Bayly Blog: Out of Our Minds, Too

Joy tinged with sadness on a wedding day...

As I was in the prime of my days, When the friendship of God was over my tent; When the Almighty was yet with me, And my children were around me; When my steps were bathed in butter, And the rock poured out for me streams of oil! (Job 29:4-6)

(Tim) Lord willing, in a few hours our third daughter, Hannah Marie, will be married to Lucas Dee Weeks, son of Ron and Doris Weeks. This will leave Mary Lee and me with one child still living at home--Taylor, our fifteen year old son.

As I sit here writing the wedding sermon, it occurs to me that the joyful sadness Mary Lee and I feel as our Hannah departs is a graceful sadness...

What 13-letter word ending in "animous"...

(David) ...often describes a plurality--frequently a majority--of Presbyterian Church in America judicatories and commissioners? "Unanimous"? short four letters. "Magnanimous?" fat chance on both counts.

"Pusillanimous?"

Latest evidence of the depth of this impulse within the PCA is Heritage (Delaware) Presbytery's failure to pass a simple statement opposing the murder-by-starvation of 23-year-old Delaware resident Lauren Richardson. (For more on Lauren's plight read PCA Pastor Gary Knapp's blog here.)

Praise God for the commissioners who voted in favor of the proposed statement. Shame on the one-vote majority who couldn't find it within their hearts to agree that Scripture, indeed, simple humanity teaches the following principles:

A (proposed and rejected) Public Statement from Heritage Presbytery on Euthanasia and Imposing Death by Starvation and Dehydration

Believing that human life at all stages from conception until natural death and in every condition regardless of disability or cognitive ability bears the image of God, we, the Heritage Presbytery (Presbyterian Church In America) offer our voice in support of life and in opposition to imposing death on the ill and disabled in any way, in particular through starvation and dehydration.

Evangelizing mystical relativists...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kevin) Here's a helpful op-ed piece from the New York Times detailing the challenges we'll face in our preaching in the coming decades. It's written by David Brooks who's frequently good.

The "S" word...

(Tim) Senator Clinton's been hoping and searching for a smoking gun that will force Senator Obama's withdrawal from the presidential race. After this debacle, she may have her heart's desire. Check out this video of Senator Obama's offense and apology. It's all over now.

Hi Peggy. This is Barack Obama. I'm calling to apologize on two fronts. One was you didn't get your question answered and I apologize. I thought that we had set up interviews with all the local stations. I guess we got it with your station but you weren't the reporter that got the interview. And so, I broke my word. I apologize for that and I will make up for it.

Second apology is for using the word 'sweetie.' That's a bad habit of mine. I do it sometimes with all kinds of people. I mean no disrespect and so I am duly chastened on that front. Feel free to call me back. I expect that my press team will be happy to try to make it up to you whenever we are in Detroit next.

"I want to crawl up in the fetal position..."

(Tim) The announcement by the National Abortion Rights Action League yesterday, that they support Senator Obama's presidential candidacy, has the women desperately clinging to Senator Clinton spitting mad. One woman sent an E-mail saying:

I want to crawl up in the fetal position but instead I have to go report as chair of the League of Women Voters Nominating Committee. I just tried calling NARAL and the office is closed." -Alisa

So, good citizens, if you're a single-issue voter as I am, you now know who is the most dependable advocate of the slaughter of little babies yet in their mother's womb.

Had Calvin or Luther lived in our time...

(Tim) Senator McCain asked for Pastor John Hagee's support in his presidential bid, and got it. Later, Roman Catholics sought to make Senator McCain's association with Pastor Hagee the same sort of liability Senator Obama had with Pastor Wright. Well, unlike Pastor Wright, Pastor Hagee knows how to backpedal.

Releasing this howler of an abject apology, the LA Times reported:

Pastor John Hagee, who heads the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, said in a letter made public Tuesday that he now knew the terms he used to describe the church, such as "the great whore," were "rhetorical devices long employed in anti-Catholic literature."

I'm chuckling.

The costly biblical witness of Crystal Dixon...

(Tim) It's long been dangerous for followers of Jesus Christ to speak publicly of Scripture's teaching on fornication, child-murder, divorce, adultery, father-rule, sodomy, and a whole host of other subjects our culture opposes God in. And although we don't like bad news, here's a case we should all be following and exerting our influence in.

Editor in Chief of the Toledo Free Press, Michael Miller, wrote an editorial advocating sodomy and smearing those who oppose sodomy as resembling racists. This prompted University of Toledo Associate Vice President for Human Resources Crystal Dixon to submit an op-ed opposing Miller's editorial. Dixon wrote: "As a Black woman who happens to be an alumnus of the University of Toledo's Graduate School, an employee and business owner, I take great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are 'civil rights victims.' Here's why. I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a Black woman. I am genetically and biologically a Black woman and very pleased to be so as my Creator intended. Daily, thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle...

Soccer girls: "As capable and as tough as any boy..."

Janelle’s father was concerned, too, but a bit more philosophical. Title IX, the federal law enacted in 1972 mandating equal opportunity in sports, has helped to shape a couple of generations of girls who believe they are as capable and as tough as any boy. With a mix of resignation and pride, Rich Pierson said to me: “We’ve raised these girls to be headstrong and independent. That’s Janelle.” -"The Uneven Playing Field," New York Times Magazine, May 11, 2008.

(Tim, w/thanks to Lucas & Jeff) If you don't love motherhood, how will you raise your daughter? Will she be a doctor? Lawyer? Do neuroscience research? Take over your family business? Go to seminary? Be a vet?

If you don't protect your daughter, how many of her little babies will she murder before she decides childbirth won't intrude on her career?

If you want your daughter to be aggressive and physical, how many ACL repairs will she have before she finds out she's got a woman's joints--not a man's? And that still, at this late date, sex makes all the difference...

Pics from the past...

(Tim) Back in 1980, Mary Lee and I set off for seminary with our daughter, Heather. Completing my degree at UW-Madison in 1979, I'd worked a year at First Presbtyerian Church in Boulder, Colorado, before matriculating at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the Fall of 1980. Our dear friend, Paul Cote, had worked in city management at Wheaton, Illinois, for several years before he, too, entered GCTS that fall. The next two years my brothers David and Nathan also joined us at Gordon-Conwell.

Friday afternoons, six of us got together in a library of medieval manuscripts and paintings to talk...

Ah yes, let a study committee handle it...

(Tim) For the record, I'm disappointed Rocky Mountain Presbytery's City Church in Denver was allowed to take the PCA's ball and go home without being disciplined for her rejection of biblical sexuality and polity. A plant of the Presbyterian Church in America, she (and particularly her pastor) should have heard a clear "No" from her presbytery, somewhere or sometime. Instead, she saw her presbytery enmeshed in a bunch of split votes that demonstrated tepid leadership, at best; and trendy postmodern commitments to biblical sexuality, at worst.

What would a pastor or session have to do in order to receive a clear disciplinary "No" from a presbytery of the PCA today in this matter of sexuality?

I can hear some responding, "No one's ordained a woman elder or pastor, yet."

If we think it's possible to avoid declaring the boundaries of biblical sexuality at every point leading up to the eldership, but then to hold firm there, our problems are much deeper than the biblical doctrine of sexuality...

Not your mother's DTS...

"The fact that the women were there during the most significant events in the life of Jesus meant that the apostles, the male apostles could not write the Gospels without collaborating with the women." -Ms. Carolyn Custis James in Dallas Theological Seminary chapel on March 28, 2008

(Tim, w/thanks to John) During a CBMW council meeting about ten years ago, I listened to one of the high priests of evangelical exegetical scholarship rebuke the council for our work opposing gender-neutered Bible translations. Wayne Grudem had been excited at the possibility that an invitation to sit in on the council meeting might be enough of an enticement to get this scholar to allow CBMW to use his name on the council or as a member of the Board of Reference, but instead of being awed by the company he'd been given entree to, he took the opportunity to poke us in the nose...

Study committees and majority and minority reports...

(Tim) Deep in the many helpful comments under my brother David's post from a few months ago titled "Moving on in victory towards peace and harmony," one writer asked about my own experience serving on General Assembly's Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military a few years back. My response bears on the overtures requesting study committees on sexuality issues that have been sent up to this year's General Assembly. Here's the question I was asked, followed by my response.

QUESTION: "Actually, maybe we should ask Tim his opinion. I know (of) the attempt to make the Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military "balanced" in such a way that nearly no other committee was. That is why that Study Committee was one of only a couple to have minority reports. I'll leave Tim to say whether that was a blessing to the Church."

RESPONSE: The experience was not good. Through it I came to believe even more than I already did in majority and minority reports (except in certain very limited cases). Why?

Well, the year before our final report was presented, our chairman did his best to get us to accept a unified report. So our penultimate year (Daryl has inspired my vocabulary), we presented one report agreed upon by both sides.

Being a grazed woodlot, it was neither good woodlot nor good grazing...

Senator Clinton, pining for the fiords...

Pet Shop Owner: "Well, he's, he's, ah, probably pining for the fiords."

(Tim, thanks to Dave) Here's a funny takeoff on the Monty Python dead parrot sketch, dealing with Senator Clinton's "I'm not dead yetness."

Home-schooled MK Heisman Trophy winner...

(Tim, w/thanks to Taylor) Gator sophomore quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner, Tim Tebow, is making news witnessing to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. His coach, Urban Meyer, isn't cringing about this player: "If anybody ever knew the complete story about Tim Tebow, most people wouldn't believe it.... Nothing surprises me about Tim. There's a skeptical side to all of us. We think, 'They talk the talk, but do they really walk the walk?' I can't say I've met many people that do, but Tim is definitely one of them."

Inside Gainesville Correctional Institute, Tebow told the inmates:

Everybody is telling me I've made it. They tell me, "Tim, you have success and you've made it." I've won the Heisman Trophy, so I've got it made, right? One day, people are going to forget about me. One day, people are going to forget about the Heisman Trophy, the jump pass and the national championship. One day, this [championship] ring is going to rust. There are only four things that are going to last forever: God, his word, people and rewards.

May God use this young man mightily for the salvation of many.

Why did God make mothers?

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) Here's a cute compilation of answers given by young children to various questions concerning their mothers.

The no-holds-barred pugnacity of the weaker vessel...

(Tim) In the context of commanding husbands to live with their wives in an understanding way, showing them special honor, the Word of God declares woman to be the "weaker" sex:

You husbands likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman; and grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered (1Peter 3:7).

This is one of a number of reasons Christians haven't voted for Hillary. Feminist Susan Faludi had an op-ed titled "Fight Stuff" in the New York Times yesterday...

Thank you, dear brothers...

(Tim, w/thanks to everyone who went home muddy) What an encouragement it was to have all of you dear brothers help with the work this morning! We're thankful for each one of you who dug in and got muddy planting the shrubs, but also the others--men, women, and children--who helped plant earlier this week and last. Our church yard looks beautiful with the 100 or so ten foot trees and the 350 or so shrubs we've planted these past two weeks. Thank you too, Mike, Pastor Dave, and Sebra, for guiding the process.

As a foretaste of what the shrubs will look like as they grow, here are some pictures. Run your cursor over the picture and the name should pop up. Here are the quantities:

Texas Scarlet Quince (above): 50

One more run-of-the-mill denominational train wreck...

(Tim) Our readers regularly send us links to more documentation of the train wreck within the Anglican denomination today. As David pointed out in an earlier post, Martyn Lloyd-Jones accurately warned of this decades ago, but the evangelicals he directed his warning towards wouldn't listen. The controversy is thoroughly recorded in the history of these exchanges written by Iain Murray in his superb, Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950 to 2000--particularly the chapter titled, "How the Evangelical Dyke Was Broken in England."

These things are instructive for us today, not because David or I are particularly concerned about the Anglican branch of Protestantism, but because every denomination has evangelicals arguing these same questions Lloyd-Jones argued with Jim Packer and John Stott. It would be a shame to have evangelicals make the same mistakes, over and over again, endlessly repeating history because we won't learn from it.

Here are some quotes from the conflict:

Alister McGrath: "I have no intention of claiming that evangelicalism is the only authentic form of Anglicanism. My concern is simply to insist that evangelicalism is . . . a legitimate and respectable option" (as quoted in Murray, p. 118).

Speaking of the 1988 book John Stott co-authored with liberal churchman, David Edwards, titled Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue, Murray sums up Stott's newly compromised views...

Happy Mother's Day!

(Tim) Tomorrow is Mother's Day, so here are pictures of David's and my mother, Mary Louise Bayly, and my father and mother-in-law, Ken and Margaret Taylor (Dad Taylor is deceased).

And honoring God Who gave us motherhood, here's a sermon on a wonderful Mother's Day text--Isaiah 60:10-14. This was the funeral sermon given several years ago on the occasion of the death of Bloomington's mother-in-Israel, Rita Cuffey...

You can't go wrong, here...

(Tim, w/thanks to Andrew) Excellent resource for believers. Forget most things published today and download these men. It will cost you nothing. We've added a link on the left, under "Publications."

Fleeing sinking ships

(David) It's hard for anyone committed to ecclesiastical purity not to view J.I. Packer's recent departure from the Anglican Church of Canada through jaundiced eyes.

Dr. Packer, at age 81, finally finds a cause worth quitting Anglicanism over. According to Packer, "poisonous liberalism" has consumed the Anglican church in the form of her recent dalliance with homosexuality. Packer leaves the Anglican Church of Canada for the extra-territorial "Province of the Southern Cone" based in South America.

Our appreciation for Dr. Packer's opposition to homosexuality is tempered by the realization that his stalwart support for Anglicanism influenced many into the Anglican church despite its long history of opposition to Biblical truth both corporately (women's ordination, authority of Scripture) and personally by its officers (Williams, Robinson, Spong, et al).

Indeed, as with Dr. Stott, the die was cast as early as 1966 when Martyn Lloyd-Jones warned Stott, Packer and other Church of England stalwarts of the need to break with their denomination at the annual meeting of Great Britain's Evangelical Alliance--a warning scorned by Stott and ignored by Packer. It's to Dr. Packer's credit that he actually leaves--something Stott never did. But it leaves a sour taste in the mouth to know that neither Stott nor Packer have ever acknowledged the slightest debt to Llloyd-Jones for his 1966 warning, or the slightest error in ignoring it for so many years.

Men's hats: to doff or don...

(Tim) Teach the men and boys of your church how to wear a hat, but also how and when not to. And despite the howlers buried in this guide to hat etiquette, it's a good place to start. But I'm sure Mike McMillan will pick it up from here...

Slip sliding away: Twenty year Wheaton prof on "sexual preference"...

God only knows
God makes his plan
The informations unavailable
To the mortal man
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we're gliding down the highway
When in fact we're slip slidin away

                        - Paul Simon

(Tim) Yesterday, one of our congregation's Wheaton alumni was talking about other Wheaton alumni she keeps in touch with. She described her friends' typical post-graduate spiritual condition as consisting of a crisis experience a few years after graduation in which a decision is made between throwing it all away or turning and facing the fact that they're a sinner and coming to true Christian faith. Her grief was obvious as she described the spiritual bankruptcy so often characterizing her friends' post-Wheaton lives...

Would you please pray for Martyn...

(Tim) Martyn is the son of missionaries supported by Church of the Good Shepherd. Recently, Martyn wrote and asked for prayer. Would you please pray for this brother in Christ serving with the USMC in Iraq? Pray particularly that God would make him holy.

Just down the street from our church-houses...

"For from the least of them even to the greatest of them, Everyone is greedy for gain, And from the prophet even to the priest Everyone deals falsely. They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, Saying, 'Peace, peace,' But there is no peace. Were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done? They were not even ashamed at all; They did not even know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; At the time that I punish them, They shall be cast down," says the LORD. (Jeremiah 6:13-15)

(Tim) A few years after Yale was founded, a student spoke critically of one of Yale's tutors saying, "He has no more grace than this chair." Yale's response was swift: The student was expelled and, despite his apology (contra Wikipedia), Yale refused to reinstate him. Centuries later, Yale named one of her Divinity School buildings for this student. It's the only building ever named for a student who was expelled.

One of this student's contemporaries also attended Yale a few years earlier when Yale was just being chartered. At that time, Jonathan Edwards himself was caught up in the discipline of Yale's tutors. Their infraction?

They were promoting Arminian theology. Yale had been founded because of Harvard's betrayal of Christian doctrine, so no one involved in Yale's founding was about to let it happen again.

What does Yale discipline today?

This past year, a Yale art student regularly impregnated herself (artificially, with a syringe), then killed the babies she never knew by taking oral abortifacients--all of which she carefully documented with a video camera for display at a Yale art exhibition. Yale's administration was quite embarrassed and released a statement...

Syncretistic pressures on Navy chaplains...

(Tim) Under the Jeremiah Wright post, Al comments:

"One of the things that disturbed me most in my 20 year Navy career was the number of Chaplains who walked around with crosses on their sleeves, who claimed the name of Christ, yet had no love for Christ or his Gospel.

"While in the Persian Gulf during Ramadan, onboard the USS Nimitz, I was in my rack (bed, for you civilians) at evening prayer. The senior Chaplain in the battle group came on the 1-MC (ship’s intercom) and delivered these words: “Dear God, Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, Mother Earth… you are known by many names…” I was dumbfounded by such blatant syncretism and ripped open the curtain of my rack and everyone in the berthing compartment (place where Sailors sleep) was staring at me...

What Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright got right...

(Tim) Speaking to the National Press Club this past Monday, April 28, 2008, Senator Barack Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, forthrightly identified himself as a preacher of what he calls the Christian "gospel" of liberation. Or more specifically, the gospel of black liberation theology advocated by men such as Dr. James Cone which replaces salvation with liberation.

Here's a transcript of Dr. Wright's words. It's kind of rough slogging, since it hasn't been broken down into paragraphs, but it's fascinating, nevertheless. As a political ideology, it's not half bad. But as a statement of the Christian Gospel, Dr. Wright gets it right when he says,

...what we both mean when we say, I am a Christian, is not the same thing.

It would be possible to read Dr. Wright as saying only that the white man on the deck of the slaver and the black man below deck don't mean the same thing. Yet despite this being the immediate context of his statement above, the rest of his words indicate that his us vs. them extends far beyond slave owners and slaves, to the core of the Christian faith. Specifically...

On commentaries...

(Tim, w/thanks to Jeff) Have I ever said anything about commentaries? Sure, but I'll have another hack at it.

When I left seminary, we had no money, so book purchases were mostly from used bookstores and resale shops. But I felt the need to have something "substantial" on at least one of the Gospels, so I took everyone's advice and spent about 40 of our limited dollars on I. Howard Marshall's commentary on Luke. "Stupendous example of evangelical scholarship at its very best" they all said, and I took the bait.

We moved to Pardeeville and I began preaching. Immediately, I looked for an occasion to use my most-excellent new tool and it wasn't long in coming. Choosing a text in Luke, I opened Marshall and...

The B-I-B-L-E, yes that's the book for me...

(Tim) If you don't read Doug Wilson's blog, forget this one and bookmark him. If you have time for two good reads, David and I don't mind being your second, but make sure Doug's your first. Yes, there are positions and friends we don't share with him, but for about fifteen years I've found him more consistently edifying and biblical than anyone else I read.

Typical of his chronic helpfulness is this simple post about why we should all bring Bibles to church. Read it, and then let's all join in making sure each of us and our family members have Bibles in hand in worship next Lord's Day. Deal?

Encroachments on liberty: It won't stop with the Mormons...

(Tim w/thanks to Dan) Speaking of the loss of liberty, here's one of an almost-limitless number of articles that demonstrate where we're headed in these United States. Western European nations, Australia, and Canada are already far down the trail, but it's still a bit of a shocker here at home. "As to be hated needs but to be seen." In time, though, I'm afraid we'll all settle in and decide no Christian witness is at stake here, there, or anywhere.

I wonder whether Christians right now believe spanking their children is a basic act of biblical obedience? How many evangelicals would, as an act of conscience, oppose national or state laws banning it?

You think you know something about the churches David and I serve, right? Well, we just lost a woman who'd been at Church of the Good Shepherd for twelve years because...

Simple statements about politics and our civil authority...

(Tim) Readers know David and I rarely take political positions, but recently I received this E-mail from one of our readers, Keith Knowlden, and I thought I'd pass it on. It's simple and true...

This week's offertory...

(Tim, w/thanks to Rebecca) Who needs Denise Graves when you've got Zoei, herself.

You try telling your wife she's a horse with a mane...

(Tim, w/thanks to Bryan Maes) Recently, someone told us he'd thought men had to have beards to attend Church of the Good Shepherd. Not true, although, like babies, we have a lot of beards...

ID: Dawkins isn't opposed to space aliens bringing it...

(Tim) Went to Ben Stein's Expelled this weekend. A couple comments...

Dawkins' facial tics get the best of him when Stein puts him through his paces, repeatedly asking him about his non-belief in God. Do you believe in God? Do you believe in the Christian God? How 'bout the Muslim God? Any one of the many Hindu Gods? Do you believe in any God at all? Are you sure? Absolutely sure? What would you put the chances of God's existence at? Ninety-eight percent sure He doesn't exist and two percent sure He does? Fifty-two percent He doesn't and forty-eight percent He does?

It's a good education watching the über-evolutionist squirm under such scientific scrutiny...