Good morning. Grace and peace to you.
Today’s Kindle deals include several excellent titles on justification. There’s a study Bible in the mix as well.
The Challenge of Masculinity
Alan Noble responds to some recent writing about masculinity. “A positive Christian account of masculinity involves the use of power for protecting, sacrificing for, serving, and caring for the vulnerable. It also sees the pursuit of greatness, magnanimity, not as a perverse egotism, but as a striving for excellence for God’s glory and the good of the community … I’m not implying that women don’t also desire greatness, but I think men, particularly young men, often feel this desire acutely. At least, that is my sense of things. They experience it as a great burden.”
The Daily Battleground We Often Ignore in Therapy Culture
Casey continues writing about some of his concerns with therapy culture. “We live in a therapeutic age that trains us to label every emotional struggle as disease. We are trained to identify illnesses for which we bear no responsibility. Our mental state is determined solely by forces outside our control. As a result, we bypass our own moral agency and engage in an external battle against invisible forces with the help of the professional medical class. Our greatest problem is never in here—in what the Bible calls the ‘mind’ or ‘heart’; it’s always out there in an oppressive trauma-inducing society that wreaks havoc on emotionally-deficient persons.”
How We Treat the Human Body Speaks Volumes
“The human body matters, both in life and in death. Our physical being is part of who we are. God has made us with body, mind, heart, and spirit. Harming the body is an affront to human dignity and life. Mistreating the remains of the dead signals a level of disdain both for the dead and for those who are left behind that is inhuman.”
We Are (Gratefully) Not Exempt
This article grapples with the reality that many Christians can feel that, because of all they’ve done for God, they ought to be exempt from difficulties.
No Need to Fear, Ever
Justin writes to the fearful. “You are not alone, Christian believer! God’s people have always wrestled with fear, with questions, with sickening doubts when it comes to the many challenges of living in a sinful world. Yet the answer continually returns: there is no need to fear!”
The Wounds of Fatherhood: How Popular Music Confronts Paternal Neglect
Anthony Bradley has an interesting one here: “For decades, popular music has served as a powerful medium for artists to grapple with personal trauma, none more resonant than the wounds inflicted by bad fathers. From abandonment to emotional neglect, musicians have transformed their pain into melody, offering listeners both catharsis and a window into the lifelong consequences of paternal failure. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a wave of songs emerged that directly confronted the heartbreak of absentee or neglectful fathers, spanning genres and generations in a cultural reckoning with broken families.”
Flashback: Navigating the Space between Singleness and Marriage
…while the Bible clearly commends marriage and expects it for the majority of people, it offers little guidance on getting there…So what are we to do?
Let us beware lest we do injustice to others by believing false things about them. What is it in human nature, that inclines people to believe evil of others? Shall we not strive to have the love which thinks no evil?
—J.R. Miller
