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Search CATEGORY: News

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Saturday Selections - August 24, 2019

The Joel Osteen sermon that changed Oprah's life (13 minutes)

While we prefer to focus on what's good and right and true (Philippians 4:8), Joel Osteen's sermon here is of-a-kind with the "Christian" theology that's everywhere available: on blogs, podcasts, and yes, YouTube sermons too. That makes Tim Challies' takedown of Osteen's sermon instructive for us in our everyday reading, listening, and viewing.

Canadian gov't is subsidizing the mainstream media to the tune of $600 million over 5 years

Ted Byfield warns that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Should Christians be capitalists? (10 min. read)

"In 2019, the absolute poor numbered 750 million, which is a lot but, proportionally, is less than 10 percent of the world’s population. 200 years ago, you couldn’t find close to 10 percent who weren’t living in absolute poverty."

FREE E-BOOK: Titus for you

This is a recommendation sight unseen but the company it comes from has published some great books. Titus for You is available for free until the end of the month. You do have to give them your email address but if you don't like getting emails from them it's easy to unsubscribe.

Parents: pleasant words are healing words

Christian parents know better than to insult their children, but just because we aren't saying really nasty things doesn't mean we're saying good things. "Do it because I said so" is adequate, from a justice perspective – children should listen to their parents simply because we are their parents – but is it a patient way of saying things?

Quit social media (14 min)

This would be a fantastic video for parents and teens to watch together and discuss. We might not make the same decision as this TED talk presenter, but he gives us lots to think about.

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Saturday Selections - August 17, 2019

What to expect when your kids head off to college  "Hundreds of years of bad philosophy are about to immerse your child." World magazine's Andrée S...
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Saturday Selections - August 10, 2019

Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and Jane Goodall have a plan to save the planet Once again key figures in the environmental movement are treating childre...
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Saturday Selections - August 3, 2019

A very unique way to share the Gospel (5 min) Here's an inventive way that one church is reaching into its community. Josh Harris, author of I ...
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Saturday Selections - July 27, 2019

Seal bearing name that appears in the Bible was discovered (3 min) It's tiny, but it's big – this recent archeological find is a seal is from the s...
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Saturday Selections - July 20, 2019

The programmer? (6 min) Our DNA is more remarkable than any man-made computer program. So who programmed it? When your kids complain, "That's not fair!" Two children plus one toy equals trouble. Or is it an opportunity? Arguments Creationists shouldn't use While it's important we hold to the biblical truth of a six-day creation tightly, we can hold to individual creationist hypotheses loosely. Why I wish we hadn't lived together before getting married A 34-year-old reflects on what she might have told the 18-year-old version of herself. The gift of accepting help There's a word for thinking we can do it all ourselves, better than anyone else: pride. 1984 is happening in China (11 min) The BBC reports on how the Chinese government is interning a million of its citizens, mostly Muslim, for thought crimes. That's why some are calling China "freedom's greatest threat." ...

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Saturday Selections - July 13, 2019

Fined $8.2 million for pro-life work, this pastor wouldn't pay Randy Alcorn's name is well known in Christian circles for the many books he's written. Less known is how he worked at a minimum wage for 20 years so he wouldn't have to pay an $8.2 million judgement to an abortion clinic. This is an amazing story of faithfulness! Free e-book: Transgender In this short 80-page book, Vaughan Roberts lays out the biblical understanding of gender and body and shows how to talk lovingly to transgender folk. To get the free e-book you do have to give your email address, and you do have to act quickly because it will only be free for a short while. Parents: 8 tips for a snark-free summer Our kids don't always talk to us the way they should. Here are some practical tips to help them and you. Hell interrupted The eternal punishment of hell is a difficult doctrine for many to accept. But as Greg Koukl and Tim Barnett make clear in this 5-minute read, it is what Scripture teaches. Can China's demographic nightmare be undone? China's four-decade-long one-child policy taught citizens that children were a burden, rather than the blessing God says they are. The country is now facing a demographic nightmare, with siblingless couples the sole working support for their two sets of parents and four sets of grandparents. Not having children has been the real burden – if their parents and grandparents would have had more children then there would have been brothers and sisters and cousins to share the work. And while the government now allows families to have two children, they're finding they can't undo the "children are a curse" outlook they spend 40 years creating. Evolution can't explain the origin of life (7 min) If life originated without design or intent, but by chance, why can't the world's most brilliant minds – with their computers and chemicals and machines helping them and with the blueprints provided by already living cells – make life from scratch? This is a fascinating video, though the Intelligent Design perspective underlying it doesn't explicitly give God His due. ...

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Saturday Selections - July 6, 2019

Parents: don't squelch your kids' interest in Creation (1 min) Global warming hopelessness In response to climate-change cataclysmic predictions, some wonder: "Why save for the future if there is no future?" Why Board games are booming in a digital age "...more and more people using screens at work....When we finish, do we really want to stare at a screen some more?" Liligers, Ligers, and tigons, oh my! Some have misrepresented the Bible as teaching a "fixity of species" – i.e. that all species stay the same. But instead the Bible speaks of "kinds" and those kinds can involve a lot of changes, like all cats descending from just one cat kind...even as they all still stay cats. Sex and statistics Statistics can be twisted this way and that, so what's commonly being reported in the media can turn out to be the complete opposite of the truth. In this example, you may have heard recently that conservative Protestants have miserable sex lives, and are indulging in porn at a similar rate to the world. The truth is very different. The Fine-Tuning of the Universe (8 min) Our planet, solar system, and the universe are improbably fine-tuned for us to thrive. How could everything happen to be just so? The secular world offers up the multiverse theory. They say that while it is too improbable to believe our universe could be this fine-tuned if we had just the one chance at it, the odds could be improved if there were actually billions upon billions of other universes out there – then this would just happen to be the one where everything lined up right. But what evidence is there for the multiverse theory? Just as much as there is for leprechauns. Or unicorns. Or fairies. Yet, this is what secular "science" offers us. ...

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Saturday Selections - June 29, 2019

John MacArthur: Calvinism vs. Arminianism (6 min) How can God be sovereign over everything and we still be responsible for our sin? John MacArthur gives the classic Calvinist answer with his own unique style. What are some of the best evidences against the Big Bang and Old Earth theories? Dr. Jonathan Sarfati gives a short answer to this question, but with links to a dozen other articles that provide the longer version. How could heaven not have sex? "...lifelong commitment to a spouse in marriage is...one of the greatest joys to be had in this world. Why would it not endure into the next?" Vaccines, sunscreens & the “sneaky lie” moms need to stop believing We do have to care for our children's physical wellness, but there's something far more important, and we also need to get our priorities straight. Sorry, banning plastic bags won't save our planet While the author of this article isn't Christian, hearing his critique of one-use plastic bans lines up with Proverbs 18:17, where we're told that to know the truth, we really have to hear from both sides. So we hear a lot about the benefits of plastic bag bans, but what would a critic say? Here are two questions critics might ask: Will it fix what it's supposed to fix? In this case, will it have a significant impact on the plastics in the ocean? Will it cause other problems? Or, in other words, what are the tradeoffs? Do we have to rule out God to do good science? (4 min) This is an absolutely fantastic take-down of methodological naturalism - the idea that if we turn to God as an explanation for anything then we aren't doing science. But what would happen if we, before our investigation even began, ruled out the possibility that there might be a Designer? Imagine if we could only appeal to natural sources to explain the origins of the car? What sort of explanation would we come up for it, if, before our investigation even began, we ruled out the possibility that there might have been a designer? Obviously whatever explanation we came up with would be a very wrong one. So when scientists rule out the Supernatural, before they've even begun their investigation into our own origins, then they are showing themselves unwilling to go where the evidence takes them - they are ideologically blinding themselves so that they can't find certain answers. ...

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Saturday Selections - June 22, 2019

Preparing parents for the sex talk This 11-minute video from a conservative Christian group has some great thoughts for parents to consider, includin...
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Saturday Selections - June 15, 2019

Bigger than big! (5 minutes) God has crafted our universe on the grandest of grand scales! Pinterest permanently bans investigative pro-life gro...
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Saturday Selections – June 8, 2019

Dude Perfect's does more than bottle flips If you and your family don't already know about Dude Perfect, these guys provide some good clean and free ...
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Saturday Selections - June 1, 2019

Six ways not to read the Bible (4 min) Dr. Dane Ortlund shares 6 ways that we do, but shouldn't, read the Bible. When GMO children have childre...
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New York Times takes dads to task about housework

When will men stop shirking their share of the housework? That was the question a recent New York Times article asked, and the answer it gave was, if it happens it will be some time between 75 years from now and never. According to the author, Dr. Darcy Lockman: The amount of child care men performed rose throughout the 1980s and ’90s, but then began to level off without ever reaching parity. Mothers still shoulder 65 percent of child-care work. The rest of the article explored why this inequity still exists, even among “progressive couples…who thought had made a prenatal commitment to equal parenting.” Interestingly, the article puts the blame on innate male and female differences: men are supposedly more comfortable than women with “getting away with something.” So why do men do less than women? Dr. Lockman thinks at least part of it is because they don’t feel guilty about shirking while women do. FEE.org’s Jon Miltimore points out another possibility: maybe men do less child care and work inside the home because they are busying putting in more hours outside the home. According to the Pew Research Center, women do more inside the home – 32 hours, compared to men’s 18 – but dads average more hours of work overall. When child care, housework, and paid work is all added up, dads spend 61 hours each week working, while moms average 57. It turns out that moms and dads don’t split any of the work exactly 50/50. The same Pew data showed that dads in 1965 used to spend just 2.5 hours a week caring for their kids. By 2016 that had increased to 8 hours, and we can be thankful for the change. Nothing in marriage and parenting is ever going to be 50/50 because God made men and women with different roles, interests, abilities and weaknesses too. Then He told us to pair up so we could compliment – not duplicate – one another. Christians can echo the French with a rousing “Vive la différence!” but we should never forget that our kids need not only their mom but their dad too....

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Saturday Selections - May 25, 2019

Ordinary amazingness (2 min) It's a dandelion. And here, too, the Creator has crafted his magic, putting it on display for all who have eyes to see. Save money: stop changing your oil We're called to be good stewards of what God gives us, and that applies to how often we change the oil in our cars too. For years now, we've had it drummed into our heads that good, stewardly, car owners change their oil every 5,000 kilometers (or 3,000 miles). But, as Philip Reed shares, for some cars that just isn't true anymore. How did all the pollsters get the Australian election massively wrong? Michael Cook argues they did it to themselves when they shifted from being simply opinion takers to trying to be, in subtle ways, opinion makers. Free e-book: R.C. Sproul's Everyone's a Theologian For a limited time (I don't know how long) you can download Sproul's fantastic, accessible, and really enjoyable book on systematic theology, Everyone's a Theologian. You do have to give your info, but for this book, and with this organization, that seems a very good and safe trade. Abortion, evil, and the sovereignty of God (10 min read) That God is sovereign can be a great comfort, but reconciling His sovereignty with the wickedness of rape – why does He let this happen? – is hard. This is a deeper read, but worth the effort. Hungary wants at least 4, China considers 3, while India ponders a 2-child limit For 35 years China used forced abortions, sterilizations, and infanticide under its infamous one-child policy. But that's brought them to the entirely predictable demographic crisis of one child having to care for two parents and four grandparents with no help from siblings or cousins...because they don't exist. In 2015, finally recognizing this looming crisis, China changes to a two-child policy. Might they now be considering a three-child policy? It seems even the godless Chinese government is being forced to recognize at least one biblical truth: that children are not a curse, but a blessing. (Meanwhile, India is pushing for just 2 to restrict the size of Muslim families. And in Hungary, the government wants women to have at least four, and if they do, they don't have to pay income tax for life.) 7 reasons (43 min) Ray Comfort shows that there is a large muddled middle that is pro-choice mostly because they've never heard someone speak clearly and compelling for the unborn. And Comfort shows the power of analogies to make clear, at least for those who have ears to hear, why the 7 most common reasons for abortion don't justify it at all. ...

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Saturday Selections - May 18, 2019

Caterpillars feeding on an explosive treat (3 min) BBC Earth is all about getting viewers closer and deeper into Nature than we've ever been before. And in this clip what we find is freaky coolness. While the BBC never gives God his due, by giving us in-depth looks at His creativity they can't help but prompt praise for the One who made it all. Tardigrades too tough for evolution? Here's a fascinating anti-evolution argument: Natural Selection has no reason to over-engineer. So why can the Tardigrade survive being frozen at -267ºC? And why can it revive after being hit with 250 times the radiation needed to kill a Man? Israel Folau thrown to the lions Australia's top rugby player has been fired for an Instagram post that noted, unless they repent, drunks, adulterers, liars, thieves, atheists, idolaters, fornicators, and homosexuals will go to hell. But he's not backing down. 5 charts that show the world is improving for mothers We can sometimes get tricked by all the doom and gloom in our daily news  into thinking the world has never been worse. To provide a little balance - and show how much we have to thank God for – here are five charts that show how some things are better than ever. The religious language of climate change John Stonestreet notes that the way the world talks about climate change is religious, with transformative language, its own list of sins, and its own damnation too. Keynes vs. Hayek: round 2 Rap and Economics? Can it get any better? ...

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Hostility to Unplanned helps get its message out

Unplanned tells the true story of how Abby Johnson, a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic director, changed her mind and now fights for the unborn. Her story hit cinema screens in late March and had already made $18 million, or three times what the film cost to make. But that success has been hard won. Shows abortion isn't just another surgery First, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) announced they were giving Unplanned a restricted or “R rating” which meant the trailer could only run before other R-rated films and anyone under 17 would need to be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian to see it. That put a big dent into its potential audience. The rating was a controversial one because the film received no cautions for profanity, nudity, or sex. While the MPAA’s listed caution is for “disturbing/bloody images,” the only such scenes involve abortion. The film’s writers/directors Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman shared with MovieGuide.org how “ironically, the MPAA seems to be indirectly endorsing the pro-life position: namely that abortion is an act of violence.” The Washington Post’s Mark Thiessen echoed that thought: “They would not give it an ‘R’ if it depicted a tonsillectomy.” Can't see, but can do? Solomon and Konzelman went on to detail how the R rating was doubly ironic. “…many teenage women in this country who can legally obtain an actual abortion without parental permission will be prohibited from going to see our film containing simulated images of abortion, without obtaining parental permission.” A different sort of roadblock was used in Canada, where both major movie chains, Cineplex Odeon and Landmark, are refusing to show it. However, there is demand for the film, as was evident in mid-May when the film had a successful private showing in Edmonton for a crowd of almost 3,000. Turning evil to good A third irony? Even as the movie industry seems intent on preventing people from seeing Unplanned, their efforts are aiding in its publicity. Articles have appeared in The New York Times, Glamour, Hollywood Reporter, and Fortune (not to mention countless conservative and Christian sites) and they touch on more than just the controversial rating – many of them raise, and attempt to rebut, what the film says happens behind Planned Parenthood clinic doors. Hollywood may have stopped some people from seeing this film but God is using their efforts to get many more talking and learning about what abortion does to the unborn....

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F.R.E.E.D. – an acronym to help us defend and use our religious freedom
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Saturday Selections - May 11, 2019

The world is rated R (50 minutes) It is a parental impulse to shelter our children. But is our end goal to give our children comfortable lives? Or do...
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Saturday Selections – May 4, 2019

The 16 most amazing nests built by birds The amazing tailorbird crafts camouflage for its nest by using grass or spider silk as thread, and then it a...
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SI’s swimsuit edition: from barely-there to burkinis
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Donald Trump, the pro-life rabble-rouser?

In April the president of the United States made headlines for a movie he didn’t watch, and didn’t comment on. So what was all the fuss about? He let an “anti-abortion” film be shown in his home. In the days leading up to the April 12 screening, mainstream media on both sides of the Atlantic let their readership know that Gosnell, was going to be shown at the White House. Gosnell is the true-life story of Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist who in 2013 was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder for babies he killed after they were born. At the time both the prosecutor and the mainstream media emphasized that the case wasn’t about abortion, but about the murder of born babies. But what makes the film a powerful pro-life argument is the defense offered by Gosnell’s attorney: he argued that what Gosnell did to these babies after birth was not significantly different from what other abortionists were, with the law’s blessing, doing to babies before birth. It wasn’t enough to get his client off, but the argument is sound, and for any of the undecided in the viewing audience his reasoning could be convicting. President Trump didn’t watch the film, but in the lead-up to the screening he received a lot of criticism. So why did he let Gosnell be shown in the White House? The cynic might say this was a mostly-pain-free way to appease his Christian base – it excited them, and even though it got widespread negative coverage in the mainstream media, that negative coverage was over quite quickly. But there is another plausible explanation: maybe the former pro-choice Democrat has taken a genuine pro-life turn. If so, then this screening was the president making the deliberate choice to take some heat so an important film could get some much-needed publicity. To bolster that case, consider two other examples of presidential pro-life agitation from earlier this year. In January he once again spoke, via video, to the tens of thousands attending the Washington DC March for Life. Then in February, in his State of the Union address, he responded pointedly to a just-passed New York abortion bill. He told the millions watching: There could be no greater contrast to the beautiful image of a mother holding her infant child than the chilling displays our Nation saw in recent days.  Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments from birth.  These are living, feeling, beautiful babies who will never get the chance to share their love and dreams with the world.  And then, we had the case of the Governor of Virginia where he stated he would execute a baby after birth. To defend the dignity of every person, I am asking the Congress to pass legislation to prohibit the late-term abortion of children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb. Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life.  And let us reaffirm a fundamental truth:  all children — born and unborn — are made in the holy image of God. This last line is remarkable – it gets at the very core of where our value comes from, and why our worth doesn’t differ, no matter our size, location, or level of development. Our worth doesn’t come from what we can do, but from in Whose Image we are made. Though this is the issue in the abortion debate, it’s almost never heard. We’re all very aware of this president’s faults, so it is not his body of work we are praising here. And we don’t even need to be convinced Trump is sincerely pro-life to see how his provocative, courageous, and sometimes downright insightful advocacy for the unborn is an example well worth imitating. He is loud. May we be so too. Check out our review of Gosnell here. ...

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Saturday Selections - April 27, 2019

Real men exercise David Murray's Christian Man Academy offers men, young and old, straightforward advice on what it means to be a godly man. And in this edition he shares why "Real Men Excercise." What does coal have to do with the Flood? "What Kurt was talking about...was unimaginably big: a log mat the size of a continent." Your middle schooler lied Don't just stop your children's bad behavior - make Christ's resurrection personal for them. Why some Christians refuse vaccines on moral grounds This Christianity Today shares the moral objections some Christians have with some vaccines – specifically those that were propagated using tissue from aborted babies – and offers answers to many of those objections. 5 ways the Bible and Economics connect In the Capitalism vs. Socialism debate, the Bible has something to say... 3 simple steps to making your point Greg Koukl gives an overview of 3 simple strategies to use in discussions and debates with unbelievers. This is a 5-minute overview of what he covers at length is his super-user-friendly apologetics book Tactics. ...

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Saturday Selections - April 20, 2019

Preferred pronouns or jail? This is American but has ready application for most other Western nations. Raising motivated kids (20 minutes) In this first installment of a video parenting series, Brett Harris (father of the Do Hard Things authors) speaks to the problem of unmotivated kids. This is good stuff. And three follow-up videos will be available over the course of the next week. Digital addiction got you down? The key is to replace, not simply restrict In Ephesians 4, Paul tells the thief not just to stop stealing, but to start working so he'll have something to share with others (Eph. 4:27). It isn't enough to stop doing bad; he needs to start doing good. While this New York Times article is secular, its approach to beating digital addiction is along the same lines. Don't simply stop looking at your phone; don't try to beat something with nothing (Matt. 12:43-45); find something that makes God-honoring use of the time He has given you. As Notre Dame burned, what exactly were we mourning? It was a building, not a person. That's what our heads tell us. But our emotions might be saying something else. Why? Mike Rowe on the college admissions scandal: "We're obsessed with credentialing," not education God wants us to be life-long learners. And as Mike Rowe notes, university is one way of furthering our education. 1,000 Ph.D. scientists who doubt Darwin "Evolution is supposed to be as certain gravity, yet nobody goes around saying, 'Gravity is a fact, fact, FACT!' and nobody says 'Gravity is as certain as Evolution.' Against this backdrop, Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture noted last week that the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism has topped 1,000+ names...." ...

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Saturday Selections – April 13, 2019

Is it a sin to be angry with God? (2 min) R.C. Sproul gives a clear answer to this question. The 8 deadly sins of political conservatism Whatever party we might vote for, most RP readers probably identify themselves as politically conservative. That makes this article an important read for us all. The trans-child as an experimental guinea pig (15 min read) "So what if the boy wants to wear a dress; what's the big deal?" If you've been asked this question or one like it, this National Review article is an answer. God tells us we are made male and female (Gen. 1:26-28) and those who "in compassion" say otherwise are only showing God right when He says the "mercy of the wicked is cruel (Prov. 12:10b). In Canada living as God wants keeps 99% out of poverty In Venezuela and many other parts of the world, poverty can happen to people no matter what they might do, and even in the stable West many things are still beyond our control. But the Fraser Institute has found that in Canada poverty is largely a result of "bad choices" rather than "bad luck." The poverty rate here is less than 1 percent for people who do 3 things: graduate high school work full time have children only in a committed relationship Of three, two are obviously biblical: working full-time (Col. 3:23, Prov. 12:11, Prov. 13:4) and having kids inside marriage. Graduating high school is the wish of most parents so there are some Fifth Commandment implications there too. So while the world hates God's law we can see here how His restrictions evidence His love. Our Father knows what's best for us and for our good He's warned us what to avoid. Parents, you can control your temper Our kids can be exasperating, and while we don't want to lose our temper, sometimes it just seems to happen. It can't be helped...right? Jay Younts says, not so fast! Preacher, apologist, and ordinary joe plead for the unborn (3 min each) In Phoenix, preacher Jeff Durban, apologist James White, and ordinary joe, Zachary Conover showed what being a public witness for God and for the unborn looks like. ...

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