I take joy in being a part of a Christian denomination that holds a high view Scripture and that encourages members to structure their lives in a way that is true to Scripture and God honoring. Baptists are often accused of being closed-minded and backwards because we cling so tightly to Scriptural principles in a world that every day moves farther and farther from the mandates of Scripture.

One of the topics that has been at fore in Baptist circles in recent decades has been the scriptural model for a family. This has led to a statement in the foundational document of the SBC:

XVIII. The Family

God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption.

Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race.

The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.

Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage. Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents.

Genesis 1:26-28; 2:15-25; 3:1-20; Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Joshua 24:15; 1 Samuel 1:26-28; Psalms 51:5; 78:1-8; 127; 128; 139:13-16; Proverbs 1:8; 5:15-20; 6:20-22; 12:4; 13:24; 14:1; 17:6; 18:22; 22:6,15; 23:13-14; 24:3; 29:15,17; 31:10-31; Ecclesiastes 4:9-12; 9:9; Malachi 2:14-16; Matthew 5:31-32; 18:2-5; 19:3-9; Mark 10:6-12; Romans 1:18-32; 1 Corinthians 7:1-16; Ephesians 5:21-33; 6:1-4; Colossians 3:18-21; 1 Timothy 5:8,14; 2 Timothy 1:3-5; Titus 2:3-5; Hebrews 13:4; 1 Peter 3:1-7.

Baptists have rightly recognized that the Biblical model for families has come under heavy attack and have endeavored to tackle the issue head on by including statements like the above in the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) and by teaching those ideals in seminary classrooms to students who will carry the torch in the future.

Unfortunately, we seem to have lost something in the process. So much of the dialog focused around the third paragraph in the above statement has been directed to women. Here is a recent example (I encourage you to listen to the entire podcast). Pay special attention to 15:30-17:15, 19:00-20:30, 29:00-34:30:

It is important to understand that the above podcast was recorded at an event for women and was addressed specifically to women. Still, it illustrates what I view to be a troubling trend among Baptists. We seem intent on focusing our efforts at developing Biblical families on women and wives.  We spend a great deal more time telling women how they should look in relation to Scripture, and very little on husbands.

This could be because our denomination is largely led by men and it is much easier for us to see faults in our wives than it is for us to see faults in ourselves. I think it is time we take a long hard look at Southern Baptist men and start spending just as much time training them to be Godly husbands as we do exhorting women to be Godly wives.

Here’s a good start:

Mark Driscoll is right on the money. Baptists should be endeavoring to raise up generations of Godly men who women would be proud to be married to and walk beside as they follow God’s calling on their lives. This is not just something to be taught in the seminaries and colleges, but it should be something taught in the churches to men and boys of all ages. A boy growing up in the church should become a man worthy of having a wife, but too often the church has failed to reach out to men, instead being content with reaching the women and children who are more naturally inclined to be church attenders in the first place.

It is time for Baptist men to start looking at themselves in the mirror and looking at the men (or lack thereof) in their churches before they start trying to tell women how to behave in a marriage. If men are truly supposed to be leaders as the Bible commands, than we must hold each other to the Biblical standard of what a man and husband should look like. Perhaps once we have learned to be better men and husbands than we can honestly and without hypocrisy join our wives in the never ending quest to build families that follow the model put forth in Scripture.

Before you read, watch:

Now, tell me what you think of that?

Every year, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary engages in an evangelism initiative to help encourage the seminary family to take the Gospel to the lost. One of the things I most admire about my seminary is how evangelistic it is. Every semester there are many opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to engage in evangelism that the seminary promotes and provides resources for.

This semester, they decided to try and reach all the families that are in close proximity to the main campus in Fort Worth. This is a great idea and one that the seminary should be engaged in continually and not just once. The seminary has done a great job promoting the initiative and encouraging students to be involved. Unfortunately, I think the direction they took with the promotional material is inappropriate.

If you watched the above video, you noticed men carrying guns and a dune buggy with a mock-up of .50 caliber machine gun mounted on it. My first thought when I saw the dune buggy mounted .50 cal at a campus picnic was, “I wonder if they realize a .50 caliber machine will blow a human being apart?” My first thought was not, “Ooooh, this makes me want to go tell people about Jesus!”

One of the other images in the video that really bothered me was the final shot of the three dudes walking toward the camera toting guns. I’m all for guns and I enjoy shooting and hunting, but who ever put together this video did not really think about how it would come off. I understand the desire to motivate and call people to get involved, but they could have chosen much more appropriate imagery. In the military, firearms have only one purpose and that is to kill. Evangelism is the farthest thing from killing as it brings light and life to a dark world.

I think it is important that SWBTS continue to focus on evangelism, I only wish they would have thought through the video they made for this campaign. While the Bible does sometimes use militaristic images (i.e. the armor of God), I think the use of guns here was gratuitous. They could easily have gotten the point across, and even kept the name of the campaign, without resorting to images of men looking like they were on a military patrol waiting to kill something. Oh, and did you see any women in the video? I think a good test for the seminary to have asked themselves would have been, “Would this still look as cool if I put a couple of seminary wives with guns, on patrol, and low-crawling in there?” Women are called to evangelism too, but for some reason the seminary didn’t include any in their video (perhaps they deemed that as the line they wouldn’t cross).

In conclusion, I am not trying to be overly critical of SWBTS and I applaud their evangelism efforts. I only wish they would have thought through the promotional video a bit more before they made it. If the people who made the video  could see what those with a military background see and how the video appears to the public, they might have thought twice before they used it.

I think it’s fitting to end with a video of actual soldiers in combat and then you tell me if you still think the combative and arguably violent imagery of the above video is appropriate:

If anything, the medic in the video is a greater example of the Christian faith than any of the images in the promotional video.

Creed is one of those bands I listened to a lot during high school. The mix of solid, thought provoking lyrics mixed with Scott Stapp’s gritty vocals and the stellar guitar work of Mark Tremonti have made Creed one of the staples of my music collection for nearly a decade. In my opinion, it was the mainstream success of Creed that helped pave the way for the likes of Daughtry to find such a receptive audience. Creed’s new album, Full Circle, was released today and proves the band has not lost a step in their hiatus. If anything, the lyrics show more maturity especially considering the troubles that Scott Stapp had a few years ago. So now for your listening enjoyment, one of my favorite songs from the new album:

I celebrated a birthday this month. As I get older I have started to notice more and more how youth oriented our culture is. It’s also interesting to hear people my age talk fondly about high school like those were their glory days.

I guess I’m an optimist, but I believe my best days are in front of me. I think Christians too often get bogged down in the apocalyptic prophecy of the Bible and completely focus on the doom and gloom of life and how terrible this world can be. All those things are true, but the reason I can be optimistic is precisely because of my faith. I know humanity will let me down (we are totally depraved after all). If you just watch the news it’s easy to get depressed, run into the bomb shelter, whip out the Left Behind series, and wait for the rapture. Fortunately, Christians don’t need to do that. Obsessing over the end times will not make them get here any sooner or later.

Christians have an eternal hope in Jesus Christ that stretches beyond this world. That is why I can look at the future, despite all the terrible things that happen in the world, and be joyful. One day Christ will return in glory and all the stains of sin will forever be washed from the world. Instead of focusing on what amounts to doom and gloom about things and dates no one really knows, I find hope in Christ.

So I might be another year older and the world might be scarier than it was last year, but since my hope is not in this world I can have peace. Even if the the doom and gloomers are right, shouldn’t that just motivate us all the more to fulfill the Great Commission and leave our bomb shelters and Left Behind books behind? So instead of worrying that the end of the world is nigh, rejoice, because that means the return of Christ is just over the horizon.

Serving a sovereign God is a wonderful thing.

First things first, you can find the full article from the Washington Times here.

I try to avoid talking politics on here unless it relates to issues of military, morality, or theology. This is one report that definitely needs to be read and it should make any clear headed person furious at some of the outright selfishness of our elected officials.

Here are some excerpts from the above article:

While earmarks are hardly new in Washington, “in 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year,” said Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer who worked on defense funding and oversight for both Republicans and Democrats. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information, an independent research organization.

Mrs. Landrieu said she was “proud to fight” for money for the World War II museum, which is not just a “monument to the brave men and women who served during World War II,” but also “a constant reminder to future generations about the tremendous sacrifice of millions of Americans.” She added that the earmarked funds “will help to increase tourism to New Orleans.”

Mr. Inouye had a total of 35 earmarks worth more than $206 million in the final bill, and the ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, sponsored 48 worth $216 million.

It’s not just Democrats folks. Republicans are just as guilty and it is just as wrong when they do it.

Mr. Cochran defended earmarking as part of Congress’ responsibility to direct government spending.

“I am not ready to cede the power of the purse to any administration,” he told The Times in an e-mail. “It is vested by the Constitution in the Congress.” He added that appropriators had “reviewed the budget request very carefully, conducted public hearings and reported the appropriation bills that the committee thinks will serve the public interest.”

In addition to the $2.6 billion in earmarks, the bill includes $2.5 billion for 10 Boeing C-17 cargo planes that the military says it does not need, and $1.7 billion for an extra DDG-51 destroyer not requested in the Pentagon’s budget proposal.

The Pentagon is often rightfully accused of bloated budgets and wasteful projects, but right now senators are desperately trying to bring home the bacon so that come election time they can tell everyone about all the fixin’s they brought home to their constituents.

Mr. Wheeler said that senators took most of the cash for the projects from the “operations and maintenance” or O&M accounts.

Mr. Wheeler said senators had raided O&M accounts to pay for narrowly targeted projects in every budget since 2002, with dire results for troops on the front lines.

“Air Force and Navy combat pilots training to deploy are getting about half of the flying hours they got at the end of the Vietnam War,” he wrote in his analysis. “Army tank crews get less in tank training today than they did during the low-readiness Clinton years.”

That’s right, our military, which has been at war for nearly a decade, is not getting the training it needs. Senators should be fighting to increase funding for training rather than monuments to increase tourism. Believe it or not, we are a nation at war. Many in our government do not seem to grasp that fact and continue to spend money and rob defense budgets like it’s 1998.

Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, called the transfer of funds from Pentagon operations and maintenance “a disgrace.”

“The Senate is putting favorable headlines back home above our men and women fighting on the front lines,” he said in a statement.

Mr. Coburn mounted a rear-guard action on the Senate floor to try to restore some of the money to its original purpose. One proposed amendment restored $100 million to the accounts by correcting the economic projections used in the bill to estimate future costs. That passed, but other amendments to prevent the use of O&M money to fund earmarks were soundly defeated.

Coburn is a good guy. I don’t care where you fall on the political spectrum, if you don’t like government waste you have to admire Sen. Coburn.

Mr. Coburn said in May that the Navy had been forced to curtail at-sea training and flying because of a shortfall in 2009 O&M funds.

The White House Office of Management and Budget has called on lawmakers to reverse the cuts.

“These reductions would hurt force readiness and increase stress on military people and equipment,” the agency said.

The White House is doing the right thing here. The troops in harm’s way have to come before selfish pork projects and they are right to call on the Senate to stop robbing the military of valuable resources that are directly related to readiness.

This news story really got under my skin. I have friends who are currently downrange and I know many more who will be headed that direction within the next year. We are rapidly approaching a decade of war and very few people in the government have the gumption to make the unpopular calls. The nation as a whole has not given up much to fight this war. We have not seen drafts, rationing, or the conversion of factories to churn out tanks and planes. I don’t think it is asking too much for our lawmakers to set aside their selfish desire to look good in their reelection bids and instead to put the needs of the troops first.

Folks, we have young men and women on the verge of victory in Iraq and on the verge of disaster in Afghanistan. It’s time for the American people to man up and demand that our elected officials give the military what they need to win these wars. I have seen how hard these wars have been on our military and they will keep going back and keep fighting as long as they are required to. If they are given the right tools, they will win the war. If the government continues to rob them of needed funds and manpower, it is going to be an even longer and bloodier mess. We need to get behind the soldiers 100%. Let them do their jobs and win the war. Then let them come home in victory and get some much needed downtime so that the physical, mental, and spiritual wounds of the last ten years can heal and our military can be rested and ready when they are called on once again to defend the country.

I know, I know…I’m not a Chaplain yet. I am, however, ordained and have performed one wedding and expect that I will do a good number of them over the course of my ministry. I am always on the lookout for good resources to use and recommend to couples that I counsel. Thanks to the internet and some generous churches, I have access to a number of great sermons on relationships that I can share with couples preparing for marriage as well as many good books. Here are some of the tools that I use:

The Peasant Princess- Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church did a great series on the Song of Solomon last fall. One of the greatest things about Mars Hill is that they have harnessed technology to make their sermons and study resources available to anyone for free. On the website you can download audio and video files of each sermon and you can download study guides. This is a great series that is frank, humorous, and most importantly it is Biblically sound.

Love Songs- In the early 90s Tommy Nelson of Denton Bible Church did a series on the Song of Solomon. This is a powerful series and offers sound Scriptural incite into the Song of Solomon and how those principles can be applied to different stages of the marital relationship. Tommy Nelson is a great speaker and a lot of fun to listen to and it was this series that helped launched the Song of Solomon conferences that occur across the country at various times throughout the year.

I love the 90s fashion on display in the above video.

Marriage and Men- Marriage and Women- These are Mark Driscoll sermons as well and were preached during a series that went verse by verse through Peter’s epistles. Both sermons offer some great Scriptural principles for men and women as they prepare for marriage. These sermons also have videos and handouts that can be downloaded to supplement them.

I know everyone has their favorite books to recommend, but here are some that I have found useful.

God, Marriage, and Family- Andreas Kostenberger- Great book on a variety of topics that couples preparing for marriage should think about.

The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands- Dr. Laura Schlessinger- Okay, I haven’t read this book. My wife read it when we were engaged and found it useful and I trust her opinion. Schlessinger is very pro-marriage and very anti-shacking up and promiscuity and typically delivers very solid advice.

The Total Money Makeover- Dave Ramsey- The number one cause of marital discord is money. It is important that two people be on the same page on money issues before they tie the knot and Dave Ramsey delivers solid common sense advice that would be helpful to all couples.

There you have it. Those are some of the resources I use and recommend. I’m always on the lookout for new resources so if you have any suggestions, leave me a comment!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me. Last week was a short hectic week thanks to a three day drill weekend. I have come to value every day of the week for studying Hebrew. I like to spread my studying out over the course of the week so that I don’t burn out. The short week last week wrecked havoc on my study routine and led to a rough day in class on Monday. This week I have been trying to get all my work done before the weekend because my wife and I will be going to visit my parents to celebrate my birthday this weekend.

Hebrew has been getting tougher as we delve deeper into the textbook. I have started to feel a little bit overwhelmed as we have started tackling pronominal suffixes and the level of memorization involved (in addition to the vocab we have to master) is very difficult for me. I still understand what is happening, but I have always struggled with the rote memorization of endings that learning a language like this requires. I struggled with this in Spanish, Greek, and now in Hebrew. The Hebrew is even harder to memorize because the suffixes do not have the similarities in sound that the Greek noun endings had. All that to say, the last two weeks have been tough and have taken a lot of time and energy.

I have been doing better at keeping up with the vocab than I have in other language classes. It’s hard to find a balance between memorizing vocab and memorizing tables in the textbook.

Other than Hebrew, the rest of my classes are going well and thankfully are not too difficult. This really was an ideal semester to start Hebrew in terms of the relative ease of the rest of my class schedule.

A little over a year ago I gave into the Ipod cult and purchased an Itouch to use primarily for the PDA type features and the ability to take the internet with me in my pocket. Unfortunately, that also meant that I was stuck with Itunes (I know there is freeware out there, I just didn’t want to mess with it) to use for syncing up the device with my computer. I used Itunes as my primary music playing software for over a year before I finally got tired of it. The software is bloated, slow, and not very fun to look at. I went back to my trusty Windows Media Player for awhile because the software was much more responsive. Now, my computer is no slouch so there is no reason why Itunes should be so slow other than the software simply being bloated.

With Itunes trying my patience, I decided to search out a new media player to replace it as my primary desktop music software. I had heard a few good things about the Zune software but had never jumped on that bandwagon because I do no own a Zune. Well, I decided to give the software a try. I downloaded it and installed it and it found all my music with no problems. In fact, it has had far fewer issues pulling album art than Itunes had. After loading the software, I decided to start fiddling with it and was pleasantly surprised by the responsiveness and depth of features the Zune software provides.

My favorite feature of the software is the artist bios that it pulls down. You can browse through your collection and pick an artist and you can select an option to find out more about the artist. Selecting that option will take you to a screen where you can access their bio, pictures, and other works by the artist. I have been impressed that the software will pull bio info for even some fairly obscure acts and it is not just limited to the big names. This feature alone should be enough for true music lovers to give the Zune software a try. If you would like to know a little bit about the artists you have in your collection, you should definitely give this software a try.

The Zune software also beats Itunes hands down in terms of user interface. The interface is clean, modern, and makes browsing through your collection a joy. The screen that you can bring up when your music is playing features an ever changing background of all the album art in your collection.

I have not purchased any music from the Zune store, but a music lover should find the Zune Pass an appealing proposition. $15/mo lets you download as many songs as you want and keep them for as long as you have the subscription. Imagine how many new artists you could find with the ability to simply download whatever caught your eye without worrying about the cost. The other nice thing about the Zune Pass is that included in the $15 monthly fee is the option to permanently keep ten songs you downloaded. If you were to download 50 songs in a month, you could pick out your ten favorite songs and keep them at no extra cost. If you love finding new music, the Zune Pass allows a person to try anything that suits your fancy.

Really, what have you go to lose? Are you really that tied to Itunes? Yeah, I still have it so that I can sync my Ipod but happily the Zune software has replaced it as my music playback software of choice. So go out and try something different. The software is free and if you don’t like it, you can always uninstall it.

Below are some screen captures from the Zune software on my computer that show it in action:

I’m always a bit sad when a well made, thought provoking movies gets hated on by reviewers and does poorly at the box office. My wife and I ventured out to a local movie theater last weekend to catch Surrogates despite the poor reviews spread across the internet.

I left the theater impressed with the production values and the story the movie told. The basic premise is that later in the 21st century, technology has progressed to a point that humans are able to control a robot with their thoughts. The story goes deeper because not only do people control the robots, but they also feel anything good that their surrogates feel while being insulated from any pain. It’s a system that has made murder virtually nonexistent because every human simply stays at home while their surrogates go out and about doing jobs, buying groceries, and living life while the humans controlling them sit at home in an easy chair hooked up to a device that allows them to control the surrogates.

The movie was a solid action flick, but what set it apart from standard action flick fare was the questions that it asked about where we are heading as a society. The technology the surrogates provided allowed humans to simply stop interacting with each other. We see a wife who refuses to talk to her husband except through her surrogate. We see people so dependent on their surrogates to do their living that they become sickly, pale, and either emaciated or obese due to rarely having to move except to eat and sleep. It is a society that is built around people creating ideal images of themselves and then locking their real selves away and living life behind a fake mask.

Is this social networking taken to its extreme? Facebook, Myspace, blogging, and Twitter all allow people to create images of themselves that may or not be true. In Surrogates there is nothing to stop a balding fat man from controlling and experiencing life from the perspective of a blond female who looks like a supermodel. The other surrogates have no idea that the pretty blond girl who works at the beauty salon (for surrogates) is actually an old, fat, and perverted bald guy.

Facebook, or any other social networking tool, lets us create an image of ourselves that we wish to project to the rest of the world. Social networking also encourages people to create shallow relationships that exist only in a digital realm and built on nothing more than an easily falsified profile. Surrogates forces us to take a hard look at where we are headed as more and more people do more and more relating completely digitally.

The moral of the Surrogates story is that you miss out on life when you live in such an isolated manner and under such false pretenses. If all you know of a person is their idealized image through a social networking site, do you really know them? If your life is consumed by the digital world and you spend more time relating in that world than in the real world, how much of life are you missing? Sure, it’s easier to maintain a relationship over a social networking site but you miss out on the physical contact of a hug, the emotional impact of a face to face conversation, and the joy of having someone to share life with.

Who knows if the premise of Surrogates will ever resemble reality, but if there is one thing history has proven it is that science fiction has a way of becoming reality in some form. Surrogates reminds us in a society that is becoming increasingly dependent on indirect and impersonal forms of communication that nothing should ever replace human to human interaction. People are created to relate to other people and technology has made it easier to know something about a person (whether true or false) while letting us off the hook of doing the difficult, but rewarding job of building actual relationships with people. If you are looking to catch a flick this weekend, give Surrogates a try. It’s a solid action movie that asks some thought provoking questions and I always appreciate a movie that is both entertaining and engages the old gray matter a bit.

Last spring, Steven Curtis Chapman and his family suffered the loss of a daughter in a tragic accident. He is releasing a new album in November and this is the first single from the album. The song is meaningful not just because of the story behind it but also because of what it makes us think about. This world can be a really terrible place full of violence, tragedy, and heartbreak. Thankfully, Christians can see beyond that and see glimpses of the world that God intended and that He will eventually restore. Where do you see glimpses of the perfection that God intended?