Eric Clapton - Blues Rehearsals - "It Hurts Me Too"

Shoot The Lame Ducks Put Them Out Of Their Misery

How a Father Shapes the Church-Going Habits of His Children (for the rest of their life!)

In the June 2003 issue of Touchstone, Robbie Low examines a 1994 study in Switzerland about the connection between the churchgoing habits of parents, in particular fathers, and the effect on children once they are grown and out of the house. He explains:

In short, if a father does not go to church, no matter how faithful his wife’s devotions, only one child in 50 will become a regular worshiper. If a father does go regularly, regardless of the practice of the mother, between two-thirds and three-quarters of their children will become churchgoers (regular and irregular). If a father goes but irregularly to church, regardless of his wife’s devotion, between a half and two-thirds of their offspring will find themselves coming to church regularly or occasionally.
A non-practicing mother with a regular father will see a minimum of two-thirds of her children ending up at church. In contrast, a non-practicing father with a regular mother will see two-thirds of his children never darken the church door. If his wife is similarly negligent that figure rises to 80 percent!
The results are shocking, but they should not be surprising. They are about as politically incorrect as it is possible to be; but they simply confirm what psychologists, criminologists, educationalists, and traditional Christians know. You cannot buck the biology of the created order. Father’s influence, from the determination of a child’s sex by the implantation of his seed to the funerary rites surrounding his passing, is out of all proportion to his allotted, and severely diminished role, in Western liberal society.
A mother’s role will always remain primary in terms of intimacy, care, and nurture. (The toughest man may well sport a tattoo dedicated to the love of his mother, without the slightest embarrassment or sentimentality). No father can replace that relationship. But it is equally true that when a child begins to move into that period of differentiation from home and engagement with the world “out there,” he (and she) looks increasingly to the father for his role model. Where the father is indifferent, inadequate, or just plain absent, that task of differentiation and engagement is much harder. When children see that church is a “women and children” thing, they will respond accordingly—by not going to church, or going much less.
Curiously, both adult women as well as men will conclude subconsciously that Dad’s absence indicates that going to church is not really a “grown-up” activity. In terms of commitment, a mother’s role may be to encourage and confirm, but it is not primary to her adult offspring’s decision. Mothers’ choices have dramatically less effect upon children than their fathers’, and without him she has little effect on the primary lifestyle choices her offspring make in their religious observances.
Her major influence is not on regular attendance at all but on keeping her irregular children from lapsing altogether. This is, needless to say, a vital work, but even then, without the input of the father (regular or irregular), the proportion of regulars to lapsed goes from 60/40 to 40/60.

Read the whole essay here.
[HT: Gene Veith via Justin Taylor]

Who Is Christmas For?

Jesus came for those who look in the mirror and see ugliness.
Jesus came for daughters whose fathers never told them they were beautiful.
Christmas is for those who go to “wing night” alone.
Christmas is for those whose lives have been wrecked by cancer, and the thought of another Christmas seems like an impossible dream.
Christmas is for those who would be nothing but lonely if not for social media.
Christmas is for those whose marriages have careened against the retaining wall and are threatening to flip over the edge.
Christmas is for the son whose father keeps giving him hunting gear when he wants art materials.
Christmas is for smokers who cannot quit even in the face of a death sentence.
Christmas is for prostitutes, adulterers, and porn stars who long for love in every wrong place.
Christmas is for college students who are sitting in the midst of the family and already cannot wait to get out for another drink.
Christmas is for those who traffic in failed dreams.
Christmas is for those who have squandered the family name and fortune—they want “home” but cannot imagine a gracious reception.
Christmas is for parents watching their children’s marriage fall into disarray.

You can read the whole thing here.
 Justin Taylor

Robert Plant & Band Of Joy - Angel Dance

Barney (Mr. Magoo) Frank Is A Disaster

The Great Reversal

In C.S. Lewis’s masterful children’s story The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he tells of a country, Narnia, which is under the curse of the White Witch. This evil queen places a spell on the land so that it’s “always winter and never Christmas.” Under her control, the future of Narnia looks bleak until word gets out that “Aslan is on the move.” In the story, Aslan is a noble lion who represents Christ. He’s coming to set things straight. He’s coming to destroy the White Witch and thus reverse the curse on Narnia. The first sign of Aslan’s movement toward this cursed land is that the snow begins to melt–“spring is in the air.” The cold begins to fade as the sun rays peer through the dark clouds, promising the dawn of a new day. Everything in Narnia begins to change.

You’ll have to read the book to see how the story ends, but when I’m asked to describe the true meaning of Christmas, I like to say that the birth of Christ is the sure and certain sign that “God is on the move.” The arrival of Jesus two-thousand years ago ensured that God had begun the process of reversing the curse of sin and recreating all things. In Jesus, God was moving in a new way and, in the words of C.S. Lewis, “winter began stirring backwards.”
All of Jesus’ ministry—the words he spoke, the miracles he performed—showed that there was a new order in town: God’s order. When Jesus healed the diseased, raised the dead, and forgave the desperate, he did so to show that with the arrival of God in the flesh came the restoration of the way God intended things to be. New life was given, health was restored; God was reversing the curse of death, disease, and discomfort. The incarnation of Christ began the “great reversal.”
Tim Keller observes that Christ’s miracles were not the suspension of the natural order but the restoration of the natural order. They were a reminder of what once was prior to the Fall and a preview of what will eventually be a universal reality once again—a world of peace and justice, without death, disease, or conflict.
To be sure, when Christ comes again, the process of reversing the curse of sin and recreating all things will be complete (1 Cor. 15:51-58). The peace on earth that the angels announced the night Christ was born will become a universal actuality. God’s cosmic rescue mission will be complete. The fraying fabric of our fallen world will be fully and perfectly rewoven. Everything and everyone “in Christ” will live in perfect harmony. Shalom will rule.
Isaiah pictures it this way:

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:6-9)

For those who have found forgiveness of sins in Christ, there will one day be no more sickness, no more death, no more tears, no more division, no more tension. The pardoned children of God will work and worship in a perfectly renewed earth without the interference of sin. We who believe the gospel will enjoy sinless hearts and minds along with disease-free bodies. All that causes us pain and discomfort will be destroyed, and we will live forever. We’ll finally be able “to enjoy what is most enjoyable with unbounded energy and passion forever.”
Christmas is the celebration of this process begun and the promise that it will one day be completed.
Tullian Tchividjian

Christmas Is for Those Who Hate It Most

We are by now accustomed to hearing about how Christmas is difficult for many people. The story of Scrooge and his—ehem—problems with this season is no longer anecdotal. It is now par for the course. Maybe it always has been. Maybe the joy of the season has always been a thorn in the side of those who can scarcely imagine joy.

Not too long ago, I heard from someone about how difficult Christmas would be because of some heartbreak in their family. There was utter hopelessness and devastation. Christmas would be impossible to enjoy because of the freshness of this pain. It’s been a story very hard to forget.
I get it. I mean, it makes sense on the level of Christmas being a time in which there is a lot of heavily concentrated family time. The holidays can be tense in even the best of circumstances. Maneuvering through the landmines of various personalities can be hard even if there is no cancer, divorce or empty seat at the table. What makes it the most wonderful time of the year is also what makes it the most brutal time of the year. My own family has not been immune to this phenomenon.
But allow me to push back against this idea a little. Gently. I think we have it all backwards. We have it sunk deep into our collective cultural consciousness that Christmas is for the happy people. You know, those with idyllic family situations enjoyed around stocking-strewn hearth dreams. Christmas is for healthy people who laugh easily and at all the right times, right? The successful and the beautiful, who live in suburban bliss, can easily enjoy the holidays. They have not gotten lost on the way because of the GPS they got last year. They are beaming after watching a Christmas classic curled up on the couch as a family in front of their ginormous flat-screen. We live and act as if this is who should be enjoying Christmas.
But this is backwards. Christmas—the great story of the incarnation of the Rescuer—is for everyone, especially those who need a rescue. Jesus was born as a baby to know the pain and sympathize with our weaknesses. Jesus was made to be like us so that in his resurrection we can be made like him; free from the fear of death and the pain of loss. Jesus’ first recorded worshipers were not of the beautiful class. They were poor, ugly shepherds, beat down by life and labor. They had been looked down on over many a nose.
Jesus came for those who look in the mirror and see ugliness. Jesus came for daughters whose fathers never told them they were beautiful. Christmas is for those who go to “wing night” alone. Christmas is for those whose lives have been wrecked by cancer, and the thought of another Christmas seems like an impossible dream. Christmas is for those who would be nothing but lonely if not for social media. Christmas is for those whose marriages have careened against the retaining wall and are threatening to flip over the edge. Christmas is for the son whose father keeps giving him hunting gear when he wants art materials. Christmas is for smokers who cannot quit even in the face of a death sentence. Christmas is for prostitutes, adulterers, and porn stars who long for love in every wrong place. Christmas is for college students who are sitting in the midst of the family and already cannot wait to get out for another drink. Christmas is for those who traffic in failed dreams. Christmas is for those who have squandered the family name and fortune—they want “home” but cannot imagine a gracious reception. Christmas is for parents watching their children’s marriage fall into disarray.
Christmas is really about the gospel of grace for sinners. Because of all that Christ has done on the cross, the manger becomes the most hopeful place in a universe darkened with hopelessness. In the irony of all ironies, Christmas is for those who will find it the hardest to enjoy. It really is for those who hate it most.
Gospel Coalition

Wynton Marsalis - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Nobody Liked Caroling With Yoda

Speaking Of Nancy Pelosi

Speaking of Nancy Pelosi, as I was driving in to the office I heard Dennis Miller talking about Pelosi's mental density, Miller said, "Nancy Pelosi is thicker than a Charlie Sheen Pre-Nup", upon hearing that I burst out laughing for some time.

Nancy Pelosi: The Girl in the Plastic Bubble

Being a leftist in America means never needing to actually hear or grasp what conservatives believe.  Many leftists, particularly soon-to-be Minority Leader Pelosi, live in a plastic bubble.  Pelosi grew up as the daughter of a powerful Democrat, Thomas D'Alessandro, whose power base was Baltimore.  In college, Pelosi interned for Democrat Senator Brewster.  She met her husband, a native of San Francisco, and after a short stint in New York City, the two moved to Mr. Pelosi's home town, where they have lived for more than forty years.

Pelosi has been a Democrat operative from Northern California since 1976.  How political has the Pelosi family been?  Not only was her father a Democrat mayor and congressman, but one of her brothers, Thomas D'Alessandro III, was also mayor of Baltimore, and another of her brothers, Ronald Pelosi, was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.  The Pelosi family, for more than ninety years, has been inextricably connected to the Democrat Party.  Consider, also, just where these Pelosi Democrats have lived and worked in politics.  Baltimore, New York City, San Francisco -- three cities as thoroughly Democrat and profoundly leftist as any in America.  

Lots of those on the left can live for  years before they actually are exposed to genuine conservatism....The left's plan for America has been remarkably simple: make sure that Americans hear only information which supports the left, hear only analysis which reinforces leftism, and receive only mass entertainment marinated in leftism. 
But there are some Americans who can go through their lives without ever feeling the destructive idiocy of the left, without enduring or seeing a friend or relative endure the brutal bigotry of the left, and without stumbling across a vast quicksand of leftist mendacity. You spend your entire life in communities which are aberrations of Middle America.  You live in Washington, among the most leftist polity in the Republic, for decades.  You dwell in an America whose national media, until you are well into middle age, is a monolith of ideological purity which only reinforces your prejudices.  Living such a surreal life, a woman like Nancy Pelosi can actually find herself to the left of Barack Obama.  But that is where she is, this Girl in the Plastic Bubble.  
Read The Rest At American Thinker

Ten Times Worse

A Crossway book that had until this week slipped under my radar was a little collection of nine Lloyd-Jones sermons on the psalms called Seeking the Face of God.

The first sermon is on Psalm 14 and the theme that 'the fool says in his heart, "there is no God."' It is an apologetically driven sermon arguing for why God is a very reasonable belief and that it is fools who deny him, not fools who believe in him.

In the second sermon Lloyd-Jones does something interesting. He goes to Psalm 50 to show a complementary truth. In Psalm 50 the problem is people showing up to offer sacrifices when their hearts aren't in it at all. This is another kind of fool, though more insidious and self-deceived. Lloyd-Jones kicks off his series on the psalms in this way to show with a one-two punch that while God-denying pagans are fools, God-affirming churchgoers whose hearts are not engaged are even greater fools.

He says:

It may surprise some of you to hear me, a Christian preacher, saying a thing like this, but I am almost persuaded that the chief problem today is not the problem of people who say there is no God and who are in the world. It is the problem of people who go to the house of God in a purely technical manner. They go there, but why? Because it is the thing to do. They attend a church as a matter of duty.

Just when I begin diagnosing in my mind people I know who do this, Lloyd-Jones rightly says:

God knows, we have all been guilty of this; we may still be guilty.

Why do we come to God's house? What really is the character of our worship when we come to analyze it? Is it not true that in exactly the same way as God's people of old, we feel that we gain merit by doing it?

Probably thousands of people still go to church on Sunday morning, and then they are finished; and they have done it, as it were, so they can go and do anything else they like now--write family letters, play games, read the Sunday newspapers, look at the television, watch some exciting thing here or there. They have been to church on Sunday morning, and that is all.

That was exactly the position of these children of Israel. It was formal, it was mechanical. . . .

Let me repeat: Ten times worse than being outside and saying, 'There is no God at all' is going to God and to His house in a formal manner only.

--Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Seeking the Face of God: Nine Reflections on the Psalms (Crossway, 2005), 32-33
Dane Ortlund

I'll be Home for Christmas-Frank Sinatra - Christmas With The Rat Pack

Christmas Blues - Canned Heat - Future Blues

Nothing Like A Load Of Pork For The Holidays - They Still Don't Get It

Owen: Gospel Doctrine, Gospel Experience

John Owen:

When the heart is cast into the mould of the doctrine that the mind embraceth; . . . when not the sense of the words only is in our heads, but the sense of the things abides in our hearts; when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for--then shall we be garrisoned, by the grace of God, against all the assaults of men.

And without this all our contending is, as to ourselves, of no value. What am I the better if I can dispute that Christ is God, but have no sense of sweetness in my heart from hence that he is a God in covenant with my soul? . . . Let us, then, not think that we are any thing the better for our conviction of the truths of the great doctrines of the gospel . . . unless we find the power of the truths abiding in our own hearts and have a continual experience of their necessity and excellency in our standing before God and our communion with him.

--quoted in J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life, 217-18
Dane Ortlund

The Diverse Excellencies of Christ

From John Piper's 2008 Together 4 the Gospel Conference message titled "How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice". Christ is supreme because:

He is God's final revelation
He is the heir of all things
He is the creator of the world
He is the radiance of God's glory
He is the exact imprint of God's nature
He upholds the universe by the word of His power
He made purification for sins
He sits at the right hand of the Majesty
He is God enthroned forever with the scepter of uprightness
He is worshiped by angels
His rule will have no end
His joy is above all other things in the universe
He took on human flesh
He was crowned with glory and honor because of his suffering
He was the founder of our salvation
He was made perfect in all of his obedience by his suffering
He destroyed the one who had the power of death
He delivered us from the bondage of fear
He is a merciful and faithful high priest
He made propitiation for sins
He is sympathetic because of His own trials
He never sinned
He offered up loud cries and tears with reverent fear and God heard him
He became the source of eternal salvation
He holds His priesthood by virtue of an indestructible life
He appears in the presence of God on our behalf
He will come a second time to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him
He is the same yesterday, today, and forever

Jared Wilson

Oscar Peterson - Hymn to Freedom

Raising Taxes Does Not Create Jobs

Not the Strength of the Hand, but the Goodness of the Meat

Helpful words on justification from Joel Beeke that are gospel-rich:

Too many Christians live in constant despondency because they cannot distinguish between the rock on which they stand and the faith by which they stand upon the rock. Faith is not our rock; Christ is our rock. We do not get faith by having faith in our faith or by looking to faith, but by looking to Christ. Looking to Christ is faith.

Nor is it perfect faith, great faith, fruitful faith, strong faith that justifies. If we start qualifying our faith, we destroy the gospel. Our faith may be weak, immature, timid, even indiscernible at times, but if it is real faith it is justifying faith (Matthew 6:30). Our degree of faith affects sanctification and assurance, but not justification. Faith's value in justification does not lie in any degree in itself but in its uniting us to Christ and His glorious achievement. As George Downame illustrates:

A small and weak hand, if it be able to reach up the meat to the mouth, as well performs its duty for the nourishment of the body as one of greater strength, because it is not the strength of the hand but the goodness of the meat which nourishes the body.

Far too often we are prone to look to the quality of our faith, the quality of our conviction of sin, the quality of our evangelical repentance, the quality of our love for the brethren for confirmation of our justification, forgetting that it is Christ alone who saves by gracious faith alone.

And I've always loved this line from Augustus Toplady:
"A feeble faith my lay hold on a strong Christ."
Jared Wilson

The Opposite of Biblical Christianity - What a Pretentious Load of Crap

Ken Wilbur, a 'mind-blowing' author according to Rob Bell:



A few things:

1. This guy couldn't be more Kantian if he tried. In all the ways we don't want to be like Kant.

2. The lady whispering 'I-am-ness' at 3:09 is both laugh-worthy and tear-worthy.

3. The reference to Exodus 3:14 is a hijacking of what that text, and the whole biblical revelation of God, means.

The epistemology, anthropology, and theology propounded here is the opposite, the precise opposite, of biblical Christianity.

Dane Ortlund

The Glorious Pardoxes of God Incarnate

Charles Spurgeon preached in 1858 on the wonderful paradoxes of the incarnation:

Infinite, and an infant—
eternal, and yet born of a woman—
Almighty, and yet hanging on a woman’s breast supporting the universe, and yet needing to be carried in a mother’s arms—
king of angels, and yet the reputed son of Joseph—
heir of all things and yet the carpenter’s carpenter’s despised son.

Sam Storms also reflects on the paradoxes:

The Word became flesh!
God became human!
the invisible became visible!
the untouchable became touchable!
eternal life experienced temporal death!
the transcendent one descended and drew near!
the unlimited became limited!
the infinite became finite!
the immutable became mutable!
the unbreakable became fragile!
spirit became matter!
eternity entered time!
the independent became dependent!
the almighty became weak!
the loved became the hated!
the exalted was humbled!
glory was subjected to shame!
fame turned into obscurity!
from inexpressible joy to tears of unimaginable grief!
from a throne to a cross!
from ruler to being ruled!
from power to weakness!

Justin Taylor

270 Movies from 2010 Edited Into One Surprisingly Riviting 6-Minute video

Are You Appropriating Christ's Justifying Work In Your Life?

Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives. Many have so light an apprehension of God's holiness and of the extent of the guilt of their sin that consciously they see little need for justification, though below the surface of their lives they are deeply guilt-ridden and insecure. Many others have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine (of justification through imputed righteousness) but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for their justification, in the Augustinian manner, drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their experience of conversion, their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience.

Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther's platform; you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in that quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude.

Richard Lovelace - Dynamics Of Spiritual Life, pg 101