Russell Moore is going through a series on the temptation of Jesus and what it means to us. Audio is posted here.

SmartChristian posted an entry from the New York Times on Megachurches making a point of fostering economic growth in the communities they minister to.

At first glance, I thought this was a pretty good idea. I believe the church should be doing a lot of what the current government is doing (foster care, welfare, food stamps, education, etc.) so why not add economic stimulation to the list? Well, I think the answer lies in the article itself:

In addition, there is WC Properties, a for-profit unit that manages the church’s shopping center, called Community at the Village, where a Subway outlet, an eye-care shop and other businesses share space with church programs that draw traffic to the mall.

This seems like an unequal yoke. A church using its influence in a community to draw people to a place that uses its influence to promote greed, self-centered lifestyles, vanity, etc. I am not saying that malls are a bad thing of course, but certainly love of temporal possessions is. The Bible warns us against these types of business arrangements, so we should steer clear of them even if they could bring more people to a church event.

So, my question is, what should Christians be doing to promote economic prosperity in their communities? Tim Keller makes a good argument for local business owners to be involved in the communities their businesses operate in because if you live where you work then you are pouring money back into the same community you are drawing your pay from and the people will prosper. What do you think?

November is National Adoption Awareness Month. The folks over at Desiring God have posted some resources to raise awareness for this month.

Lifenews is reporting that the highest criminal court in Texas has upheld a decision that a man could be charged with two counts of murder after killing a woman and her child who was five weeks in the womb. While this is good news for the case against abortion (it is hard to use the word good when talking about the death of a woman and her child) some alarming quotes are found in the article.

The Supreme Court has emphasized that states may protect human life not only once the fetus has reached viability but ’from the outset of the pregnancy,’” the court said. “The Legislature is free to protect the lives of those whom it considers to be human beings.

God certainly has placed all governing authorities above us and we are to submit to those authorities, but when they overstep God’s clear definition of human life and claim to have sole-power in determining who they consider to be human and non-human, we as Christians should take note of this. This train of thought has had disastrous consequences in that it allows one group to say who should live and who should not live as evidenced in another quote found in the article:

The ’compelling state interest’ test, along with the accompanying ’viability’ threshold, has no application to a statute that prohibits a third party from causing the death of the woman’s unborn child against her will,” Presiding Judge Sharon Keller wrote.

So here we see that, in accordance with the US Constitution as it exists today, one person has complete control on whether or not a child will live.

The logic used in this case is tough to grasp: a man can be charged with murder because he caused the death of a child still in the womb but a woman cannot be charged with murder when she “desires” the death of a child in her womb through an abortion. But, this is our current state of affairs, a woman has the right to take her child’s life while it is in the womb. This is perfectly legal and it happens over 45 million times every year according to WHO.

References on abortion:
Russell Moore Commentary
Desiring God on adoption
Jefferson Davis Book “Abortion and the Christian”
Justin Taylor partially reviews Frank Beckworth’s upcoming book “Defending Life”
Al Mohler weighs in

Click here if the above link doesn’t work

My wife’s uncle showed this video to me after Thanksgiving dinner (yes, this is just what you want to see after gorging on a huge feast). I was fascinated with the organization of God’s creation. Watch the way a herd of water buffalo, who have no vocal communication, are able to group together for the protection of their young. I mean, the small group of water buffalo in the beginning had some way of going back to the larger herd and communicating with them the fact that a pack of lions had one of their young trapped and that if they all grouped together they could scare off the lions and save the babe. How did God do this? If He gave them the ability to communicate a situation amongst themselves without words, imagine how much more we can do as humans with words. Thank God for His Word that was given to us, which, by the Spirit, has the power to save souls because of the work of Jesus Christ.

The Boston Herald, actually most major news sources, has picked up a recent story, “Shocking new details in alleged ‘priest stalker’ letters to O‘Brien.” The details of the story are fairly common amongst celebrities, stalking just seems to be part of the life. So what sets this story apart from the many other stalkings that take place in a celebrity’s life? Look at the title of the article. “Mechanical Engineer Stalks Hollywood Celebrity” would never make the headlines. This makes for alluring news because of the man’s profession. He is a priest, he is supposed to be holy, he is supposed to be “good” and look at what he’s done.

This is nothing new, I don’t want to discuss any so-called bias in the media. But maybe I can take this assumption, that this is only “news-worthy” because of the man’s involvement with a religious organization, and propose a possible explanation for this.

Romans 2:15 says “they show the work of the Law written in their hearts”. Man knows right and wrong. He knows it when he sees it because God has put it in his heart to know. But they suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). They cannot help but point out that a wrong was committed but they will not say that a wrong shouldn’t have been committed. I believe people are so fascinated with these types of stories because they are grasping for any reason to help prove to themselves that God does not exist. “If we can show that the people who believe in God are just like we are, then we can show that believing is useless.” But the problem with this plan is that to show that the so-called righteous men are really not righteous at all would be dependent on knowing righteousness from unrighteousness in the first place. You can only have these two standards if there is a standard to measure them against. They would claim that morality is not a proof for the existence of God, but you can’t have it both ways.

“He has made everything appropriate in its time He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.”
Ecclesiastes 3:11

I won’t go too long here, it seems like a good idea to state why this
blog exists though. Recently, Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary, stated that more Christians should be involved in
blogging as a way of reaching out to the culture we live in. David
Kotter paraphrases:

“Believers should be known as people who have something to say
because language is a unique gift from God to humans and is essential
to the spread of the gospel message. We can use more than words, but
never less.”

I thought that since I seem to embrace the consuming of blogs on a
very periodic basis that I could also add to the discussion and
hopefully minister to those who would choose to consume this blog.