BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

Please help...

Will you please help me?

When the publisher of Dad's novel, Winterflight, decided to take it out of print, I bought the 3,000 copies they had left in their inventory. With shipping I paid about $3,500 for them and I need to recoup that money. I've given away many of these books--some to some of you. But I can't afford to keep giving them away and I'd like to ask you to buy some for Christmas gifts, your church library, your public library, or as presents for your pastors and elders and senators and congressmen and doctors.

Winterflight is the perfect antidote to President Obama's grand scheme to move all medical authority inside the Beltway.

The book is about a hemophiliac who is dying because of nationalized health care...

Recommendation for interlinear Bible...

A reader asked me to recommend an interlinear Bible. Since he's the most literal in his English interlinear text, I'd recommend McReynolds' Word Study Greek-English New Testament. For an English Bible translation, I recommend the New American Standard Bible (NASB) 1995 updated edition. (TB)

Soft and effeminate Christianity hides behind lofty and ethereal theology...

This is an excerpt from Horatius Bonar's God's Way of Holiness. Much here that is helpful to men and women of God. Read carefully, to the very end. It's packed with meat. Paragraphing is mine. (TB, w/thanks to Tim C. by way of Matt B.)

* * *

"The man who knows that he is risen with Christ, and has set his affection on things above, will be a just, trusty, ingenuous, unselfish, truthful man. He will “add to [his] faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity” (2 Peter 1:5-7). He will seek not to be “barren nor unfruitful.” “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report” (Phil 4:8), these he will think upon and do.

"For there is some danger of falling into a soft and effeminate Christianity, under the plea of a lofty and ethereal theology...

Andrew Marin is a wolf...

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. (Acts 20:28-31)

In response to my warning against the heresies promoted by InterVarsity and its publishing house, InterVarsity Press, a man commented that he'd been involved with InterVarsity and now has a sodomite son who has found a church where he can be at home as a gay man. He went on to comment that he's read IVP's Love Is an Orientation by Andrew Marin and found it a "balm to (his) soul," so he recommended it to our readers.

Marin's book is preciously wrong and one day Marin and his publisher will give an answer for seducing many away from repentance for their bondage to sexual perversion. I responded to this man...

Commend, hesitate, warn, and (yes, Mabel) forbid...

Dad used to say every article in Readers Digest was "Oh the wonder of it!", "Oh, the horror of it!" or "Oh." In his memory, here's a new category of Baylyblog posts.

Listening to my son Taylor last night, it occurred to me a pastor should tell his flock those authors and books he commends, those he commends with some hesitation, those he warns against, and those he forbids. And yes, forbidding certain authors and books is one of the obligations of faithful shepherds and ought to be binding on those who have placed themselves under his care by vowing to submit to the church's "government and discipline."

Our model for this series of posts will be Charles Spurgeon's most-helpful book reviewing commentaries, Commenting and Commentaries.

Commend: Our first commendation is the single book I consider most important (after God's Word) for any man aspiring or ordained to church office...

Sin, temptation, and the Campuscrusadification of the Church...

When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?”

And looking at them Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:25-26).

Again, here's a response to a question asked by "Jay" under the post, "Must a gay man go straight?" I thought it best to put the response here on the main page as a post.

Jay asked: "I do know other men and women who struggle with homosexual temptation, who not only reject copulation but also gay identity and culture, but who do not have any heterosexual desires. Are they saved?"

Sorry for the lack of response. The post took all my time for the blog yesterday so I'm playing catch-up.

First, I'm doubtful these men and women you know who struggle with homosexual temptation actually reject gay identity and culture as clearly and with the finality you indicate. If we live in a culture that hates sexuality as God made it; if we pursue androgyny in the pulpit in the way we preach (see the category of Baylyblog titled "gelded discourse"), in our appearance--hair length and style, for instance; if our  men are physically vain (whether macho buff or femmie bling and piercings or a sweet combination of both); it's likely no Christian tempted by homosexuality has really turned away from androgyny to Biblical manhood and womanhood. Made an effort, sure, but today within the Church there are precious few heterosexuals who pursue Biblical manhood or womanhood.

So being "straight" in our sexuality as the Bible presents manhood and womanhood is exceedingly rare, today. Men are narcissists and refuse to man up, taking responsibility for themselves or others...

Which Bible, which printing, and which binding...

Until the late nineties, I read and preached from the New International Version. Since then I've exclusively used the New American Standard Bible Updated (1995) Edition. For many reasons that is the Bible I commend. Some in ClearNote Church of Bloomington use the English Standard Version, the Holman Christian Standard Bible, or the New King James. I have no strong objection to these Bibles, but our standard here at ClearNote Church of Bloomington is the NASB Updated Edition. (Here's a longer explanation of why I prefer the NASB.)

Bible Design Blog is the place I turn for reviews of Bible printings and bindings. The details this blog provides are superb. Here's a review of an NASB printed by R. L. Allen and bound in crimson Highland goatskin.

 

Steven Mosher and the latest Rwandan genocide: your tax dollars at work...

(Tim, w/thanks to Dan R.) Back in 1983, a young Stanford anthropologist was booted from China for blowing the whistle on China's forced abortion policy. Steven Mosher (not the Mosher of Climategate) had been in one of China's rural provinces doing Ph.D. research when he discovered China's government forced mothers to murder their unborn children.

Mosher publicized this great oppression and China's government responded by expelling him from the country. Standford University also responded by expelling Mosher from his Ph.D. program. The Chronicle of Higher Education did long articles on the scandal and, despite Stanford's attempt to defend their actions, those of us who read about the case as it developed learned a lesson about the limits of Academic freedom.

Shortly afterwards, Mosher published his best-selling expose of China's mass murders of the unborn, Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese; followed a few years later by Allan Bloom's best-selling expose of the Academy, The Closing of the American Mind.

For some years, now, Mosher has been doing excellent work at the Population Research Institute. Here's a recent example exposing the abuse of our U.S. tax dollars for the coercive sterilization of Rwandan men.

ClearNote Resources: free MP3 of Bonar's "Words to Winners of Souls..."

(Tim) ClearNote Press today announced a free MP3 recording of Horatio Bonar's Words to Winners of Souls. We're grateful to the men who did the work of recording and puting the file up on the server. We're especially grateful to Jeff Ewer for his reading. The audio is free to anyone who registers and I trust many will find it helpful.

Tom Wolfe, Rolling Stone, race relations, and Rev....

(Tim) If you want to gain a deeper understanding of race in the northern urban context of these United States, I'd recommend Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. Originally serialized in Rolling Stone, don't let that put you off. It's excellent, although you'll want to skip some parts you'll find unhelpful to your sanctification.

Speaking of The Bonfire of the Vanities, did you know it's not proper to write "Rev. Bayly?" On the other hand...

"It is better to 'be' than to 'do'..."

(Tim) Here's a review of Ideas Have Consequences; and this from the book itself:

Women of the world's ancien regime were practitioners of Realpolitik in this respect: they knew where the power lies. . . They knew it lies in loyalty to what they are and not in imitativeness, exhibitionism, and cheap bids for attention. Well was it said that he who leaves his proper sphere shows that he is ignorant both of that which he quits and that which he enters. Women have been misled by the philosophy of activism into forgetting that for them, as custodians of values, it is better to "be" than to "do".

The complete idiot's guide to typing...

WRONG: The bird is beautiful.  Look at the bird's coloring.  See the bird fly.  The bird flies high in the sky.  Look at the bird's nest.  See the baby birds.  The baby birds want to eat.  See how their mouths are open?  I wish I were a bird so I could fly.  Do you want to fly?

RIGHT: The bird is beautiful. Look at the bird's coloring. See the bird fly. The bird flies high in the sky. Look at the bird's nest. See the baby birds. They want to eat. See how their mouths are open? I wish I were a bird so I could fly. Do you want to fly?

WHY?

(Tim) By now, it's likely there are over 4,000,000 words on Baylyblog and I've written, edited, or read all but a very tiny fraction of them. Edited?

Yes, edited—including our good readers' comments. At times I correct spelling and some of the more obvious typos. Too, I remove spaces.

Why remove spaces? Because many have the habit of treating their computer like a typewriter and it mucks up  readability...

Man vs. lust...

(Tim: Nathan Alberson writes) Dear Dad or Mom:

Your average teenage boy already knows about the birds and bees. But how on earth are you going to talk your darling child through all the issues that come along with it: from lust to porn... Wouldn't it be nice if there was some sort of book about sex written for young men...

"Digesting sin without bitterness..."

(Tim) Over at ClearNote Blog, Jake Mentzel posted an introduction and has been putting up paraphrased excerpts from John Owen's Mortification (The Killing) of Sin in Believers. If you refuse to forgive others, look longingly at men's or women's bodies, wish you had your neighbor's Kubota, are prayerless, comfort yourself with ice cream, numb yourself with alcohol, bale hay during worship, and are bitter against God, this book's for you...

Missional flattery and selfishness...

(Tim) Yesterday, a friend sent me a satirical piece his son and several friends had written about a bunch of new city church plants with names like Elevation Church, Dust, The Line, Infusion Church, and Austin City Life (see Howard Davis' comment, below). He commented, "What is really amazing is their unique web sites all look alike (and) I bet all their unique worship services are the same. And... they're all about being in the 'city.'"

From reading many city church web sites, it's clear such churches normally aren't missional if missional means faithfulness to Jesus' Great Commission commands. Most indicate no practice of rebuke, preaching God's Law, or calls to repentance. Instead, they prattle on about being "for the city" and they're positively chipper.

It's all about seeking common ground with unbelievers. And if they mention God's perfections, it's only those perfections that would be likely to make unbelievers feel good about themselves and think God might not be so high and mighty and scary after all. Christian faith and the Church are presenting as uniting believers and unbelievers in the same brotherhood and sisterhood of man in and for the city. Convicting the world of sin and righteousness and judgment is out and assuring the world of our goodwill toward them in God's Name is in.

Reading Augustine's City of God earlier today, I came across this excerpt. Augustine knew something about preaching the Gospel in the city and contextualizing the Lordship of Jesus Christ to urbane men and women world-weary in a decadent

Legacy publishers on the ropes...

(Tim) The latest New Yorker has an article by Ken Auletta chronicling the death throes of bookstores and traditional book publishers. People are still buying books, but there's a hostile takeover of these legacy hard copy businesses being waged by authors and their strong allies: particularly the explosion of e-books and the pricing structure and self-publishing services of a number of companies; most especially, Amazon. 

It's been a long time coming and nothing but good that authors are regaining some authority over the marketing and distribution of their work.

Take, for instance, self-publishing. In the old days, traditional book publishers cultivated the notion that anything worth publishing would be recognized and put under contract by a reputable publisher. If you weren't able to interest the big name publishers and went the vanity press route, it was because you were vain and wouldn't listen to the simple truth acquisitions editors kindly sent you by letter--that your book had no market. So hardheaded authors who wouldn't take "no" for an answer went off to a vanity press and paid, rather than being paid, for their book to be published. They spent money out of their own pockets to purchase a few hundred copies they could pawn off on business associates or family members.

But no serious man with serious credentials and serious things to say would be caught dead going that route. That's what was meant when you heard the suits say "he went with a vanity press."

Of course those who live in the publishing world know how fallible acquisitions editors and publishers are. John Grisham had his first mystery turned down by twelve publishers and sixteen agents before he found someone willing to take him into print...

A primer on two-kingdom, spirituality of the church, redemptive-historical evasions...

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires.... (2 Timothy 4:3).

(Tim) Darryl Hart is Director of Partnered Projects at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) and an adjunct faculty member at Westminster Seminary in California (WSC). He wrote a helpful bio of J. Gresham Machen titled Defending the Faith. He's also done a short history of the OPC titled Fighting the Good Fight which made me want to go back to my roots there in that denomination--that is, until I remembered what the OPC actually was like. As in somnolent by way of its distinctives, one of which is variously referred to here and other places as R2K (radical two kingdom), 2K (two kingdom), or "the spirituality of the Church."

Concerning the two books above, buy and read them, carefully. If you trace your spiritual or cultural lineage back to the popular evangelicalism of the twentieth century as many of Dr. Hart's admirers do, you need to know the history of men like J. Oliver Buswell, J. Gresham Machen, and the denomination Machen founded called the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. You need to know how real dispensationalism with its always-attendant moralism dogged fundamentalism and the early evangelicals; but also Machen's courageous stand against it. This history will go a long way toward explaining why many otherwise good reformed men today seem careless about cruelty and injustice, and indifferent to the sodomitic bondage and slaughtered babies at the headwaters of the river of blood we drive through each day in this Babylon that is our home.

Dr. Hart does a superb job documenting Machen's opposition to the binding together of the Church and the feminine anti-alcohol and tobacco crusade that, by way of Fundamentalism, sought to extend its reach into conservative presbyterianism. He said "no," and our R2K brothers think of themselves as the true keepers of Machen's flame. Sadly, though, what started out as opposition to teetotalers, prohibitionists, and other moralistic crusaders has morphed into what appears to be a lack of compassion and love for our neighbors and opposition to the Moral Law itself in our work of obedience to the Great Commission...

Top ten books on sex...

(Tim, w/thanks to Mick) Here's a top-ten reading list for those looking to reform their understanding of the meaning and purpose of the sexes as God created them.

1. Scripture, starting with these texts
2. Henrik Ibsen: A Doll's House
3. Paul King Jewett: Man as Male and Female
4. Stephen B. Clark: Man and Woman in Christ
5. Walter Neuer: Man and Woman in Christian Perspective
6. Steven Ozment: When Fathers Ruled
7. G. K. Chesterton: What's Wrong With the World or The Thing
8. Doug Wilson: Reforming Marriage
9. George Eliot: Middlemarch
10. Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons

Now, ten explanations...

And we think we're modern...

(Tim) This excellent exhortation to church planters and other pastors by son Joseph was just posted on the ClearNote Fellowship Blog. With his wife, Heidi, Joseph is planting a church in Indianapolis and I commend the work to our readers if they know residents of Indy looking for a church home. For more information, please e-mail Joseph.

* * *

Currently, my wife and I are reading out loud together volume one of Iain Murray’s two-volume biography of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The First Forty Years 1899-1939 (v. 1). (By the way, reading out loud is an excellent way to pass the time, but more about that another day.)

Whenever I read history, I find myself wondering at my own stupidity... It's truly amazing I so easily forget the truth of God’s declaration through King Solomon that “there is nothing new under the sun.” But I always do, and this is why it's so important to read history. Whenever I read about the past, I find that it's just like the present. Only today we’re so conceited we honestly think we’re the first ones to…

Fatherhood, the dread of responsibility, and childbearing...

(Tim, w/thanks to Bob and Brian) At church the other day, I was talking with Bob Sands, a young father of ten or twenty (I've lost track), and he mentioned another man in our congregation, Brian Bailey, had sent him a link to a book on Google Book that he'd found very helpful titled The Dread of Responsibility by Emile Faguet.

"The dread of responsibility," I thought, "that's the perfect summary of leaders today--teachers, principals, professors, judges, senators, presidents, and of course, pastors, elders, deacons, fathers, and husbands. All of us have a dread of responsibility."

Bob told me the book emphasized the courage fatherhood required and I was reminded of a quote I've used at times that says something like, "The father of a family is the world's first and greatest adventurer."

So today, I went and read the part of the book Brian had recommended...

"Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true..."

(Tim, w/thanks to David B.) Shortly after posting on the charade-posing-as-debate-over-woman-officers-in-the-PCA, I opened an old e-mail from David Baker and read this one-paragraph review of a book that might have arrived in the nick of time. We're at a kairos in our denomination, and before we go whole hog for submergent contextualization, we ought to give Harry Frankfurt's latest work a chance. Here's a description:

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us.

If you think punctuation doesn't matter...

(Tim, w/thanks to TidBits) The second comma in this sentence cost the Canadian telecom company, Rogers Communications Inc., 2.13 million dollars:

The agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

When I was in my early twenties, Dad told me, "Get Strunk & White and read it. Read it until you have it memorized." For the uninitiated, that's Strunk and White's The Elements of Style.

Fifteen books...

(Tim, w/thanks to daughter, Michal) Got this Facebook thingie from Michal today. First, her list; then my own:

This can be a quick one. Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose...

Okay, Talia, off the top of my head (I knew I had to do it right away or I'd be formulating the list in my head for the rest of the day, which is kinda cheating):

Michal Crum's List:

1. St. Augustine's Confessions
2. There is No Me Without You, Melissa Fay Greene
3. Howard's End, E.M. Forster
4. King Leopold's Ghost, Adam Hochschild

From one Christian monarch to another: amusing ourselves to Hell...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) If you want to begin to understand our day--the switch of the central currency of cultural engagement from the Bible to moving pictures, the use of film clips in Gospel preaching, the building of congregations around virtual images of themselves on the movie screen each Lord's Day employed by men like Mark Driscoll and John Piper, and the gift our head of state and his wife gave the Queen, recently--only two things are necessary: first, read the Second Commandment; and second, read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

And while we're talking about the gifts the monarchs exchanged...

Read Edwards for yourself...

(Tim, w/thanks to Jake) For a number of years, Yale's been hard at it putting the works of Jonathan Edwards online, freely available for hoi polloi who can no longer afford the critical edition now running around $110 per volume . It's an ill wind that blows nobody some good, though, and I suspect the high price of the hard copies is part of the reason all of us are now able to search the volumes online. So I'm happy.

Don't allow anyone else to give your Edwards to you. When I was at seminary in New England, I took a course in Edwards' works under Richard Lovelace. One night (it was a small evening seminar), I well remember coming to the session with great anticipation, having read a good portion of Edward's harder truths that week. But then, Dr. Lovelace started the class with a statement to the effect that "Here, Edwards goes a little bit off the deep edge, engaging in his well-known penchant for negativity."

Yes, yes; that's the problem with Edwards. He's so negative you get an ulcer reading him. What we need today is something positive that people can relate to; something that will give people hope and not lead them into despair.

Well, if you've read Edwards, you know that there are few men in the history of the Church who are more...

Down under, the drift toward domesticity...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) Since moving to Bloomington, I've often read aloud to one of my younger brothers or sisters in Christ, seeking to innoculate them against this or that part of our cultural decadence. Scripture always and foremost. But also Bonhoeffer (Life Together). Calvin. Kierkegaard (Attack Upon Christendom). A. A. Milne. The "Preliminary Principles" from America's first Presbyterians. Blamires. Baxter. Bayly--Dad of course. Sayers...

In frequency and zeal, though, my use of Chesterton far surpasses the others. For the lies popular among young men and women today, particularly those being propagandized on university campuses, Chesterton is God's man on the spot. Specifically, no one does a better job of exposing feminism's humorless and bloody corpse.

Among Chesterton's essays, read "The Drift from Domesticity" found in The Thing. (You'll find the full text at the bottom of this post.)

Sit your mother down; call your daughter or wife; read it to the woman of your love right now. You'll both laugh with delight.

Then buy Chesterton's What's Wrong With the World and read the essays comparing the work of husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. You'll never again think big thoughts about business and small thoughts about motherhood. Chesterton will have given you a lifelong innoculation against such stupidity.

All this comes to mind with this from Australia recording the growth in love for the household arts among women there. Now that's good news!

By the way, when I recommend Chesterton, people occasionally get a look of horror on their faces and inform me that he's Roman Catholic and hates Calvin...

Nat Hentoff, a New Yorker with large biblical commitments...

(Tim) Last week, Nat Hentoff was laid off at the (Greenwich) Village Voice. This brings an abrupt end to Hentoff's fifty year run there, appropriately and affectionately titled "Fifty Years of Pissing People Off" by fellow Voice columnist Allen Barra in his recent tribute to Hentoff.

Hentoff started as a staff writer for the Voice back in 1958. His dismissal fifty years later coincides, almost to the day, with Louis Menand's short history of the Voice that ran in the current New Yorker. Beyond the Voice, Hentoff has also published in the New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, JazzTimes (his best-known work may be as a jazz critic and historian), and Atlantic Monthly.

I note the dismissal of Hentoff, as well as the profile of the Voice in the current New Yorker, because this past week I've been enjoying a Christmas gift received from a friend in New York City who knows me well. A former member of Church of the Good Shepherd while studying at IU's School of Music, Regina Scow sent me an autographed copy of The Nat Hentoff Reader which I've been relishing this past week.

So far, I've read a short piece on jazz clarinetist, George Lewis; a longish one on my longtime favorite, Merle Haggard; some superb essays on racism in America including a good profile of Ken Clark titled, "The Integrationist;" and a rare glimpse of the racial suffering of Louis Armstrong in "Louis Armstrong and Reconstruction." The book also reprints Hentoff's classic essay exposing the practice of infanticide in America today titled, "The Awful Privacy of Baby Doe." I'll never forget reading it when it first appeared back in 1985. When I finished the piece, I remember feeling deep gratitude for Hentoff's leadership and courage.

I've been a fan of Hentoff for years now, largely (but not exclusively) because of his heroic defense of the First Amendment, the newborn, and the unborn. Interesting trio, aren't they? Imagine someone who tenaciously defends the First Amendment against the depredations of p.c. nannies also tenaciously defending the unborn and newborn against oppression and murder. He'd have to be a Christian, wouldn't he?

Well, in this case not...

The NASB and ESV on the iPhone...

(Tim, w/thanks to Lillis) Although for myself, I'll be waiting for a good tethering solution before I use an iPhone, many of you already have them and I wanted to pass on some information about a new Bible that's been produced for it. It's called Bible Touch and it runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch--not over the network. So you don't need internet access to run it.

It's encouraging they've only released it with true translations so far, and not the neutered non-Bibles known, for instance, as the TNIV and the NLT.

Here's the (sort of) press release...

Books, a crackling fireplace, and Mother...

(Tim) I have tender childhood memories of sitting in front of the fireplace roasting my back, my two younger brothers lying on the floor falling asleep, while Mud (affectionate diminutive of Mother) read to us. Dad was on the road speaking at conferences much of the time those years, and when he was gone our evenings had a certain leisure. Not that we lived under joyless discipline when Dad was home, but like most men, Dad was sort of daddish.

So the Life without Father routine was that, following dinner and devotions, a fire was built, and as it crackled, Mud read to us by the hour.

Books were the main course in our home, just as they were in the homes of three other families whose children were all growing up at the same time within the same congregation, College Church in Wheaton: the Ken Taylors (Mary Lee's family), the Ken Hansens (ServiceMASTER's founder), and the Hudson Armerdings (Wheaton's prez). All the children of these homes loved to read.

Why?

Because none of our parents were willing...

Book of the week (1): "Life Together"

(Tim) Last week, three links were added at the top of the left column. The first is titled "Book of the week," and this is my first recommendation.

When Mary Lee and I were first married, we'd moved to Madison, Wisconsin and had no idea what church to become a part of. We had no friends in the city when we moved there so we spent quite a bit of time looking for a church home. Visiting church after church, nothing drew us in. We didn't like this church because every sermon was a Gospel appeal; that church because people weren't warm to us; the third church seemed snooty; and so on.

Then, somehow or other, we got a hold of Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and everything changed. One of the many parts still burning in my heart now thirty-two years later--the roundhouse punch that got us to find a church and stay throughout our years in Madison--was the section of the first chapter where Bonhoeffer says "God hates visionary dreaming." It's a knife in the heart of souls who judge the church rather than loving her (I've put an excerpt on the next page). As Mary Lee and I read it aloud, we saw our pride and lack of gratitude and started to repent...

Barack Obama rocks XV: Not a Muslim, and certainly no Christian...

(Tim) Each week, our church has a pickup soccer game at an elementary school near an apartment complex where a number of Muslim law school students live. When we're playing, one or more of the men (and sometimes their wives and children) come over to watch, and occasionally to play. Always, we talk afterward inviting them over for dinner and to church Lord's Day morning. A week and a half ago, one of the men came to both Sunday school and church.

Most of the men are from Turkey, but one is Liberian. During a conversation, the subject of Senator Barack Obama's faith came up and the Liberian gentleman said, "Barack Obama's a Christian, isn't he?"

"No, he's not a Christian," I answered.

"But doesn't he go to a Christian church?" he asked in some confusion.

"Well yes, he holds membership in a church that claims to be Christian, but it's not...

Carson on Matthew is very good...

(Tim) As I'm working on a sermon on Matthew 23:16-24, I'm again struck by how good Don Carson's commentary on Matthew (Expositor's Bible Commentary series) is. Typical of his ability to get to the heart of the matter is this comment on Jesus' third woe dealing with oaths found in verses 16-22. Note particularly his final statement:

Some writers have supposed that 5:33-37--which, formally at least, abolishes oaths--contradicts 23:20-22, which maintains that all oaths are binding but does not abolish them. In fact, however, verses 20-22 provide the rationale for 5:33-37. All oaths are in some way related to God. All are therefore binding, and thus evasive oaths are disallowed. On the other hand, the heart of the issue is telling the truth; and it is probably a new kind of casuistry that, failing to see this, insists that Jesus in 5:33-37 abolishes all oaths of every kind. (Carson, p. 479)

Normally, I wouldn't post such a simple thought and recommendation, but having drubbed Dr. Carson in a post earlier this week for his promotion of gender-neutered Bibles, it seemed right to say the good publicly.

Complementarianism simply a private Christian conviction...

(Tim) Several of us have been having a conversation about what I consider far and away the best work on sexuality in print today, Stephen B. Clark’s Man and Woman in Christ. If you’re a Titus 2 woman, a pastor, or an elder and you haven’t read Clark, you should know that this book written by a Roman Catholic layman is indispensable. Traditional complementarian literature such as Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood can never be more than a stopgap measure. Although helpful, such works are only a hodgepodge of viewpoints and perspectives, never approaching a theology of sexuality. Why?

At the heart of the movement known as “Complementarianism” is the commitment to saying sex matters only in the church and home and only among Christians. It’s a private affair for those who affirm the authority of Scripture because of their Christian faith, and this private affair is only applicable in the private Christian spheres of the church and the home. One looks in vain for complementarians’ application of the order of creation to the military, courts, law enforcement, education, business, or government. The silence is deafening.

As with abortion in the late seventies and early eighties, we again are humiliated by having to turn to Roman Catholics for the doctrinal work needed for our time. While evangelical marketing mavens cop relevant postures and talk loudly in restaurants about being missional and the necessity of contextualizing, Roman Catholics do the heavy lifting against the heresies of our time. What shame we should feel.

These comments exchanged with several brothers by private E-mail led to this response by Bill Mouser, a dear brother in the Lord who's been a great encouragement to me for many years, now. Mouser, the head of the International Council for Gender Studies, writes...

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."

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...

Books I hope to buy....

(David) April's Harpers Monthly has an excerpt from The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions by David Berlinski. The book (from Crown Forum, a division of Random House) isn't available yet, but if the excerpt in Harpers is any indication, it promises to be a powerful indictment of scientific assumptions at the root of militant atheism.

Also, April's Atlantic Monthly contains a review of British Christian literary critic Ian Robinson's latest book, Untied Kingdom. Publisher of the book, Edgeways, has information on the book and its upcoming availability here. Unfortunately, the review isn't yet available on Atlantic's web site, but Robinson's thesis, that literary and linguistic decline precedes and produces coarsening of civilization, is certainly stimulating. My one worry on the basis of the review is that Robinson appears somewhat of a linguistic snob--he argues for the continued superiority of the KJV, an argument that can only be made on the basis of the literary inadequacy of modern translation, not on the basis of the KJV's usefulness as a means of training modern men and women in the Word of God.

Reading, literacy, and reformed worship...

(Tim) The highest literacy rate the world has ever known was in Colonial America where every Christian father and mother knew the ability to read the Word of God was the greatest treasure they could pass on to their covenant children.

What about literacy in America today? Speaking to the New York Times' David Pogue and John Markoff, Apple's Steve Jobs said the Amazon Kindle book reader "would go nowhere."

"It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore."

Incidentally, while many reformed men are having hissy-fits today over the guitar replacing the organ in the accompanying of hymns in reformed worship services, I've been noticing the decline of what's included in reformed worship services--what we usually refer to as the liturgy. Specifically, I've noted how little Scripture is being read. For centuries books of the Bible were read aloud during (or prior to) worship services; books of the Bible, consecutively by chapter. This is what we do here at Church of the Good Shepherd: In addition to our sermon text read aloud as a part of the sermon (and usually not small), we read books of the Bible aloud as one of our Scripture lessons. Currently we're completing Hosea.

Book recommendations on the authority and inspiration of Scripture...

I hope you won't take it as bragging on my part if, before recommending books on the authority and inspiration of Scripture, I report that I have a large collection of books on this subject in my library--maybe as many as fifty. So knowing I have some grasp of what's available, here are the four volumes I suggested the men of our church buy and read this past Saturday at our David's Mighty Men meeting. The list is from less to more difficult.

• Authority by Martyn Lloyd Jones (available used at ABEBooks.com for $1)
• Christ and the Bible by John Wenham (available used at ABEBooks.com for $1.55)
• Fundamentalism and the Word of God by J. I. Packer (available used at ABEBooks.com for $3.90)
• The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible by B. B. Warfield (available used at ABEBooks.com for $6)

The elements of style...

(Tim) When I was in my late twenties, soon to enter the pastorate, my father gave me a little copy of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, with the comment, "Read it until you have it memorized." It was, and still is, good advice for anyone who writes. Since then, I've given away more copies than I could count, always passing along to the recipient the same advice my father gave me.

Here's an online version. Or you can buy your own copy of The Elements of Style.

Two-volume Jonathan Edwards set for $39...

(Tim) Despite all the brilliant scholars, today, who show they're in vogue by dissing Edwards for his purported "immediatism" and "populism," my dear friends pay, them no heed. No heed at all.

Rather, put a finger in their eye by ordering Hendrickson's (thanks for the correction, David Gray) two-volume set of Edwards' works at the great price of $40 now being offered by Cumberland Valley Bible Bookstore, a place we like to do business. Drink from the well men like John Piper have been drinking from for many years, now. Apart from a Bible, it's hard imagining any Christian work you could buy that would provide the same bang for the buck. This is spiritual meat for your soul and the souls of your loved ones.

And by the way, the J. C. Ryle set on the Gospels they're also offering is some of the best devotional, expositional reading I've ever done. If you want only one set of commentaries on the Gospels, get this one.

The disrobing of Buddhist monks and reformed pastors...

(Jesus said) I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. (John 10:11-13)

(Tim) Tonight I'm leading a discussion of Herbert Workman's Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford Paperbacks) with our first year Pastors College men. If you haven't read this book, you simply must. Nothing has helped me understand our present pressures and how best to prepare our children for the coming persecution as well as this little treasure.

Anyhow, I was reminded of Workman's book while reading this excerpt from an account published in the Times of the recent persecution of Buddhist monks in Burma:

A teacher talked about the pain of seeing Buddhism desecrated and the fear of the military that spread among the monks.

I know dozens of monks. One monk is very old. He is 78. It never occurred to him that in his lifetime he would have to hide. The day after the shootings started, I went to this monastery and the faces that I saw on those monks was something I had never seen. It is not fear. It was a sadness so unbelievable.

Now the young monks that I talked to--who weren't rounded up--they want to disrobe...

An Australia day...

(Tim) For Hannah, Lizzie, and me, it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. So, we're sympathizing with Alexander:

"My bath was too hot, I got soap in my eyes, and I had to wear my railroad train pajamas. I hate my railroad train pajamas. My mom says some days are just like that--even in Australia."

By the way, if you have a wee one and have never bought this book to read to him, do it now. You'll both love it.

A great read...

(Tim) If you love the Lord Jesus Christ and are terminally committed to His Bride, the Church, may I suggest you go out and buy a copy of Soren Kierkegaard's Attack upon Christendom?

Not looking to him as a philosopher, but to his understanding of how Official Christianity--what he calls "Christendom"--is the lethal enemy of true Christian faith, I have taken many hours of comfort and delight from this masterpiece. Although the Christendom he himself fought against was the state church of his native Denmark, his parables work almost seamlessly in our own  context; particularly my own heritage, the Wheaton/Colorado Springs evangelical "church."

As there are some conferences where enrollment is limited to men who are elders, pastors, or aspiring to church office, maybe this book ought only to be read by church officers; and not just any church officers, but only those who believe discernment is still a gift given to the church for her edification, and who ask the Holy Spirit for that gift.

Attack upon Christendom is not for those who think it's a sin to examine their own hearts, or the hearts of their sheep, for hypocrisy. It's not for those who believe that the New Testament church and the Reformers had to go through conflict and say some harsh things so that we could escape such conflict and limit our own rhetoric to healing, uplifting, graceful, peaceful, "look to your baptism" words...

The GOOD version of Luther on Galatians at a GREAT price...

(Tim) Lucas Weeks just posted the good news that Watson's translation of Luther's commentary on Galatians published by London's James Clarke is available on Amazon for the unbelievably good price of $16.50. This version has double the pages of the version Crossway sells as one of its Classic Commentaries series, but is only a few dollars more. So trust us: forget the Crossway edition and buy it on Amazon.

Even though J. I. Packer edited the Crossway version, he uses the unabridged Clarke version himself. And what's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.

Martin Luther's commentary on Galatians, gagged...

(Tim) The second group of men have now matriculated in our pastors college and, as part of the heart religion emphasis during the first of three years' study, I'm leading a seminar on Luther's commentary on Galatians. I have an old copy of the commentary published in 1953 by London's James Clarke & Co. which I've used preaching through Galatians the past couple of years. But I went ahead and bought a second copy of the commentary since the most widely available and cheapest printing today is a paperback edition sold by Wheaton's Crossway Publishers. It's one volume in their Crossway Classic Commentaries series and we had assigned it as the edition of Luther's commentary the men were to read for the seminar. It made sense for me to be on the same page with the men. Literally.

Still, I wasn't entirely happy with the situation. Concerning evangelical publishers and their theological trustworthiness, I have a naturally suspicious mind. "Surely no need to worry about Crossway, though," I thought. "They publish many good authors and, although Alister McGrath is one of the series' editors, Jim Packer is the other and he wouldn't allow them to bowdlerize Luther." In his essay, "Sola Fide: The Reformed Doctrine of Justification," Packer cites the same edition of Luther on Galatians I use, translated by Philip S. Watson and published by James Clarke & Co. He's drunk at the same well so he'll not allow anyone to ruin Luther.

And yet I had a nagging thought at the back of my mind that we'd made a mistake by going with Crossway's edition... 

The excellent pastoral counsel of Samuel Miller...

(Actually posted by Tim.)

Buried in a comment is this list of works by Princeton Seminary professor and presbyterian pastor, Samuel Miller. Many of us have found Miller's works to be wonderfully pastoral and wise, but also blissfully short. Here's a list of his works available for downloading and reading, at no cost.

The Utility and Importance of Creeds and Confessions
This is a wonderful antidote to the liberal experiential and emotive community masquerading today under the title "evangelical." For summer reading that would go far to opening one's understanding of the contemporary evangelical/seeker-sensitive/emergent church, I suggest pairing Miller's Creeds and Confessions with J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism.

Adherence to Our Doctrinal Standards

The Guilt, Folly, and Sources of Suicide

The Duty, the Benefit, and the Proper Methods of Religious Fasting

The Ruling Elder

An Able and Faithful Ministry

And again, Miller's excellent, Infant Baptism Scriptural and Reasonable

Calvin's Sermons on Job

The unavailability of English print versions of numerous great Christian works remains a scandal. When Google is seeking to digitize the whole world for free, the lack of Christians seeking to digitize great Christian works for the general good is astounding.

What are we going to do, folks, leave such works to Logos and Ages so that they can profit from them? CCEL is a great resource for classic works but it's somewhat too broad for my taste.

I just bought a facsimile version of Calvin's sermons on Job--750 pages typeset (and translated into English) in the 1500s. I have half a mind to take the binding off, feed it through the church's high speed copier/scanner and see if my copy of OmniPage 15 can be trained to read the old typeface.

Then, if that works, on to Calvin's sermons on Deuteronomy (which I ordered in facsimile form from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom and never received), Bannerman's The Church of Christ, etc....

But first I have to reconcile myself to hacking apart a $55 book I just bought....

A great read for fundamentalists, rednecks, the PCA, and the SBC...

Last night I finished a book recommended by my good friend, Bob Patterson, titled Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (2004). We started the book during our family vacation, reading it aloud in the car as we drove. But we didn't get to the end so now we all have to finish it on our own.

Born Fighting is a broad-stroke history of the Scots-Irish, combined with a good bit of personal narrative by the author, James Webb, whose love and respect for his ethnic background runs gold-mine deep.

Webb's father was an Air Force colonel who clawed his way up the ranks by sheer determination. Webb followed in his father's footsteps, graduating from the Naval Academy, then serving as a Marine officer in the An Hoa Basin in Viet Nam. He was wounded twice and decorated with the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts. Forced to leave the military because of a wound that wouldn't heal, Webb went on to earn his J.D. at Georgetown University where the faculty sought to humiliate him for his military service. His final work with the military came as Secretary of the Navy in the late eighties.

Since then, Webb has been a journalist. His work includes what many consider the classic novel of the war in Viet Nam, Fields of Fire (1978). Tom Wolfe writes, "In my opinion ( Fields of Fire is) the finest of the Vietnam novels."

If you've read The Great Santini to which Webb makes a glancing allusion in the final pages of his book, you could say Webb is the mirror image of the Great Santini's biographer-son, Pat Conroy; and therefore, his precise opposite. Many of his father's traits Conroy portrays as despicable could easily serve as the basis of Webb's honorable and loving tribute to his own dad. It's all in the perspective. Only one of these men has learned the truth of Wilde's observation, "Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them."

And as an aside, I've rarely hated a book as much as I hated The Great Santini. Vulgar, sanctimonious (although I doubt anyone has ever applied this term to Conroy's work before), and patricidal, I do wish Conroy had read the account of Noah's drunkenness before taking up pen. Does America really need one more child bent on destroying his father's reputation? Conroy and Frankie Schaeffer would have done better to shut up. How do men cash royalty checks they receive for this kind of work?

But back to Webb. I'm telling you, this book is required reading for Baptists and Presbyterians with Scots-Irish blood. With me, you also may have the joy of recovering your ethnic roots and pride, realizing why, raised on Handel's Messiah playing from a stereo speaker above your crib in infancy in a suburb of Philadelphia, as you grow older you find yourself growing in your love for most things Southern. You love it's humor (Jerry Clower and Barney Fife/Citizen's Arrest); its music (Merle Haggard and Bill Monroe); it's manners (from the time of first meeting, your daughter's husband [a Nashville man] addressed you and your wife "Sir" and "Ma'am"); its literature (Flannery O'Connor, Dabney's bio of Stonewall Jackson); its sports (Nascar); its denominations (Presbyterian Church in America and the Southern Baptist Convention); its movies (Driving Miss Daisy and Deliverance [yeah, I'm joking--it's just a joke, chill out, wouldya?]...

Books Wanted....

How about we all go together and buy a high-speed scanner to produce electronic versions of books no one's yet seen fit to publish electronically?

I've been frustrated in recent days by not being able to find Calvin's Sermons on Deuteronomy, Turretin's Institutes of Elenctic Theology and Bannerman's The Church of Christ in electronic format. Incredibly, two of the three (Bannerman and Calvin) aren't even in print. If there's ever a place for an electronic book, it's to satisfy demand for out-of-print titles.

But while we're at it, rather than simply grab low-hanging fruit by converting old versions of classics to electronic format, why not add value, electronic publishers, by commissioning new translations of works like Calvin on Deuteronomy where existing translations into English are centuries old? Then you can honestly claim copyright--creative value has been added--and justify a price equal-to-or-greater-than the print version.

I'm frustrated by the tendency of Christian software publishers to charge more for electronic versions of public domain works than normal publishers charge for print versions.

And while the move toward republication of classic works pioneered in the fifties and sixties by Banner of Truth has been truly beneficial, many of the works could use a translation fresher than the eighteenth century.

When I buy electronic books I primarily do so from Ages Software or Logos. I prefer buying from Logos because Logos makes it easier to manage a multi-book collection. But that's also Logos' achilles heel. I do ten times as many "Bible" searches as "Basic" searches in Logos because with every additional book Logos crams into its editions the number of junk hits in a "Basic" search increases. At this point, I find most "Basic" searches quite useless.

In the end, if Adobe would increase Acrobat's usefulness with multi-book collections, Acrobat would prove a serious competitor to Logos. Bibles and Biblical reference books would continue to benefit from Logos' hyperlinks and search capabilities. But the bigger a library gets in Logos, the clunkier the program becomes--and the more attractive a simple E-book manager/reader appears.

There are ways around the vast quantities of unhelpful hits in Logos searches. For instance, I could set up collections and search them individually. But frankly, weeding through hundred of books in Logos' collection manager is laborious. It would be easier and probably cheaper to buy books in PDF format, put them in categorized folders on my HD and use Acrobat Professional to index each folder.

I suspect that over time books published in in PDF format will prove Logos' primary competitor. Ages Software already uses Acrobat as its volume management system and their collections are increasingly potent--and great values to boot.

But Acrobat's library collection management capability is marginal. It annoys me that I have to back out to the initial screen each time I want to change volumes in a multi-volume book in Ages.

Logos has one marketing feature no one else can touch--the capability of their software to inform you of new books in the Logos collection. Each time the Logos software starts up on a computer linked to the internet it checks with a Logos server. As new books and sets become available, a pop-up window appears hyperlinked to a web page from which existing customers can one-click order. For this reason, if for no other, publishers are likely to continue using Logos for electronic publication of copyrighted materials.

In the long run I suspect Acrobat will overtake proprietary Christian publishing models--unless, of course, Logos changes its business model to resemble Adobe's and begins selling software rather than books. Then competition could develop within the Logos marketplace.

"Scimitar's Edge," Marvin Olasky's first novel...

A year ago, I asked Marvin Olasky what he was working on that he was excited about, and he mentioned he was writing a novel. Several months later, he sent me the manuscript and I enjoyed reading it. Now Scimitar's Edge has been issued by Broadman & Holman and Stephen Roberts has reviewed it. Check it out, particularly you who profess Christ in academia.