We now have a cover for my forthcoming book, “God in the Whirlwind: Stories of Grace from the Tornado at Union University.” The book goes to the printer this morning and we’re still on target for a June 1 publication date.
PoliPundit reports on a Christian photographer who was sued because she declined to photograph a lesbian wedding. The court unbelievably sided with the plaintiff.
Hat tip: Lisa
I’m leaving this afternoon for Louisville, Ky., and the Together for the Gospel conference. Not sure what kind of Internet access I’ll have over the next few days, so blogging may be light. I hope to see some of you there.
We talked favorite Nintendo games previously. Today let’s go with top five Atari 2600 games. Here’s my list, as best as I can remember it. It’ll probably change once I see some other games listed:
1. River Raid
2. Space Invaders
3. Realsports Baseball
4. Pitfall
5. Q-bert
Gosh, that’s been a long time ago. I’m getting old.
Feel free to add your list, or to opine on any other topic you choose.
Over the weekend I read “Why We’re Not Emergent,” by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. I highly recommend it to you. The book is an excellent primer on the emergent church and the theology of such emergent bigwigs as Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Rob Bell, Leonard Sweet, Donald Miller, Peter Rollins and others.
I won’t give an in-depth review, and instead point you to Tim Challies’ review of the book. I will provide a few quotes from the book that I found to be especially insightful and interesting.
On emergents’ views about God speaking:
The emergent agnosticism about truly knowing and understanding anything about God seems to be pious humility. It seems to honor God’s immensity, but it actually undercuts His sovereign power. Postmoderns harbor such distrust for language and disbelieve God’s ability to communicate truth to human minds that they effectively engage in what Carson calls “the gagging of God.” For example, Tomlinson writes, “To say Scripture is the word of God is to employ a metaphor. God cannot be thought of as literally speaking words, since they are an entirely human phenomenon that could never prove adequate as a medium for the speech of an infinite God.” In a similar vein, Bell writes, “Our words aren’t absolutes. Only God is an absolute, and God has no intention of sharing this absoluteness with anything, especially words people have come up to talk about him.”
Such statements fly in the face of redemptive history and nearly every page of Scripture. The God of the Bible is nothing if He is not a God who speaks to His people. To be sure, none of us ever infinitely understand God in a nice, neat package of affirmations and denials, but we can know Him truly, both personally and propositionally. God can speak. He can use human language to communicate truth about Himself that is accurate and knowable, without ceasing to be God because we’ve somehow got Him all figured out.
On emergents’ emphasis on right living instead of right doctrine:
Besides being untrue, orthodoxy as orthopraxy is monumentally unhelpful. It sounds wonderful at first. Jesus is the best way to live. Where’s the harm in that? After all, it is true that Jesus taught good ethics and set a good moral example. But if orthodoxy means I live the right way, the way of Jesus, I have no hope. Where do I turn after I’ve screwed up the beatitudes for the fiftieth time? Where do I find peace when I realize I fail the Sermon on the Mount daily? …
Now, I’m sure many in the emergent church would also talk about grace, but I don’t read much about grace in their books. Certainly, there’s grace as a general inclusiveness, but not grace as the only hope for sinners deserving of God’s judgment. I despair when I hear Pagitt say, “The good news is not informational … Instead we have an invitation into a way of life — life we constantly realize is not ours alone.” If the good news is an invitation to a Jesus way of life and not information about somebody who accomplished something on my behalf, I’m sunk. This is law and no gospel.
On emergents and liberalism:
The biggest irony about the emergent church may just be this: For all their chastisement of all things modern, they are in most ways thoroughly modern. Many of the leading books display a familiar combination of social gospel liberalism, a neoorthodox view of Scripture, and a post-Enlightenment disdain for hell, the wrath of God, propositional revelation, propitiation, and anything more than a vague, moralistic, warmhearted, adoctrinal Christianity.
On emergents and politics:
American Christianity has at times sounded a lot like the platform of the GOP. Emergent leaders need to be careful they do not make the same mistake in the opposite direction. Emergent Christians shouldn’t position themselves as the neutral middle ground when their concerns read like talking points of the Democratic National Committee: racism, environmental degradation, militarism, corporate greed, poverty, Third World debt, overpopulation, consumerism, AIDS, and imperialism. …
The emergent church, like Protestant liberalism before it, is quite certain about God’s politics yet equally uncertain about God’s theology.
This book is well worth your time, and will help you understand a movement which is a cause for concern, because it too often abandons the gospel entirely.
The Kansas City Royals are 3-0. The Detroit Tigers are 0-3. It’s baseball season again, and all is right with the world.
Over at Blogged Down World, while j razz is out of the country, Randy Riley is filling in. He just posted a great question: What are your top five games from the original Nintendo Entertainment System?
Go tell him what you think.
A starstruck Scott Lamb relates a humorous story about his encounter with Ben Stein at the Los Angeles airport.
Michael Gerson writes in the Washington Post about Barack Obama’s extremism on abortion.
Hat tip: Denny.
Hat tip: geno
It’s Opening Day. ‘Nuff said.
I may have made predictions before, but here are my predictions for this season.
NL East: NY Mets
NL Central: Chicago Cubs
NL West: Arizona Diamondbacks
NL Wildcard: Atlanta Braves
AL East: Boston Red Sox
AL Central: Detroit Tigers
AL West: Seattle Mariners
AL Wildcard: Cleveland Indians
NLDS: Mets over Cubs, D’backs over Braves
NLCS: Mets over D’backs
ALDS: Tigers over Mariners, Indians over Red Sox
ALCS: Tigers over Indians
World Series: Tigers over Mets
For the past month, I’ve been at work on a book entitled “God in the Whirlwind: Stories of Grace from the Tornado at Union University,” to be published by B&H Publishing Group.
The book, which will be available June 1, is a collection of stories about how God has acted providentially in the lives of students and others through the Feb. 5 tornado that hit Union University.
The project has been a consuming one for me, but I’ve been blessed to put into writing some incredible stories about God’s grace. I hope it will be a blessing to those who read it.
I’m almost finished with the book, and will be sending it to the publisher on Tuesday. I’ll post more updates as the publication date nears.
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