There's Beauty in the Bellow

I recently came across an article warning that The Bible Project has an insufficiently robust explanation of the Atonement. ( The Bible Project: Brilliant but Flawed ) I love  the Bible Project. The visuals are nice but I really love the depth and clarity of their content. Really, I prefer the podcasts. I appreciated the criticism because heretofore I've not seen any. And for all its perfections, it must  have some flaws. The author of the article ended by saying that he would not recommend TBP at all. I wouldn't go so far as that. But this instance was a good reminder as the Church deals with a new series of scandals: do not follow any one leader or thinker slavishly. Tim Keller believes in Old Earth Creationism. C.S. Lewis was an open theist. Greg Bausen had rather too large an ego. Martin Luther had some unsavory sentiments (antiSemitic if I remember correctly). Charles Spurgeon had some exegetical problems. Wayne Grudem might have some problems explaining the Trinity. ...

The royal wedding (or sort-of sub-royal) is old news but I want to add my little 2 cents to the non-gushing side of things. Bishop Michael Curry made quite a stir with his sermon. The Americans have been raving about it. I noticed a line featured on the cover the People special wedding edition. It seems that most of the "love" is simply patriotic fervor because Curry is American. There are plenty of churches in America where similar sermons are given -- perhaps with less flair -- with little publicity. Hillsong, for example. I'm pretty sure that exact sermon gets trotted out every so often. Maybe Bieber finds it inspiring. It should be noted that Bishop Curry smooshed together all the various kinds of love into one amorphous mass. He spun the Song of Songs as puppy love; it had as much depth as a Beatles song but four times as long.  It had little in common with the mighty unquenchable love that Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of. He did happen to mention Jesus. There...

So now I'm here: married to a credo-baptist who is crowned with the fruits of the Spirit and who possesses a warm and generous heart. We attend an SBC Reformed Baptist church. I had to receive believer's baptism before I could join. And from my solid upbringing, church membership is a vital ingredient for spiritual maturity. As I started spending more time with Baptists, I started wondering why Presbyterians (of a certain sort at least) seem to continually harp on baptism -- even to the point of implying that Baptists can't fully grasp the Gospel because they don't subscribe to infant baptism. My Baptist husband and friends seem somewhat bewildered by the vehemence over paedobaptism. Michael Bull over at Bully's Blog has been invaluable at pointing out something so simple, I can't believe I overlooked it: Baptism is not the new covenant equivalent of circumcision, because the "circumcised," transformed   heart  is the sign of the new covenant. It a...