Articles of the Week
On Daughters and Dating: How to Intimidate Suitors, Jen Wilkin. This is gold, whether your daughter is 5 months or 15 years old: “Instead of intimidating all your daughter’s potential suitors, raise a daughter who intimidates them just fine on her own. Because you know what’s intimidating? Strength and dignity. Deep faith. Self-assuredness. Wisdom. Kindness. Humility. Industriousness. Those are the bricks that build the wall that withstands the advances of Slouchy-Pants, whether you ever show up with your Winchester locked and loaded or not.”
Why Shouldn’t We Trust the Non-Canonical Gospel Attributed to Mark? J. Warner Wallace. Every heard of the Secret Gospel of Mark? Wallace offers this helpful explanation and critique of this fraudulent text (see also Pastor J.D.’s Monday blog post on the “Lost Gospels”): “It is a legendary and elaborate fabrication written by an author who was motivated to alter the history of Jesus to suit his own purposes. It is an alternative narrative fabricated from the foundational truths of the original Gospels. [However] much can be learned about the historic Jesus from this late lie.”
Do Christians Have to Care About Everything? Aaron Earls. For anyone who feels tired just thinking of all the worthy causes you could give your time to, much less actually doing it, here’s a word for you: “I’ve spoken with numerous other Christians … [who are] burdened by their burden for worthy causes. Is it your job to do something about everything? No, it’s not, but it is yours and my job.” Christians don’t act alone. We are a part of much larger body God uses to minister to the world, and we are each part of the solution. As Pastor J.D. often says, “Not everything that comes from heaven has your name on it.”
Harvey Weinstein vs Billy Graham, Samuel James. The author asks if applying the Billy Graham rule might have prevented Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s exploitation of women that has come to light this week: “The weakness of rules is that they don’t always take into account mitigating circumstances and can fail to meet the needs of the moment. But the strength of rules is that you don’t have to impugn someone’s motives in order to enforce them.”
Semper Reformanda
Looking at Wittenberg in the Time of Martin Luther, The Gospel Coalition. Most of this is familiar, but this short Q&A with a professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary includes some historical context, pictures, and interesting bits on Luther: “In September of [1517], he had led a debate on scholastic theology where he said far more radical things than were in the Ninety-Five Theses. Ironically, this earlier debate, now often considered the first major public adumbration of his later theology, caused no real stir in the church at all.”
