Talking Darwin and Morals

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Richard Weikart has written a salty article about Ben Carson’s recent commencement address at Emory University. I saw the link in one of John Piper’s tweets earlier today.

Here’s the climax of the piece:

Ben Carson, then, should hardly be pilloried for arguing that evolution has ethical implications and that it undermines morality.  If Emory University professors want to argue that evolution has no ethical implications, they are free to make that argument (I wonder how many of them actually believe this).  However, if they do, they need to recognize that they are not just arguing against “benighted” anti-evolutionists, but they are arguing against many of their cherished colleagues in evolutionary biology, including Darwin himself.

Read the whole thing.

Theology in Baseball and Blockbusters

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My colleagues (and friends), Tony Reinke and David Mathis, have authored two posts this week I absolutely love. Now, I think it’s excellent content. But even more than that, it’s what’s under the hood that encourages me most. It’s the way these posts give us a model for seeing the world. Tony is drawing deep truths about God’s wrath from a movie about superheros. David connects John Frame on the Christian life to Major League Baseball’s league-leading homerun hitter.

Check them out: Tony’s The Avenger and David’s Josh Hamilton, Relapse, and the Means of Grace.

On Election and Faithfulness

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Deuteronomy 7:7–9,

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples,  but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations

The theology of election leads to the exhortation to know the very character of God. He is sovereign: loving whom he loves, having mercy on whom he wills — and he is not arbitrary. He acts in accordance to a standard, namely, himself. He is a God of covenant faithfulness.

This passage is a remarkable blending together of YHWH’s utter sovereignty and condescending relation to his people. He is sovereign enough to choose whom he wills, according to his own good pleasure, and yet he is guided by his own character such that he never acts outside of who he is. He is sovereign, in that he does whatever he pleases, and he is bound, in that he doesn’t contradict his character.

This is deeply rooted in the essence of the triune God, whose election is in reference to the Son (Ephesians 1:4). And the root of his election — his unconditional, because-he-is-God election — and his mind-boggling, mouth-shutting faithfulness is intrinsic to himself. It is in himself, “for he is content with his own secret good pleasure.”

Living Grounded Amid the Compulsion of Perpetual Mobility

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We love to be on the move. Movement, activity, journey — Western society is a society on the go. Anthony Esolen calls it the “compulsion of perpetual mobility” in his recent Touchstone article, “God’s Place and Ours: On Mutability and the Lost Virtue of Steadfastness.” Pilgrimage has deep roots in the soul of Western humanity, he explains. But the problem now is that it’s a pilgrimage detached from an end. A journey without a destination. . . .

Read the entire post.

For a quick outline: 1) perpetual mobility is the new cultural plight; 2) but this is contrary to the nature of the church; 3) yet looking forward steadies us here, because God is the same.

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On the Ground

One practical step towards steadfastness amid mobility is to not play the radio while driving your vehicle. Or said positively, drive in silence and prayer. Try it out.

This sort of happened to me by accident. I was having some car issues a couple months ago. There was about a week of time when my radio would not play. I was forced to drive my 15-minute commute in silence. And it was wonderful.

After my radio was fixed and I played it a couple times, I decided to go back to nothing. That’s half an hour a day, to work and back home, that I get to spend in silence. I’ve been picking one thing to pray about during the drive, or sometimes I just stay quiet and bounce around in my thoughts. It’s only been a couple months, but so far I like it. It’s exploiting a means of mobility to be a session of silence. And it’s had a steadying effect, especially as it comes in that transition zone from work to the real start of my day (that is, when I get home).

So I recommend it. Try it out and see how it goes.

Jesus Crucified, Barrabas Released, and Luke’s Picture for Us

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From Barrabas and Me, by David Mathis —

So Luke, it appears, means for us to identify both with Jesus and Barabbas. Jesus in that by identifying with him, through being united with him by faith, his death is our death. His condemning of sin is our condemning of sin. And Barabbas in that we are sinners, criminals who have broken God’s law, guilty as charged, deserving death for our rebellion against our creator and the ruler of the universe. And Jesus, through the grace of giving himself for us at the cross, takes our place and we are released.

As we more greatly understand the depths of our sin, we see with Luke, “I am Barabbas.” I am the one so clearly guilty and deserving of condemnation but set free because of the willing substitution of the Son of God in my place.

Read the whole thing.