Compare these two music videos and consider what it takes to redeem a song that was originally written to express the hurt and suffering and meaninglessness of life without God. I would love any comments and discussion you have to offer.
This post stands as a compilation of the recent debate and commentary on the debate that has been posted by Doug Wilson, Nate Wilson and Christianity Today. Below I have also included links to one of my fellow Bloggers who wrote some good commentary about Presuppositional Apologetics last year during the Christianity Today debate between Wilson and Hitchens.
Here is an interview of Wilson and Hitches on the Debate/Book tour:
by Doug Wilson
by Nate Wilson
Christianity Today Debate – 2007
Commentary on the Debate – by James Grant
Here is that awesome video preview of the documentary again:
Here is a link to the published book of the debate hosted by Christianity Today in 2007. You can support out ministry by purchasing this book and others through our book store.
Here are some helpful thoughts from Doug Wilson about how Christians should respond to the election of Barack Obama.
1. God is still Father, Christ is still at His right hand, and the Holy Spirit is still abroad in the world, recreating that world according to the image of Christ. When the nations conspire against Him, He laughs at them.
2. The most important thing we can do for our nation, and for the world around us, is to gather for worship every Lord’s Day. The privilege of voting in presidential elections comes to us every four years, while we are graced with the opportunity to take the Lord’s Supper week to week. Right worship reforms the Church, and is therefore God’s central instrument for remaking the world. For this reason, we must insist on worship that is in accordance with Scripture. Judgment begins with the household of God. Our generation is fatherless. In the power of the Spirit, in the name of the Son, we must therefore worship the Father.
3. The first and greatest command is to love God, and the second is to love our neighbor. When the question arises, as it will, as to who is our neighbor, a good policy is to always begin with the smallest, the least, the most defenseless. Never apologize for a crawl-over-broken-glass pro-life stance. Live in such a life-affirming way as to expect apologies from those who would redefine the lives of others (always the lives of others, isn’t it?) into expendible insignificance.
4. Honor women. Honor your mother, your wife, and your daughters. We live in a culture that despises women, and which has engineered a vast machinery of propaganda designed to get them to surrender to it. If you don’t know how to honor, on a day-to-day basis, the women in your life, then learn. Make it a priority.
5. Don’t doubt in the dark what you knew in the light. The late Francis Schaeffer taught evangelical Christians to think like Christians as they engaged with unbelief in the public square. But a goodly number of his proteges, disciples, and name-appropriators have begun to “engage with the culture” in a way that looks more like going native than it looks like missionary work. Melancthons fall apart more rapidly than they used to. Get used to it, but don’t you do it.
6. While pro-life work is at the very center of all mercy ministry, it should not be allowed to distract from the broader kind of mercy ministry that offers gospel help to those who have contributed to their own misery — addicts, convicts, the uneducated and the unemployable. Such mercy ministry must be consistently tenderhearted and hardheaded. Sentimentalists are never able to give themselves away in the ongoing way that bleeding (but thinking) Christians must.
7. Learn something about economics. Please.
Continue reading Ten Things to Keep in Mind After the Election
School Clams Up on ‘Gay’ Pledge Cards Given to Kindergartners
Saturday, November 01, 2008
By Michelle Maskaly
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A California school system refuses to say what action, if any, it will take after it received complaints about a kindergarten teacher who encouraged her students to sign “pledge cards” in support of gays.
During a celebration of National Ally Week, Tara Miller, a teacher at the Faith Ringgold School of Arts and Science in Hayward, Calif., passed out cards produced by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network to her class of kindergartners.
The cards asked signers to be “an ally” and to pledge to “not use anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) language or slurs; intervene, when I feel I can, in situations where others are using anti-LGBT language or harassing other students and actively support safer schools efforts.”
The school has acknowledged that the exercise was not appropriate for kindergartners.
Parent Adela Voelker, who declined to be interviewed in depth for this report, said she was furious when she found her child’s signature on one of the cards. She said she contacted a non-profit legal defense organization specializing in parents’ rights. [Continue Reading…]
Doug Wilson has finished writing a satire related modern day Church culture and their pastors. I encourage you to visit the book’s web site. All of the material is available by chapter in blog format for free. So you can read the whole thing online if you want. Here is the link to the first chapter of the book. Here is some information about the book:
John Mitchell is the pastor of a small, modestly successful Reformed Baptist church in a city in the Midwest. Chad Lester is one of the most successful pastors in North America, and he is the leading light at Camel Creek Community Church in the same city. He is, speaking in theological terms, a dirt bag. And yet, his quasi-secret sexual misbehavior leads only to church growth success followed by publishing success, followed in turn by ever more church growth. John Mitchell hates everything that Lester stands for and yet, unbeknownst to him, envy of Lester’s success has him secretly by the throat. He thinks of it as indignation, or righteous concern, or something, but the real issue is that he is peeved that Lester appears to be blessed by God for being a creep, and he, Mitchell, struggles in obscurity for being faithful. But of course, Mitchell is faithful, and Lester is a creep, and the reader is not surprised that Mitchell can’t see it. None of us would if we were in his place.
When Lester is falsely accused of the one rotten thing he didn’t do, and his ministry starts to implode, John Mitchell is dragged into it much against his will, All this said, Evangellyfish is not really a dark comedy, but rather a medium brown comedy. In some sense, it is a satire on a world that defies satire.
I have to say, I cannot wait for this to come out on DVD! Enjoy the preview, especially the music and the camera work. 🙂
Here is some more information about it:
Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson squared-off in a recent series of debates over atheism. Hitchens is an atheist with an acerbic wit who thinks Christianity to be a blight on society. Douglas Wilson is a Christian who wants to show the reasonableness of the Christian faith. The video above is a trailer for a forthcoming documentary that describes the debates. (HT: Denny Burk)
Congressman Warns of Obama Dictatorship
Monday, November 10, 2008 6:44 PM – WASHINGTON
A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.
“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force,” Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. “I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism.”
Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.
“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun said. “When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”
Obama’s comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado about building a new civil service corps. Among other things, he called for expanding the nation’s foreign service and doubling the size of the Peace Corps “to renew our diplomacy.”
…
Broun said he also believes Obama likely will move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national police force.
…
“We can’t be lulled into complacency,” Broun said. “You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential.”
| NT Use of the OT — Test Your View! |
Single Meaning, Multiple Contexts and Referents view
 You seem to be most closely aligned with the Single Meaning, Multiple Contexts and Referents view, a view defended by Darrell L. Bock in the book “Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament†(edited by Kenneth Berding and Jonathan Lunde, Nov. 2008). This view affirms the singular nature of the meanings intended by the OT and NT authors when OT texts are cited in the NT. In spite of this essential unity in meaning, however, the words of the OT authors frequently take on new dimensions of significance and are found to apply appropriately to new referents and new situations as God’s purposes unfold in the larger canonical context. Often, these referents were not in the minds of the OT authors when they penned their texts. For more info, see the book, or attend a special session devoted to the topic at the ETS Annual Meeting in Providence, RI (Nov. 2008); Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Darrell L. Bock, and Peter Enns will all present their views. |
Fun quizzes, surveys & blog quizzes by  |
Kevin L. Anderson
‘But God Raised Him from the Dead’: The Theology of Jesus’ Resurrection in Luke-Acts
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Paul: Missionary of Jesus
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Jesus the Village Psychiatrist
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Learning to Read Biblical Hebrew: An Introductory Grammar
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Alec Gilmore
A Concise Dictionary of Bible Origins and Interpretation
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Introduction to the Prophets: Their Stories, Sayings, and Scrolls
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Andrew T. Lincoln and Angus Paddison, eds.
Christology and Scripture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
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Theo A. W. van der Louw
Transformations in the Septuagint: Towards an Interaction of Septuagint Studies and Translation Studies
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Revealed Wisdom and Inaugurated Eschatology in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity
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Frank J. Matera
New Testament Theology: Exploring Diversity and Unity
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Sarianna Metso
The Serekh Texts
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Ela Nutu
Incarnate Word, Inscribed Flesh: John’s Prologue and the Postmodern
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Forms of Rabbinic Literature and Thought: An Introduction
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David E. S. Stein, ed.
The Contemporary Torah: A Gender-Sensitive Adaptation of the JPS Translation
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I and II Kings: A Commentary
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Recalling a Story Once Told: An Intertextual Reading of the Psalter and the Pentateuch
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You have probably seen by now one of the ads for Bill Maher’s new documentary “Religulous.†If you haven’t seen it, it’s a movie that was produced for the expressed purpose of denigrating religion. The fundamental point seems to be that having faith in any religion is ridiculous—thus “Religulous.†In the trailer for the movie, the following exchange takes place between Maher and a person dressed up like Jesus.
Maher: Why doesn’t [God] just obliterate the devil and therefore get rid of evil in the world?
Jesus Impersonator: He will.
Maher: He will?
Jesus Impersonator: That’s correct.Maher: What’s he waiting for?
The whole point of the exchange is to show how ridiculous it is that the Christian God will not do anything about evil in the world even though He’s supposed to be both good and all-powerful. Even though it’s delivered with sarcastic humor, Maher is asking a serious question. At bottom the exchange is really about the classical question of theodicy, and the whole thing is framed in a way to discredit the Christian faith.
In a recent blog post, John Piper answers Maher’s question, though he doesn’t mention Maher’s name. Nevertheless, the title of Piper’s essay reads like an allusion to “Religulousâ€: “Why not destroy the devil now?†Piper gives an answer that is (as you might expect) grounded in God’s passion for His own glory. God is most glorified by allowing Satan to remain for a time. He writes:
“The glory of Christ is seen in his absolute right and power to annihilate or incapacitate Satan and all demons. But the reason he refrains from destroying and disabling them altogether is to manifest more clearly his superior beauty and worth. If Christ obliterated all devils and demons now (which he could do), his sheer power would be seen as glorious, but his superior beauty and worth would not shine as brightly as when humans renounce the promises of Satan and take pleasure in the greater glory of Christ.â€
Maher’s question deserved a serious answer, and I am grateful that Piper took the time to write one. You should read the rest.
“Why Not Destroy the Devil Now?†– by John Piper (desiringgod.org)
