Happy Canada Day (07/01/09 - 22 Comments)
It is Canada Day today and I'm taking the day off. My kids have been begging go to a ball game so a bit later on I'll be taking them to see the Jays play the Rays. It seemed that on Canada Day it would make sense to write a little bit about Canada's national anthem. Canada may be unique as a nation that has two official national anthems. I was too lazy to do...
Death Is No Escape (06/29/09 - 17 Comments)
Earlier this morning I finished up Richard J. Evans' The Third Reich at War, a very long, very thorough, very interesting tracing of the rise and fall of German military might from 1939 to 1945. More than just another account of the Second World War, this book looks to battles, but also to atrocities and to the German home front. It provides an overall perspective on the German experience of war, from the men on...
A Tortured Existence (06/26/09 - 23 Comments)
So the king is dead. What a sad end to a sad life; a pathetic end to a pathetic life (by which I mean to use pathetic in its true sense as "arousing pity and sympathy). I don't know that I have ever seen, in one man, such a combination of self-love and self-loathing, shocking narcissism combined with equally shocking self-hatred. Truly Michael Jackson was unparalleled. Andrew Sullivan offered a few interesting thoughts. There are...
Sharing the Gospel in the Gay Village (06/24/09 - 83 Comments)
June 19 marked the beginning of Toronto's annual Pride Week. Now in its 28th year, this is a week-long celebration of diverse sexual and gender identities. Here is how the organizers describe it: "Pride Week celebrates our diverse sexual and gender identities, histories, cultures, creativities, families, friends and lives. It includes a three-day street festival with over eight stages of live entertainment, an extensive street fair (including community booths, vendors, food stalls), a special Family...
Don't Take Your iPod to Church! (Part 2) (06/22/09 - 41 Comments)
I've been enjoying writing these little articles titled "Don't Take Your iPod to Church." I'll be the first to admit that I am overstating my case a little bit and even being deliberately vague at times. But through it all I'm seeing some great discussion and am being asked lots of interesting questions. It may be frustrating to everyone else, but I'm enjoying it, at the very least! Let's press on. In a previous article...
Brian Regan Speaks to Bloggers (06/20/09 - 10 Comments)
Brian Regan is a stand up comedian and is rare among comedians in that he is both hilarious and clean. It seems there was a time when he injected a bit of sketchy material into his routines but, as he said in a recent interview with CNN, he found that he did not need to do this. "I was always 90 to 95 percent clean with my jokes anyways, and I'm kind of anal so,...
Monitoring Mohler (06/19/09 - 12 Comments)
A couple of weeks ago Dr. Mohler supplied a suggested summer reading list. My tastes and Dr. Mohler's run pretty much the same when it comes to recreational reading so I thought I'd go ahead and just read this entire list of ten books. I'm now forty percent of the way through (math wizzes will do the math and figure out that this means I've read four of the ten) and thought I'd report in....
Don't Take Your iPod to Church! (Part 1.5) (06/17/09 - 50 Comments)
Last Friday I encouraged you not to take your iPod to church. Not surprisingly, this generated a bit of discussion both at the blog and across some other social media (Twitter, Facebook, and so on). It's a good discussion to have, I think. I realize that I am probably overstating my case just a little bit, but this is deliberate. I want to get people thinking about this issue. I offer special thanks to people...
The Perfect Technology (06/11/09 - 39 Comments)
About a year ago I wrote a review of Amazon's Kindle reading device. At the time, I loved it. That was then. A couple of months ago I traded my Kindle to a friend for a stack of old-fashioned ink-on-paper commentaries. This is now. I think I made a good trade. He is enjoying the Kindle and I am enjoying the commentaries. Win-win. Something changed between then and now--I came to see that all of...
The God Who Answers Prayer (06/10/09 - 13 Comments)
I've always loved Acts 12. It is such a fascinating bit of writing--a little story in three acts, each of which fits so well with the others. I was reflecting on the chapter this morning and thought I'd share a little bit of that. The chapter begins by describing the beginning of Herodian persecution against the church. Herod, the king, presumably to please his Jewish subjects, has the disciple James arrested and killed and then...
Addicted to Entertainment (II) (06/04/09 - 13 Comments)
Yesterday I looked briefly at entertainment addiction and attempted to propose a definition of entertainment. I said that entertainment is an escape or distraction from normal life. Perhaps I should have added that it is an "enjoyable" escape or distraction. While this is an imperfect definition, I think it is useful, at the least. We seek entertainment to take our minds off the stresses and strains and reality of life. Today I want to offer...
Addicted to Entertainment (06/03/09 - 25 Comments)
A few days ago John Piper answered a question about addiction to entertainment. He expressed his concern with our need today to be entertained and to be entertained near-constantly. He then offered a few pointers on escape this addiction. This little article got me thinking and I wanted to offer just a couple of thoughts on the topic. First, I want to try to define entertainment. The best I can do, at least for now,...
A Man There Is, A Real Man (05/24/09 - 12 Comments)
There are a couple of songs we sing in church for which I've seen only the barest information. In our bulletin we generally record at least the author, composition date and name of the tune. For these songs we've got nothing (except, in one case,the author's name). I thought I'd put them up here today to see if anyone out there can point me in the direction of more substantial information about them. The first...
An Inflated Predator Panic (05/22/09 - 61 Comments)
This is a topic I've written about before, but one that has been on my mind again lately. I'll be interested in your feedback on it. Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. 'Being male,' he explains, 'I am guilty until proven innocent.'" As awful as...
Ashamed of Shame Itself (05/14/09 - 14 Comments)
Last night as Aileen and I taught some of the teens at church (as we do every Wednesday evening) we encountered the concepts of guilt and shame. It is a tricky concept this, as it may be positive or negative depending on the context. The Bible makes it clear that, in their innocence, before they invited sin into the world, Adam and Eve were "naked and unashamed." Written after the fact and written at a...
While We Were Still Sinners (05/08/09 - 7 Comments)
This morning I came across the name Jason Dunham and spent a few minutes reading about his life and death. In 2004, Dunham was a twenty-two year-old Corporal in the United States Marine Corps, serving in Iraq. He became the first Marine since 1970 to earn the Medal of Honor--the nation's highest award for battlefield heroism--for actions in combat. On April 14, 2004, he was manning a checkpoint near Karabilah when an Iraqi man whose...
He Lives! (05/01/09 - 4 Comments)
This morning I cracked the cover of a new biography--one I spied while browsing the book tables at The Gospel Coalition Conference. It is titled The Life of Rowland Hill: The Second Whitefield and is written by Tim Shenton, a school teacher in England who has several previous biographies to his credit. Dr. Joel Beeke wrote the Foreword and he says this: "Here is biography at its best. Shenton marvellously brings Rowland Hill to life...
Escaping Anonymity (04/25/09 - 7 Comments)
Several months ago I was asked to submit an article to Tabletalk Magazine. The editors had read an blog entry I had written dealing with the subject of accountability and asked if I'd be willing to write a condensed version and submit it for publication. I was glad to do so and the result appeared in this month's Tabletalk. You may have read a version of this article in the past but, if you care...
What Is The Gospel Coalition? (Part 2) (04/24/09 - 24 Comments)
Yesterday I posted the first part of an answer to the question many people have asked me (and the question I've, in turn, asked many other people: What Is The Gospel Coalition? In that article I answered a few of the what, where and why questions. Today I want to discuss how you and I can be involved in it. Important to the ethos of The Gospel Coalition are the differences between an organization and...
What Is The Gospel Coalition? (04/23/09 - 36 Comments)
As I wrote yesterday, I am in Chicago at The Gospel Coalition Conference and I am here primarily to discover what The Gospel Coalition (TGC) is and why you and I should care about it. It is my impression that most people are quite confused, as I am, about what the organization is and what it hopes to accomplish. I am also uncertain as to who this organization is for--whether it is exclusively for pastors,...
