Sometimes I fall into thinking of abortion as an American issue, or worse, an American political issue. Most of the stats I read, after all, are about abortions in this country. And when I consider voting for a candidate, one of my first questions is "Are they pro-life?"

So I find it helpful to remind myself that abortion is not American and it is most certainly not primarily political. Those stats are kids, not numbers. And the kids are from many colors, cultures, and countries.

Life International is a ministry that actively remembers that abortion is a world-wide scourge. They note,

Abortions in the U.S. and Canada (1.4 million) amount to 3% of abortions worldwide. …

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I’m a bit of a Scrooge when it comes to Christmas time gift giving. Sometimes I feel like if you’re going to spend $25 on me and I’m going to spend $25 on you, then let’s just do nothing and call it even, save the effort.

But when it comes to my wife, it’s a different story. I love buying presents for her, because I think I know exactly what’ll make her tear up with happiness on Christmas morning. Granted, she cries easily, but she’s going to love what I got her. So I spend my days leading up to Christmas making up silly songs about her present to torment her with the fact that I know what it is and she doesn’t. Maybe that’s mean, but I can hardly help it. I’m excited.

So what’s the…

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What’s worse than being a beast? Being like a beast. Animals are supposed to be beastly; humans aren’t. When we become like animals, it’s against our nature; it’s perverse. And we won’t be that impressed with our salvation until we're thoroughly digusted by the perversion we're saved from.

When we are arrogant enough to stand up against God, we make ourselves like animals to him. The Lord made this metaphor literal with Nebuchadnezzar.

As Nebuchadnezzar was walking on his palace rooftop, he looked out and proclaimed:

Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?

God was unimpressed. To s…

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Perhaps what we need in the baptism and church membership discussion is a bit of anecdotal evidence. Certainly a story cannot solve all the ins and outs of a theological debate, but it can add weight to it by reminding us that where we come down on this issue really does affect people.

Jeremy Archer shares the story of how being rejected from church membership is having practical and painful consequences for him and his family. The church he is excluded from is Bethlehem Baptist.

I'm a member there; almost everyone who works for DG is a member there; DG is owned by Bethlehem; we happily operate under the authority of its elders. Along with all the rest of Bethlehem's ministries an…

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Andy Jackson is beginning a study of Christian Hedonism. He offers a reminder that all of us who have been around this theology awhile need to hear:

The purpose ... is not to simply swallow or memorize what Edwards, Piper, and Storms publicly declare, but to renew my strength, focus my teaching, and formulate my own convicitions and communication....

Pursue seriously your happiness in God! Remember, a static belief in Christian Hedonism can easily become dead orthodoxy, it must be sought after, renewed, and experienced again and again.

My wife and I just finished reading through The Big Picture Story Bible with our 2-year-old for his bedtime devotions. We went from Creation to Revelation in 26 simply-told and colorfully-drawn stories. Obviously, a lot has to be skipped over in order to sum up the Bible in 26 segments. But that's this book's whole point: to sum it all up; to give kids the gist of God's word. The whole point of the story of redemption is Jesus, “the forever king.”

Nothing I say could emphasize the value of books like this more than just quoting my son. For the last several minutes he has been reading this book to himself and making up songs about the pictures that he recognizes.

At the beginning of …

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In his Touchstone article about evangelicals and literature, Donald Williams looks at the fiction of Flannery O'Connor and how her Catholic faith made her art possible. The question he wants to answer by considering O'Connor is why there are no evangelical writers who are recognized for their similarly high literary quality. Here is one of the reasons that he notes:

[T]he popular Evangelical subculture seems ... addicted to pragmatism in its approach, as a brief trip through the “Christian bookstore” will show. Fiction can only be justified if it has an overt evangelistic purpose; works of visual art must have a Scripture verse tacked under them.

Evangelistic fiction a…

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One common response to John Piper's thoughts on baptism and church membership is to say that being unbaptized is to live in sin, and anything besides immersion as a believer is not baptism, therefore those who have not been immersed after their profession of faith are, in fact, living in sin. In Mark Dever's recent post on the issue, he writes,

Jesus clearly commanded baptism and to disobey this command is sin [whether intentional or not]. To continue in such an unbaptized state is unrepentant sin [whether intentional or not].

His point being that if we as Baptists do not believe infant baptism is legitimate, then we can't in good conscience have paedobaptists in ou…

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Douglas Wilson offers some wisdom on the effect of resentment: If you are bitter, you are siding against yourself with the person you're offended at. Wilson writes:

What this means is that someone came into your home and smashed your precious things. And let us say that you are not imagining it—he really did this. And so what does bitterness do? Bitterness goes to the workroom in the basement, finds a hammer, and goes through the house, smashing any of the remaining precious things that the other may have missed. At the basic heart level, this means that bitterness agrees with the vandal. For all the appearance of conflict, it is a false conflict.

Aggressive belli…

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