Matt Perman, the senior director of strategy for the ever-expanding Desiring God Ministries, gives us free advice for organized, productive life and work (on his blog). He digests books that I'll never read and gives me the golden nuggets.
You're welcome.
HT: Justin Taylor
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Bible-Believers and Politics
The past few days I have invested considerable time thinking about letting the Bible confront our political ideas and bias. I'm biased, I'll admit. After talking with a friend who pastors a nearby Bible-believing church, I crafted my morning sermon around an exposition of Isaiah 59.
I think verses 14-21 of Isaiah 59 give something like a two-pronged solution to a society where God's moral standards do not prevail in the public square.
For the last 10+ minutes of the sermon, I mentioned issues that I think require our attention if we are to let the Bible confront us and guide our political priorities. I also listed distractors.
My pastor friend, Greg, told me he needed to devote a good bit of his sermon to convincing believers that they should vote (I think disillusionment had set in with many). Then, Monday I had the privilege of discussing political "neutrality" with a couple of guys from a different religion. I'll confess that I flirted with pacifism in college, but the arguments for pacifism, I'm convinced, are flimsy for Bible-believing Christians. Regrettably, I did not convince those two men to go vote on Election Day (nor to drop their questionable religious convictions).
I voted today - not straight ticket.
Finally, a bit of my bias: Justin Taylor linked an article from the Wall Street Journal's site by Andrew Wilson that dispels "Five Myths About the Great Depression." Wilson tersely makes the case that free-market principles did not cause the Great Depression. I've never heard his take on the Great Depression! I was taught that Hoover was to blame and FDR was the hero.
I think verses 14-21 of Isaiah 59 give something like a two-pronged solution to a society where God's moral standards do not prevail in the public square.
For the last 10+ minutes of the sermon, I mentioned issues that I think require our attention if we are to let the Bible confront us and guide our political priorities. I also listed distractors.
My pastor friend, Greg, told me he needed to devote a good bit of his sermon to convincing believers that they should vote (I think disillusionment had set in with many). Then, Monday I had the privilege of discussing political "neutrality" with a couple of guys from a different religion. I'll confess that I flirted with pacifism in college, but the arguments for pacifism, I'm convinced, are flimsy for Bible-believing Christians. Regrettably, I did not convince those two men to go vote on Election Day (nor to drop their questionable religious convictions).
I voted today - not straight ticket.
Finally, a bit of my bias: Justin Taylor linked an article from the Wall Street Journal's site by Andrew Wilson that dispels "Five Myths About the Great Depression." Wilson tersely makes the case that free-market principles did not cause the Great Depression. I've never heard his take on the Great Depression! I was taught that Hoover was to blame and FDR was the hero.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Dr. Wesley
Here are a few pictures of Dr. Wesley on Halloween. We went down to Main Street again and passed out bags filled with a Bible and candy. It took us about 45 minutes to pass out 300! Wesley got lots of giggles and long stares. You could tell he thought he was pretty funny in his little get-up. He did check his pages all night long, don't worry. When the stress got to be a little too much for him, he tried to hide his pager in a planter full of flowers.
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