Many of you will recognize the name “Weezer” from the 1989 movie Steel Magnolias, a film about the special bond shared among a group of small-town Southern women and how they cope with the death of one of their own. Many will also remember that Shirley MacLaine turned in a performance of a lifetime in her depiction of the endearing curmudgeon, Weezer Boudreaux. What many people don’t know is that the movie was inspired by a true story. Playwriter Robert Harling wrote Steel Magnolias after the untimely death of his own sister Susan. Like the movie, Susan had a group of women who were a part of ..read more

Someone recently asked me a question about complementarianism, and I thought it might be useful to share with readers more broadly the answer that I gave privately–especially in light of recent controversies in the Southern Baptist Convention concerning women serving as pastors. Here’s the question followed by my lightly edited answer. Do you think complementarianism is a big enough tent to include those who restrict the office of elder/senior pastor to men but still allow women to serve in associate pastors roles? From a normative perspective, I think the answer is clearly no. If we take The ..read more

I just read the following observation in an Axios newsletter: “Abortion rights have yet to lose since the end of Roe when the decision has been up to voters instead of legislators or courts.” This is a sobering reality that pro-lifers need to come to terms with. It’s why many Republican politicians are now treating the pro-life cause as a political liability. See Donald Trump’s statement yesterday, and Kari Lake’s statement today. And of course, we know where the Democrats stand. They are even worse by supporting abortion rights through all nine months of a woman’s pregnancy. The politicians a ..read more

O Jesus, Savior of my life, My hope, my joy, my sacrifice, I’ve searched and found no other one Who loves me more than you have done. So I denounce my lingering sin Whose power You have broke within My ever weak and faithless frame. Its vigor’s crushed in Jesus name. For your death did at once proclaim, The Godhead’s glory and my shame. And you did seize my cup of guilt And drank all that the chalice spilled. No condemnation now I dread Because you went for me instead To bear the curse and wrath and rage, To pay the debt I would have paid. Yet your work finished not with death, Nor with your ..read more

The Left is colonizing the calendar. The most recent evidence of this is President Biden declaring tomorrow, Easter Sunday, to be “Transgender Visibility Day.” For Biden, I suspect this is a political calculation—a sop to the Left and indifferent contempt for faithful Christians everywhere. I have seen little evidence that his Catholic faith is anything more than a meaningless tradition. He publicly dishonors his church’s teaching about abortion, homosexuality, and marriage. And now he defiles the holiest day on the Christian calendar with transgender abomination. But Biden aside, we would all ..read more

Source: This is an excerpt from Don Carson’s message at the Bethlehem 2016 Conference for Pastors and Church Leaders in Minneapolis, Minnesota ..read more

I finished Abigail Shrier’s book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up about two or three weeks ago. I’ve had a lot of time to ruminate on it, and I think it will be one of the most important books of the year. It really is a bit of a barn-burner. Her reporting gathers evidence against some of the sacrosanct totems of our age: 1. Trauma-informed therapy 2. Gentle parenting 3. Hyper-medicalization of children 4. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score 5. Empathy run amok Shrier begins the book with a giant disclaimer that she’s not writing this book about kids with actual serious ..read more

? Last Saturday morning, I Googled the following question: “What happens to us after we die?” Before I finished typing the sentence, Google autocompleted the words. I assume that means the question has been asked so many times that Google “knows” what’s coming. It occurred to me that this fact all by itself is sad. Can you imagine someone being gripped by such a question and then resorting to a Google search? After I entered the question, the top result was this paragraph from Quora.com: Your consciousness ends (we know this because all detectable signs of it stop) and your cells cease to fun ..read more

Pastor Steven Bezner has published an article arguing “Against the Law Amendment” in which he urges messengers to to vote against the measure at the upcoming SBC meeting in Indianapolis. Interestingly, Bezner doesn’t really argue against what the amendment actually says but against what he perceives as ulterior motives on the part of those who support the amendment. He writes: The Law Amendment seeks to clarify the extent of complementarian commitments within the SBC, answering this question: can a church remain in good standing with the Southern Baptist Convention if they have women staff mem ..read more

One of the perennial exegetical debates surrounding 2 Samuel 11 is whether David’s actions toward Bathsheba amount to rape. Sometimes popular discussions of the question founder on ideological concerns imposed upon the text rather than focusing on what the biblical text actually says. On a recent episode of the 9Marks “Bible Talk” podcast, Jim Hamilton argues that the author of 2 Samuel does not portray David’s relationship with Bathsheba as rape. Nor does the author does portray Bathsheba as a temptress. Rather, the author highlights David’s lechery and blameworthiness in the whole affair. Ne ..read more