Between Two Worlds

Greg Koukl and Steve Wagner from Stand To Reason will be in Minneapolis this weekend, doing a seminar entitled Win Every Ethics Argument: Never Be at a Loss for Words Again! Among the issues covered will be abortion and stem-cell research. On Friday, March 11 (7pm–9 pm) they will do a debate; on Saturday, March 12 (9am–12pm), there will be a lecture. Both sessions will be held at First Baptist Church in downtown Minneapolis. Tickets and more information are available at 651.289.4444 or online. It’s about $10 per person. Having heard STR’s Scott Klusendorf lecture and having hosted him in our house, I can tell you that the STR guys deliver superb, provocative, very informative seminars.

John Piper--pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis--has penned an open letter to Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty regarding Pawlenty's new support for the expansion of statewide gambling. Here's the letter in its entirety.

An Open Letter To Governor Tim Pawlenty

Concerning the Expansion of State-Supported Casino Gambling

in Minnesota

Many of us who have admired your gifted leadership of our state are stunned by your support for expanding the gambling industry in this state. We hope that you will reverse this position and provide strong, creative, far-seeing leadership for reducing, and even eradicating, government support for the social cancer of gambling.

We understand from your press release last fall, when the Minnesota State Lottery published Gambling in Minnesota: An Overview, that you “stated a preference to not expand gambling in Minnesota.” Probably that stated preference was based on your knowledge of the destructive effects of widespread gambling on our culture. Therefore, it appears that you regard the financial benefits to the state and the inclusion of northern tribes in the gaming industry (in the name of fairness) as more desirable than the social benefits of minimizing gambling. Many of us strongly disagree.

When we read that “the state’s gross revenues would be approximately $164 million per year,” and that the “tribal entity” that owns the new casino would receive twice that, what we hear is that the governor will be glad that citizens of this state will lose that much money while gambling at this casino. Not counting the relatively minor non-gambling revenue, the real meaning of casino revenue is gambling losses. People must risk money and lose it for the state to get its income. If every one of the five million Minnesotans gambled at this new casino, each one of them would on average have to lose nearly a hundred dollars a year.

But, of course, millions of Minnesotans will not gamble at this casino—which raises the losses demanded of those who do gamble to amazing numbers, in order for the state to get its desired income. Every year Americans wager billions of dollars in casinos and on lotteries, horses and dogs, and other forms of gambling. Those who cash in on this industry are not lovers of our nation; they are exploiting the poor, encouraging folly, promoting greed, damaging our commitment to rewarding labor, and undermining the character that makes a nation work.

The American exploitation of the poor with state-supported gambling muddies the conscience of many legislators. Statistics abound that the government-sponsored gambling exploits the poor. In my own Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis, one need only watch who gets on the bus that takes them to the casino. It is the poorest of the poor.

Only a few, it seems, are willing to say how far and how manifold are the corrupting effects of state-sponsored gambling. I encourage you to ponder this insight from Richard Neuhaus:

In a democracy, the need for popular consent to tax is a powerful check on government growth and irresponsibility. A government that raises money by encouraging and exploiting the weaknesses of its citizens escapes that democratic mechanism of accountability. [Just] as important, state-sponsored gambling undercuts the civic virtue upon which democratic governance depends. (First Things, Sept., 1991, p. 12).

We are disappointed that you are supporting the expansion of an industry that “destroys marriages, undermines the work ethic, increases crime, motivates suicide, destroys the financial security of families . . . and dupes people into believing [it] will somehow benefit children” (James Dobson, Gambling’s Dirty Little Secrets, April 1999).

It is telling that tucked away in the news release at your website is the admission that some of the income from the gambling losses of our people will be set aside for “programs for problem gaming.” So you are willing to promote an industry that destroys many lives, and then take some of income and try to do remedial work with the human wreckage.

You are a Christian. I rejoice in that. I am not suggesting any naïve attempt to “legislate your morality.” I am suggesting that the Bible informs our vision of what is good for people, and our daily lives confirm the wisdom of God (not that he needs it). That is surely the case with gambling. Evidence abounds that gambling damages the fabric of the community—especially the Native community.

Gordon Thayer is the Executive Director of American Indian Housing Community Development Corporation, and former tribal chairman of the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Tribe of Wisconsin. In an interview yesterday he lamented the number of people that he works with who come seeking help with their utility bill because they lost their meager income at the casino. He commented that it is a sad day when the people who once sat on the resources of our country now have to resort to gaming.

“Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. . . . Some by longing for it . . . have pierced themselves with many a pang” (1 Timothy 6:9-10). In other words, the desire to be rich is suicidal. And endorsing it by encouraging gambling is cruel.

It is wrong to endorse and support an institution that is bound to confirm people in their weaknesses and to cultivate in others the greed that would lie latent without this outlet. Expanded gambling will hook most easily those people who need just the opposite, namely, encouragement and guidance in fiscal diligence and responsibility.

I believe I speak for thousands, Governor Pawlenty, when I say, I urge you to have the courage to stand for what is really good in the long run for our state and not concede to the financial pressures or the demand for “fairness” in an industry that cultivates a character where fairness is irrelevant.

Sincerely yours,

John Piper

Pastor, Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis

James Nuechterlein's article, What's Right with Kansas, is a review of Thomas Frank's popular book, What's the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. Neuchterlein's review appears in the latest issue of First Things. First Things doesn't usually post their current content online, but I'm thankful that they decided to feature this article. I found it to be one of the most concise and incisive articles I've read, surveying the current divide between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans.

Here is an insightful section on the cultural/religious divide in the United States:

It is cultural issues that most divide the nation—and that most put Democrats at a disadvantage. Americans can (more or less) find common ground on economics and foreign policy, but, on cultural matters, they are radically at odds with one another. The differences in their realms of moral understanding go so deep as to make communication difficult. Their mutual incomprehension produces stereotypes of the other that range from the oversimplified to the truly vicious.

At its deepest level, this is a war of religion. Secularists vote heavily Democratic; those most regular in their religious observance vote disproportionately Republican. But that, as liberals point out, distorts the issue. Most secularists are Democrats, but most Democrats are not secularists. America is a religious nation, and our differences are not so much of religion vs. irreligion as they are of divergent understandings of what our religious commitments require of us politically. That is a complicated matter that defies easy summary, but it is a serviceable generalization that here, as in the culture at large, we pit liberal, mostly Democratic, modernists against conservative, mostly Republican, traditionalists.

These religious and moral differences play out in critical political controversies. Everyone agrees that Supreme Court appointments will be the most controverted issue of President Bush’s second term. That is because those appointments may well determine the outcome of everything from abortion to affirmative action to gay rights to religion in public life. (Experts on both sides present sophisticated jurisprudential arguments in defense of their positions, but most people look more to congenial outcomes than to consistent principles of law.)

These are the issues that try Democrats’ souls. In each case (abortion most complicatedly) their instincts lead them to the politically unpopular position. Artful finessing by artful candidates can go only so far: Democrats must sooner or later choose between principle and prudence. As with the culture, so, if less obviously, with politics in general. Today liberalism is not, as it was for so long, America’s default political position, and that transformation—effected so gradually that many people have missed it—means that Democrats are no longer the nation’s natural political majority.

In a fascinating article published a couple of years ago in JETS—entitled Why Scientists Must Believe in God: Divine Attributes of Scientific Law—Vern Poythress argued that “All scientists—including agnostics and atheists—believe in God. They have to in order to do their work.” He argues—persuasively in my view—that scientific law has divine attributes (power, personal character, incomprehensibility, goodness, beauty, and rectitude). Poythress even believers that there is a trinitarian nature to scientific law, and that God reveals himself through it. He also explores how this perspective can be a fruitful platform for witnessing to both ordinary people and scientists.

Twenty-four years ago today, Dan Rather first sat behind the anchor desk at the CBS Evening News. Tonight is his last night.

For a restropect, you might want to check out Jim Gerharty's Finally, Dan's Farewell and Philip Chalk's Wrong From the Beginning. Their reviews are unkind but true.

John Piper, in a sermon on fear and trembling, says:

Piper also explores the practical effects of "fear and trembling" on parenting and evangelism. It's an excellent sermon.

Those who have seen and savored the holiness of God and justice and wrath and grace of God, can never again trivialize worship. It is so sad when someone hears a message like this and then comes up and says, “Don’t you think we can have fun in worship?” What is sad about that response is that their heart is so small that the only alternative they can think of to fear is fun. I don’t like to the word “fun” for what we do in worship—or in ministry for that matter. It is a sad commentary on the superficial condition of our times that one of the most common things said about good experience in ministry and worship is that “we are having fun.”

The point is not that Christians can’t be light-hearted. You are probably sick if you can’t be light hearted. The point is, there is time and season for everything under the sun. And something should happen in corporate worship, before the face of the infinitely holy God, that calls forth a different vocabulary than what you experience at the amusement park.

We are Christian Hedonists. We pursue joy with all our might, because we believe that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. And Christian Hedonists can smell the flames of hell. Christian Hedonists tremble still at the ledge from which we were snatched. Christian Hedonists see those who are toppling toward wrath as people who are just like us, only not yet snatched by grace alone from the ledge. Christian Hedonists feel a potential for joy—infinitely serious joy—in the God of holiness and wrath and grace that is so great it would break our heart if God did not give us a divine ability to bear the weight of our happiness without being crushed by it.

Oh, the difference in worship when the wrath of God is known and felt! Gone is jesting and silliness and slapstick and pettiness and trifling and joking and clowning and levity. Listen to Charles Spurgeon:

“We must conquer—some of us especially—our tendency to levity. A great distinction exists between holy cheerfulness, which is a virtue, and that general levity, which is a vice. There is a levity which has not enough heart to laugh but trifles with everything; it is flippant, hollow, unreal. A hearty laugh is no more levity than a hearty cry.” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 212)

Over and over again, we on the staff at Desiring God and Bethlehem remind ourselves of 2 Corinthians 6:10 as the watch word of Christian Hedonism: “sorrowful yet always rejoicing (lupoumenoi aei de chairontes).” “Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.” That’s what happens in corporate worship when you believe and feel the wrath of God.

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Piper also explores the practical effects of "fear and trembling" on parenting and evangelism. It's an excellent sermon.

Ajilon Office recently conducted a survey about clean desks vs. messy desks.

You can read the survey for yourself, but in general, it seems that women and young workers have cleaner desks than men and old workers. Northeasterners have cleaner desks than other regions of the country.

But the following two stats are especially interesting:

• The higher the salary, the messier the person: 66% of Americans making $35,000 or less per year are self-described “neat freaks,” whereas only 11% of those earning above $75,000 claim the same.
• The more educated tend to be messier with only 16% consider themselves to be neat. For those who did not finish college, this number increases to 29%.

Based upon this information, I may ask for a raise.

The link also has some good advice on how to keep your desk free from clutter.

By the way, here's one of my favorite pictures. It is atheistic philosopher professor Quentin Smith, looking for something on his desk.

You might also enjoy looking at the article "Kings of Chaos" on the six messiest desks at the University of Chicago. Admit it: your clean desk doesn't make you look that smart anymore, does it?

So for all you neat freaks out there. Do you want to earn more money and appear to be an eccentric genius? Then grab that tickler file from your drawer and dump its contents onto your desk. It's okay. And while you're at it, you might even want to spill a little coffee on your copy of David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Doesn't that feel better?

(I get teased so much about being organizationally challenged that I have to give my friends a hard time once in a while!)

May of 2006 will see the release of the movie version of Dan Brown's bestselling The DaVinci Code. Given the mass appeal of the book, the fact that Ron Howard is directing it, and the fact that Tom Hanks is starring in it, I'm sure the movie will be a huge success.

A number of critiques of the book have been written--one of the most significant being New Testament scholar Darrell Bock's Breaking the Da Vinci Code: Answers to the Questions Everybody's Asking.

For those on-the-go, you can listen to NT scholar Craig Blomberg deliver the following two lectures on the topic:

The DaVinci Code (Part 1): Was There A Plan to Suppress the "Secret" Gospels?

The DaVinci Code (Part 2): Was There a Conspiracy to Concoct a Divine Jesus?

Here are some endorsements for our forthcoming book, Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, edited by John Piper and myself. Other contributors include Al Mohler, C.J. Mahaney, Mark Dever, David Powlison, Carolyn Mahaney, Carolyn McCulley, and Ben Patterson. If all goes according to schedule, the book will be due out in May.

* * * *

In a culture that’s desperately asking sex to be the alpha and omega, this book shows how sex is better when Christ is the alpha and omega.

Andrée Seu, senior writer for World Magazine

I cannot think of any gift of God that has been more abused and misused than that of sex. What was intended to be a stunning, pure, earthly picture of amazing heavenly, eternal realities, has been perverted into an alluring but false god that is in fact a grotesque caricature of the true God and sucks the life out of its worshipers. With tsunami-like force, wrong ways of thinking about sex have inundated our secular culture, as well as the evangelical world. The resulting fall-out, pain, and dysfunction have reached proportions that are unfathomable and unspeakably tragic. The contributors to this volume have provided a refreshing, insightful, and much-needed treatment of this sacred subject, calling us to bring our thoughts and lives into captivity to the supremacy of Christ, and to reflect our ravishment with our heavenly Bridegroom in our sexuality. I pray this resource will make a profound and widespread difference in how God’s people think and live.

--Nancy Leigh DeMoss, author, host of Revive Our Hearts radio

Sex is a wonderful gift from God; but it makes a terrible idol, brutal and unyielding in the misery it inflicts. These authors are a breath of fresh air, because unlike our culture’s self-proclaimed sexperts, they respect biblical authority and warmly embrace the Lordship of Christ. Hence, they can lift up the torch of divine truth and expose the enemy’s lies about sex that have penetrated not only the darkest corners of our culture, but of our churches. I pray Sex and the Supremacy of Christ will demonstrate to readers that Christ being Lord of all means that He must be Lord of all we think, say, and do about sex . . . and that in His lordship we will find deliverance and joy.

—Randy Alcorn, author of The Purity Principle

In a culture characterized by pervasive distortions of the divinely appointed norms and purposes of human sexuality, what we need in our churches is a robust and biblical understanding of God’s view of sex. Our generation, at least here in America, is fixated on sex. But its preoccupations are inappropriate and unhealthy, and it is, by and large, given over to a worldly mind about sex and committed to the practice of self-destructive sexual freedom. Now many may think the best thing to do is just to ignore the whole subject, or merely to condemn the perversities. But pastorally we need a genuinely Christian outlook on and practice of sexuality to pervade our people’s thinking and living—if we are to be the godly example, witness, and counter-culture that the Lord intends us to be, for His glory. This book is a glorious start to forming a Christian mind that expresses delight in God’s gift of marital intimacy—a Christian mind that so desires to delight in that which God delights in, that it revels in rejecting the cheap substitutes pawned off on this passing age as true pleasure, and instead only finds satisfaction in what is purest and highest and noblest and best. The book considers the subject of human sexuality biblically, theocentrically, Christologically, and thus helps form a well-rounded Christian outlook on sex.

—J. Ligon Duncan III, Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi

Another Christian book on sex? This is so much more. We don’t need another book on how not to look at the girl in the mini-skirt. We’ve read that. We don’t need another bedroom guide with chapter titles containing the word “hot.” Basically, we don’t need another book on sex that’s all about us. We need our gaze lifted. We need to consider the God who made us sexual creatures for His glory. This book will help you form a Christ-centered, Bible-shaped understanding of sex. This is something we all need.

—Joshua Harris, author of Sex is Not the Problem (Lust Is)

What's the difference? LaShawn Barber examines the question and points to some resources.

Michael Horton and the White Horse Inn folks are broadcasting part 1 of their series on the Emergent Church, including interviews with McLaren, Grenz, and others. The radio show is here. They are also posting online a free download of an extended interview with three members of the Emergent movement.

The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once described our increased tolerance for morally deviant behavior as "defining deviancy downward." Now Thomas Sowell is arguing that judicial activism constitutes a similiar sense of "defining democracy downward." The painful irony, he suggests, is that while democracy is increasing abroad, it is shrinking at home. For Sowell, the heart of the issue is this question: Are the people to have the right to elect their own representatives to decide issues or are unelected judges to take over an ever-increasing share of the power to rule?

Sowell writes:

An aging Supreme Court means that there is now a perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stop the erosion of democratic self-government by putting advocates of judicial restraint, rather than judicial activism, on the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

Well said.