why I collect the cell phones at night

Al Mohler is reporting on a New York Times story about texting taking a toll. ….Katie Hafner offers a view into the lives of American teens. They are fanatical texters. As Hafner reports, “They do it late at night when their parents are asleep. They do it in restaurants and while crossing busy streets. They [...]

New Atheists are boring victims

Charlotte Allen tweaks the new atheists, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens et al. Nicely tweaked too. Here are the first five paragraphs to get you started, but go read it all. I can’t stand atheists — but it’s not because they don’t believe in God. It’s because they’re crashing bores. Other people, most recently the British [...]

biblical illiteracy

Randy Alcorn is concerned about the level of Biblical illiteracy in the church today, even among its leaders. It is a very real concern. Biblical illiteracy among Christians is arguably at an all time high, with chilling implications that can hardly be overstated. I know that various things in the church will inevitably change, such [...]

friday fotoes

My lovely wife and I celebrated 20 wonderful years of wedded bliss last weekend in Grapevine at the Gaylord Texan. and the sky was really funky one evening this week here we are on self timer

some questions for “a Latina Judge”

Judge Sonia Motomayor, Barack Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court, is really an amazing piece of work. Matthew Franck has more from the speech she gave in which she declared that a wise latina will generally make better judicial decisions than a white male. He also has some questions. published as “A Latina Judge’s Voice,” [...]

self-righteousness is no respecter of persons

courtesy of vitamin z, I ran across Tullian Tchividjian’s excellent post on the double reach of the disease of self-righteousness. good stuff. Now, it’s very interesting that in the Bible it’s always the immoral person that gets the Gospel before the moral person. It’s the prostitute who understands grace; it’s the Pharisee who doesn’t. It’s [...]

piper on driscoll

Here is a blog post containing six minutes of audio of John Piper discussing the controversy between John MacArthur and Mark Driscoll. Very interesting indeed. If you want a more complete narrative of the fuss, Jonathan Christman has a nine part run down focusing on Phil Johnson and Mark Driscoll including Phil Johnson’s letter to [...]

judicial nominee

Judge Sonia Motomayor is President Obama’s pick to replace Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. She has an interesting track record to say the least. Here is an article by Stuart Taylor in the National Journal about her infatuation with identity politics. This is nothing more than naked disgusting racism: “I would hope [...]

why American believers don’t give

one thing we have noticed in visiting churches this year is that budgets are in deep trouble. It is to be expected in a recession like this that church receipts would be down significantly, but we have seen several churches who have in 2009 received only 35 and 40% of the amount that they had [...]

Memorial Day

Pete Hegseth: ….Americans across this great country will join together in remembering those American warriors—throughout our storied history—who gave their lives in defense of freedom. From the blood-soaked beaches of France to the bombed-out back-alleys of Fallujah, the American G.I. has fought—and died—opposing that which is evil and oppressive, and defending all things good and [...]

Zach is thankful for Mark Driscoll

Zach of Vitamin Z is thankful for Mark Driscoll. Most people know that Mark is known for his strong push for men to act like Biblical men. Sometimes I feel that this crosses the line and could give people the impression that he believes a real man has to be a fist pounding, beer drinking, [...]

Piper on Obama on abortion

Take a look and listen to this: transcript here.

Shepherding to truth

Matt Chandler’s excellent post on shepherding people to truth: Give people texts to read and then give them plenty of space to wrestle. I love strong, convincing theologically driven books. The Bible’s better. Listen. Don’t listen to respond. Listen. You’ll find that people usually have an aversion to truth because it is affecting something or [...]

foto friday

UPDATED to put this on Friday where it belongs. Sorry about jumping the gun yesterday. still water 360 bridge isolating the subject from the background

the will of God

My sister sent me a link to this page yesterday. the question being answered is this one: Question: Can you help me understand God’s perfect will versus His permissive will? I don’t think that the answer went the direction that the questioner was expecting. Go read the answer and ponder it a while. I remember [...]

talking about talking about abortion

Dr. Mohler writes about Barack Obama’s visit to Notre Dame this past weekend and the speech he gave at commencement. Mr. Obama went on to call for “Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.” In the end, the President’s comments were entirely about how Americans should discuss or debate abortion. There was no serious consideration of [...]

Good news

some of you may recall that coffee was recently discovered to enhance brain health. Now the even better news that coffee won’t hurt you and is helpful to health in several ways. My lovely wife sent me a link to this article packed with good news for coffee drinkers and perhaps sufficient justification for non [...]

New Page

I added a new page over to the left which is the complete 2400 word essay that I wrote about The Shack in four parts here on the blog.

This Momentary Marriage

I posted a quick bit about John Piper’s book This Momentary Marriage last month with a link to download it in pdf for free. Tim Challies has now reviewed the book and it is a review well worth reading. If you haven’t done so, do yourself a favor and download or buy the book and [...]

the Shack part IV (conclusion)

this is the wrap up of my series on The Shack. Part I, Part II and Part III are intended to convey to you that God is God. The reason that I am so exercised about this book is simple. The god portrayed in this book is not the God of the bible. Papa is [...]

the Shack part III

I have written two posts (part I and part II) now rebutting with scripture this statement from “Sophia” in the Shack: “But I still don’t understand why Missy had to die.” “She didn’t have to, Mackenzie. This was no plan of Papa’s. Papa has never needed evil to accomplish his good purposes. It is you [...]

the Shack part II

Saturday, I wrote the first part of my rebuttal to this statement spoken by “Sophia” the distillation of God’s wisdom on page 165 of the Shack: “But I still don’t understand why Missy had to die.” “She didn’t have to, Mackenzie. This was no plan of Papa’s. Papa has never needed evil to accomplish his [...]

the pursuit of happiness

Julie Neidlinger has a great post up about the pursuit of happiness resulting only in increased sadness. Check it out. here is the last line of an excellent post: And yet I still go after the carrot. The pursuit of happiness ensures that I will be anything but happy. I have what I need, but [...]

the Shack part I

I am reading the Shack. It took all the way to page 165 (out of 246) before I got completely angry. Up to that time I was reading at a relatively low grade frustration level. The prose was juvenile. the story was wooden. The theology was wrong. The emphasis was on Mack instead of God. [...]

new polling on abortion

these are some very interesting numbers. A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves “pro-life” on the issue of abortion and 42% “pro-choice.” This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995. ….. The May 2009 [...]