Good morning from San Diego, where I’m speaking at a men’s retreat this weekend. This is my final event for the year, so I guess I’ll soon be settled in at home for the rest of the winter.
Sales & Deals
Yesterday saw the launch of a huge sale on Kindle books, most of which are published by Crossway. You can find that complete list on my November Kindle Sale page. Many of these books are cheaper now than I’ve ever seen them. Of course, there are some other Kindle deals as well which you can find in the usual place.
Westminster Books has a great deal this week on R.C. Sproul’s commentary series. I have often found them useful.
Recommended Reading
Churches Shouldn’t Just Ban Hillsong, Bethel, and Elevation. Though I’m sticking with my perspective on the matter, I appreciate Kenny Klinglesmith’s alternative take on singing Hillsong, Bethel, and Elevation. “I’ve been leading worship for 15 years. For the past 10, I’ve served as a contract leader for multiple congregations throughout Texas. And increasingly, I’ve encountered churches all across denominational lines taking a strong position: They won’t sing songs written by the worship behemoths Hillsong, Bethel, or Elevation.”
The New Benefit of Clergy. Writing especially of Russell Brand and David Walliams, Carl Trueman compares modern celebrity scandals to older clergy scandals. “Reviewing the autobiography of Salvador Dalí, George Orwell asked why moral monsters like the Spanish surrealist were granted immunity from accepted moral standards. His answer was that artists enjoy ‘benefit of clergy’—the medieval practice of granting clergymen accused of crimes the right to be tried in church courts, where penalties were considerably lighter than those faced by ordinary villains. The same holds true today. We grant our modern holy men, the artists and entertainers, a similar privilege…” (You’ll need one of your per-browser monthly allotment of free articles to read it.)
Everything Sad Coming Untrue. “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?” Jacob Crouch explains why this little scene from The Lord of the Rings chokes him up.
What Do We Do With New Testament Books Not Written by Apostles? Not all of the New Testament books were written by apostles, of course. Some people suggest this presents a problem when it comes to their authority or place in the canon. Michael Kruger disagrees. “In the end, it is fair to say that the entire 27-book corpus of the New Testament is apostolic. In some fashion, they all bear official apostolic testimony about Jesus and his message. Thus, they all bear the very authority of Jesus himself.”
The Million Dollar Gene Editing Question. Emma Waters outlines two different forms of gene editing and explains why she regards them very differently. “In many of our conversations about technology, the question is rarely whether to ban a tool outright. The goal is to figure out how to use it for health, healing, and human flourishing, while banning or limiting the ways it can be misused.” This, she says, is the case with gene editing.
Scrolling the Soul Shallow. John Piper does a good job of explaining what it means to have a shallow soul. “I have said many times that the worst problem with television (or now let’s just say Instagram or any online media in general) is probably not the pervasive sexualization of all of life — that’s big enough — but rather the pervasive trivialization of all of life. You can scarcely watch TV ads or be online for more than ten seconds without being dump-trucked with banality and silliness. Grown men and women, even famous grown men and women, act like eleven-year-olds whose high point at summer camp was to bob for apples in a toilet filled with Mello Yello — the apex of satisfaction. That’s the quality that we’re being dumped on every day.”
The Funnies
My friend Chris Martin maintains a Substack called The Funnies, and every Saturday he shares a few fun and silly things he found on the Internet—something I see as a modern equivalent to the comics pages that used to be in every newspaper. I asked him to share a couple with you. I added one as well—an awful pun from Denny Burk.
Flashback
Marriage Happy, Marriage Holy. You will grow in holiness by tolerating quirks and habits and by not allowing every frustration to boil to the surface.
We must never forget that the heart which is not too young to sin is also not too young to be filled with the grace of God.
—J.C. Ryle
