Interrupting the Series to Close Some Browser Tabs

1. It must feel pretty cool to see John Piper say you wrote the book Jonathan Edwards wanted to write.

2. Little known facts: "The SBC only truly exists two days a year. It is not a denomination, it is a collective of free churches choosing to partner together for mission."

3. Don't tell me there's no "emerging middle."

4. This offers a great look inside the mind and mood of Christianity Today.

5. Though I've disagreed with Scot McKnight on many points, he's dead on in his critique of George Ladd's yearning for "a place at the table." Here's the conclusion:

I don’t believe our goal as Bible or theology scholars is to be deemed among the finest of scholars or to find a place at the table, but to be faithful to Jesus Christ and to the gospel and to orthodox theology and to academic rigor. Yes, we are to work to discover and to be creative, but the driving passion to prove ourselves at the feet of others falls short of a true Christian telos. I’d put it this way: we are called to be faithful, whether we are accepted or not.

6. And finally, Russell Moore published a provocative analogy to romance novels today:

Pornography is based on the illusion of a perfectly willing, always aroused partner without the “work” of relational intimacy. Often romance novels or their film equivalents do the same thing for the emotional needs of women that pornography offers for the erotic urges of men.

But to be fair, my wife's and my friend, Beth Spraul, said it first! [PDF]:

Let me start with a somewhat provocative, but reasonable comparison. Among thoughtful Christians, one will hear significant concern for how the culture of pornography harmfully affects men by distorting their view of sex and women. . . . I’d like to suggest that culture attacks women similarly — it is just a bit more subtle. The lies told to women are introduced at the level of women’s emotions (less harmful, right?), in how they dream about men, and in what they long for relationally. Like pornography, chick-flicks take a good gift from God (romance, relational intimacy) that women are created to desire, and distort it by presenting as “normal” an unbiblical and unrealistic picture of men, love and marriage. And just like men who buy into the lies of pornography, women who believe that their husbands and marriages should always be like what they see on the screen will be sinfully dissatisfied with God’s good gift to them of a “normal” husband and marriage.