partsofspeaking

At my age, I've seen a lot and am somewhat jaded about a lot of the rhetoric about male-female relationships (read: submission of wives to husbands) in the church. The complementarian vs. egalitarian debate absorbs a lot of time and bandwidth; I don't think it ends the discussion.   According to https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/complementarianism-for-dummies/ "a complementarian is a person who believes that God created male and female to reflect complementary truths about Jesus. That’s the bottom-line meaning of the word. Complementarians believe that males were designed to shine the spotlight on Christ’s relationship to the church (and the LORD God’s relationship to Christ) in a way that females cannot, and that females were designed to shine the spotlight on the church’s relationship to Christ (and Christ’s relationship to the LORD God) in a way that males cannot." The writer goes on to clarify this view has nothing to do the innate i...

 I am not sure whether Cecily Strong's Saturday Night Live bit as Goober the Clown speaking about abortion rights was tasteless, ironic, sincere, or just plain sad. No, it was sad for women who had abortions. It was an argument for pro-life.  You can find it on YouTube. It's weird, of course, and not really funny. But some of the lines were telling: "I got an abortion at 23 and I wouldn't be able to be a clown on this show if I hadn't had the abortion." You hear a version of that a lot with women who want to defend their abortions. "I wouldn't have been able to .... without abortion." And usually those things are being an actress, getting on TV, etc. The equivalent of being a clown.  A clown versus being a mother. Hummm? A clown versus a human life. The fact that women are being equated with clowns is kind of telling, too. My point is that a lot of lines could be taken the opposite. There was nothing funny about the skit; if it was propaganda for...

For Hope, we read this morning in church Psalm 130.   This year I will post for each Sunday rather than every day of Advent, as in the past two years.  Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord ; 2  Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive To the voice of my supplications. 3 If You, Lord , should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? 4  But there is forgiveness with You, That You may be feared. 5 I wait for the Lord , my soul waits, And in His word I do hope. 6 My soul waits for the Lord More than those who watch for the morning— Yes, more than those who watch for the morning. 7 O Israel, hope in the Lord ; For with the Lord there is mercy, And with Him is abundant redemption. 8  And He shall redeem Israel From all his iniquities. Our pastor this morning compared the Jews in the Old Testament to children waiting for Christmas for years and years and years.  It reminded me of the line in The Lion, the Witch, and Wardrobe: "In N...

Thanks to the Dispatch, I share this meaningful excerpt. We think of Thanksgiving as starting with the "Pilgrims and Indians" but the way we do it, and when started during the Civil War, in fact deep in the middle of it, right after Gettysburg, and the country started being thankful then. How unlike us! Read on: The Thanksgiving tradition in the Americas dates back nearly 500 years, of course, but it wasn’t observed nationally every year until 1863, when— prompted by a letter from writer and editor Sarah Josepha Hale—President Abraham Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving proclamation reportedly written by his Secretary of State, William Seward.  “The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies,” it reads. “In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, ord...

The Rocket Mortgage one about the family next to the cat lady. Is that wife high maintenance or not? Get a dog; the cats will leave you alone. Sheesh.  Anything with Sebastian Gorka.  A lot of the Progressive Insurance ones, especially the half motorcycle guy. What are they smoking there? (They must be progressive on weed policy.) The My Pillow guy. He charges that much for a pillow? His political opinions got him in trouble, yet right wingers think it's okay if that happens to progressives. What goes around comes around. He kept saying the election was stolen, which is kind of extreme.  Any commercial for other programming on the network. Is anything worse?

 They are "teachers" - those with authority to "teach" the Word (another point, below) who do not live in the same way that they teach. Who say "do this," and don't "do this" that they teach.  In terms of "teaching the Word," many are teaching modern psychology (without being trained psychologists) or self-help methods rather than doctrine and truths from the text. Case in point, character studies. I find no warrant for those. The only character (bad choice of words, better, person) in the Bible about whose character we should study is Jesus Christ alone. All the Word teaches, points to, extols Him, and anything else is off point and becoming man-centered.  Is there really any character in the Bible other than the Alpha and Omega who needs to be studied? Let's face it; Bible personages are pretty much a mess, with a few exceptions, and for those who aren't displayed as messes, it's largely because they are not major and ...

 Jude is a short book that excoriates false teachers. But what are they? We tend to think they teach wrong doctrine. That is true, but also involved is their motive and purpose for doing it. Why would someone teach and disseminate false, nonBiblical doctrine? Just because they don't know any better? Just because they think it's right?  It's pretty clear that Jude concludes they are "clouds without water." Their problem is not wrong doctrine, but the desire to destroy people's lives through wrong doctrine.  Case in point: https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/november/judy-dabler-creative-conciliation-abuse-lapm-unfit-ministry.html This article is horrifying. More later, perhaps. Second case in point, CT's podcast on Mark Driscoll, who did not really teach bad doctrine as much as treat his staff and members abusively. (His story convinces me that pastors should attend seminary.)

I am speaking at a women's retreat at a local church today. Below is my presentation, more or less.  The Word—Jesus the Word and the textual Word--should always take priority, so please turn to John 4 and we will read verses 1-42. Pray. You probably know this account already, and you’ve perhaps heard sermons or talks on it already. It’s not a story. “Story” has a certain meaning today in this post-modern world, so I prefer to use the word account or history. This happened and by inspiration of the Holy Spirit and his own research, John recorded it at this point in the gospel he wrote. A little background. John wrote his account of Jesus life, death, and resurrection as the last gospel, Mark was the first one. Probably written about 80 AD, quite a bit later than it happened, perhaps 50 years. John was elderly by the time he wrote this gospel, but he was also quite young when he walked with Jesus. John’s gospel, as you’ve probably noticed, is a different ...