Some Here, Some There — December 26, 2014

by Dan Phillips

Historically, the day after a major holiday (such as, oh, I don't know... Christmas?) is a dead one at the blog. But hey, you clicked through, I hate sad and disappointed readers, so: it may be short, but it is an SHST, and it is just for you!

• A day late in telling you, but our family appreciated Kevin DeYoung's Do You Know Who He Was? on Christmas Day.
• On Christmas: when I was a boy, and not even a Christian boy, I remember that Christmas-time would bring all sorts of respectful nods to Christ in the culture. The comics (then called "the funny pages"), TV, all over. Then as I grew and the culture shifted, I noted that the Christ-hating Los Angeles Times would always try to warm the holiday season by scraping the bottom of the moldy wooden barrels of academia, to find some PhD to tell us about how this or that aspect of Christian faith was ludicrous hooey.

Wow. This guy really, really hates Christians—and the jolly @Newsweek elves gave him a megaphone (http://t.co/LGMEqltO8G).
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) December 24, 2014

• Newsweek follows in this hallowed tradition. This year, their love-bouquet to Christ and His bride was The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin, by one Kurt Eichenwald. It's a genuinely vitriolic hit-piece with zero redeeming value.

Pitch-session at @Newsweek— NW: Whatcha got? Writer: I just really hate Christians NW: Who doesn't? Go for it! Not like they'll kill anyone
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) December 25, 2014

• Not only that, but it's got some pretty adorable chestnuts.

All you need to know abt @Newsweek editorial process: no editor caught it whn a writer calld Bart Ehrman a "groundbreaking biblical scholar"
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) December 24, 2014

• Michael Kruger has begun a solid response you'll want to note.
• But did you know this, I'm wondering. Who owns Newsweek, these days? Check out these articles. According to CT's reporting, Newsweek reportedly has some kind of relationship to controversial Korean pastor David Jang, rumored to be seen as the second coming of Christ by followers.
• Interesting, eh? Now to something different.
• It's on the Huffington Post, so it isn't overtly Christian or Biblical — but there's a lot of common sense in these 36 lessons learned after 36 years of marriage. More replete with real-world sagacity than some things I've heard from Christian "family experts."

@JohnPiper Shouldn't it have been "Brothers, we are not saved, let alone pastors, let alone professionals"?
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) December 23, 2014

• There are those who mock even raising an eyebrow over Piper's apparently collegial reference to the Pope. This makes me wonder, not for the first time, what our leaders today do think is worth fighting over. For one thing, apparently it's worth fighting over not fighting, since that's what they like to squawk about. They don't mock, ridicule, sneer at, isolate, and attempt to marginalize those who are purveying damnable heresies, or those who are compromising core doctrines. But those who do promote sound, biblical Gospel over against false teaching and false teachers? Oh, it's open season on them.

BONUS: Ed Stetzer-inspired addition to the #GospelCoalitionColoringBook dedicated to #the15. pic.twitter.com/vqaX95n5Ne
— Jesse Light (@ReformedintheQT) December 26, 2014

• As an exercise in empathy, I try to imagine myself reading some Mormon or Jehovah's Witness leader saying how they really need to flood the world with their version of the gospel. And I try — seriously, I do — to imagine myself Tweeting, "In other words, we need to tilt the world with the Gospel!" You know, use it as a tie-in with my book-title, and in effect linking to their words. I try, I say... and it's just not happening for me.
• And factor in: if I already had my own massive instant-promotion machinery and legions of adoring, I-can-do-no-wrong fans...? Now I'm feeling like...

• Now to funner things.
• Re-reading Warfield's masterful statement on the presence and presentation of the doctrine of the Trinity in the NT, I realized not all will have read it, and thought it worth sharing with you.
• Over at Cripplegate, Jesse Johnson reviews Max McLean's stage version of C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. Sounds like a great experience.
• That book, if I may digress, is one of these books that are (A) eminently profitable if you read it with a mind to "get" the points Lewis was set on making, (B) very troubling if your stance is OH MY GOSH! THIS IS LEWIS' SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY AND IT'S TERRIBLE!!!1! Though he often noted he was no theologian and did not write as such, he did obviously touch on a lot. Sometimes he was muddled, sometimes downright bad, and sometimes absolutely amazingly wonderful. If you know how to eat a fish, you should be able to read Lewis with profit.
• Douglas Wilson's post Racial Animosity is so, so good. So much better than so many of the vaunted posts on Ferguson, Garner, and the whole lot. It's the bottom-line truth of the matter. It should have been shared and tweeted broadly, more broadly than those which could be seen as fostering bitterness, resentment, hopelessness and anger. Was it?
• In the spirit of the Peanuts/25 Or Six To Four video, if you haven't seen this, you must. It's absolutely brilliant, and buckets of fun:

I'll update through noon TX time if anything else strikes me. God bless!

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