Sex in Scripture pg. 21

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Posted in Biblical Sexuality

John Calvin on Abortion

Posted on January 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

The Reformers spoke up for the unborn. Will you?

“The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being and it is a most monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man’s house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light” John Calvin, Commentarius in Exodum, 21,2

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Posted in Abortion

Sex is Not Safe

Posted on November 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

“As [Wendell Berry] writes in the splendid essay, “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community”: “Sex was never safe, and it is less safe now than it has been.” Community customs, arrangements, and controls had existed “in part, to reduce the volatility and the danger of sex.” These controls would preserve its energy, its beauty, and its pleasure” so that the sexual act would in turn bond husbands to wives, “parents to children, families to community, [and] the community to nature.” Whenever sex becomes “autonomous,” freed from communal restraints, and valued solely for its own sake, it also becomes “frivolous” and “destructive–even of itself.”

“Rather than freedom the disintegration of the household through “sexual liberation” has produced a novel form of bondage. The new overlords, Mr. Berry says, are the sexual specialists–sex clinicians and pornographers–”[b]oth of whom subsist on the increasing possibility of sex between people who neither know or care about each other” and who also “subsist on our failure to see any purpose or virtue in sexual discipline.”

Allan Carlson. “Not Safe, Nor Private, Nor Free: Wendell Berry on Sexual Love and Procreation.” The Family in America. Sept-Oct 2007.

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Posted in Biblical Sexuality

The Pastor’s Wife

Posted on November 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

I cannot think of a more difficult position in life than that of a pastor’s wife.   Grace Driscoll, wife of Pastor Mark Driscoll, has written two excellent posts on being a ministry wife. She covers all the major issues and supplies some great solutions. You can read part one here and part two here.

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Posted in Femininity