"Combat and Cowardice"

Yesterday I saw that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is removing the military’s ban on women serving in combat, opening hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs. Is this a good thing? Is it really a "victory" for women and society as a whole?  I'd argue it is not.

In 2007, John Piper wrote an article in World Magazine called "Combat and Cowardice." It is worth reading as we attempt to think Christianly about all of life, including women in combat. Here is the introduction:

If I were the last man on the planet to think so, I would want the honor of saying that no woman should go before me into combat to defend my country. A man who endorses women in combat is not pro-woman; he's a wimp. He should be ashamed. For most of history, in most cultures, he would have been utterly scorned as a coward to promote such an idea. Part of the meaning of manhood as God created us is the sense of responsibility for the safety and welfare of our women.

Sanctity of Life Sunday is Bitter Sweet

An excerpt from Dr. Russel Moore on Sanctity of Life Sunday.

I hate Sanctity of Human Life Sunday because I’m reminded that as I’m preaching there are babies warmly nestled in wombs who won’t be there tomorrow. I’m reminded that there are children, maybe even blocks from my pulpit, who’ll be slapped, punched, and burned with cigarettes before nightfall. I’m reminded that there are elderly men and women languishing away in loneliness, their lives pronounced to be a waste.

But I also love Sanctity of Human Life Sunday when I think about the fact that in our churches there are ex-orphans all around, adopted into loving families. I love to reflect on the men and women who serve every week in pregnancy centers for women in crisis. And I love to see men and women who have aborted babies find their sins forgiven, even this sin, and their consciences cleansed by Christ.

We’ll always need Christmas. We’ll always need Easter. But I hope, please Lord, someday soon, that Sanctity of Human Life Day is unnecessary.

Russel Moore "Why I hate sanctity of life Sunday (and why I love it too)"

"Premarital Sex?"

Below is an excerpt from an article by Russel Moore on the issue of "premarital sex."

Christians talk a lot about premarital sex. And I think that’s a mistake. I don’t think it’s a mistake because the issue is unimportant but because the grammar is skewed. The word “fornication” is almost gone from contemporary Christian speech. It sounds creepy and antiquated. Instead, we talk about “abstinence” and “premarital sex.”

In the most recent issue of Touchstone magazine, I argue that the loss of the words “fornicate” and “fornication” implicitly cedes the moral imagination to the sexual revolutionaries because the words “fornication” and “premarital sex” aren’t interchangeable.

Fornication isn’t merely “premarital.” Premarital is the language of timing, and with it we infer that this is simply the marital act misfired at the wrong time. But fornication is, both spiritually and typologically, a different sort of act from the marital act. That’s why the consequences are so dire.

Fornication pictures a different reality than the mystery of Christ presented in the one-flesh union of covenantal marriage. It represents a Christ who uses his church without joining her, covenantally and permanently, to himself. The man who leads a woman into sexual union without a covenantal bond is preaching to her, to the world, and to himself a different gospel from the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he is forming a real spiritual union, the Apostle Paul warns, but one with a different spirit than the Spirit of Christ (1 Cor. 6:15, 19).

Get a Great Study Bible for $5.99

From now until January 15, 2013, you can purchase the ESV Study Bible Online access for just $5.99. This is an incredible resource full of introductions to biblical books, study notes on the ESV text of the Bible, helpful illustrations and charts, and many helpful articles on theology all written by world class evangelical scholars.

You can also get the online MacArthur study Bible for $5.99 here. This is another great study Bible.

Plan to Read the Bible in 2013

As Christians, we desire to hear the words of our God. We want to read his words in the Bible in order to see him more clearly, follow him more nearly, and love him more dearly. The problem is, in a world of distractions and short attention spans, we often fail to read consistently for lack of planning. Maybe you do fine without a plan, but I bet most of us do not. So, I encourage you to get a Bible reading plan to help you fulfill your desire of being in God's word this year.  Check out the GCOT website for links to some Bible reading plans .

Where Was God in All the Goodness of 2012?

Great article by John Piper. A good way to end 2012, reflecting on God's goodness.

As this year ends, the question I am asking is: Where was God when so many good things happened this past year?

How can God be a God of justice, yet allow so much good to happen to people who dishonor him by disbelieving in him, or giving lip service to his existence, or paying no more attention to him than the carpet in their den, or rejecting the kingship of his Son, or scorning his word, or preferring a hundred pleasures before him?

How can God be righteous and do so much good to us who are so unrighteous?
Where was God in 2012?

• Where was God when nine million planes landed safely in the United States?
• Where was God when the world revolved around the sun so accurately that it achieved the Winter solstice perfectly at 5:12 AM December 21 and headed back toward Spring?
• Where was God when the President was not shot at a thousand public appearances?
• Where was God when American farms produced ten million bushels of corn, and 2.8 million bushels of soybeans — enough food to sell $100 billions worth to other nations?
• Where was God when no terrorist plot brought down a single American building or plane or industry?
• Where was God when the sun maintained its heat and its gravitational pull precisely enough that we were not incinerated or frozen?
• Where was God when three hundred million Americans drank water in homes and restaurants without getting sick?
• Where was God when no new plague swept away a third of our race?
• Where was God when Americans drove three trillion accident free miles?
• Where was God when over three million healthy babies were born in America?

He goes on to look at Scripture to find out why God has been so good to us and others even though, in his righteousness, he should not have been. 

The Wonder of The Incarnation

That man should be made in God’s image is a wonder,
but that God should be made in man’s image is a greater wonder.
That the Ancient of Days would be born.
That He who thunders in the heavens should cry in the cradle?

—Thomas Watson