Sex and gender

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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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Luther and marriage...

Should I get married? Most of us don’t ask the question. We just assume we’ll get married and spend time thinking about whom we will marry.

Martin Luther, however, did ask that question. When he became a monk, he had taken a vow of celibacy and the Bible has stern things to say about those who break their vows. He also thought there was a good chance he would be martyred, soon. There were many people who wanted him dead. Should he marry when his wife could end up a widow before their first anniversary? Too, his Roman Catholic critics believed the new Protestant movement was just a cover for sexual licentiousness. If he got married and others followed his example, this would help silence the critics.

Luther struggled with the question and asked his parents about it. His father urged him to marry and have children, just like fathers everywhere, always, and at all times.

In Roman Catholicism, marriage was a sacrament and regulated by canon law that told you...


Effeminacy: when the church denies a sin is a sin...

Do not be deceived; neither ...adulterers nor effeminate ...will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9, 10)

A family member pointed me to this post by Doug Wilson, saying it encouraged him. The post is excellent. I hope you'll read it. Doug's post got me thinking...

The example Doug mentions of people being scandalized by what he's written is a reference he made in the past to "lumberjack dykes." Six or so weeks ago I used the expression "bull dykes" and got similar pushback from readers. Then yesterday, a pastor I respect told me he didn't think a man I'd posted a picture of was "vain" in his appearance. My post was wrong, he thought...


Alfred C. Kinsey: an introduction...

Alfred_Charles_Kinsey.jpgThe work of Alfred Charles Kinsey at Indiana University, and the affiliated Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, has had a dramatic impact on our age.

In that I grew up in Bloomington, the home of IU and the Kinsey Institute, and have lived here for a portion of my adult life, I can claim some expertise in knowing the reputation of the Institute in our small, midwestern city. In that I’m a Christian, I’ll be writing from a specifically Christian worldview in making these series of posts. The impact of the man and the Institute that bears his name has been evil. 

The author of my major source has made an attempt to be objective and at least some reviewers think he has been successful. It is the biography by James H. Jones entitled, Alfred C. Kinsey: a public/private life (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1997). Jones is a historian who teaches at the University of Houston. He did his Ph.D. at IU and has written, Bad Blood: the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. He began his work on Kinsey while he was in Bloomington...


The church's witness on sexuality: too cute by half...

Remember, the goal of my writing on sexuality is not to demean women and promote male privilege. Every brash woman and effeminate man who hates Baylyblog never stops repeating these accusations, but they couldn't be further from the truth. Manhood is not privilege, but its opposite: responsibility. As Christ died for His Bride the Church, so man takes up his own cross and dies for the mother of his children, his lover, his bride.

The story of marriage is man dying so woman may give life and nurture it. Where that story is not told, marriage doesn't exist. It's not a private story for Christians. It's the timeless, transcultural story of sex written by God in the very DNA of His universe. To preach and live this story is to preach and live the Gospel.

Among the perishing, this Gospel witness is the stench of death. This is why worldlings outside and inside the church never stop scorning, mocking, hissing, and shaming those who try to be faithful witnesses to God's holy heterosexuality.

There can be no middle ground on sexuality, although many of us are frantic...


Bruce Jenner is a leech on our wives and daughters...

A friend of son Joseph has written a good piece over on [Roman] Catholic World Report titled, “I Think I am a ___, Therefore I am a ___.:Thoughts on Descartes, gender identity and the demise of the Reality Principle."

The piece ends with these words which again show why we should subvert every discussion of "gender" that's not about grammar...