John Piper uses Romans 5 to explain the simplicity of the Gospel here:

The Fatal Disobedience of Adam and the Triumphant Obedience of Christ

Faith and fear go hand in hand. Faith keeps the heart cheerful, fear keeps the heart serious. Faith keeps the heart from sinking in despair, fear keeps it from floating in presumption.

Thomas Watson, All Things For Good, 1663

From D. A. Carson:

I would like to buy about three dollars worth of gospel, please.

Not too much – just enough to make me happy, but not so much that I get addicted.

I don’t want so much gospel that I learn to really hate covetousness and lust.

I certainly don’t want so much that I start to love my enemies, cherish self-denial, and contemplate missionary service in some alien culture.

I want ecstasy, not repentance;

I want transcendence, not transformation.

I would like to be cherished by some nice, forgiving, broad-minded people, but I myself don’t want to love those from different races – especially if they smell.

I would like enough gospel to make my family secure and my children well behaved, but not so much that I find my ambitions redirected or my giving too greatly enlarged.

I would like about three dollars worth of the gospel, please.

(HT: Between Two Worlds)

There’s an article in today’s Independent titled “Boys like blue, girls like pink – it’s in our genes.”

According to researchers at Newcastle University,

“On top of the universal preference for blue, females have a preference for the red end of the red-green axis, and this shifts their colour preference slightly away from blue towards red, which tends to make pinks and lilacs the most preferred colours in comparison with others.”

(Emphasis mine.)

The headline is slightly misleading in that both genders tend to prefer blue over all other colors, but females tend to have a secondary preference toward reds.

Either way, the article attributes these characteristics to genetics and, ultimately, to evolution. But here is the very strange part:

However, early human societies almost certainly engaged in a division of labour between the sexes, with men travelling long distances to hunt wild game. Women, meanwhile, foraged locally for fruit and berries.

Dr Hurlbert suggests that this division of labour may be at the root of why girls now prefer pink.

“Evolution may have driven females to prefer reddish colours – reddish fruits, healthy, reddish faces. Culture may exploit and compound this natural female preference,” she said.

As for the wider human preference for blue, Dr Hurlbert said this may have something to do with our love for the grassy plains of our place of origin, in Africa, where the sky is an important feature of the landscape.

“I would favour evolutionary arguments here,” she said. “Going back to our ‘savannah’ days, we would have a natural preference for a blue sky, because it signalled good weather.”

(Emphasis, again, added.)

So, basically, girls prefer pink because many many years ago, women picked berries. But this implies that our environment influences our genes, which is wrong even if you buy into evolutionary theory.

Incidentally, the biggest problem with this article is that the whole “blue for boys, pink for girls” thing wasn’t uniform until the mid-twentieth century. Prior to that, pink was preferred for boys, while blue was preferred for girls:

“There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” [Ladies Home Journal, June, 1918]

See here for more detail on that (scroll to “Why is Pink a Girl Color and Blue a Boy Color?”)

Sorry, folks. Back to the drawing board on this one.

Note: I have thus far avoided politics on this blog, and it is my intention to continue to do so. Personally, I believe that Christians are not called to appeal to the state for solving the problems of the world, whether on the “right” or the “left.” But some things transcend politics, and yes, life is one of them.

This morning, I found this story to be particularly sickening:

Police said William Stanley Sutton III, 25, added ProstaMate last week to a soda drank by Lauren Ashley Tucker, 21, who is carrying his child…

According to police, Sutton said he didn’t mean to harm Tucker, just to cause her to miscarry.

It is completely horrible that someone would even think to do something like this, but to me, that’s not the worst part.

Sutton was charged with reckless endangerment, assault and contaminating Tucker’s drink.

The story isn’t clear whether the “victim” in those charges is the woman, or the unborn child. I would bet the former, but for the sake of argument, let’s give the authorities (and the law, for that matter) the benefit of the doubt, and assume that the charges of reckless endangerment or assault were against the child. What’s sickening about this is that the child was not “recklessly endangered” nor was the child “assaulted.” The man attempted to murder the child, plain and simple.

But to me, that’s still not the worst part.

“It’s an unthinkable type of situation,” said Kent County Sheriff’s Sgt. Glenn M. Owens.

With all due respect to Sgt. Owens, he is wrong. This situation, while sickening, horrible, awful, terrifying, nauseating, depraved, etc. – choose whatever description you would like – while it’s all those things, there is one thing that it is not. This sort of thing is not “unthinkable.” And that is the worst part of this story.

It’s not unthinkable because we live in a time and place where an unborn child is not considered alive. We live in a time and place where a “person’s” right to live can be measured by the distance from one side of the birth canal to the other. And we live in a time and place where many of our most qualified leaders think this is OK.

That is what makes this story only too “thinkable.” That is what makes this story not at all surprising. And that is the worst part.

Whoever wrote this video for Lowe’s, on installing wood panel fencing, needs to go back and brush up on poetry interpretation…

(For the full text of Robert Frost’s classic poem, Mending Wall, see here.)

According to the site that does the ratings:

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
death (6x) hell (1x)

By including that information above, the counts for “death” and “hell” jump to 7x and 2x respectively. Actually, 8x and 3x because of that sentence. Anyway, I wonder if that bumps me up to PG-13?

There’s an intriguing article in First Things this morning from Joseph Bottum. In it, he argues that the recent surge of books on atheism does not represent the vitality of this philosophy; rather, it is indicative of its death throes:

In Michael’s view, there’s an odd defensiveness about all these books—as though they were a sign not of victory but of desperation. Everywhere on earth except Western Europe, religion is surging. Each of the authors admits that most people, especially in America, do not agree with him. Each pictures himself as a man who spits against the wind. Each rehearses his arguments for atheism mostly, it seems, to convince himself.

Read more, and be sure to check out the great story involving Daniel Dennett and Jeff Jordan.

Hebrews 12:1

12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, (ESV)

A friend of mine taught on Hebrews 12:1-3 this Sunday. And when he talked about the race analogy that “the author” uses, I couldn’t help but think of the childhood game Red Light, Green Light.

In many ways, our growth as Christians is like this. We all run toward the goal, but at some point, He will return and call the final “Red Light.” Where will you be standing when He does? How hard are you running in the meantime?

For some reason, an old post from Paul Lamey at Expository Thoughts showed up in my RSS reader this morning. No worry, it’s a good one:

While preparing a sermon on Jude 5 i came across a great quote by Pastor Matthew Henry. This comment reflects Jude’s thought in a fresh way (Jude 1:5 “Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe”).

Henry writes, “Preaching is not designed to teach us something new in every sermon, somewhat that we knew nothing of before; but to put us in remembrance, to call to mind things forgotten, to affect our passions, and engage and fix our resolutions, that our lives may be answerable to our faith. Though you know these things, yet you still need to know them better. There are many things which we have known which yet we have unhappily forgotten. Is it of no use or service to be put afresh in remembrance of them?”

There’s always something new to find in the Word, but there’s also a lot of value in finding something old and familiar as well. Amen!