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A La Carte (9/1)
- 09/01/10
- 14
Happy September, blog readers. If anyone can explain to me how it got to be September so quickly, I’d love to hear an explanation. We’re six days away from my kids heading back to school (including my youngest who begins this year!). And it seems like it was just yesterday that the last school year wrapped up. Tempus fugit and all of that.
Switchfoot iTunes Sessions - Here’s one for the Switchfoot fans.
Her Part in Haiti - It was neat to see this article in our local newspaper. LeeAnn is a neighbor of ours and someone we used to go to church with. For the past year she has been serving in Haiti.
Not the Root of All Evil - Andrew Peterson has some good things to say about money in this article, showing that while money is the root of all kinds of evil, it isn’t intrinsically evil.
Beware of Professional Weaker Brothers - Michael Patton nails it in this post. “I remember Chuck Swindoll talking about this saying: ‘Be careful, there are some people out there who are professional weaker brethren.’”
Marriage and the Seinfeld Effect - “Americans appear to accept same-sex marriage more than they really do, perhaps because they believe it to be more widely accepted than it really is.”
Church Planter - I’m not a big fan of trailers for books but here is one that was done right. It is for this book, which I actually just began reading yesterday.
The important thing about a man is not where he goes when he is compelled to go, but where he goes when he is free to go where he will. —A.W. Tozer
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
Releasing on April 1, The Next
Published in 2008, this book
This is a guide that calls men,
This review of the bestselling
New to the site? You can get
This is a guide written
Comments (14)
money is NOT the root of all evil…. how many times is that slung around. the scripture says “For the LOVE of money is the root of all evil”
Andrew Peterson wrote a well reasoned article. Money itself is not evil,dirty or immoral. What is evil is when we allow possessions and things to become more important than God or even people. Having said that , I still believe in North America , we are a people who over spend . We indulge to the point of gluttony. The danger of money is that as you get more of it , you begin to live a life beyond what is even normal. If one has Christ at the root of his satisfaction in this life and the only hope for the next , whether you have much or not will be a non issue . Plus if God blesses you with much , you will we generous to a fault like a Wesley or Spurgeon back in the day.
The Darrin Patrick video is good, but the spelling mistakes in the subtitles are a little distracting.
Enjoyed Michael Patton’s article.
#10 on the list? Someone has a problem with my footwear? REALLY? I’ve known people who have a problem with the other things on the list. But, FLIPFLOPS?
Loved the selection of articles today (particularly the Andrew Peterson , the Michael Patton , and the marriage/Seinfeld ones).
Barry, glad to see someone else had the same thought. I was afraid I was just being hypercritical, but there were a lot of little errors.
Also, I just got to see two guys from Switchfoot play acoustic live at a radio station in Houston, and I have to say, Jon Foreman is a heck of a lot better acoustic. No contest, whatsoever.
Like Barry, I also enjoyed the Darrin Patrick video, and look forward to getting my hands on the book itself.
However there was one aspect of the trailer that disappointed me, and it wasn’t the first time I’ve come across it either. It’s the presumption that any ‘man’ over a certain age - I think it’s somewhere in the mid-20’s - who is not married and with a settled, full-time job must be a slacker.
I don’t doubt that there are some Christian men who fit this description because they are shirking responsibility, but just because someone matches the description doesn’t automatically make them lazy.
I’m 26 and currently working in a part-time job that I like. I have tried to gain promotion on more than one occasion, but haven’t been successful. I’ve tried to get a full-time job elsewhere, and have been invited to interviews, but still haven’t found success. I currently live with my parents. I have also recently decided to pursue ministerial training, so that will be a few more years where I won’t be in full-time work. Does all this automatically make me someone who’s scared of taking personal responsibility? I don’t think so. I do want to get married and bear the responsibilites that come with being a husband and a father, but I know God is in control and has things to teach me now whilst I’m single.
Given that the Bible as a whole says that you can serve God whether married or single, I tend to think that this emphasis on what and where a man has to be by a certain age is more culturally-based than Scripturally-based.
Money is just a temptation to evil, in that it provides the opportunity for one to misspend. In the U.S. we have more money, which is to say more temptation, and, like sinners everywhere, many of us succumb (to some degree) to that temptation to misspend.
While the message that “money is not inherently evil” is undoubtedly true, I also find that many of the people ardently “pushing” this message are either trying to excuse a level of comfort I might consider “misspending”, or they are mounting an attack on those who see an obligation on the part of believers to provide for the physical needs of the poor.
I also appreciated Patton’s article. My wife’s parents don’t drink. They graciously paid for our wedding, but didn’t want us to serve wine. (Wedding at Cana anyone? Can I get an amen?) Fortunately they were also gracious enough to allow us to pay for the wine with our own money, which we did, without making an issue of it.
OK, I’ll address the apparent time warp phenomenon which has made September arrive so quickly. Yesterday I made lunch for my kids and the food was done faster than it should have been. Twenty minutes went by in about 10 minutes. This 50% increase in the rate of time passage is actually variable and is caused by a rupture in space which was created by the Large Hadron Collider in Cern. That is one theory. My other theory is perhaps a little more sound. The older a person gets the faster time appears to flow. This theorem is supported by comments from teenagers on Facebook: “I’m so bored!” “I have nothing to do!” Whine, whine! I want to smack those kids; perhaps they can come over and clean out my crawl space! You see, I am 43 therefore one year is 1/43 of my life so far. My grandma lived to be 107 so her final year seemed like 1/107th of an actual year (an actual year is 1/1, which is only experienced in the first year of life). That is why my grandma thought Christmas came 2 days in a row; it seemed like it to her. To those whiney teens on Facebook, a year seems like 1/15 which is a much larger number than 1/43 therefore time passes much more slowly for them.
In other words, this phenomenon occurs because you are getting older.
You’re welcome.
Jim Spelman
I have to wonder if watching professional mixed martial arts is any better than playing video games. Hmm.
These guys, the Mars Hill/Acts 29/ Re:Lit pastors, are adept at making sweeping generalizations that require the turning off of the brain. They make laws for others that the Scriptures do not. Real men don’t make an issue of “things out there”, but rather the deeper issue of the heart.
I’ll take the truly reformed faith, where hard thoughts and hard work are required. Not a movement, but the ancient pathways.
Signed,Husband, father of four, professional artist and designer, who doesn’t play video games (but thinks they can be fun and beneficial), and who enjoys a good round of stupid mirth to lighten the heart.
What is sad to me is that C. Michael Patton misses the point of Romans 14. Paul’s objective here is to build up the church by teaching them how to serve one another in love, making room for differences and disputable matters, urging them to live by a faith that rests upon a foundation of love, where judging has no room to speak.
Scruples are personal and cannot be foisted. But as a parent, and especially as a father, Mr. Patton has every right to say no to his 11 year old daughter who wants to wear makeup. That’s just plain old good fathering.
How did we get to september so quicly? That is actually a great time to reflect upon eternity. You see, as Im sure your aware, the older we get, the faster time goes, or so it seems.
The reason is all humans were created with eternity in our hearts, just like our conscience. God has an eternal reminder in our souls, and as we reflect back, it really does seem like a moment.. Where did the last 80 years go.. 40 years.. etc.. We are bumping up against eternity, the older we get the shorter time seems to become.. it is actually true.
“Someone has to buy the burgers”
Great comment on how to use any wealth that God gives.
I think you are right that scruples are personal and should not be foisted on others. But I think that was the basic point of his article. Too many people want to force others to live by their scruples, which isn’t loving and isn’t really about edifying the church. It is about making that person comfortable.
I think Romans 14 is important to actual weaker brothers. But it is often the more powerful (not weaker) that use the scripture. It is most often used to block bible studies from meeting in bars because it offends the sensibilities of denominational leaders. Or preventing dancing at Christian schools because it offends the sensibilities of large donors.
I think it is hard to have a discussion without specifics because it is in the specifics that you can get to the root of why, which in this cases is exactly the issue.