Wisdom from This Week’s Celebrity Deaths

Ed McMahon was the right hand man of the greatest late-night performer in television history, Johnny Carson. He had the best seat in the house every night for thirty years. He is a legend in television history. This week he breathed his last.

Farrah Fawcett was “the girl next door” during her fame in the 1970’s. She was one of the most beautiful women in entertainment during her day. She was Charlie’s Angel. She is another legend in television history. Today, after a long fight with cancer, she breathed her last.

Michael Jackson was, at his peak, the most popular man alive. His Thriller album still stands as the best-selling album of all time. Arguably the most popular pop artists of this generation are only following in his footsteps. His bizarre off-stage antics virtually invented the modern tabloid culture. He is a legend in entertainment. Today, he breathed his last.

What are we to learn from all of this? If there is one thing for us to learn, it is this: people, no matter how influential, no matter how popular, no matter how powerful, are in the end people. No matter how much our celebrities are idolized, they are mere humans. No matter how big they seem to be in our eyes, in the end, they die.

Listen up, TMZ! You are wasting your lives! You follow celebrities’ every move because you think it matters. They are not gods. They are humans. And one day you too will die!

Listen up, fans and groupies! You put up your posters and buy the merchandise of your gods and goddesses. You look up to them and want to be just like them when you grow up. But they are not gods. They are humans. And one day, you too will die!

Listen up, entertainment-crazed America! You give billions of dollars to your heroes. You want so badly to believe that they are invinvible. They are not. And neither are you. No matter how highly you exalt them, you are just putting on masks. We all die. That is the main point. That is the curse. No amount of celebrity can overcome that.

We all die. But one got back up! There is one who conquered the grave. There is one who not only removed the curse of death, but also can remove the cause of your death as well– sin. All of the athletes, celebrities and politicians will eventually die. If you want a hero, look to Christ.

Anyone Want BibleWorks 8?

Nathan Bingham over at Cal.vin.ist is celebrating the first anniversary of the blog with a BibleWorks 8 giveaway. Here’s how you enter:

How do I enter the Cal.vini.st First Anniversary Giveaway?

1. You must be a subscriber to the blog via RSS or Email.
2. Visit the BibleWorks website to find the answer to this simple question: Name the three standard original language grammars that have newly been included in BibleWorks 8?

3. Complete this form with all your contact details and include the correct answer to the above question.
4. That’s it! On July 12th the first two randomly drawn entries which correctly answer the question regarding the original language grammars included in BibleWorks 8 will win a FREE copy.  You will be contacted via email for shipping details and must respond within 72 hours before your prize is forfeited.

The New Shape of World Christianity

Mark Noll has a new book called, The New Shape of World Christianity. Here is chapter one.  Here is an excerpt:

 

• This past Sunday it is possible that more Christian believers attended church in China than in all of so-called “Christian Europe.” Yet in 1970 there were no legally functioning churches in all of China; only in 1971 did the communist regime allow for one Protestant and one Roman Catholic Church to hold public worship services, and this was mostly a concession to visiting Europeans and African students from Tanzania and Zambia.
• This past Sunday more Anglicans attended church in each of Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda than did Anglicans in Britain and Canada and Episcopalians in the United States combined—and the number of Anglicans in church in Nigeria was several times the number in those other African countries.
• This past Sunday more Presbyterians were at church in Ghana than in Scotland, and more were in congregations of the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa than in the United States.
• This past Sunday there were more members of Brazil’s Pentecostal Assemblies of God at church than the combined total in the two largest U.S. Pentecostal denominations, the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ in the United States.
• This past Sunday more people attended the Yoido Full Gospel Church pastored by Yongi Cho in Seoul, Korea, than attended all the churches in significant American denominations like the Christian Reformed Church, the Evangelical Covenant Church or the Presbyterian Church in America. Six to eight times as many people attended this one church as the total that worshiped in Canada’s ten largest churches combined.
• This past Sunday Roman Catholics in the United States worshiped in more languages than at any previous time in American history.
• This past Sunday the churches with the largest attendance in England and France had mostly black congregations. About half of the churchgoers in London were African or African-Caribbean. Today, the largest Christian congregation in Europe is in Kiev, and it is pastored by a Nigerian of Pentecostal background.
• This past Sunday there were more Roman Catholics at worship in the Philippines than in any single country of Europe, including historically Catholic Italy, Spain or Poland.
• This past week in Great Britain, at least fifteen thousand Christian foreign missionaries were hard at work evangelizing the locals. Most of these missionaries are from Africa and Asia.
• And for several years the world’s largest chapter of the Jesuit order has been found in India, not in the United States, as it had been for much of the late twentieth century.

 

“O the times, they are a-changin’.”

Jesus in Children’s Books- Against God’s Law?

I was shopping around this morning for a new children’s book when I noticed a disclaimer at Westminster Bookstore that read, “Note: This book contains cartoon or artistic images of Jesus.” I then clicked on a link that led me to an explanation. It reads:

There are many people in our constituency who, in a sincere effort to honor the second commandment, refrain from the use of any kind of drawings or pictures of Jesus, even if not intended for a worship context (cf.Westminster Larger Catechism Q. and A. 109). Out of respect for those who take this position, we have sought to add a note to books in our children’s category which have drawings or depictions of Jesus so that they can factor that into their internet buying decisions, as they would if they could inspect the books physically.

That leads me to ask today, Do pictures of Jesus in children’s books, or any book, violate the second commandment? How do we as parents think biblically about this?

A Pro-Life Reflection on a Miscarriage

At about 1:30 Sunday morning my Bride and I walked through the door of our home. I put the boys to bed and entered into mine. I held my wife to sleep that night, exhausted over all that ensued over the previous ten hours.

Exactly one week before, I was crawling into bed, stunned and rejoicing over the news that she had given me– we were expecting a third child. We spent the week thinking about how and when we were going to tell everyone. I had the nervous excitement that I’m growing familiar with by now.”How am I going to take care of another child,” I thought, followed rather quickly with, “The Lord will provide for us, Ronjour. You know that.”

Because her brother is getting married in a few weeks, my Bride had planned to take the boys with her back home so she could join in the preparation. To celebrate our last weekend together before they flew up north, I decided to take them to the movies. We had a wonderful time. We then went to the candy store in the mall. It was the first time the boys had ever been in a candy store. The look on their faces was priceless; they sort of stared with this, “I’ve found my special purpose” kind of look.

Afterward my Bride had to go to the store as she was preparing for her leave on Monday. It was then that our day changed. Sometime while she was in the store, she felt different. She cut her time short, and we went home. Once we came home, she started to bleed. We knew that we had to get to the hospital quickly. While there, Annie looked at me. Her eyes were red from crying. She knew what was going on in her body. “I just want to prepare you,” she told me, “it doesn’t look good right now. Things haven’t gotten any better, and I’m in a lot of pain right now.”

We prayed together in the waiting room. We prayed that God would intervene. We prayed that he would reverse all that was going on, just as he did when we had problems with Joshua and Noah. We also prayed that if he chose not to do so, we would bless his name. We asked him to deliver us from the “What if’s” and the “What if I did’s”, and instead, we asked, that he would fill us with his inexplicable peace. He did not change the course of her pregnancy. He did give us peace.

Along the way I noticed the words that I used when I was praying. “Lord, save my child.” My child… When he, in his hard wisdom, declined, I heard my Bride say, “I lost the baby.” Baby… We grieve because we lost a child. Our child. We grieve because this child, so very young, so tiny, was still ours. Fearfully and wonderfully made, though not complete. Bearing the image of God. We grieve even though we’ve never met.

Through tears we told our parents. They joined us in tears and prayers. We then told our church. They too overwhelmed us with love and tears and prayers. Perhaps this was just a tiny part of God’s design to show us the beauty of his plan for the local church. Thank God for those who weep with us as we weep. Thank God for the gospel-rich words that I couldn’t even finish:

Freely You gave it all for us
Surrendered Your life upon that cross
Great is the love
Poured out for all
This is our God
Lifted on high from death to life
Forever our God is glorified
Servant and King
Rescued the world
This is our God

And I thank God for my child. Not mass of tissue. Not an accident. I thank God for my child. And I affirm its personhood with my tears.

President Obama Makes U.S. More Pro-Life

At least that’s the conclusion that Gallup made after they found, for the first time, that a majority of Americans polled considered themselves pro-life. This majority is not a fluke, either. They saw an increase in every category (except among liberals, of course). I don’t know what this means politically, for the majority in Washington are still pro-choice. But it is encouraging to know that the glass is not half-empty. Praise God for common grace and his persevering church.

Redmond Interviews Chappell

Eric Redmond has an interview with Bryan Chappell, president of Covenant Theological Seminary, over his upcoming book, Christ-Centered Worship. It should be an excellent companion to probably his most well-known book, Christ-Centered Preaching.

Trueman on Rubbish Worship

From his latest post on Reformation21:

What are surprising, therefore, are accounts of services where the theology is supposedly orthodox but the content is sheer trivia.   If God is awesome, sovereign and holy; if human beings are small, sinful, and lost; if Christ died and rose again by a most miraculous and costly act of grace, then this should impact the way things happen in church.  This is not to argue for a one-size-fits-all-my-way-or-the-highway approach to church.  Context and culture are important; but what is expressed through the idioms of particular cultural manifestations of the church should be awe, reverence, and, above all seriousness – not a colourless and cold miserable seriousness but a fitting amazement at the greatness of God and his grace.

A church service involving clowns or fancy dress or skits or stand-up comedy does not reflect the seriousness of the gospel; and those who take the gospel seriously should know better. Frankly, it is more appropriate to liberal theology which does not take the gospel, or the God of the gospel, seriously. Serious things demand serious idioms.   I heard recently of a church service involving dressing up in costume and music taken from a Tom Cruise movie.  Now, if I go for my annual prostate examination, and the doctor comes into the consulting room dressed as Coco the Clown, with `Take my breath away’ from Top Gun playing in the background, guess what?  I’m going to take the doctor out with a left hook, flee the surgery, and probably file a complaint with the appropriate professional body.   This is serious business; and if he looks like a twit and acts like a twit, then I can only conclude that he is a twit.

You can tell a lot about someone’s theology from what they do in church.  Involve Kenny G’s music in your worship service, and I can tell not only that you have no taste in music but also that you have nothing to offer theologically to those who come through the church doors; indeed, what you do have can probably be found better elsewhere.  Why certain academics hanker for the approval of the people who, when they leave the lecture theatre also abandon any semblance of adulthood or intelligence, beats me.  More seriously, however, why certain orthodox churches strive to look like them, worries me intensely.  Look, it’s rubbish.  So let’s just call it rubbish, shall we?

“No, Mr. President”

If you haven’t seen the visual excerpt from this year’s Sanctity of Life Sunday message by John Piper, here it is. I ask, where are the prophets like Amos? “How long, O LORD?”

Vanhoozer Goes to Wheaton

I did not know this until I read Justin Taylor’s interview with him, but Kevin Vanhoozer is leaving TEDS to join the Ph.D. program at Wheaton. Here is the interview.