Pastoral Integrity and the Limits of Confidentiality
Confidentiality is important, but it is not ultimate
Because I refuse to allow anyone to bind my conscience on their own terms, I have occasionally stopped a person in mid-sentence when I hear the words, “You cannot tell anyone what I am about to tell you.” My reasoning goes like this: if you cannot trust my judgment regarding what to do with the... Continue Reading
Do Truck Drivers Matter to God?
Is ministry a "higher call"?
Whenever I speak, I hang around afterward and talk with individual audience members about their specific questions and concerns. As a result, I’ve had countless conversations with people looking for an answer to the question of significance. They sit in those pews and wonder, Did I miss my calling in life? Is my life’s work... Continue Reading
Freedom Is Not Free
The price tag for the Sixties cultural revolution is now becoming obvious and it is costly
“Free sex,” taught in public high schools at government expense, and modeled by Hollywood is not free for the tax-payer. The average citizen has to underwrite other people’s fantasies. This liberated life-style, outside the bonds of marriage, practiced by welfare queens and absentee fathers, now costs the tax-payer $330 billion per year in welfare payments.... Continue Reading
Do You Now or Have You Ever Believed that Homosexuality Is a Sin?
Christians everywhere, in pulpit or pew, in the office cubicle or the backyard party, need to be ready for “the question”
In light of such a knee-jerk tendency to be alarmed over any expression against homosexuality, we Christians should be especially careful in how we phrase our answer to their incessant question. We will too readily be misunderstood. Christians need to stand against homosexuality, but not as a goal in itself. We need to stand for... Continue Reading
Kaepernicking Replaces Tebowing
A touchdown celebration—flexing his right arm and kissing his biceps—is called “Kaepernicking”
I am saying that an anti-distraction bias by itself doesn’t explain Tebow’s exile: It will be a great mystery if none of the 32 NFL teams wants him. I’m also saying that worship of Man rather than God is now our national religion: Kissing your own biceps is more acceptable than bowing before our Creator. ... Continue Reading
John Brown the Calvinist
Calvinism rightly understood is a threat to the autonomy of modern man in modern America
In modern America, Calvinism is associated with fanaticism and hate. Calvinists are a deluded sort! Modern America is not threatened by evangelicalism. Modern America is not threatened by fundamentalism. However, Calvinism is a different story. In my mind, Calvinism rightly applied, is the only real threat to the fulcrum of a godless America. Calvinism which... Continue Reading
Against the Objectification of Females
It is not possible to see people as humans created in God’s image and as objects at the same time
The differences between the woman in the revealing swimwear, drunken coeds on Girls Gone Wild, a prostitute, a stripper or a sexually exploited child are only in the extremes and opportunities. The mindset is the same. Objects have no opinion, no right of refusal, no humanity, no femininity. Like a tire or a piece of... Continue Reading
What Chris Rock Can Teach Us About Marriage
The difference between a wife and a girlfriend
Even on its own terms, cohabitation doesn’t “prepare” couples for marriage. Without the security of permanence and fidelity a “relationship” is wholly different from a marriage. As a matter of fact, “dating” isn’t a preparation for marriage either, beyond the level of discovering whether this couple have a reason not to marry. Most Christians don’t look to Chris... Continue Reading
Preventing Inauguration Blues
Voting isn't the only means of social change
What are people to do, then, if their candidate is not on the podium on the day of the inauguration? Do they despair about America? Do they give up? No. They are to be reminded that a virtuous society has a larger network of mediating institutions that shape the mores and norms of human flourishing.... Continue Reading
Pro-Choice: What Does It Mean?
No unborn baby has ever had the right to choose or deny its own destruction
What is the substance of the pro-choice position? If a woman says that she personally would not have an abortion but does not want to deny someone else’s right to do it, on what grounds would this woman hesitate to get an abortion? Perhaps she simply wants to have as many babies as possible and... Continue Reading