Discernment

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The World We Made: Coming soon...

UPDATE: There’s been lots of interest in this podcast, with about 2000 listens from 30 countries and counting! If you haven’t subscribed yet, we’ve added a few links to make it easier for those of you who aren’t on iTunes, which is most of you. (Welcome non-Apple fanboys.) Don't miss an episode. Scroll down and subscribe now.

"These are the confessions of American Christians recovering from American Christianity. This is the world we made."

Warhorn Media is pleased to announce a new podcast hosted by Jake Mentzel and Nathan Alberson and featuring Tim Bayly. The World We Made is designed to help ordinary American Christians think through the difficult issues we face in our culture today. Season 1 is about homosexuality.

Over the course of the first season, we talk with Tim about how we went from having anti-sodomy laws in all 50 states (just 50 years ago) to where we are today. What are the changes Tim has seen in his lifetime? What exactly do they mean? What part did the culture play and what part did the church play? How are regular Bible-believing Christians supposed to respond? What has Tim learned as a pastor to help equip us for the challenge of ministering to men and women tempted by homosexuality?

These are the questions we'll be unpacking over the course of eight 20-minute episodes. We'll start out slow and easy, and things will pick up steam as we get closer and closer to the end. You won't want to miss it, so check out the trailer (above), and go ahead and subscribe now in iTunes or Android (or wherever you listen to your podcasts—Google Play Music, Stitcher, TuneInRSS feed) so you're ready when the first episode drops (July 17). 

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Standing in the gap: what does it mean?

Nobody standing in the gap in the wall

Nobody standing in the gap. Nobody rebuilding the wall. But what need? There are no enemies visible (yet).

(By Joseph Bayly, posted by TB) When discussing what is unique about our church, one of the things I often bring up is the concept of "standing in the gap." I'm referring to a biblical analogy of a protective wall around a city. If the wall is broken in a certain place, that is a gap in the wall. In case you are wondering, gaps are not good. In the book of Ezekiel, God uses this analogy and we see three things that faithful men do to "stand in the gap"...


Response to inquiries concerning the Sam Allberry post...

Last week I wrote Gay priest Sam Allberry is LivingOut... warning against the errors bound up with Rev. Sam Allberry and his LivingOut.org movement now quite popular here Stateside. Since that post, men who read the post through FB links have been quite angry. 

I understand the frustration these men feel at criticisms leveled against a pastor who is committed to foregoing sexual intimacy outside heterosexual marriage, and to speaking against such sin to his liberal synod’s bishops, most of whom are themselves full-blown homosexualists. At this point in Western culture’s normalization of sodomy,  it seems wacko to get technical about our witness against the movement. Something like the enemy of my enemy can’t be anything other than my friend, right?

Trouble is, we can witness to Biblical sexuality in a way that undercuts Biblical sexuality. Which is to say winning isn’t everything; how we fight is an integral part of our witness. Yes, I get it: we’re very weary of the battle. We see the growing marginalization of Christian sexuality and it would be very helpful right now to have...


Is there a Christian ghetto in our future...

This is a talk given by ruling elder Ken Patrick at a conference held this past Saturday at his church, Trinity Presbyterian Church (PCA), in Ludlow, Kentucky. Titled "Maintaining a Christian Witness in an Increasingly Pagan Culture," the conference's other speakers were Trinity's pastor Chuck Hickey and an attorney from the Alliance Defending Freedom, Jeff Shafer. I attended the conference with my son, Joseph, and his fellow pastor Paul Belcher (both serving Christ Church in Cincinnati). Hope you find this talk as wise and helpful as Joseph, Paul, and I did.

* * *

Maintaining a Christian Witness in an Increasingly Pagan Culture

by Ken Patrick

Before we begin, let me talk about my qualifications to divine the future: I’m not a prophet; I don’t have a “word from the Lord” in the sense that I’m about to share any divinely sourced revelation with you; God didn’t appear to me in a dream.

What I’m going to share are simply observations on what may come to pass if current trends continue, and what I would do if I were in charge. If you find yourself disagreeing with what I say, hopefully you’ll stay until I’m finished. We’ll have a Q&A session where you can ask a question, and of course you can pigeon-hole me afterward.

So, to answer my own question right up front—is there a Christian ghetto in our future?—I think the most likely answer is “of course, yes” at least in an intellectual sense and perhaps in a real, physical way as well. I think it’s very possible that we’ll see both. Before I begin describing what these Christian “ghetto” scenarios might look like, let’s establish why many of us think...


Fathers and mothers in Israel: Joe Sobran...

He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward. (Matthew 10:41)

This past week, I exchanged several e-mails with a young man who's been reading Joe Sobran and loving it. The e-mails were because this brother is inclined to believe the trash-talk William F. Buckley unleashed against his old friend Sobran, smearing him as a Jew-hater.

I tried to defend Joe against Buckley and all his wealthy friends who lived with him on Israel's Amen Corner, but it was no use. Young men can't help underestimating the cost of discipleship, particularly when a man's apostolate is teaching, preaching, or writing. Do you remember as a young man thinking your cultural sophistication and close study of God's opponents would allow you to get rich being a truth-teller when all other men through the ages got poor and dead doing the same? Hope springs eternal from us human pests, doesn't it?

I'm guessing this was the hope Joe had when as a young man he first started writing. Maybe he could tell the truth and be published by Oxford or HarperCollins? Maybe he could write the truth and get rich doing it? Maybe he could expose Israel's abuse of these United States...


On the death of truth: a lament...

All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, But the LORD weighs the motives. (Proverbs 16:2)

Recently, we've had several posts calling out Liam Goligher and Carl Trueman for misquoting Calvin. David Talcott's post explained why reformed men want to claim Calvin for their side. To the contrary, as Dr. Talcott gently warned readers, "Calvin thought sex meant something in civil society." This is the heart of the issue.

Sadly, the point is lost on reformed men today. Dr. Talcott's kind assumption that reformed men care about truth is wrong. What Reformed men keep track of isn't truth, but spin, relationships, and outward appearances. What else could account for the refusal of men like Goligher and Trueman to correct their blatant falsehoods? What else could account for the hostile response of other reformed men to these men being called out for their deception?

Truth matters. When Goligher and Trueman feed their readers a lie, it tarnishes their own reputations among the godly. Beyond that, their lie slanders a man who cannot defend himself. If he were alive, he could file charges against them, but John Calvin died some time ago...


Trump, Russ Moore, and white Southern Baptists...

The Donald is a repulsive figure, personally. But don't blow off his supporters by supposing they vote for The Donald because of his three wives, his hair, or his seemingly conscienceless lying. There's something deeper going on here. The New Yorker gets it:

Trump also grasped what Republican élites are still struggling to fathom... The base of the Party, the middle-aged white working class, has suffered at least as much as any demographic group because of globalization, low-wage immigrant labor, and free trade. Trump sensed the rage that flared from this pain and made it the fuel of his campaign.

...When he vows to “make America great again,” he is talking about and to white America, especially the less well off. The ugliness of the pitch will drive some more moderate and perhaps more affluent Republicans to sit out the fall election...

Reformed believers are ground zero of the "more affluent" and we're not known for our sympathy for poor white trash.. They're not a popular cause among the elite. But look at Bernie Sanders:

The Democratic Party has a strange relationship with the white working class. Bernie Sanders speaks to and for it—not as being white but as being economically victimized. He kept his campaign alive last week, in Indiana, in large part by beating Clinton nearly two to one among whites without a college degree.

As I keep saying to friends and family, no matter how repulsive we find The Donald... 


Test the spirits: Tully and friends...

(NOTE: I was not aware of the present and very sad additional scandals in Tully's life just announced the day I posted this warning. Had I known, I would have written a different post or not written at all. Please join me in praying for Tully and his family. And may God guard each of us from these sins of the flesh which do terrible harm to all those most precious in our lives; but worse, that cause scandal to the Name of our Lord and His Bride. TB)

Men, we need to warn our sheep and loved ones against these false shepherds. Tully is very appealing to Reformed souls who have no deep root and are in bondage to sin, but the cheap grace he and his friends sell is the road that leads to death. If you love your family and fellow church members, don't be silent.

Having eaten pizza with Cheap Trick at a DeKalb bar back in the day, I liked the author's link to "I Want You To Want Me" as these men's true heart desire.

Remember this warning given both by our Lord and his Apostle John:

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1)


What Christians should learn from Rob Bell and the psychologists…

5352592011_fff4a2dce4_z.jpgHow Stories Deceive is a worthwhile read. It tells the story of a con artist who claims to be a sexually exploited underage teenager. But what the article is really about is the power of stories. Of course, it would have to be in story form to prove the point, and it does a good job. First, some excerpts, then I’ll make a few comments:

“Stories bring us together. We can talk about them and bond over them. They are shared knowledge, shared legend, and shared history; often, they shape our shared future. Stories are so natural that we don’t notice how much they permeate our lives. And stories are on our side: they are meant to delight us, not deceive us—an ever-present form of entertainment.

“That’s precisely why they can be such a powerful tool of deception. When we’re immersed in a story, we let down our guard. We focus in a way we wouldn’t if someone were just trying to catch us with a random phrase or picture or interaction. (“He has a secret” makes for a far more intriguing proposition than “He has a bicycle.”) In those moments of fully immersed attention, we may absorb things, under the radar, that would normally pass us by or put us on high alert. Later, we may find ourselves thinking that some idea or concept is coming from our own brilliant, fertile minds, when, in reality, it was planted there by the story we just heard or read.

“Give me a good story, and I can no longer quite put my finger on what, if anything, should set off my alarm bells. When the psychologists Melanie Green and Timothy Brock decided to test the persuasive power of narrative, they found that the more a story transported us into its world, the more we were likely to believe it—even if some details didn’t quite mesh. The personal narrative is much more persuasive than any other form of appeal. And if a story is especially emotionally jarring—How amazing! How awful! I can’t believe that happened to her!—its perceived truthfulness increases.”

This is what allows scam artists to make a healthy living, whether they are small-time or in the big leagues. Psychologists and others have studied this, and Rob Bell seemed to grasp it intuitively. Why do we fall for lies, whether theological or otherwise, when there’s a good story?


What's wrong with playing the lottery...

Note from Tim Bayly: Many believers gamble, some in the stock market while others play bingo or the lottery. Famous Christian celebrities play poker together, for money, while others gamble in casinos. This pastoral warning against gambling by David Wegener was published here back in 2009. Given the lottery craze of the past week or so, it seemed like a good time to run it again.

We got some new books for the Theological College of Central Africa library, recently. Now they are being processed to go into the collection and I was reading one of them this morning. The book is John H. Leith's Pilgrimage of a Presbyterian: Collected Shorter Writings, 2001, edited by Charles E. Raynal; Louisville: Geneva Press.

On pages 208-13, the book republishes a short article Leith wrote in 1956 titled, "Gambling--What's Wrong with It?." Here's a summary...


The scandal of the Evangelical college...

Why bother continuing to warn souls against the betrayal of God by the profs and administrations of Evangelical colleges?

A quarter century ago, I bought a book that put some social science muscle behind what I had observed growing up in Wheaton and knowing Wheaton's profs, administrators, and their families firsthand. The book was Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation by University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter. Originally published in 1987, Hunter's work was based upon a careful survey of students at Evangelical colleges and seminaries, including Wheaton College, Gordon College, Westmont College, Seattle-Pacific University, Taylor University, Messiah College, Fuller Theological Seminary, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Wheaton Graduate School, and Westminster Theological Seminary.

University of Chicago Press summarized Hunters' work..


Calvin's Cornelius Plantinga says peace, peace...

For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge...  (Malachi 2:7)

After the post on Calvin College's billboard campaign lauding themselves for being dirt-renewers, one reader defended Calvin by providing links he believed would explain their dirt-keeping campaign. He commented:

Actually Calvin College teaches about renewing minds and renewing the earth. Judging by the sarcasm in your second paragraph it sounds like you started with a negative pre-disposition toward the college. (Did you really think the photo depicted a religious ritual?) The billboard you saw was one of six scattered around West Michigan, each with a different photo and message. You can get more context of the campaign here: http://www.calvin.edu/wonderon.... And you can get more context for Calvin's approach to education here:http://www.calvin.edu/about/wh.... I doubt I have swayed you in any way but at least your readers will have more context.

I read his links and responded by...


"Spiritual friendship" demythologized...

There's a movement insinuating itself into the church and selling a sweet spot to stand halfway between the worldlings' love of all things gay and God's condemnation of the abomination. Led by men and women intent on clearing a path for the mainstreaming of their gay identity among the people of God, when they talk to one another the movement's architects refer to themselves as "Side B." According to their jargon, "Side A" designates gays who consummate their relationships while "Side B" designates gays who don't.

Talking with church people, though, their language gets more nuanced. They call themselves "gay," but they add the qualifier "celibate"—as in "celibate gays." The celibacy they speak of, though, is perversely truncated. Christian terms normally associated with celibacy such as 'chastity', 'purity', 'modesty', or 'virtue' become meaningless when "celibate" is simply a modifier of "gay."

Side B gays also show their sensitivity to normal church-going Christians by not speaking of their Side B relationships as "monogamous covenantal unions" or "gay marriage." Rather their new phrase is "spiritual friendship." Presented well (and gay's are pretty good at presentation), the term takes on a sort of medieval monastic or Pauline buzz that allows naive Christians to let down their guard.

The essential thing noted by Biblical Christians, though, is that these proponents of "spiritual friendship" are united in their repudiation of the sex God made them. So chatting Christians up on the subject of "spiritual friendship" doesn't quite cut it because, whether or not these "spiritual friendships" are consummated, they're nothing like the friendships found...


In film exposures of Planned Parenthood, do ends justify means?

Pastor Doug Wilson recently did a helpful post exploring the ethics of tactical deception on the part of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). He got me thinking about what constitutes a moral obligation of full disclosure and whether parameters for godly deception can be marked out.

I have had discussions with Christians who are very pleased by CMP’s work, but are conflicted regarding tactical deception. They wonder if they’re giving into saying “the ends justify the means.” In addition to this, there are R2K proponents criticizing CMP for their “unethical” methods for infiltrating PP. The former are understandably conflicted, the latter are selectively squeamish—dare I say pietistic—about operating within the “common” kingdom.

Adding to the mess is the media’s selectivity in reporting on CMP's videos while also reporting names linked to a website dedicated to facilitating adulterous liaisons...


Setting Captives Free repents of focus on sin and repentance...

The problem with my original writings was the focus on sin, the labeling of people according to their sin, the sharing and discussing of sin, and the constant reminders of the sin. This is Old Covenant law-oriented, problem-focused doctrine and not according to biblical truth, and it hurt many people to whom I’ve recently been apologizing.

- Mike Cleveland, announcing his repudiation of thirteen years of work with Setting Captives Free

One change in the past quarter-century that has been terribly destructive within the Church and Her households is the ubiquity of the internet through smartphones, tablets, and laptops. These tools have enabled the private consumption of horrendous moral filth and Christian men and (increasingly) women have found this wickedness almost irresistible. The percentage of young Christian men who have succumbed to internet fornication on a regular basis is likely close to ninety percent, and now women have joined men and are consuming thirty percent of the internet filth.

At Clearnote, we've given ourselves to working closely with men and women repenting of this sin. A critical part of our work with those repenting of this sin is that each man and woman has been required to enroll in an internet discipleship program called Setting Captives Free (SCF).

For this reason we were quite sad to be notified recently by several men of our congregation that SCF is now repudiating and will no longer be offering their former courses, including the Way of Purity (for heterosexuals who are struggling with sexual sin) and Door of Hope (for homosexuals in the same position). After a preliminary investigation, one of our elders wrote "it would appear [they] are watering down the gospel by shifting focus away from sin and the need to repent from it."

We contacted SCF to express our concern and this was their...


Why won't Scott Walker say that President Obama is a Christian?

This is the headline being run by various media rabble rousers. They're incensed that Gov. Walker won't simply accede to President Obama's religious self-definition. As they see it, a man has the freedom to choose his sex without regard to his body parts, so clearly a man has the freedom to choose his religion without regard to his denial of the religion's God.

So what's wrong with Gov. Walker? President Obama says he's a Christian and that's the end of it.

Questioned, Gov. Walker responded: 

As someone who is a believer myself, I don’t presume to know someone’s beliefs about whether they follow Christ or not, unless I’ve actually talked with him.

We can all speak to President Obama personally, or we can take him at his word...


Brian Prentiss has not actually been hidden in a closet...

Under the post, "Intown's Brian Prentiss comes out of the closet...," one reader asked, "How long before the PCA ends up in the same slough of despond, and heaven knows what else, that has claimed most of the PCUSA?"

Since the PCA is a largely southern denomination, her failures will always lag behind other denominations, and her wealth will give it a better face than most. But she'll have to stop giving northern liberal churches/pastors a pass despite knowing disciplining them won't get good press. At this time the PCA's failures aren't even in the same ballpark as the PC(USA). At this time.

The troubling thing is that the PCA is following the same path the PC(USA) and her predecessor denominations followed in trusting famous men of wealth and influence rather than following little boys named "David" with just a slingshot who are determined to slay the giant using "only" the means of grace: discipline, from the least formal private discussion and exhortation all the way to heresy trials.

In this context of Intown, Pastor Prentiss has been giving signs of heterodoxy for years and I'm guessing nothing has been done by anyone on any faithful personal level. That's the norm within PCA presbyteries. We don't want to deal with men individually through private remonstrance and exhortation and rebuke, and that for a whole host of reasons including...


How should the church approach homosexuality (V): "Biblical friendship" as a Trojan horse?...

Is he clueless to our cultural context? Honestly, although it seems incomprehensible, Covenant Theological Seminary grad and PCA pastor Scott Sauls (channelling Wesley Hills) claims David and Jonathan as Biblical support for his project to bring gay men into the mainstream of the Church—as gay men. Speaking of the tender Biblical account of love between David and Jonathan, Pastor Sauls has the audacity to hold it up as a pattern of "covenantal" and "for the rest of life" friendships of "gays" within the Church of Jesus Christ:

"I think that message cannot be missed, it cannot be forgotten when we leave here, that friendship is the answer, true friendship, covenantal like David and Jonathan, 'I commit to you for the rest of my life.' Or like Julie Rodgers, another—you know, a woman with same-sex attraction, has said that—and who has fallen where you have on the ethics of it, and the vision for what that means for her."

[This post is fifth in a series (the firstsecondthirdfourth, and sixth) working through Pastor Scott Sauls and Christ Presbyterian Church's "Same-Sex Attraction Forum." More will follow.]

King David was light in the loafers. He liked men better than women. Yes, in that way.

Are you surprised? You shouldn't be. Jesus was like this, too...


Gagnon's critique of Moore's "Here We Stand"...

Full disclosure, Robert Gagnon was a friend of my cousin, John DeWalt, and I have an autographed copy of his masterpiece, The Bible and Homosexual Practice. I've recommended it before. If you want the best work on Scripture's teaching on homosexuality, there's nothing close.

That said, I also have spoken at a conference with Russ Moore and David and I have expressed our appreciation for his efforts to defend the Biblical doctrine of sexuality. This time, though, Russ has come up for a well-deserved drubbing by Gagnon and it's ironic given the fact that Dr. Moore is a member of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention and runs their Ethics and Religious Life Commission in Washington D.C. while Dr. Gagnon is a member of the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA) and a professor at the PC(USA)'s Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

Dr. Moore put together a statement opposing the Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision. The statement is called Here We Stand and people like Al Mohler, Danny Akin, Paige Patterson, Paul Tripp, Denny Burke, Karen Swallow Prior, James MacDonald, Alistair Begg, Owen Strachan, Bryan Chapell, and Rosaria Butterfield signed on. You too can sign on if you get them your name and position by this Friday.

Trouble is, the statement is less than wise.

Dr. Gagnon explains...