Rockstanding

John Piper has an upcoming book on marriage that is based on a sermon series he did last year at Bethlehem Baptist Church. Based on what I’ve heard of those messages, it should be excellent. In one of his messages, Piper talks of the wonder of marriage:

Marriage is more wonderful than anyone on earth knows. And the reasons it is wonderful can only be learned from God’s special revelation and can only be cherished by the work of the Holy Spirit to enable us to behold and embrace the wonder. The reason we need the Spirit’s help is that the wonder of marriage is woven into the wonder of the gospel of the cross of Christ, and the message of the cross is foolishness to the natural man, and so the meaning of marriage is foolishness to the natural man (1 Corinthians 2:14).

And because of that thinking, we are confused about what is intended by marriage. He explains in the following excerpt from that message:

AMAZING GRACE AT AMAZON: Amazon.com has put the 2007 theatrical release of “Amazing Grace” on sale. It was a great movie and a definitely worth checking out.

WHY STUDY CHURCH HISTORY? Tim Challies, author of The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment and one of the most disciplined bloggers out there, has come up with seven reasons why you should study church history.

WHAT BIBLICAL MANLINESS LOOKS LIKE: Phil Johnson over at Pyromaniacs lays it on the line when it comes to being a man:

Biblical manliness is about authentic character. It’s not about bravado, and it’s not about boyishness. Going out into the woods with a bunch of other men, putting on war paint, making animal noises, telling scary stories around a campfire, and then working up a good cry might be good, visceral fun and all, but that has nothing to do with the biblical idea of manliness.

Read the rest here.

WORSHIPING SUMMER: John Piper offers some good counsel about how not to let the pleasures of summer turn you from worshiping God instead:

Don’t let summer make your soul shrivel. God made summer as a foretaste of heaven, not a substitute. If the mailman brings you a love letter from your fiancé, don’t fall in love with the mailman. That’s what summer is: God’s messenger with a sun-soaked, tree-green, flower-blooming, lake-glistening letter of love to show us what he is planning for us in the age to come—“things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man, God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Don’t fall in love with the video preview, and find yourself unable to love the coming reality.

From an ad in Salvo magazine:

Does your son act too much like a little boy?
Is he fidgety and rambunctious?
Does he have trouble listening or have a puerile sense of humor?
Is he easily distracted?
Does he have a propensity to get dirty?
Does he enjoy playing with violent toys?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then it might be time to medicate your son. Even if he doesn’t have ADD or ADHD, you’ll most certainly agree that he’s annoying.

Well, now you can curb the boyish tendencies in your son and make him almost comatose in the process. E-MASQL8 Plus has been clinically proven to remove in boys all signs of unwanted boyishness. You’ll never have to deal with snips, snails, or puppy-dog tails again.

E-MASQ8 Plus: A Cure for the Common Boy

Also see, in that same issue, this article entitled “Girly Men: The Media’s Attack on Masculinity.”

HT: Between Two Worlds and Wittingshire

As if the book wasn’t good enough, Alex and Brett Harris are now providing a study guide (for free!):

If you’re like us, talking with others about what you’re reading helps you decide what you think and how to respond to what a book is saying. This chapter-by-chapter study guide is intended to help you do just that.

Use it for personal study, if you wish, but we think it works best in a group. And the best group is one where you’re surrounded by others who care about the same things you do and are ready to put truth into action.

Don’t feel you have to process every question. It’s not a test, and as often as not, there’s no one right answer. Also, don’t let our questions limit what you ask or where you go. Ask God to direct your thoughts and decisions. And ask Him for courage — lots of it. Because big ideas are weak ideas if we’re not willing to let them shape how we think and live.

So use this study guide to zero in on the ideas, choices, and actions that seem most promising and helpful to you and your friends. Then expect great things to happen in your lives as you do hard things for the glory of God!

Your Fellow Rebelutionaries,

Alex and Brett

Both my son and daughter are reading through it and I look forward to going through the study guide with them. Thanks, Alex and Brett, for a great book and resource. Keep the mission!

Wesley J. Smith at Secondhand Smoke points to another case of arrogance in the media:

The Orlando Sentinel continually describes Terri Schiavo’s medical condition as “brain dead.” This is clearly wrong. Brain dead is a popular term for death by neurological criteria and it means that the whole brain and every constituent part has ceased to function as a brain. Thus, there are no reflexes, the body can’t breathe without support, etc.

Terri Schiavo was clearly not brain dead. She breathed on her own. She swallowed her own saliva. She had sleep and wake cycles, she moved her body–none of which can be done by a brain dead body.

But the Orlando Sentinel doesn’t care. When Bobby Schindler complained that their description of his sister was factually inaccurate, they told him to go eat a fig.

This was the letter the Orlando Sentinel sent to Bobby Schindler in response:

Dear Mr. Schindler:

I reviewed your complaint with our state editor, Bob Shaw. We’ve considered the arguments you made in our phone conversation, but we’ve consistently used the term “brain-dead” in connection with the Terry Schiavo case, and we see it as a valid brief description. I appreciate your calling us about it and letting us know your point of view.

Best regards,

Dana Eagles
Orlando Sentinel

But this wasn’t a “point of view” issue, it was about what is fact and what the paper was reporting. That kind of response — “point of view” — is media speak for “you can write to us all you want but we don’t care what you think and it won’t change anything we do.” It was only after a letter from Florida Attorney General David Gibbs requesting a correction that the paper admitted its mistake and printed a correction:

Correction: Because of an editing error, an article about the resignation of Florida Supreme Court Justice Kenneth B. Bell misstated the medical condition of Terri Schiavo, a Pinellas County woman who died in 2005 after the removal of her feeding tube. Schiavo, whose case was considered by the court, was severely brain-damaged but was not brain-dead.

That correction covers the particular story it was attached to, but it doesn’t go anywhere near addressing what was expressed in the letter from the Sentinel to Schindler that “we’ve consistently used “brain-dead” in connection with the Terry Schiavo case.” That’s a weak correction.

The media likes to throw out opinion polls to show how much our country hates the current president. Those are low numbers. But do you know the media is even lower in the public’s opinion than the much-criticized president and even Congress?

The point is not that we should trust all public opinion polls. After all, public opinion is fickle and there are a lot of opinions floating around out there. Rather, the point is is that we need to be discerning and critical-thinking about what is being reported. Major news organizations can do good work, but not just because they are “major news organizations.” That is just lazy thinking, and not worth putting our trust in.

UPDATE: The headline has now been corrected to what I intended it say. Everyone needs an editor!

Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. — I Peter 2:17

How should Christians who honor the life of the unborn respond if pro-choice Barack Obama is elected president of the United States? John Piper gives eight ways to honor the president, as the verse above says we must:

1. Humbling Ourselves

We will honor you, Mr. President, by humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God (1 Peter 5:6) and acknowledging that we are ourselves sinners and in need of mercy and forgiveness from God. We are not infallible. We are open to new light on this and every issue. We are not the final judge in this matter. God is. We stand before the cross of Christ on level ground with you, not above you, utterly dependent on mercy and seeking to live by the will of Christ.

2. Acknowledging God’s Image

We will honor you by acknowledging that you are a man, created in the image of God, and distinct among all the beings in the world (as it says in James 3:9). You are not a mere animal. You have the glorious potential, like all humans, of being a child of God (if you aren’t already) and shining like the sun in the kingdom of God forever and ever. We honor you as an utterly unique, human being created in the image and likeness of the living God with untold potential.

3. Acknowledging God’s Institution

We will honor you by acknowledging that government is God’s institution. He wills that there be leaders like presidents and governors. You are in power by God’s appointment and we honor that. In Romans 13:4 the Bible even calls you, “God’s servant for our good.” It grieves us that you do not intend to enact laws to protect the good of the unborn the most innocent, weak, and helpless group of Americans. But we have seen from Somalia that bad government is better than no government. The absence of some laws to protect some people is better than the absence of all laws to protect anybody. We honor your stabilizing role in this sense as a blessing from God.

4. Honoring Laws Not Conflicting with Christ’s Lordship

We will honor you by submitting to the laws of the state and the nation wherever they do not conflict with our higher allegiance to Christ the King of kings and Lord of lords. We will submit to the laws that take away

• our “right” to chose to go 75 miles an hour,

• our “right” to choose to keep our lights off when our windshield wipers are on,
• our “right” to choose to drive without a seat belt,
• our “right” to choose to fish without a license,
• our “right” to choose to make loud noises in the middle of the night,
• our “right” to choose to keep our kids out of schooling,
• our “right” to choose to send them to school without DPT shots,
• our “right” to choose to use leaded gas,
• our “right” to choose not to pay taxes,
• our “right” to choose to smoke on the other side of the restaurant, etc.

We submit to the right of government to limit our right to choose in hundreds of areas, especially when the good of others is at stake. We understand that governments exist to limit the right to choose and we submit to that.

1 Peter 2:13 says that we are to submit not for your sake but for the Lord’s sake. Verse 16 says that we are free in respect to you but slaves of God. We will submit not because you have power, but because our King commands it for the honor of his institution of civil government. Yet our submission is an honor to you because under God and from God you bear the authority to enforce the laws of the land.

5. Not Withdrawing into Isolation

We will honor you by not withdrawing into little communes of disengaged isolation from American culture. But according to 1 Peter 2:15, we will honor you by trying to do as much good as we possibly can for the unborn, and for unwanted children, and for women in distress, so that we will not be thought insolent or inconsistent in asking from you what we are not willing to do ourselves. We do this because the Bible says, “It is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men” (1 Peter 2:15).

6. Opposing with Non-Violence

We will honor you by opposing your position as long as we can with non-violence instead of violence, with reasoning instead of rocks, with rational passion instead of screaming, with honorable speech instead of obscenities, with forthright clarity of language instead of dodging the tough realities and tough words, with evidence instead of authority, and with scientific portrayals of life instead of authoritarian blackouts (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:2). We will honor you by a relentless effort to put truth, and not mere emotion, before you in the White House.

7. Expecting Straightforward Answers

And we will honor you by expecting from you straightforward answers to straightforward questions. We would not expect this from a con-man or a chimp. We expect it from an honorable man.

For example, are you willing to explain why a baby’s right not to be killed is less important than a woman’s right not to be pregnant?

Or are you willing to explain why most cities have laws forbidding cruelty to animals, but you oppose laws forbidding cruelty to human fetuses? Are they not at least living animals?

Or are you willing to explain why government is unwilling to take away the so-called right to abortion on demand even though it harms the unborn child; yet government is increasingly willing to take away the right to smoke, precisely because it harms innocent non-smokers, killing 3,000 non-smokers a year from cancer and as many as 40,000 non-smokers a year from other diseases?

And if you say that everything hangs on whether the fetus is a human child, are you willing to go before national television in the oval office and defend your support for the “Freedom of Choice Act” by holding in your hand a 21 week old fetus and explaining why this little one does not have the fundamental, moral, and constitutional right to life? Are you willing to say to parents in this church who lost a child at that age and held him in their hands, this being in your hands is not and was not a child with any rights of its own under God or under law?

Perhaps you have good answers to each of these questions. We will honor you by expecting you to defend your position forthrightly in the public eye. You have immense power as President of the United States. To wield it against the protection of the unborn without giving a public accounting in view of moral and scientific reality would be dishonorable. We will honor you by expecting better.

8. Trusting the Sovereign, Loving Purpose of God

Finally we will honor you by trusting that the purpose of our sovereign and loving God to defend the fatherless and contend for the defenseless and to exalt the meek will triumph through your presidency. And to that end we will pray for you as Christ our King commands us.

Read the whole article from Piper here.

“Get ready for the ride of your life.”

OK, I’ve been waiting for this since I saw the trailer played in a movie theater before “Prince Caspian” in May. If space travel doesn’t give you you goosebumps, then I think you should check this out for sure. If it does already, then you don’t need me to tell you this looks like it’s going to be awesome.

Here is how the mini-series is described on the Discovery Channel site:

When We Left Earth is the story of mankind’s greatest adventure, leaving the earth and living in space. For the first time this series has digitally re-mastered the original film and audio recordings from NASA’s vault, including and all the key on-board footage filmed by the astronauts themselves. From John Glenn’s Mercury mission to orbit the earth, to Neil Armstrong’s first historic steps on the moon, to the unprecedented spacewalks required to repair the Hubble telescope, these epic stories are shown in stunning clarity and told by the astronauts and engineers who were there.

This week’s episode:

ORDINARY SUPERMAN
Premieres Sunday, June 8 at 9:00 p.m. E/P
NASA selects seven men to become the first astronauts. They’re all test pilots, prepared to risk their lives. No one has ever survived a vertical launch on top of a rocket, but it’s the only way they know to put an astronaut into earth orbit. The Mercury astronauts and engineers need to figure out how to launch a man into space on top of a converted intercontinental ballistic missile.

FRIENDS AND RIVALS
Premieres Sunday, June 8 at 10:00 p.m. E/P
For Project Gemini, a new generation of astronauts arrive at NASA — their mission, to test all the procedures required to land men on the moon and bring them safely back to earth. Each Gemini mission launches two men into space, leading to some of NASA’s greatest moments — Ed White’s spacewalk, the first orbital rendezvous of Gemini 6 and 7.

I know my friend Scott has been waiting for this, and I know he didn’t need anyone to tell him it was the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” playing in the background of the trailer, either.

Who? Gianna Jessen for one. Why? Daniel Allott explains:

Miss Jessen is an exquisite example of what antiabortion advocates call a “survivor.” Well into her third trimester of pregnancy, Gianna’s biological mother was injected with a saline solution intended to induce a chemical abortion at a Los Angeles County abortion center. Eighteen hours later, and precious minutes before the abortionist’s arrival, Gianna emerged. Premature and with severe injuries that resulted in cerebral palsy. But alive.

Had the abortionist been present at her birth, Gianna would have been killed, perhaps by suffocation. As it was, a startled nurse called an ambulance, and Gianna was rushed to a nearby hospital, where, weighing just two pounds, she was placed in an incubator, then, months later, in foster care.

Gianna survived then, and thrives now, because, as she told me recently with a laugh, “I guess I don’t die easy.” Which is what the abortionist might have thought as he signed his victim’s birth certificate. Gianna’s medical records state that she was “born during saline abortion.”

Allott goes on to explain that, as an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama twice opposed legislation that would have defined as “persons” babies who survive late-term abortions. According to Allott, “Mr. Obama said in a speech on the Illinois Senate floor that he could not accept that babies wholly emerged from their mother’s wombs are “persons,” and thus deserving of equal protection under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.”

By contrast, a federal version of the same legislation passed unanimously through the Senate and with the support of all but 15 members of the House. When President Bush signed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act into law in 2002, Gianna was present.

The link above is to the article. Read the whole thing and consider the man who wants to unite America and ask yourself, “United behind what?”

OK, so this is not the new iPhone that is supposedly supposed to be released next week. Rather, this is a new iPhone at the Ridgedale Mall Apple Store in Minnetonka, Minn. It was still cool, and my son, Andrew, and I enjoyed killing some time at the store while the rest of our family shopped.

I think Apple stores are the adult equivalent of those playgrounds that are in the center of malls for parents to bring bored children during shopping trips.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great preacher of the 20th Century, wrote “Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure,” a collection of 21 sermons he originally delivered at Westminster Chapel in London. “Christian people.” writes Lloyd-Jones, “too often seem to be perpetually in the doldrums and too often give this appearance of unhappiness and of lack of freedom and absence of joy. There is no question at all but that this is the main reason why large numbers of people have ceased to be interested in Christianity.”

Believing that Christian joy was one of the most potent factors in the spread of Christianity in the early centuries. Lloyd-Jones not only lays bare the causes that have robbed many Christians of spiritual vitality but also points the way to the cure that is found through the mind and spirit of Christ.

This summer, John Piper is going through the Psalms in a sermon series at Bethlethem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. Last week’s sermon, “Spiritual Depression in the Psalms,” leans on Lloyd-Jones’ work and looks at how Psalm 42 is an antidote for depression. Below is an excerpt, go here for the whole sermon.