December 2015

(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...

NOTE: Son Taylor says I'm all wrong about this, and maybe I am. Read The Atlantic article (linked below in the original text of this post) and decide for yourself if they're right as they're wrong, if you know what I mean? Regardless, what a contrast this is to the Blessed Virgin Mary about whom I'm preaching this morning. So this additional material from The Atlantic:

And Rey proves herself to be, in extremely short order, extremely adept as a fighter. She is brave. She is smart. She is resourceful. She is a pilot of Soloian skill. She has a ninja-like command of a bow staff.

The plot of The Force Awakens, in fact, revolves around—relies on—Rey’s martial abilities. It also gently mocks the characters who would doubt those abilities. Finn, in particular, repeatedly attempts to inject chivalry into situations where chivalry is drastically out of place. During a fight the pair has against the First Order troopers, he runs over to Rey in an attempt to rescue her—only to realize that her attackers have already been neatly dispatched with. When Finn grabs her hand as they flee, she snaps, “I know how to run without you holding my hand.” (A few moments later: “Stop taking my hand!”) When Finn asks her, after another battle with intergalactic baddies, “Are you okay?” she shoots him a why-wouldn’t-I-be look. She replies, simply, “Yeah.”

They’re good jokes, but also loaded ones. Rey, after all, has been surviving all this time not just without her family—they left Jakku years ago, and she’s waiting for them to return—but also without, for the most part, a society. And extreme self-sufficiency has a way of putting social conventions into relief. The broader joke embedded in all these small ones is that all the stuff that makes for chivalry (and inequalities, and patriarchy, and if you stretch things only a teeny bit, maybe even gender itself) is itself extremely contingent. It would never occur to Rey that she would be in need of chivalry’s attentions. She has neither the luxury nor the burden of being a damsel in distress; she’s too busy surviving. She fights alongside men and women and droids, superficial matters of identity—clothing, appearance, even gender—all subsumed under bigger questions that come down to, basically: “Can you fight?”

Now, back to my original post:

Mary Lee and I went to see the first Star Wars movie back during our first year of marriage. It was OK, but nothing special.

(Snark removed.)

Still there's no arguing with success. The latest cleared $100,000,000 the first night. That plus they've updated their sexuality to fit our times, which of course means the latest product exchanges God's gift of heterosexuality for man's wickedness of homosexuality...

For twenty years or so, the battle lines were drawn up over whether or not our Supreme Court would strike down state laws prohibiting homosexual acts. With even conservative Reformed seminary professors such as Covenant Theological Seminary's David Jones calling for the repeal of these laws, it was inevitable the Supreme Court would take Jones's cue. The battle stretched over several decades, but in time SCOTUS repealed all state laws prohibiting homsexual relations.

The battle lines then were drawn up over whether or not our Supreme Court would strike down state laws prohibiting homosexual marriage. Again, conservative Reformed seminary professors and pastors refused to defend the Western world's historic commitment to heterosexual marriage. Building upon their prior ruling bringing the force of law to bear in support of homosexual relations, SCOTUS consolidated the ground they had taken and repealed all state laws prohibiting homosexual marriage. 

Now the battle lines are drawn up over what is called "reparative" or "conversion therapy." Such therapy is the outworking of the Christian doctrine of sexuality and those who practice this sort of counseling work to move souls caught up in effeminacy toward embracing their manhood or womanhood given them by God. Christian pastors, psychologists, and family therapists call those caught in the prison of homosexual lust and identity to repent of it, and to plead with God to restore to them the nature he gave them at their conception when He created them male or female.

Across the country, our states and cities are passing laws criminalizing this Christian ministry. Once again, conservative Reformed professors and pastors are on the bandwagon. They too believe conversion therapy is bad...

(This is the third in a series of posts [first, second] on the Gospel Coalition's declaration, "Godliness Is Not Heterosexuality.")

He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created. (Genesis 5:2)

Gospel Coalition has a tough problem on their hands. With their pronouncement, "Godliness is not heterosexuality," they've backed themselves into a corner they share with a skunk that doesn't stop spraying.

The problem begins to come clear when we think of other formulations of the Coalitions' pronouncement—say "Godliness is not honesty" or "Godliness is not modesty." Honesty and modesty are accepted moral virtues. Certainly honesty is not the entirety of Godliness, but no one would buck at the statement "to be honest is to be Godly." Thus Gospel Coalition wouldn't dare to run the headline "Godliness is not honesty."

On the other hand, they did run the headline, "Godliness Is Not Heterosexuality." With this headline, the Coalition is trying to make a point they believe the church needs to hear as we seek to get a few more years of peace in this post-Obergefell world...

Canon Press has pulled their recent book, Justice Primer, from their list, issuing an apology for some few sentences which were unattributed to their original authors. Doug Wilsons' co-author, Randy Booth, has acknowledged he is the guilty party, and the father-rule haters are gleeful at their success in humiliating Doug.

Yet here in the calm, solely by the grace of God, there are a couple things that need to be said about pastors and books.

Most pastors, to a greater or lesser degree, use manuscripts in the pulpit, and therefore write from 2,500 to 10,000 words each week, just for their preaching. As we write those manuscripts, we have first read and read other men's preaching and teaching, so when it comes to writing our manuscript, we pull in direct quotes from others' work and face the decision whether to cite that work in our manuscript, itself; but also, whether to cite that work in our preaching on Lord's Day. It's similar to the work of a prof lecturing. If we had a way to record profs' lectures and run them through a search site that included all copyrighted works, it's long been my conviction that a large percentage of academics' lectures would be found to contain plagiarism. But is it really that simple?

We can all see the difference between preaching and lecturing, on the one hand, and blogging and writing articles and books, on the other hand...