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Rick Love Responds to Piper's Thoughts on "A Common Word"
Last week, we posted a video of John Piper discussing "A Common Word," a letter to Christians from Muslim scholars, and expressing his disappointment with the response to it that over 300 Christian leaders signed.
In the video, John mentions that he has friends among those who signed. We contacted some of them to ask if they would be willing to provide their rationale.
Rick Love, former International Director for Frontiers, has responded. (Please note that this is his personal response, not representative of Frontiers.)
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Why I Signed the Yale Response to “A Common Word”
By Rick Love
Thank you, John, for inviting me to respond to your recent…
Something to Keep in Mind
"You can be so interested in great theological and intellectual and philosophical problems that you tend to forget that you are going to die."
-Martin Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, p. 193.
A Common Word Between Us?
John Piper discusses "A Common Word Between Us and You" and the response to it from 300 Christian leaders.
Update: For those unfamiliar with "A Common Word," it's a letter written to Christians by 138 Muslim scholars last October saying that love for God and love for neighbor is common ground between Christianity and Islam. The response from the Christian leaders, which John Piper finds disappointing, was published the following month.
Another Update: Justin Taylor suggests, "For those who want a fuller unpacking of Piper's views of these issues, I would recommend his essay, Tolerance, Truth-Telling, Violence, and Law: Principles for How Christians Should Relate to Those of Oth…
Perseverance and Eternal Security
Here is the voice of my father for 4 minutes on how final salvation is contingent on perseverance, and yet eternal security and assurance are possible. It comes from an exposition of Colossians 1:21-23.
And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
This is from the overflow of what I have been reading and …
Pray for the Third Wave
The end of abortion as a business is in sight when the prolife movement is not only joined by, but led by, the African-American and Latino Christian Community. I call it the Third Wave.
The First Wave of the modern prolife movement was the Catholic Church. In the late 60’s, as abortion “rights” were argued for in New York and California, many Catholic doctors, ethicists, and laypeople understood the horrifying truth of abortion and began to organize. They opened educational offices to explain fetal life; launched political efforts to elect prolife leaders and started “emergency pregnancy services” to help women struggling with pregnancy issues. The modern prolife movement was born. It …
Generous Conservatives
Surveys and statistics are maddeningly fickle. So don’t exult too much in what follows. I only cite it in case you have been discouraged or elated by surveys saying the opposite.
It’s better just to be a good follower of Jesus and not put your finger in the wind.
In the current issue of Books and Culture Jon Shields reviews the book, Who Really Cares, by Arthur C. Brooks which argues that religious conservatives (of all religious stripes) as opposed to liberals are more generous. Here are some quotes from the review.
Drawing on some ten data sets, Brooks finds that religiosity is among the best predictors of charitable giving. Religious Americans are not only much mo…
Don't Waste Martin Luther King Weekend
Monday is Martin Luther King day. I encourage all pastors and Sunday School teachers to make something of it this weekend. It may be too late to preach on racial and ethnic issues, if you have not already planned to. But it is not too late, if you read this on Saturday, to plan to simply take note of the day and speak a word of exhortation to your people concerning their hearts in matters of race and ethnicity. None of us. None of us is without need for help in the purification of our hearts in the way we feel and think about other ethnic groups. Your people need help.
The point of this weekend is not to celebrate all that MLK was. You need not belabor his sins. The point is to lift up…
Why I Invited Loritts to Speak at the Pastors Conference
(Listen to why we invited Crawford Loritts to speak at this year's pastors conference.)
Crawford Loritts served for nearly 30 years with Campus Crusade for Christ. I knew that anybody who has given that long to Campus Crusade must have a real heart for God and for evangelism.
Then I learned that he had become the senior pastor of a church in Roswell, Georgia. I was surprised to learn that it is primarily a white church (and he's not white!). I thought, "That's unusual!"
And on top of that he has written a book on fathering.
That was enough—almost—for me to call him. But then I went to hear him at the Gospel Coalition. In his message he alluded to his dad in a way that was …
A Kind of Cold You Don't Play With
Tonight it will be 40 degrees warmer in our kitchen freezer than it is outside here in Minneapolis. The high temperature on the Lord’s day will be five below zero (Fahrenheit). We receive this from the Lord’s hand.
He sends out his command to the earth;
his word runs swiftly.
He gives snow like wool;
he scatters hoarfrost like ashes.
He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs;
who can stand before his cold?
He sends out his word, and melts them;
he makes his wind blow and the waters flow.
(Psalm 147:15-18)
This is the kind of cold you do not play with. It kills. When I came to Minnesota from South Carolina, I dressed for it. But I did not prepare life-saving support in my car in cas…
Why I Invited Livingstone to Speak at the Pastors Conference
(Listen to why we invited Greg Livingstone to speak at this year's pastors conference.)
Greg Livingstone is one of my heroes. He founded Frontiers, a mission to Muslims. He is not the president anymore, but he grew that mission into hundreds of people going to the hardest places of the world.
He has himself endured a lot, dealing with health issues in his family and serving in very risky places. Through the mission, he has had to deal with people getting thrown in jail and getting killed. And he has had to handle parents who are upset because their child is going to some crazy place like Iraq or Saudi Arabia because of him.
The reason I invited him this year—though I would have…
