John Piper on Accepting the Unbaptized as Members

John Piper, Pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN

Pastor John Piper has just made a stunning announcement concerning who will be accepted as members at his Baptist church.

“The Council of Elders believes that membership requirements at Bethlehem should move toward being roughly the same as the requirements for membership in the universal body of Christ . . . The most obvious change this involves is allowing the possibility that a person may become a member who has not been baptized by immersion as a believer but who regards the baptismal ritual he received in infancy not as regenerating, but nevertheless (as with most Presbyterians) in such a way that it would violate his conscience to be baptized as a believer. The elders are proposing that under certain conditions such persons be admitted to full membership” (“What the Elders Are Proposing”).

Military Chaplains Pressured Not to Pray in the Name of Jesus

Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt, a chaplain and a priest with the Evangelical Episcopal Church, has accused the Navy of religious discrimination.

The Washington Post reports today on an little known controversy among the ranks of chaplains in the U.S. military:

“Evangelical Protestant chaplains are fighting what they say is a legacy of discrimination in hiring and promotions, and they are bridling at suggestions they not pray publicly ‘in the name of Jesus.’”

You can read the full story here.

Watching and Waiting With Apprehension and Prayers

My wife and I are watching the impending disaster as it creeps ever closer to the shores of our home state. We are apprehensive about our family and friends who live in and around the New Orleans area and who are preparing for the worst.

One of my friends from high school just evacuated his family at 4pm this afternoon. They left Covington, LA to head back toward our hometown DeRidder, LA (which is in the southwest part of the state and out of the way of the storm). The westbound traffic on I-10 between New Orleans and DeRidder is crawling along very slowly. In some spots it is taking about an hour to go ten miles.

My mother and father went to eat at Wendy’s with friends after the evening service at FBC DeRidder. They saw evacuees all over town. The hotels are full, and others are just wandering around with no place to go. My parents and their friends ran into a family of evacuees in line at Wendy’s. They were traveling through town with no place to go, so my parents’ dinner partners invited the family to stay with them at their house.

As we watch the coverage on the television and as the stories of the evacuees come trickling in, Susan and I are heavy hearted tonight. We know that tomorrow morning may witness one of the most fearful disasters we have ever seen.

The million persons who are fleeing will likely not be able to go back home for at least a week or more after the storm is over. And when they get back, it is not at all clear that anything will be there. My high school friend who was leaving did not know if his home or his job would withstand the storm. They literally stand to lose everything before the day is out, and there’s nothing to do about it except run.

Our hearts and our prayers are in Louisiana tonight.

What do college students do when they aren’t studying?

(Right: My Greek teacher Rev. James Lipscomb and I during one of our tutoring sessions at his home in Ruston, LA , circa 1994.)

“What do college students do when they aren’t studying?” According to the Wall Street Journal’s Naomi Riley’s review of two books about college life, college students are primarily engaged in idleness.

No, they are not studying and going to class forty hours a week. They certainly are not becoming avid readers. Rather, they are in pursuit of the ideal represented in their ubiquitous watchword: “fun.” “Fun” includes among other things a great deal of binge drinking (often beginning on Thursday night and going through the weekend) and frequent casual sexual encounters.

This sad state of affairs comes as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to the decline of university life over the last thirty years or so. We are no longer shocked by Jay Leno’s undergraduate “Jay Walking All-Stars” who don’t even know who the vice-president of the United States is. We simply assume that a significant number of undergraduates will be idle dead-heads who really don’t learn that much by the end of their seven years of college.

There was a time in the history of higher education in America when going to college meant going to get an education. To be an undergraduate student was more than merely hanging around old buildings with books in them.

My own undergraduate experience began with the same shiftlessness portrayed in Ms. Riley’s article (minus the partying and dissipation). Academically speaking, I was just there to get a piece of paper. Somebody told me I needed that paper, so I was there to get it. I had no clue about how an education could enrich one’s life and faith. But that all changed during my sophomore year.

During my second year in college, I entered into a profound crisis of faith. As a result of one professor in particular and a few other key influences, I came to doubt the reliability of the sourcebook of my faith: the Bible. It was as if someone had yanked the rug out from under me and I had no where else to stand.

But God used this spiritual and emotional crisis to drive me to a whole new perspective on Him and my education. In addition to being driven back to the Bible, I became blood-earnest about understanding history, philosophy, theology and all the other big worldview disciplines that have impacted Christianity over the centuries.

For me, it wasn’t an academic exercise, it was a matter of spiritual life and death to understand the Bible and where it came from, to understand the history of theology, and to think God’s thoughts after others who have gone before.

My love of the Greek Bible began in earnest during this period because I knew that I had to read this book for myself. I could no longer allow the secularists to tell me what the Bible is, what it is saying, and where it came from. I had to know God’s revelation for myself or I felt as if I would drown in the morass of conflicting opinions about it.

I’m not saying that everyone’s experience should be like mine or that everyone should go to college so that they can become a New Testament professor. What I am saying is that an education is not coextensive with a piece of paper. Many people with the piece of paper don’t have an education.

An education relates to how we view the mind that God has given us. Are we going to be passive receptacles for the world’s tripe, or will we discipline ourselves for the glory of God to learn about Him and the world in which He’s put us? An education is not just about knowledge (though it certainly includes that!), but it is also the formation of our character under God and the shaping of our minds according to a biblical worldview.

I fear that the majority of what passes for undergraduate education today is very far from such an ideal. May God allow us to see this tide turned in our generation for the glory of God.

(For more on philosophical and theological roots of the current crisis, see my review of George Marsden’s The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief.)

What do college students do when they aren’t studying?

My Greek teacher Rev. James Lipscomb and I during one of our tutoring sessions at his home in Ruston, LA (circa 1994).

“What do college students do when they aren’t studying?” According to the Wall Street Journal’s Naomi Riley’s review of two books about college life, college students are primarily engaged in idleness.

No, they are not studying and going to class forty hours a week. They certainly are not becoming avid readers. Rather, they are in pursuit of the ideal represented in their ubiquitous watchword: “fun.” “Fun” includes among other things a great deal of binge drinking (often beginning on Thursday night and going through the weekend) and frequent casual sexual encounters.

This sad state of affairs comes as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to the decline of university life over the last thirty years or so. We are no longer shocked by Jay Leno’s undergraduate “Jay Walking All-Stars” who don’t even know who the vice-president of the United States is. We simply assume that a significant number of undergraduates will be idle dead-heads who really don’t learn that much by the end of their seven years of college.

There was a time in the history of higher education in America when going to college meant going to get an education. To be an undergraduate student was more than merely hanging around old buildings with books in them.

My own undergraduate experience began with the same shiftlessness portrayed in Ms. Riley’s article (minus the partying and dissipation). Academically speaking, I was just there to get a piece of paper. Somebody told me I needed that paper, so I was there to get it. I had no clue about how an education could enrich one’s life and faith. But that all changed during my sophomore year.

During my second year in college, I entered into a profound crisis of faith. As a result of one professor in particular and a few other key influences, I came to doubt the reliability of the sourcebook of my faith: the Bible. It was as if someone had yanked the rug out from under me and I had no where else to stand.

But God used this spiritual and emotional crisis to drive me to a whole new perspective on Him and my education. In addition to being driven back to the Bible, I became blood-earnest about understanding history, philosophy, theology and all the other big worldview disciplines that have impacted Christianity over the centuries.

For me, it wasn’t an academic exercise, it was a matter of spiritual life and death to understand the Bible and where it came from, to understand the history of theology, and to think God’s thoughts after others who have gone before.

My love of the Greek Bible began in earnest during this period because I knew that I had to read this book for myself. I could no longer allow the secularists to tell me what the Bible is, what it is saying, and where it came from. I had to know God’s revelation for myself or I felt as if I would drown in the morass of conflicting opinions about it.

I’m not saying that everyone’s experience should be like mine or that everyone should go to college so that they can become a New Testament professor. What I am saying is that an education is not coextensive with a piece of paper. Many people with the piece of paper don’t have an education.

An education relates to how we view the mind that God has given us. Are we going to be passive receptacles for the world’s tripe, or will we discipline ourselves for the glory of God to learn about Him and the world in which He’s put us? An education is not just about knowledge (though it certainly includes that!), but it is also the formation of our character under God and the shaping of our minds according to a biblical worldview.

I fear that the majority of what passes for undergraduate education today is very far from such an ideal. May God allow us to see this tide turned in our generation for the glory of God.

(For more on philosophical and theological roots of the current crisis, see my review of George Marsden’s The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief.)

Pro-Life and Hip-Hop: Nick Cannon’s Amazing Video

Nick Cannon and His Mother

It’s not often that a rap video brings a tear to your eye. But my wife and I watched one tonight that did.

Some of you may know Nick Cannon from the hit movie “Drumline” or perhaps from his new show on MTV, “Nick Cannon Presents Wild ‘N Out.” What you may not know is that he released a music video this summer that is powerfully pro-life.

The lyrics to the song tell the true story of Nick Cannon’s mother. When she became pregnant with Nick, she was an unwed teenager. She made it all the way to the operating table of the abortion clinic when she realized that she was about to do something awful. So she got up and walked away from the clinic and away from the abortion. The rest of the song is a “thank you” to his mother for letting him live. The video closes with Nick embracing and thanking his real-life mother.

The music video to the song “Can I Live” is one of the most poignant pro-life messages that I have ever witnessed. Reading the lyrics alone won’t really convey the emotional wallop that you get from watching the video. So I highly recommend clicking here or here to see it for yourself.

Kathryn Jean Lopez from National Review Online writes:

“Cannon’s new music video ‘Can I Live?’ tells a tale that’s very different from a gangsta’s paradise of dirty dancing and booty calls that Cannon may be sandwiched in between on MTV or BET. In the song, the hip-hop pop star tells his life story — or at least the beginning of it and his mom’s close call with abortion.

“Cannon, 24, appears in the video as a ghost (or an angel, if you prefer) and sings, ‘Mommy, I don’t like this clinic. Hopefully you’ll make the right decision, and don’t go through with the knife decision.’

“A scared teen, his mother was on a gurney — that’s how close the call was — but got up, and, at least in the video version, ran.

“He points out to his mother something she got on some level, or she wouldn’t have gotten up: ‘That’s a life inside you, look at your tummy. What is becoming Ma, I am Oprah bound. You can tell he’s a star from the Ultrasound.’

“The video images tell a stirring, gripping story regardless of where you fall in the abortion debate.”

Go watch the video and buy the single. We should support something that is bound to save many lives that might otherwise have been snuffed out.

(R. Albert Mohler talked about the video on his radio show. You can download the mp3 of Mohler’s program here.)

(HT to Justin Taylor whose blog first brought this video to my attention.)

Mohler and Moore on Pornography

In light of my blogs from last week on the XXXChurch, I would like bring your attention to R. Albert Mohler and Russell D. Moore’s blogs. Dr. Mohler investigates “Pornified America—The Culture of Pornography” in a review of a book by Pamela Paul. Dr. Moore’s essay is about “Praying for Porn Stars.”

“No Miracles Allowed”

Today’s Washington Post runs a story on the Intelligent Design (ID) debate titled “In Explaining Life’s Complexity, Darwinists and Doubters Clash.” One opponent of Intelligent Design explains why he thinks ID is unscientific: “One of the rules of science is, no miracles allowed. That’s a fundamental presumption of what we do.”

Isn’t it telling that the proponents of Darwinism reject ID based solely on the presumption that ID can’t be right. There’s no serious engagement of the arguments and data cited by ID proponents, just an a priori dismissal.

This just goes to show the atheistic naturalism that is at the heart of much of modern science. This God-less presumption concerning human origins is no less a faith commitment than those who would argue otherwise.

“Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive”

Even the title of the story reveals that the New York Times is on the war-path against intelligent design: “Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive”. This article reads like an opinion piece, but it’s not. It’s reported as straight news. There is no serious engagement of arguments in this article, just the usual ad-hominem accusation that Intelligent Design scientists are politically motivated culture warriors.

The Gospel for Porn Stars and Porn Addicts

“. . . and such were some of you” (1 Corinthians 6:11)

After two critical posts, it’s time to say something constructive. Even if I can’t agree with the methods of the XXXChurch, I do want to affirm their desire to take the Gospel to every sinner. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is just as much for porn stars and porn addicts as it is for any other sinner on planet earth.

There is good news and hope for those who have spiraled into the darkness of pornography. God loves sinners. Believe it or not, He loves all kinds of sinners. When the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he said:

“Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

When the Apostle Paul looked at the believers in Corinth, he saw a congregation filled with former adulterers, effeminates, and homosexuals (among other things). The whole spectrum of sexual perversion was represented in the Corinthian congregation. Yet the message of Christ crucified had delivered them from their former life. Paul says, “such were some of you.”

So if there are any who read this blog who are stuck in a cycle (the addicts) or if there are any who read who are trapped in a profession (the actors), you need to know that Jesus Christ crucified and risen is supreme over every chain of perversion that holds you in darkness. There is forgiveness and hope in Him for you, if you will receive Him by faith.

If there are any who read this blog who have occasion to minister to those who are trapped in some way by pornography, by all means in love give them the Gospel. The announcement of a King who has come to set free His captives is the only thing sufficient to liberate and to save (Luke 4:18).

I am reminded of a friend of mine who recently blogged about the hyper-sexualization of our culture and the degradation of women. I will end by quoting him at length:

“These women—all of them someone’s daughter—are reduced to a leviathan company’s line of merchandise, as though they were so many units of chicken flesh served up on platters for lecherous men. And the Hooters Girls are just one in a long line of men and women victimized by the culture of sex-as-commodity. Where is the compassion for the cruelly named ‘porn stars’—many of whom spend their hours off the screen in a heroin-induced, self-loathing depression?

“As Christians, this shouldn’t surprise us. Jesus has warned us that what seems like freedom is a false consciousness, that enslaves us and ultimately drags us to our death (John 8:34). The apostle Paul presents the picture of a cosmos outside of Christ ‘following the prince of the power of the air’ enslaved to ‘the passions of the flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind’ (Eph 2:2-3).

“With this in mind, we shouldn’t confront the pornographic culture as head-wagging moralists, but as broken-hearted evangelists. We should stand against the Hooters corporation, not only because it rips apart the moral fabric of society, but also because it renders women created in the image of God as one more ‘product’ to be bought and sold.

“This means that our churches must be the kind of places where desperate women—in whom the rest of the world sees no value beyond body parts—can find a Messiah who can liberate them from tyranny.

“What would it mean if our churches stopped encouraging our own teenage and preteen daughters to dress like Hooters Girls? What would it mean if we insisted that our young girls insist on being treated with the dignity with which they were created? What if fathers and brothers and uncles took seriously the command to guard such dignity, even to the point of turning away from buying someone else’s daughter as a ‘product’ on the cover of a sports magazine or a fashion catalog? What would it mean if our senior adult ladies took time to share the gospel and a cup of coffee with the young woman who thinks all she has to offer is a tight T-shirt and a miniskirt?

“This would mean that we would be following the example of Jesus of Nazareth—who refused to allow a Samaritan woman to continue defining herself by her sexual availability to men (John 4:17). It would mean that we would signal what Jesus has already shown us, that the way of sexual ‘freedom’ really enslaves. It would mean that we would follow Jesus in heralding a kingdom made up of redeemed tax collectors, prostitutes, and, yes, maybe a Hooters Girl or two.”

Read: “Jesus and the Hooters Girl” by Russell D. Moore