Weekend A La Carte: 737 Nosedive, Surrogacy, Kids’ Sports

Good morning. I’ve got a selection of articles and videos today, and they range from a graphic-heavy piece from the Wall Street Journal, to an article about the Wild West of surrogacy, to a video about a remarkable recovery from a devastating accident. Check in tomorrow for interesting, uplifting, and enjoyable bits and pieces I gleaned throughout the week.

Sales & Deals

Today’s Kindle deals include a collection of books that features some older and some newer titles.

Recommended Reading

I’m not convinced that we have expressed enough amazement at the recent act of terrorism aboard that FlyDubai jet. Its survival is an incredible act of God’s providence as, by rights, it should have crashed. Why God chose to save that jet and all its passengers, I don’t know, but I know that I’m looking forward to seeing the inevitable movie when it comes out. This graphic-heavy article from the Wall Street Journal explains how the plane managed to survive despite being pushed far beyond its normal capabilities.

Read: How a Boeing 737 MAX Survived a Nosedive Traveling at the Speed of Sound.

Trevin Wax wrote a long piece this week that begins with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and ends with a call for Christians to resist the siren calls of this world and preach the gospel.

Solzhenitsyn upset his British listeners when he showed them it wasn’t only the Soviets who were in chains. He diagnosed the spiritual vacuum in the Western world, even with (and sometimes because of) our material wealth. “We have forgotten God,” he said in 1983. The spiritual shallowness he saw decades ago continues to mark our hollowed-out civilization. The rot of complacency and compromise has spread.

As Christians who long to see the gospel take deeper root in our own lives and then transform the lives of the those around us, we must tether ourselves to the good news that every heart needs most, the one saving word that releases us sinners from bondage.

And yet we must admit we don’t always recognize our own captivity to commonplace cultural narratives and invisible spiritual forces. If we’re to open the eyes of people to their cultural captivity, we must have our own eyes opened to the ways we’ve been molded by the world we’re called to oppose.

Read: One Saving Word.

Sometimes we are made aware of so many great moral evils that it’s difficult to know which of them is worse than the others. But I’m quite sure time will prove that the current “Wild West” of surrogacy is exceedingly evil and exploitative. The Atlantic is quite a progressive publication and the author of this feature is not firmly opposed to surrogacy, yet even she can’t help but express some significant misgivings. Yet she, of course, wouldn’t express the major concern that many of these children are being created so they can be given to gay couples. After all, just as progressive ideals demand “marriage equality,” they also demand “reproductive equality,” even when that demands the exploitation of other people and the creation of children who will never have either a mother or father.

California, the home of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, is the undisputed center of American surrogacy, and the practice there is infused with a distinct blend of crunchy vibes, social liberalism, and straightforward capitalism. Surrogacy costs in the state begin at about $150,000 for a single baby, according to promotional materials for a variety of agencies doing business there. The percentage paid to the surrogate varies widely.

Many, many enterprises want to help make gay couples’ dreams of parenthood come true, and the Men Having Babies conference was underwritten by a number of them: IVF clinics, genetic-testing companies, and surrogacy agencies. If the sea of Zegna sneakers and stylish down jackets didn’t tell you that these guys have money, the brochures offering future fathers “white-glove service” and VIP packages made it clear. In the exhibitors’ hall, I passed an abundance of merch designed to reel clients in—candles bearing the instruction LIGHT ME WHEN MATCHED, onesies with I LOVE MY DADS on them, canvas bags with the legend DADDY VIBES, and my own favorite: multiple iterations of sperm-shaped stress balls. Some were dyed rainbow colors.

Read: The Wild West of Commercial Surrogacy.

Griffin Gooch has a long article about the importance and necessity of spiritual habits. He links them with the growth and spread of the early church to show that they have always played a key role in the Christian faith. He also addresses the fact that habits are an important element in maintaining the fervor of our faith.

The other day I got a Hawaiian roll with a younger guy from church; he was rolling around in shame because he wasn’t spending much time in prayer or Scripture. “I’m worried I don’t love God. I heard someone say prayer should flow from our love for God. But I don’t feel like praying, so maybe I just don’t love God enough.”

This logic is sadly common. Basically: our actions should flow effortlessly from our state of mind and/or emotions.

It’s honestly one of the most crushing cultural beliefs: the idea that belief and feeling should lead to practice, and never the other way around.

Read: The Best Apologetic Is You.

I was telling someone the other day just how thankful Aileen and I were when we came to the conclusion that none of our three kids were ever going to be standout athletes. That saved us from having to even think about travel teams and all the other things that can soon consume not just a childhood, but an entire family. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal describes some of the craziness that has swept over so many of today’s parents.

The second baseman stood 3-foot-6. The shortstop weighed 44 pounds.

At a club baseball tournament east of Los Angeles this summer, the 6-year-olds on teams from as far away as Arizona were too young to pitch the ball themselves, but their parents were spending thousands on baseball.

There were club dues, tournament fees, hotels, transportation, uniforms and equipment. An app offering “advanced statistics” and video of at-bats was $191 a year. Even watching from the stands has a price—this tournament had a $60-a-head pass for spectators. Spending $10,000 a year is common.

Read: Advanced Stats and $500 Bats: Why Baseball for 6-Year-Olds Is Breaking the Bank.

Interestingly, Canada’s Maclean’s magazine also covered youth sports recently:

Thanks to a generation of well-intended parents whose default is to optimize their kids’ performance in every pursuit, paired with a youth sports industry ready to cash in, kids’ leagues have transformed from a fun after-school activity into an all-encompassing endeavour that’s draining bank accounts, commandeering schedules and reshaping childhoods.

Read: The Trouble With Kids’ Sports.

Mason Gregoire was involved in a devastating motorcycle accident and came near to death. Rise Under tells his story and follows his recovery. It also tells how his church was involved in caring for him and for his family. It’s an encouraging film that is free to watch on YouTube.

Watch: Rise Under.

Reader Recommendations

I like to solicit recommendations for things readers are reading, listening to, watching, eating, or otherwise experiencing. Note that while I screen anything that is obviously out-of-place, I do not thoroughly research each of the recommendations, so keep that in mind as you browse through them. Here’s what you sent along:

Mac recommends Ray Ortlund’s new book Eat, Drink, and Be Merry. “I have been summoned by the wisdom of Ecclesiastes to enJOY the good gifts that [God] has given in this life. A Gospel call to bold enjoyment will stir your joy.”

Jeremy recommends The Life of Arthur W. Pink by Iain Murray. “If you are Reformed and a Baptist, you will relate with many of Pink’s struggles, while hopefully not agreeing his separation from the church is the answer.”

Andy says, “A friend of mine, David Rider, has been developing a simple and helpful resource to help fellow believers cling to Christ.” You’ll find it at Cling to Christ, along with his daily Bible study.

Courtney recommends The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion series by Beth Brower. So many people have recommended this that I finally went ahead and downloaded the first volume.

Jonathan recommends the YouTube channel Dead Man Talking, in which “Bob Roberts shares his cancer journey with the world as he talks about it amongst his closest friends. He’s blunt about his status. He focuses the listener on eternity and uses humor along the way.”

Sydney recommends, “in connection to the article that talks about the Christian view of the human body and the Cornell rape case,” that everyone read Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey.

Stephen recommends “The Voyage of Life” by Luke Hill, a series of songs based on paintings by Thomas Cole. “The church I’m pastor of used ‘The Voyage of Life’ to open a week of evangelistic meetings. The songs are really powerful when listened to together. Luke Hill has written some new hymns and produced new versions of old ones. He’s definitely worth checking out!”

Brian recommends the books of Ellen ES Ceely, who “writes young adult adventure fantasy. There’s no romance and no inappropriate scenes for teenagers. She currently has 5 books with a 6th releasing in November. Her ‘Legend of Zale’ series is ideal for high school age (14+). She also has two standalone fairytale retellings that are ideal for middle school and high school (12+).”

Erika recommends the historical fiction of Rosemary Sutcliff. “Many of her books can be somewhat hard to find, but they are worth looking for at the library or through used booksellers. I read countless of her books to my kids when homeschooling and have recently been rediscovering them.”

Angie says, “Biblical counselors and anyone following the movement should read Marshall Adkins’s book, which he discusses in this podcast. It explores the presuppositional foundations of biblical counseling, detailing how Cornelius Van Til influenced Jay Adams and David Powlison to shape the movement’s roots.”

Donna says Jen Wilkin’s book Dust to Dust “is proving to be helpful, not just for her thoughts on aging, but also for her insights on the Bible’s use of chiasms as a teaching tool. Wilkin’s right, ‘Once you start seeing chiasms, you can’t stop.’ I am currently teaching Revelation 1-5 & understanding it as a chiasm has helped me teach it more effectively.”

Belita “thought the book God Planted Five Seeds by Jean Dye Johnson was well worth reading. It is about five missionaries who died in their efforts to reach a tribe in Bolivia and how the tribe was subsequently reached with the gospel. They were not as famous as the Jim Elliot team in Ecuador but just as faithful.”

David recommends my new children’s book God’s Great Big Global Church. “It reminded me of From the Rising of the Sun, yet more colorful… Definitely recommending it to friends and family!”

Ana says, “I enjoy working on the daily Waffle puzzle!”

Foppe recommends Everett Henes’s two-part article “Learning to Die from Augustine: The Forgotten Christian Art of Dying Well” (part one, part two), which he found “very comforting and encouraging” in facing the reality of death. “The promises that comfort the dying should be preached, prayed, sung, and believed long before the final illness. The Christian should not wait until the last hour to learn the language of faith.”

Flashback

A Daily Diet of Doctrine. Daily Doctrine is in a familiar yearly format much like a daily devotional, but its content is theological in nature rather than devotional. Its purpose is to teach the truth more than to apply the truth.