June 2004

Reviewing Michael Moore's latest docudrama, "Fahrenheit 9/11," David Denby writes in The New Yorker:

Is this joker opposed to the Afghanistan war? (In "Bowling for Columbine," Moore presented Bill Clinton's intervention against Milosevic's ethnic cleansing as a case of slaphappy American militarism.) Moore never talks about Islamic fundamentalism and training camps, obsessive anti-Westernism, or suicide terrorists and the difficulty of guarding against them; he never asks how the American government should conduct itself in a war agaisnt religious totalitarians. There are, apparently, no justifiable fears, only hysterical fears manipulated by the authorities, whose every act is purposive and conspiratorial. (Emphases in the original.)

(David Denby, "George and Me," The New Yorker, 28 June 2004, p. 110.)

About to leave on a week-long family reunion of the Bayly side of the family, I'm going to remind our daughter, Heather, mother of our two grandsons, that studies indicate sunburn in childhood is one of the strongest predictors of skin cancer later in life.

So don't let your little ones get sunburned this summer--slop them up with a good lotion.

This from the May 15, 2004 issue of Family Practice News:

I understand that the risk of developing melanoma is linked to sunburns in childhood and not in adulthood. Is this true?

This is true, and researchers in several studies have shown that sunburns early in life are associated with a greater risk of developing melanoma than sunburns later in life. ...It's also not just acute sunburns that are associated with the development of melanoma: Cumulative sun exposure also contributes to an individual's melanoma risk.

Often I've used this Chesterton quote to great effect:

We can always convict such people of sentimentalism by their weakness for euphemism. The phrase they use is always softened and suited for journalistic appeals. They talk of free love when they mean something quite different, better defined as free lust. But being sentimentalists they feel bound to simper and coo over the word "love." They insist on talking about Birth Control when they mean less birth and no control. We could smash them to atoms, if we could be as indecent in our language as they are immoral in their conclusions. (G. K. Chesterton, "Obstinate Orthodoxy" in The Thing).

The Apostle Paul prohibits the exercise of authority over men by women by saying "I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, for Adam was created first, then Eve." (1 Timothy 2:12a, NASB95)

With this simple statement Paul explicitly affirms what is implicit throughout God's Word, that the order of creation establishes patriarchy as God's pattern for leadership in human relationships. Addressing the matter of propriety in prayer, the Apostle Paul again emphasizes this order: "For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; for indeed man was not created for the woman's sake, but woman for the man's sake" (1 Corinthians 11:8,9, NASB95).

Imagine a new believer, thoroughly confused by the sexual anarchy of today's culture, discovering the truth inherent in passages such as 1Corinthians 11:3-16, 14:34-35, Ephesians 5:22-33, 1Timothy 2:9-15, and 1Peter 3:1-7. What a deep sense of relief to discover that the order of creation establishes timeless principles for the relationships between men and women.

But while the facts of Eve's creation are instructive for establishing proper roles for men and women, Genesis goes on to reveal another important biographical note about Adam and Eve. Like the facts surrounding God's creation of Eve, the significance of this biographical detail is revealed more fully by the New Testament.

The first hint of this element comes after the Fall when God, walking in the Garden in the cool of the day, inquires of Adam, "Where are you?" When Adam responds by explaining that he and Eve found themselves naked and hid, it is notable that God directs His follow-up question again to Adam, asking him, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" (Genesis 3:11, NASB95). [Footnote 1]

It was Adam, not Eve, who was required to explain the tragic alienation from God they both had suffered, and this despite Eve having been the one deceived, [Footnote 2] the first one to sin, and the one who enticed her husband to follow her into that sin. This is neither a small nor unimportant aspect of the Genesis account: it was Adam God first held responsible for the Fall despite Adam being the second sinner in the Garden.

Seems patronizing of Eve, and of what Scripture labels "the weaker sex," doesn't it?

My father was fond of saying "Criticism is the manure in which Christian leaders grow best," but not all criticism is helpful. Pastors receive a disproportionate percentage of the destructive criticism that floats around churches, often allowing their work to be decimated by the submission syndrome that is the fruit of years of being brow-beaten by elders (or deacons) whose mothers never needed to worry about their self-esteem. The illegitimate use of a tool, though, does not invalidate its legitimate use.

Recently, my dear brother in Christ and fellow Presbyteryian Church in America pastor, Phil Henry, received a request from an elder in another congregation asking for advice concerning rules to follow in providing his pastor constructive criticism.

As I've written here before...