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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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James Comey big and strong...

Before this news cycle is completely over, may I just say that Mr. Comey is one of the more pathetic government bureaucrats I've had occasion to witness in my sixty-three years. The juxtaposition of his towering size and manly presentation with his pathetic...


Daddy Tried audiobook now available...

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Warhorn Media is pleased to announce that Tim Bayly's Daddy Tried is now available as an audiobook. If you haven't had a chance to read it for yourself, swing over to Audible.com or Amazon.com, download a copy, and have Tim read it for you.

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We're also pleased to offer a free download of the Chapter 1 audio to Baylyblog readers.

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Denim for pansies...

Our long-lost friend, BikeBubba, just posted on Nordstrom's latest fashion statement for men. Baracuda Straight Leg Jeans come muddy and stained and the ad copy reads:

Heavily distressed medium-blue denim jeans in a comfortable straight-leg fit embody rugged, Americana workwear that's seen some hard-working action with a crackled, caked-on muddy coating that shows you're not afraid to get down and dirty.

Mike Rowe says Nordstrom's $450 jeans are "a costume for wealthy people who see work as ironic."

By the way, give me two wishes and the first will be that I never again have to listen to a woman say anything is her "passion." The second will be that I never again have to listen to a man say anything is "ironic."


Peggy Noonan on the Inauguration: nothing like this has ever happened...

Peggy Noonan is a Reagan Democrat. She wrote speeches for President Reagan and her memoir of her Reagan years, What I Saw at the Revolution, is a piece of tender affection for Nancy's Ronnie. Joe Sobran loved Peggy. There was a tenderness when he talked about her you never saw him express for anyone else except Jesus Christ.

What Noonan writes I like and trust. After 9/11 she wrote a short piece titled "Welcome Back, Duke" that I consider one of the most astute essays on sexuality in our time. 9/11 and sexuality? Yup, read it and you'll never forget her contrast between firemen and Woody Allen. Devastating—not just to Woody Allen but also you (if you're a man) and me.

Now Noonan has given us a short piece on the Inauguration of President Donald Trump...


Amanda Nunes beats the excrement out of Ronda Rousey...

A couple days ago, I posted the headline "Amanda Nunes beats the shit out of Ronda Rousey...". The headline introduced a post in which I unequivocally condemned the 48-second rout of Ronda Rousey by Amanda Nunes in their Las Vegas mixed martial arts fight last week. And being the son of a prophet, I wrote "Undoubtedly you were more offended by the headline of this post than the pic accompanying it, and that's the point."

The accompanying pic was obscene, but no one objected to it. Beyond the pic though, no one thought to say what's wrong with women beating the shit out of each other. Instead, Godly men had a hissy-fit over the use of the word "shit."

The gnat was strained, the camel escaped.

Since no one else bothered to say it, let me do the dirty work...


"Gay icon" George Michael dies...

David Bowie, Prince, and today George Michael died. The news is Elton John just penned a tender tribute. After Michael began LivingOut, he told an interviewer:

I used to sleep with women quite a lot in the Wham! days but never felt it could develop into a relationship because I knew that, emotionally, I was a gay man. I didn’t want to commit to them but I was attracted to them. Then I became ashamed that I might be using them.

Note his confession (and yes, he's talking about his women): "I didn't really want to commit to them but I was attracted to them."

You remember the Apostle Paul's declaration, "It's better to marry than burn?" The "gay Christian" men of LivingOut.org don't self-disclose with the honesty of Michael. If they did, their pastor and elders would be kind to repeat the Apostle Paul's remedy and exhort them to marry. The essence of manhood is responsibility. Commitment is the swearing-in ceremony. Marriage is manhood's sacrament. You don't need to be married to be a man, but it sure does help. And if you burn, it is the remedy God Himself ordained.


Not Ashamed—the book behind the conference...

CNF_banner.jpgYou saw the announcement of our Shepherds Conference here on Baylyblog last week. What we didn't tell you is that this conference is closely connected with the next book we're working on here at Warhorn Media with the working title, In the Closet: How Shame Stopped the Church from Loving Homosexuals. We're particularly excited by the book's cornerstone chapter titled "The Sin of Effeminacy."

Joseph and I spent a great deal of time talking through the content of this chapter. I learned a lot. After finishing the chapter I told Mary Lee that, if I'd known as a young man what I learned that week about the sin of effeminacy, I would have spent my life opposing...


Socrates and Ischomachus on the beauty of womanhood...

Older women ...encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. (Titus 2:3-5)

A brother in Christ passed this text on to me. It's from Project Gutenberg so it's public domain (meaning copyright-free).

There are many of us who come to the end of the dialogue and are able to say "that's my dear wife!"

Will you be able to say as much when you're my age?

In our wicked culture with the church seemingly determined to hide her light, being blessed with a wife who loves doing the home work and loves her husband doing the away-from-home work is a miracle. But this miracle begins with a lover of a husband who sees the good of this and argues and fights for it, maybe with his wife, but certainly with his friends, neighbors, and relatives—starting with his in-laws. In these fights, it is a great help to have...


The good father: it's a boy...

Until recently, fathers and mothers learned their child's sex at birth when the doctor or midwife announced "it's a boy" or "it's a girl!" Some still choose to protect this romance by telling their ultrasound technician and doctor they don't want to find out beforehand. I like that.

Sex is a calling from God and savoring the revelation until the moment of birth seems to protect its weight and glory. But finally, there it is and it is heavy. How heavy you won’t know fully until your child hits puberty, but from the moment of birth your duties as a father flow in the direction of your precious child’s sex. You want your little one to confess the sex God made him. If he’s a little man, you must teach him manhood. And womanhood if she’s a little woman.

What God decreed at the moment of conception is now visible to you and your wife and both of you must carry it forward. This tiny infant has male or female hormones which soon will begin to develop a man's shoulders or a woman's breasts. God assigned your child this calling and the calling can’t be removed by artificial hormones, surgical mutilation, or anyone's preference for this or that gender identity.

Sex is not a choice, but a command. And this command has been given...


Where you can find masculine affection today...

I saw two men hugging in public last weekend. Actually, it wasn’t two, it was about two hundred. And they weren’t just hugging, they were lung-burstingly singing and dancing with their arms around each other.

No, it wasn’t a same-sex “wedding.”

It was a soccer game.

Never seen men, mostly white and in their 20s-40s, let out all of their emotions and show affection with other men? Go visit your local Major League Soccer game, sit near the “supporter’s section,” and see what happens.

There’s glory, there’s conflict, and there’s male emotion in spades....


WarhornMedia.com...

About a month ago Clearnote Fellowship quietly launched a new ministry called Warhorn Media. It’s our attempt to pull together a bunch of stuff we’ve been doing over the past several years all under one roof—specifically, our forays into publishing, music, and now podcasting (if you like classic lit like Pride & Prejudice, etc., The Bookening might be for you #DOUGWILSON).

Much of the written content at WarhornMedia.com is a spinoff of our little magazine, The Warhorn, which we know many Baylyblog readers have enjoyed and looked forward to. While we readily admit there’s been more looking forward than there’s been enjoying, if you haven't been getting it, you've been missing out. Get a free subscription here.

Although The Warhorn Mag is still alive and well, our efforts for the time being have been focused on pulling together our online presence…which we have done. Very well. In fact, we've become rather well-known among male TV lovers between the ages of 25 and 34.

You see...

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The anti-Reparative therapy bandwagon: perverse to the core...

For those confused about the bandwagon the Louisville Southern Baptists and the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors have climbed aboard, the news tells us each day that these men have picked a winner. Everyone is busy passing laws preventing fathers and mothers from getting any help teaching their sons to be masculine and their daughters to be feminine. This is the heart of the issue. To instruct and counsel children to embrace who God made them, sexually, and to forsake any desires they may suffer under to commit the sins of effeminacy or butchness is being criminalized around the country.

Meanwhile, Al Mohler,1 Heath Lambert,2 Denny Burke, and the professional association of "certified Biblical" counselors have all announced they are also opposed to parents getting this help for their children.

It's such fine synchronicity when the world and the church both realize at precisely the same moment precisely the same sexual reforms that are needed. It makes the work of deconstruction so much easier.

Along with California, Oregon, New Jersey, Cincinnati, and the District of Columbia, New York has criminalized this therapy.

And now New York is taking it a step further by putting financial teeth behind these laws. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo just took executive actions directing the state's Department of Financial Services to...


An updated reading list on sexuality...

Here's a reading list of thirteen books on the meaning and purpose of the two sexes created by God—man and woman. It's been slightly reworked since it was last published.

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: Family Life in Reformation Europe
7. G. K. Chesterton: What's Wrong With the World or The Thing
8. Doug Wilson: Reforming Marriage
9. Bill Mouser: The Story of Sex in Scripture
10. Elisabeth Elliot: Let Me Be a Woman
11. George Eliot: Middlemarch
12. Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons
13. Grudem, Knight, Piper, Poythress, etc.: Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

Now then, here are thirteen explanations of why I've included each of these books and how each is helpful...


Donald Trump: I condemn him unequivocally...

Over more than two decades, when I've read or preached Psalm 73 I've not been able to get Donald Trump out of my head. It's as if the Psalmist knew and envied The Donald:

For I was envious of the arrogant As I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no pains in their death, And their body is fat. They are not in trouble as other men, Nor are they plagued like mankind. Therefore pride is their necklace; The garment of violence covers them. Their eye bulges from fatness; The imaginations of their heart run riot. They mock and wickedly speak of oppression; They speak from on high. They have set their mouth against the heavens, And their tongue parades through the earth. (Psalms 73:3-9)

Mr. Tump is as public as he can be with his wickedness. Pride is his necklace and his tongue parades through the earth. His words to and about Megyn Kelly are maybe the most repulsive example of the betrayal of manhood I've ever read...


Gospel Coalition joins the gay celibate movement (7); the heart of the issue...

For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. (1 Corinthians 11:7)

Evangelicals have no doctrine of sex. We have Biblical commands we are scrupulous to obey and Greek words we are scrupulous to defend the meaning of, but we have no theology of sex.

Actually, though, it's worse than that: we are opposed to any theology of sex.

Yes, some of us still believe the husband should be the head of his wife. Some of us also still want the father to be the head of the home and the guy preaching Sunday morning to be an actual guy. Some of us, also, still think our church's elders should be guys.

Other than those few things, though, we believe in little more than body parts. Probably women should still be the sex that gestates and men should provide food for gestating women. Also, in most Christian homes, it's likely still good for the mother not to have to put her kids in daycare—especially while she's nursing.

Beyond men having servant leader, tie-breaking authority in private Christian places and Christians having certain scruples concerning the proper use of body parts, though, we have no theology of sex. This is the reason Evangelicals have no problem with the "gay Christian" lobby as long as these "gay Christians" living with one another in "spiritual friendships" promise not to have sex with each other. If they go off the reservation and say they're going to go ahead and have sex with each other, after all, we finally find our principles and tell them it's sin. But without the improper use of body parts, there is no sin. Identity is one thing. Body parts are something else. Body parts are serious business. They're visible. They don't lie and they have to be obeyed...


John, get your gun...

(NOTE: “Johnny” is a diminutive of “John.” After titling this piece, it occurred to me that using the title “Johnny get your gun” would be seen as disrespectful, so I’ve changed it to “John, get your gun.” I respect John Piper and apologize for a title that didn’t show proper respect for him.)

The Reformed church has been all atwitter over John Piper’s response to Jerry Falwell encouraging the students of his Baptist college to get a gun and help protect the campus against armed attack. John tells his readers that he talked with Jerry before writing him up. Then, he frames his response to Jerry this way: 

The issue is about the whole tenor and focus and demeanor and heart-attitude of the Christian life. Does it accord with the New Testament to encourage the attitude that says, “I have the power to kill you in my pocket, so don’t mess with me”? My answer is, No.

Of course, this is an uncharitable summary of President Falwell’s position since no one carrying a gun on Liberty’s campus is primarily concerned about himself. Christians don’t carry guns because they don’t want to be killed themselves, but because they want to be faithful to defend others—particularly women and children. This is our calling as Christian men. We defend the innocent and defenseless. It would have been more kind for John to phrase it this way: “I have the power to defend my sisters in Christ here in my holster, so don’t mess with them!”

(Henry Holsters are the superb work of a member of our church, Andrew Henry. Buy one.)

I haven’t read any of the responses to John’s anti-gun piece except Doug Wilson’s. Doug makes a good point when he begins his defense of John this way...


Millennials: Generation Wuss...

Vanity Fair may be the most wicked publication in the world. At least I've thought so for several decades now, but foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, you know, and I kinda think if I've made exceptions for Christianity Today and linked to them now and then, I might take the liberty of just this once linking to Vanity Fair. For an article on "Generation Wuss." Michael Foster pointed me to this piece by Bret Ellis, forwarding this paragraph...


Men at work taking down Seattle's largest hardwood tree...

Prior to enrolling in Clearnote Pastors College, Pastor David Abu-Sara of Clearnote Church, Indianapolis, worked in Chicago as a treeman ("certified aborist"). I watched this video about a year ago, then again this past week. This time Dave was in the loop of those the link was forwarded to and he sent out an e-mail giving a little explanation of the work here recorded.

I've watched Dave take down trees that were leaning forty-five degrees in the opposite direction from where he set them down, and it's stupendous. Have a look at the video, then read Dave's commentary.

Urban Hardwoods / Seattle's Largest Hardwood Tree from Ron Hansen on Vimeo.

Dave writes...


Celibate spiritual friendships between gay Christians...

"Christians today are cringing at God's explicit condemnation of sodomy and are looking for some new place to stand. Desperate to find a sweet spot halfway between "marriage equality" and the Apostle Paul's "degrading passions," we find "gay spiritual friendship" scratches us just where we itch."

To identify as "gay," "queer," "lesbian," or "homosexual" is to declare our rebellion against God Who made us. When we say we're "gay," we repudiate the personhood and duties God assigned us when He created us one of only two sexes, man or woman. It's analogous to a man claiming he's a monkey or cat imprisoned in the body of a man. He refuses the human nature God gave him at the moment of his conception. So it is with the man and woman who say they're "gay"; they refuse to confess the sexual nature God gave them at the moment of conception.

Yes, there are questions we would want to ask those who identify as "gay." Why are you in rebellion? What contributed to your rebellion? Do you see your rebellion as soft or hard-wired? Is the origin of your rebellion tied to anything obvious in your past? Your childhood?

We will ask souls with this besetting sin such questions, and many more. We will be sensitive, tender, and loving. But if we truly love them and trust the Word of God in its revelation of the nature of sexuality, all our ministry with gays will be founded on the hard fact of their rebellion. It is the only solid foundation from which to minister to Christians who claim gayness, and within the church their number is growing. How could it be otherwise given our squeamishness...