2008-11-13

CJ Mahaney: 'the realization that I could be simultaneously busy and lazy, that I could be a hectic sluggard, that my busyness was no immunity from laziness, became a life-altering and work-altering insight.' Basically, it's easy to fill your schedule with worthless things and feel like you're doing something when you're really getting nowhere. http://theologica.blogspot.com/2008/11/hectic-sluggard.html

Bayly: ""How on earth can they argue we'd be better off without religion when they themselves are religious?" --Ian Plimer. Plimer, an Australian professor who has debated creationists, argues in this debate video that self-professed atheist environmentalists are actually practitioners of a new religion." http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BaylyblogOutOfOurMindsToo/~3/451309963/environmentalist-religion.html

Bayly draws attention to an opinion editorial about how the legal efforts of homosexuals following Proposition 8 will 'harm those religions that insisted that their beliefs be in the constitution.' He says "Look, the religion of Christ will not be harmed by fallout from this battle. The gates of hell shall not prevail against her. But the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights is most certainly in the sodomite crosshairs." http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BaylyblogOutOfOurMindsToo/~3/451317231/the-collision-between-sodomites-and-the-bill-of-rights.html

Bayly: Rick Warren says that he just can't redefine marriage after thousands of years, but he doesn't mention that Authority by which that marriage is defined. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BaylyblogOutOfOurMindsToo/~3/451346697/rick-warren-just-couldnt-help-himself.html

Does compatibilism rule out Cartesian dualism? Here's a paper that says 'no.' http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/11/cartesian-compatibilism.html

Manspeak asks for resolutions to "Euthyphro’s Dilemma": “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” ... As it relates to Christians, the question is: Is something good commanded by God because it is good, or is something good because it is commanded by God? http://manspeak.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/euthyphros-dilemma-a-defeater-of-christian-ethics/

Pyromaniacs: Some have thought that given the recent emphasis of Dan Phillips, Phil Johnson, and Frank Turk, that perhaps the pyros disagree on Christians and politics. Here's a list of things they do agree upon, and it is also a good summary of the place of politics in the Christian life. http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2008/11/christians-priority-and-presence-things.html

Hays points to the cultural meaning of a snake for the Egyptions, and how it was a symbol for a numinous reality for them, an occultic being. "it would be a visible emblem or omen of an invisible evil force. It moves within the aegis of witchcraft and black magic." As to the curse, given Egyptian lore as a factor, there is the concept of trampling underfoot your enemies -"Added to that is the irony of cursing a creature which is, itself, emblematic of evil spells. An agent of black magic becomes an accursed object. The hex redounds on itself."  http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/11/far-as-curse-is-found.html

Four sermons by Jerry Bridges on the beatitudes. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BetweenTwoWorlds/~3/451939743/jerry-bridges-beatitudes-humility-in.html

Turretinfan demonstrates from quotes of the last two popes that they hold that Muslims worship the one true God. While it seems to be a very confusing point for Catholics, the bottom line is that this is false, for Muslims reject the Son of God, and therefore they reject the one true God. http://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-has-rome-to-do-with-mecca.html

So the existence of minerals depends on life, and life depends on minerals, and oxygen depends on life... here's how to read that from a evolutionary bias: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/13/minerals-evolution.html

Hays provides common-sense rebuttals to common-sense argumentation, provided by a two-kingdom advocate on the basis of natural law. http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/11/vandrunen-on-natural-law-pt-1.html

Turk on Carl Truman's essay: "this is why a 22-yr-old seminary graduate is not suited to be an elder or pastor. Pardon me for saying so, but we have an immature church because we let it be run by immature males who have been trapped into their roles as mostly-immature and faddishly young. If instead we looked to men who were first spiritually mature who are also successful fathers and husbands -- which it would be hard to do in our society before the age of 30 -- I think we'd find ourselves a church and not a fraternal order of, well, whatever." http://centuri0n.blogspot.com/2008/11/jt-already-linked-it.html

Phillips on the sequence of the next election. http://bibchr.blogspot.com/2008/11/random-thought-on-making-next-election.html

9Marks: McKinley on why Obama may not be the antichrist. America-centric view of church, eschatology, etc. His suggestion is to put down your copy of Left Behind and pray for the president elect instead. http://blog.9marks.org/2008/11/why-obama-pro-1.html

Dan Phillips continues with a radical indictment of America. America had every advantage, having the Scriptures and more access to them than anyone ever. But America is neither more biblically knowledgable nor more holy, and certainly not more fruitful. Many who call themselves evangelicals sell their birthright to fit in with the Christ-hating world - the kin of Tony Campolo and Brian Maclaren and the like. Professes Christians with an unclear, edgeless gospel, and little idea on how to apply the Scriptures. And then there is abortion - a black and white moral issue that shows the extent of the ethical blindness, resulting in the election of the most pro-abortion candidate ever. There has been those who have cried out in warning, to no avail. In times like this, God judges by abandonment. The people have lost the Gospel, they are Christless, and God is handing them over to their sin - judgment by sin. http://bibchr.blogspot.com/2008/11/election-2008-theologizing-and_13.html

Jon Bloom: Judah, under king Jehoshaphat, faced a mighty army - way too much. They would be done for. So the king set his eyes on God and looked to Him. Our trials are cause for rejoicing because they are designed for our freedom: "real freedom is not the liberty to do what we want, or even the absence of distress. Real freedom is the deep-seated confidence that God really will provide everything we need. The person who believes this is the freest of all persons on earth, because no matter what situation they find themselves in, they have nothing to fear. " And the only real way that we learn this, as sinners, is through repeated experience. God delivered Judah then - and it is in Him that we find freedom from fear. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DGBlog/~3/451736458/

Piper: Te apostle John captures for us how Jesus was concerned for believers in the 21st century. "How do we see Jesus as compellingly, self-authenticatingly, beautifully, divinely glorious and true? We read or hear the story of his incarnation and life and death and resurrection and what it means. In that hearing, we watch him speak and act. We consider the purpose and plan of God in this story." And by the grace of God revealed in Christ and applied by the Spirit our eyes are opened to this glory. http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByDate/2008/3405_Listen_to_the_Story_of_Jesus_and_See_the_Glory_of_God/

Carl Trueman: "If the poverty and hard work of my grandfather's era left men middle-aged at thirty, the ease and trivia of today's society seems to leave us trapped in a permanent Neverland where we all, like so many Peter (and Patty) Pans, live lives of eternal youth.  Where my grandfather spent his day hard at work, trying - sometimes desperately - to make enough money to put bread on the table and shoes on his children's feet, today many have time to play X-Box and video games, or warble on and on incessantly in that narcissistic echo-chamber that is the blogosphere.  The world of my grandfather was evil because it made him grow up too fast; the world of today is evil because it prevents many from ever growing up at all." ... "The answer, then, is not a naïve, nostalgic hankering for a return to an era of poverty and cruel hardship.  Rather it is surely obvious: we need to put aside childish things and start acting like adults." ... "You are, of course, what you worship, as Psalm 115 reminds us, and thus, as long as we idolize our children and the culture of youth, we can expect to - well, be just like them: pouting, irresponsible, hormonal, unpleasant and, frankly, as creepy as those sixteenth century portraits of little children with adult faces.  Trapped in Neverland with no hope of escape." http://www.reformation21.org/counterpoints/understanding-the-times/trapped-in-neverland.php

Bayly continues looking at Tim Keller and the PCA issue over female deacons. "Again, contrary to what Tim Keller reported above, the 156th Synod of the RPCES never adopted the statement, "We affirm the right of a local church to have a separate body of unordained women who may be called deaconesses." It was the 155th Synod that adopted this statement, and they adopted it in the immediate context of another statement mandating across the denomination that "this office (of deacon) be limited to qualified men."" http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BaylyblogOutOfOurMindsToo/~3/452347858/critique-of-pastor-kellers-promotion-of-woman-deacons-part-2.html

Janelle Bradshaw has a battle over jelly toast with her child. Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” http://girltalk.blogs.com/girltalk/2008/11/battle-at-the-b.html