Write More to Read More

The bulk of my reading lately has been focused on family and marriage books. I got myself Paul Tripp's "What Did You Expect?? (Redeeming the Realities of Marriage)", Andreas J. Köstenberger's "God, Marriage, and Family (Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation)", and Richard Phillips' "The Masculine Mandate (God's Calling to Men)."

Providence seems to have deemed it fitting to rock this area in my life in order to improve it, and the Lord did not leave me wanting for wisdom by guiding me to these works penned by His servants.

With that said, I realize I need to up the ante on my reading. I still have Turretin's IET and Bavinck's RD to go through, along with a host of other books that are more of the ST and BT type. Alan Parsons Project got it right when it sang, "time, keeps flowing like a river." I need to make more time for reading. But I realized that I read more when I wrote and I have not blogged for a couple of months now. So to read more, I need to write more.

This is to tell you that I plan on blogging more (in order to read more) and hopefully to have it continue on until the Lord's appointed time of cessation.

By His grace, may this blog bless you as it has blessed me in its writing.

Do We Really Need TV?

"If all other variables are equal, your capacity to know God deeply will probably diminish in direct proportion to how much television you watch. There are several reasons for this. One is that television reflects American culture at its most trivial. And a steady diet of triviality shrinks the soul. You get used to it. It starts to seem normal. Silly becomes funny. And funny becomes pleasing. And pleasing becomes soul-satisfaction. And in the end the soul that is made for God has shrunk to fit snugly around triteness.....TV is mostly trivial. It seldom inspires great thoughts or great feelings with glimpses of great Truth. God is the great, absolute, all-shaping Reality. If He gets any air time, He is treated as an opinion. There is no reverence. No trembling. God and all that He thinks about the world is missing. Cut loose from God, everything goes down.....So there are good reasons to try a TV fast. Or to simply wean yourself off of it entirely. We have not owned a TV for thirty-four years of marriage except for three years in Germany when we used it for language learning. There is no inherent virtue in this. I only mention it to prove that you can raise five culturally sensitive and Biblically informed children without it." (emphases mine)

- John Piper, Pierced by the Word, 18

The Pastor's Regress

"Since the 1960s, we have experienced an evolution in what we expect a local church pastor to be. FORTY YEARS AGO HE WAS EXPECTED TO BE A RESIDENT AUTHORITY ON THEOLOGY AND BIBLICAL TEACHING. Slowly this gave way to a model of the pastor as the CEO of the church, the administrative and organizational leader. Today the ministers we want are Christianized pop therapists who are entertaining to listen to." (emphases mine) - J.P. Moreland, Love Your God With All Your Mind - The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul, ch.10, pg.188-189

The anti-intellectualism that pervades most of evangelical Christianity today is lamentable. The average church-goer sees church as primarily a place for emotional stroking, perhaps a few laughs interspersed in between, good music and entertainment, and shallow socialization---a condition that is perpetuated by the pastor's willingness to pander to these whims. Whereas theological erudition was a key prerequisite to pastoral leadership in past times, charisma, a sense of humor, rhetorics and playing the crowd are all that's needed these days to qualify one as an overseer of God's people. It goes without saying that reform is badly needed.

Reform? But how? It must start with the realization of the truth that every form of devotion to God begins in the INTELLECT. One must first of all value truth in order for progress in the Christian life to ensue. Nowadays, EMOTIONALISM has taken the place of primacy in the Christian's mode of approaching the living of the Christ life. This is a perversion. One's emotions must be informed by truth for it to be sound, and not the other way around.

It's about time for the Church to once again send out THINKERS in the global marketplace of ideas, contending for the sole spot that the Christian worldview must occupy in the minds and hearts of people. The truth must be---and will be---known.

Mt 22:37
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

Joh 8:32
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Joh 16:13
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

1Jo 3:19
And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him.

Joh 14:6
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

You are What Fills Your Mind

The pursuit of God, of Christlikeness, begins in the intellect. But it does not stop there, of course. Knowledge becomes wisdom as it inflames the affection and moves the will to action, in a coherence that is the manifestation of Christ in us.

To love God is to love Him with all our minds in every borrowed second.

"We all meditate, and we’re all shaped by the object of our meditation. We take our attitudinal and behavioral cues from it. This week, will I be shaped by situation comedies, soap operas, and newspapers, or will I be shaped by Isaiah, Luke, A. W. Tozer, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon? It depends on how I choose to spend my time." - Randy Alcorn, Stand - A Call for the Endurance of the Saints (General Editors: John Piper and Justin Taylor), ch. 4, pp. 82