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…

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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…

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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…

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When to quit your good work—not just scholarly work, but any work:

As the author of the Theologia Germanica says, we may come to love knowledge—our knowing—more than the thing known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us. Every success in the scholar’s life increases this danger. If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his scholarly work. The time for plucking out the right eye has arrived. (C. S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, p. 50.)

Sometimes the best mark of holiness is not griping that sin abounds but groaning and grieving.

Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, 5 who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David invent for themselves instruments of music, 6 who drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! (Amos 6:4-6)

And the LORD said to him, “Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.” 5 And …

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Sometimes scholarship rivals politics for warped renderings of the opponent. Consider this from Etienne Gilson, a Roman Catholic historian of philosophy:

For the first time, with the Reformation, there appeared this conception of a grace that saved a man without changing him, of a justice that redeems corrupted nature without restoring it, of a Christ who pardons the sinner for self-inflicted wounds but does not heal them. (The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, 421)

How desperately some want to believe that justification by faith is cut off from holiness and is powerless to produce love. Michael Horton counters, “In actual fact, there are no Protestant accounts of this k…

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One of my Muslim friends was offended recently. Two Jehovah’s Witnesses had visited his family a few times and had spent hours telling his family about their religious group and their views.

In return, my friend’s family offered to give the women information about Islam. The two women agreed to come back and learn more. My friend and his family put a great deal of time and effort into collecting useful information for them.

However, after some time, only one woman came back. And even though she showed up, she showed little interest in discussing Islam. Not surprisingly, my friend had zero interest in her religion either.

Granted, I wouldn’t be excited about him becoming a Jehov…

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James Henley Thornwell, the Southern Presbyterian theologian who died in 1862, got somethings very wrong, like slavery. But this he got right and it is amazingly up to date:

Our whole system of operations gives an undue influence to money. Where money is the great want, numbers must be sought; and where an ambition for numbers prevails, doctrinal purity must be sacrificed. The root of the evil is the secular spirit of our ecclesiastical institutions. What we want is a spiritual body; a Church whose power lies in the truth, and the presence of the Holy Ghost. (B. M. Palmer, Life and Letters of J. H. Thornwell, p. 291).

If you enjoyed Jon Bloom’s post-Christmas wisdom, you might like a 400-year-old version of the same point in verse by George Herbert.

This is one of my all-time favorite poems:

The Pulley

When God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can:
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way;
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottome lay.

For if I should (said he)
Bestow this je…

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