Always Reforming

I learned a life lesson tonight.  As we were putting the girls to bed, I opened the Bible and read Psalm 39 to the them.  They were a pretty cute sight, all three lined up on Grace's bed, wrapped up in blankets.  As I read from Psalm 39, it became apparent that the content was a little bit beyond their full comprehension.  Nonetheless, I did my best to explain.  You see, Psalm 39 talks about the brevity of life.  David asks God to teach him to know his end and the measure of his days.  He confesses that human life, like a breath or a shadow, is fleeting.  That's a tought concept to explain to three girls who are aged two to five. Genesis, our appropriately-named eldest, asked, "Why is life short?"  I replied that even 100-years-old was very short compared to the eternity of God.  I went on to explain that we don't know how much longer any of us will live.  That was when I made my horrible mistake.  I told her that we can't e...

A popular Christian blogger has responded to the most recent school shooting with a radical, yet simple and common-sensical, solution.  He insists that it is time to put armed guards in every public school in this country.  This idea, while viewed as radical by many, really shouldn't be novel or radical at all.  Walsh's logic is sound when he points out that most public buildings already have armed guards and that schools being the exception really doesn't make much sense; that this is an unpleasant reality of living in a fallen world and that bad things, which should never happen, do, in fact, happen; and when he says that the real issue is evil, not politics. As much as I agree with his logic, I still must ask the question, is the solution to our problem really putting armed guards in every school?  That might be too radical for some, but it's not radical enough for my blood.  I have a far more difficult pill to swallow.  How about we get rid of pu...

It seems our nation is embroiled in an incessant battle between the "progressive" ideals of feminism and the "old-fashioned" view of the family (and the woman's role therein).  One problem at the heart of this vitriolic debate is an incorrect view of "Biblical" or "traditional" masculinity.  Now, I intend that to be taken in two ways.  Let me explain. Firstly, many feminists misrepresent the traditional view of marriage.  The Bible teaches a form of complimentarianism, which means that men and women have equal-yet-distinct roles in the family.  The roles compliment each other and are the result of a) our created design and b) the Fall.  Some people like to call this view Patriarchy, but the arguments against this view are often of the "straw-man" variety.  Whatever you want to call it, the Biblical view of the male/female dynamic, along with all leadership/submission relationships, is that of authority predicated upon responsibil...

I recently finished reading the book of Isaiah and something struck me.  The first verse of that chapter says, "Thus says the Lord, 'Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool.  Where then is a house you could build for me?  And where is a place that I may rest?"  Note that these words were spoken by God in the economy during which the Temple still played an integral role in worship, yet we see clearly, from this and other passages, that the Temple was not viewed as truly housing or containing God.  It was simply a place where He condescended to meet with man in order to, in addition to other reasons, adumbrate the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, the spotless Lamb of God. The Temple is just one of the many types of Christ's person and work with which the Old Testament is absolutely replete.  The nation of Israel; the sacrificial system; the prophets, priests, and kings; and the yearly, monthly, and weekly Sabbaths all point to the life,...

I recently shared an article  on Facebook that argued that Judge Rosemarie Aquilina crossed the line from justice to vengeance in her sentencing of Larry Nassar.  If you're not familiar with Nassar, go ahead and familiarize yourself.  None of this will make sense if you are not.  Assuming you are, let me say a few things.  Because my sharing of this article did not go over very well, I want to explain very briefly what I do mean and what I do not mean.  Let's start with the latter. Here's what I am not saying: 1) Nassar's crimes weren't heinous.   They were.  He is a bad person and he deserves to have bad things happen to him.  I'm not sure what an appropriate punishment would even be.  Emasculation is not out of the question.  2) The Judge shouldn't be incensed.   Judges are humans.  You can't expect them to be anything less when acting as a judge.  The overwhelming nature of the evidence in this case should cau...

There is in our modern day this attitude that views open-mindedness as the highest of intellectual achievements.  What some would call synergy, many view as true enlightenment.  Instead of holding to the faith handed down by our fathers, we are invited to draw bits of truth from all available sources.  That, it would appear, is true wisdom.  While I do believe in learning anything that is worth learning from anyone from whom you can learn it, I also believe that we should be cautious when opening our minds to information and influences.  For some this is more important than for others, as some are more easily led astray, but all Christians should be careful about what they allow into their minds.  This is particularly true when someone is causing you to read the Bible in a way that is new and innovative.  When you stumble across something new and exciting that seems to be entirely plausible, and when the source of that new and exciting idea comes from ...

Well, it happened--minimum wage went up ...again, at least for 18 states in our fair union.  Unfortunately, my state, Ohio, is one such state.  For many this is a time of jubilation as they celebrate the instantaneous raise that they did nothing whatsoever to earn, but for those of us who have brains that are even remotely economically-inclined, we know that the minimum wage going up is not a good thing.  For those of you who don't generally think about economics, here's why Uncle Sam (or, in this case, Uncle Sam's little brothers) raising the minimum wage is not a good thing: 1) It's a sign of the decline of our dollar.   We can argue over whether or not it's good for the economy to raise the minimum wage, but one thing is clear: it's not a sign of a thriving dollar.  Raising the minimum wage is the logical result of inflating the dollar, so, once again, the problem we're trying to fix is of our own making.  Many economists seem to think some infla...