Saturday Selections – April 19, 2025
Embrace reality - brought to you by the letter f
This is both fantastic – encouraging a farm hand to embrace reality over his feelings – and falls short because Granny points to a changeable dictionary as the final arbitrator of reality, rather than to the author of reality Himself, our God, and His unchanging Word. So God's people need to point to our sure Foundation.
Does the 2nd Commandment apply to the King of Kings?
Does the 2nd Commandment apply to film portrayals of Christ? This is a pertinent question at a time when there are three bio-films about Christ scheduled for theaters, including the animated The King of Kings for kids, and also the popular streaming series The Chosen, now in its fourth season. Roman Catholics, Mormons, and many an evangelical don't believe the 2nd Commandment applies. But as this article highlights, some Reformers such as Herman Bavinck, Joel Beeke, and John Calvin thought this commandment forbids any representation of any member of the Trinity.
Why? Part of it may be practical – how could we ever visually depict the immaterial God the Father, or the Holy Spirit? But Jesus was a man, so isn't that different? Well, another practical consideration is that in extending what was written down into a visual medium, additions will not only have to be made, but made up (because we don't know what they were wearing or looked like, etc.). And as happened with The Chosen, once producers and writers are making additions, they seem to feel free to change what was written down too.
Albert Mohler on IVF
Mohler notes that the New York Times is asking questions that the world really can't answer. Christians need to ask these same questions, and we do have answers. So, "what do we owe the embryo?" Mohler knows "Christians must now face the question of IVF and embryo ethics head on."
Creationist lessons from Australia’s rabbit plague
From 24 rabbits 166 years ago, Australia now has a rabbit population of approximately 2oo million! This article is about how creationists...
"...are often asked: how could we get so many people in such a short time since the Ark landed (about 4,500 years)? Similarly, how could we have so many land vertebrates today if most came from a pair on the Ark (seven pairs for ‘clean’ animals)? The answer is exponential growth."
Australia's News South Wales has passed its own "anti-conversion therapy" law
A law that makes it illegal to help someone convert from homosexuality to heterosexuality is now in effect in NSW Australia. The wrongs it is supposed to right are forced conversions, but as Anglican Archbishop Kanishka Raffel has noted, "the initial consultation paper provided no direct evidence of conversion practices in New South Wales."
So why this law? Well, if we lived in a rational world then laws would only be proposed when needed – again, as the Archbishop put it, "Good laws must target extraordinary harm not ordinary faith." But the law is here anyway... because the world hates God (John 15:18-19, 1 John 3:13, 2 Tim. 3:12).
"...now it’s time for churches to call this out for the massive intrusion it is on liberty of conscience, and its naked attempt to force self-censorship on faith communities at the risk of prosecution. And now is the time for faith-based schools to remind their students and their key stakeholders – government and well-heeled parents – that the gospel is actually all about conversion. Always about conversion."
What's not fair about free trade?
The key point here would be "we shouldn't make things harder to obtain simply on the grounds that they originate somewhere else."
This gentleman has an evolutionary slant – he thinks the reason people instinctively object to free trade is a remnant of our evolutionary programming – but what he attributes to evolution can be better explained by our sinful nature. We are envious and seek our own advantage even if it hurts others, so no wonder then that we'll, for example, push for tariffs that help our industry even if those tariffs make things more expensive for everyone else.
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