Beliefs have consequences

If you believe you should, often you will:

A new study shows that people of faith in America have a huge heart in terms of giving to Third World countries - and the study cites a surprising dollar figure.

Carol Adelman of the Hudson Institute cites the information in a study done with Notre Dame University. "We didn't realize it would be as large as it was, and we came out with a number of $8.8 billion worth of goods and services that churches are giving overseas to developing countries," she points out.

That figure represents nearly 40 percent of the foreign aid provided by the United States to the same region - and the money from churches is apparently doing a lot of good, says Adelman. ....

According to Adelman, U.S. foreign aid to those same countries is $23.5 billion.

Religious Americans are generous (OneNewsNow.com)

Honoring the day

Iain Campbell believes that Sunday is the Christian Sabbath. I believe the seventh day of the week is the Sabbath set by God.* It is a difference that can only exist among those who believe that the idea of Sabbath is important. Behavior like that described here does honor to God - not because it earns anything - we are saved by grace - but because it is the appropriate response to the love He has demonstrated for us. It is also a good example for those of us who, although we may go to church on the Sabbath, otherwise treat that day like any other in the week. Campbell in a post titled "Them that honour me...":

Some of today's Scottish newspapers are running a story about our local school's girls' football team. Against all the odds, they beat off older teams from larger schools all over Scotland, to reach the final of a national tournament sponsored by Coca-Cola - only to discover it was scheduled to be held on a Sunday. To not a little disappointment, the decision was taken to pull out of the opportunity to win the national tournament because of the religious convictions of our community. ....

I'm not sure what other evangelicals think of the decision of our local girls to pull out of the final: I suspect that on the whole issue of observing the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath, many evangelicals have capitulated to the world's way of doing things, and would see nothing wrong with holding, or attending, sports events on the Lord's Day.

If this week's headlines demonstrate anything, they show that there is one God-given opportunity for us to nail our Christian convictions to the social mast - to honour the Lord publicly by honouring his day, and making it altogether different from every other day of the week, whatever the cost.

The story, and its title, calls to mind the great film, Chariots of Fire, and Eric Liddell's refusal to run on Sunday in the 1924 Paris Olympics.

*“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. (Ex 20:8-10, ESV)

Them that honour me... - Reformation21 Blog

"Simple, feel-good solutions"

Tony Payne explains why it isn't enough to have good intentions, especially when dealing with complex social, political and economic problems. In fact, things can be made much worse - an alternative meaning for "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." In this case the feel-good "solution" is to purchase "Fair Trade" products. From "Smell the Coffee" at the Sola Panel:

Trying to solve pricing problems on the other side of the world through our shopping choices may make us feel better, but it is unlikely to have much effect, except possibly to make the situation worse. Basic economics tells us that the usual reason prices for a particular commodity are low is that too much of it is being produced: supply and demand. This normally motivates some farmers to move into other crops that are in shorter supply, and thus have a higher price, giving greater return to the farmer. It's why those nasty free markets tend to promote efficiency and prosperity.

However, artificially propping up the price of a commodity distorts this process and removes the incentive for farmers to diversify. In fact, it does the opposite: it creates an incentive for others to start producing that crop (since it has a guaranteed higher price), thus increasing output and putting an even further downward pressure on price. So there is a reasonable chance that the well-meaning ‘Fairtrade’ movement may actually make things worse in the long run for the majority of third world farmers. The world is very complex place, and solving problems in the world (economic and otherwise) is very difficult. The intuitively obvious action (let's give some farmers more money for their coffee by buying Fairtrade) may, in fact, end up having larger negative consequences we haven't stopped to consider.

The same is true for nearly all the practical, secular problems we face. And the larger, more complex and more distant the problem, the more resistant it is to simple, feel-good solutions. ....[more]

The Sola Panel | Smell the coffee

Fellow pilgrim

Sometime in the '70s the high school where I was teaching inaugurated a reading period every day. During that time everyone in the classroom, including the teacher, was supposed to read something - anything. The idea was simply to encourage reading. But the period was only ten minutes long. I looked for something with short chapters that could be read more or less independently. I found Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Philip Yancey and Paul Brand. That was my introduction to Philip Yancey and it was a timely introduction for me.

Christianity Today provides a profile of Yancey by Tim Stafford. Stafford:

All Philip's best writing is marked by sharp observation and caution in jumping to conclusions. His general stance is, "I didn't understand this [prayer, pain, the seeming absence of God], it was a problem to me, so I decided to try to learn from it. And now as a fellow pilgrim, I am going to offer you what I learned, to see if it helps you too."

He certainly helped me. Probably his most important book for me has been Disappointment with God, in which he approaches the questions about the silence or seeming unfairness of God in the face of suffering and pain. It, along with Ben Patterson's Waiting: Finding Hope When God Seems Silent, are surely among the best on this subject - at least for laymen. They are among the books I give away.

Yancey writes about suffering and pain without sentimentality and without the easy, pat, false comfort that can come so easily to the lips. His early co-author, Paul Brand, was a medical doctor who had worked with patients with leprosy. Stafford identifies one reason for their affinity:

... Brand had participated in the discovery that most of leprosy's terrible toll on lives began with numbness to pain. The loss of pain was at the heart of his patients' problems. In this scientific fact, Philip saw a spiritual metaphor. And he somehow felt his way to the realization—I say felt because I doubt that it was a conscious process—that pain would be the subject of his life. Dr. Brand gave him a way to start writing about pain without being too direct or too obvious.

Philip used to say that he was an odd candidate to write about suffering, since he had never suffered. I disagree. True, he had never been starved or tortured, nor did he suffer from a terrible disease. But he was a little boy who grew up without a father, a boy sensitive to the deprivations of his childhood, and a man who, despite his rational exterior, experienced life very deeply. As long as I have known Philip, he has been drawn to suffering people—to their written accounts, to their experiences shared in letters and conversations. Somehow people recognize this sensitivity in him: he started receiving an extraordinary deluge of confessions, even before he was a well-known author. People seek him out to tell him about their pain.

The article is informative and good. It should point more people toward Yancey's work - and that would be a good thing.

The Healing Pen | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Sabbath-keeping

Rick Phillips is persuaded, although I would question the relevance of the "Lord's Day" to the Sabbath. It seems to me that the Sabbath should be observed, if at all, on the seventh day. But then, that's why I'm a Seventh Day Baptist. There was once a quite respectful discussion of the issue between Sabbatarians who disagreed about the proper day. It is pleasant to find someone who still believes in Sabbath, even if he thinks it is Sunday:

I am persuaded that the Fourth Commandment, establishing the Sabbath observance, remains in effect for Christians. Not all Christians agree on this and some think Sabbath-keeping is a form of legalism. I am persuaded that this is mistaken, since Sabbath-keeping is one of the Ten Commandments, since the Sabbath ordinance is rooted not in the old covenant but in creation (see Gen. 2:2-3), and since as a sign and foretaste of God's eternal rest in glory, it is still needed on this side of Christ's Second Coming. As Hebrews 4:9 states, "There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God."

The Fourth Commandment says that on the Lord's Day "you shall not do any work" (Ex. 20:10). This means that each of us should rest from whatever is our typical work. Students should set aside their books; businessmen should set aside their business; housewives should set aside their chores. We are to rest from our normal labor. Isaiah 58:13 adds that we are to refrain "from doing your pleasure on my holy day... not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly." This tells us that the day is to be set aside for worshiping, fellowshipping with God, and enjoying his spiritual blessings. [more]

Update 4/25: I've revised my introductory sentences. What I had originally written read as much less appreciative of the Phillips insights than I actually felt. There is an interesting history of the Saturday/Sunday Sabbath question at WorldNetDaily.

Advice for Sabbath-keeping - Reformation21 Blog

Abstinence or moderation?

Seventh Day Baptists, like most other Baptists and many other Protestants, have been advocates of abstaining from the consumption of alcoholic beverages since the mid-19th century. My grandfather, a Seventh Day Baptist pastor, was active in the temperance movement and spoke for the Anti-Saloon League. My parents - and I think most of their generation in my denomination - were total abstainers. My sense is that things have changed, but that impression is not based on any change in policy. The subject is little discussed.

Southern Baptists are engaged in a vigorous open discussion about the permissibility of alcohol consumption. Those arguing for the acceptability of moderate use seem to be in the minority - but they have been speaking out. The Criswell Theological Review recently devoted an entire issue to the question of "Christians and Alcohol." Two of the articles are available online as pdfs: "The Christian and Alcohol" by Richard Land and Barrett Duke, which advocates the wisdom of total abstinence, and "The Bible and the Question of Alcoholic Beverages," by Kenneth L. Gentry, which makes the scriptural case that moderate consumption is permitted. Gentry is the author of God Gave Wine: What the Bible Says About Alcohol, a fuller explanation of his position.

Early in his essay, Gentry writes:

Few would deny the widespread abuse of alcohol in our culture today. From occasional binge drinking to full-scale alcohol dependence, from under age drinking to drunken driving, alcohol abuse is a serious problem. And none can credibly deny that the Bible strongly condemns all forms of alcohol abuse through several means, including binding precept, notorious example, negative image, and harmful effect [Gentry provides citations for each]. Yet, the debate continues raging among evangelicals.

For the evangelical the question of beverage alcohol consumption ultimately must be arbitrated in terms of the Scriptures, rather than traditional customs, contemporary social practices, cultural mores, or emotional revulsion. ....

Later:

In this article I will be presenting the biblical evidence for allowing a moderate, circumspect use of alcoholic beverages. Due to space limitations my approach to the issue involves three fundamental, unargued presuppositions regarding the Scriptures:

1. The Bible is the inerrant Word of God.
2. The Bible is the ultimate standard for ethical inquiry.
3. The Bible condemns all forms of alcohol abuse.

Building on these presuppositions I will show that just as the Bible allows appropriate use of sex (despite its widespread perversion and abuse) and wealth (despite the love of money being the root of all kinds of evil), it also allows a balanced use of alcohol. In considering the issue before us, we must always recognize the distinction between use and abuse. .... [more]

Thanks to Alex Chediak and Denny Burk for the reference.

"Doctrine is about marriage"

Ligon Duncan at the Together for the Gospel Conference:

"Would you give your life...?"

A review by Trevin Wax of The Faith: Given Once, For All: What Christians Believe, Why They Believe It, and Why It Matters by Charles Colson and Harold Fickett:

The first half of The Faith emphasizes what Christians believe about God, namely the reasons for his existence, his self-revelation to human beings, his triune nature, and the actions he has taken to defeat evil. The second half focuses on how our beliefs about God influence our beliefs about everything else, with Colson and Fickett articulating the Christian understanding of saving faith, reconciliation and forgiveness, the mission and nature of the church, sanctity of life, and so on. The result is a winning combination of Christian apologetics and Christian doctrine — a manifesto for looking at the world in a distinctly Christian way.

The authors not only see assaults on Christianity as external; they also warn against movements from within the church that they believe could undermine Christianity. Although they admit that much of the Emergent movement's protest of contemporary evangelicalism is on target, the authors critique what they see as the movement's prescription: a rejection of absolute truth. This, they say, will inevitably lead to idolatry. In attempting to maintain the propositional nature of Christianity's truth claims, however, Colson and Fickett define the Bible as "revealed propositional truth," which seems to relegate all truth to propositions and leaves little room for the narrative nature of Scripture.

It's ironic that Colson and Fickett argue for truth as propositional above all else, because what sets this book apart from other doctrinal primers, like C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity or N. T. Wright's Simply Christian, is its emphasis on stories. .... [....]

While it's never stated explicitly in the book, it seems that Colson and Fickett have moved from political and social commentary to catechesis because they realize that only a robust belief in Christian doctrine will provide the foundation for political and social engagement. "Would you give your life for a cause you didn't fully understand?" they ask in the preface. "Would you try to convince someone else to join you? No, neither would I. Which is why I decided to write this book."

And the book indeed works as both catechesis and as apologetic, a strong defense for traditional faith without sounding overly defensive. The Faith is more a celebration of orthodoxy than a circling of the theological wagons. Its primary message is that Christianity is true, Christianity is good, and Christianity is beneficial for the world. Its primary method is to do so by explaining what Christianity is. ....[more]

Colson the Catechist | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Idols

At the 9Marks blog, Jonathan Leeman quotes these "gospel counterfeits" from How People Change by Tim Lane and Paul David Tripp and asks us to examine our own beliefs and behavior in light of them.

1. Formalism. “I participate in the regular meetings and ministries of the church, so I feel like my life is under control. I’m always in church, but it really has little impact on my heart or on how I live. I may become judgmental and impatient with those who do not have the same commitment as I do.”
2. Legalism. “I live by the rules—rules I create for myself and rules I create for others. I feel good if I can keep my own rules, and I become arrogant and full of contempt when others don’t meet the standards I set for them. There is no joy in my life because there is no grace to be celebrated.”
3. Mysticism. “I am engaged in the incessant pursuit of an emotional experience with God. I live for the moments when I feel close to him, and I often struggle with discouragement when I don’t feel that way. I may change churches often, too, looking for one that will give me what I’m looking for.”
4. Activism. “I recognize the missional nature of Christianity and am passionately involved in fixing this broken world. But at the end of the day, my life is more of a defense of what’s right than a joyful pursuit of Christ.”
5. Biblicism. “I know my Bible inside and out, but I do not let it master me. I have reduced the gospel to a mastery of biblical content and theology, so I am intolerant and critical of those with lesser knowledge.”
6. Therapism. “I talk a lot about the hurting people in our congregation, and how Christ is the only answer for their hurt. Yet even without realizing it, I have made Christ more Therapist than Savior. I view hurt as a greater problem than sin—and I subtly shift my greatest need from my moral failure to my unmet needs."
7. “Social-ism.” “The deep fellowship and friendships I find at church have become their own idol. The body of Christ has replaced Christ himself, and the gospel is reduced to a network of fulfilling Christian relationships.”

Church Matters: The 9Marks Blog

The world we inhabit

Two books, reviewed by David Taylor at Books & Culture, consider the physical nature of both the "good city" and church architecture that "gives emphasis to the presence of God in the people gathered." Excerpts:

In Till We Have Built Jerusalem, Bess presents a four-part case for good urbanism or, as I might call it, a good experience of a good city. The four parts can be summarized as cities and human flourishing; cities and the sacred; cities and New Urbanism; and finally critical essays on the topic. While lacking a single-threaded argument, the book nevertheless holds together thematically, and the message repeated throughout goes like this: The best life for human beings is the life of moral and intellectual virtue lived in community with others, the chief community of which is the city. The good city is the city with good urban design. Which is what? Very simply, it is a city full of mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods, the vision articulated by advocates of the New Urbanism, or "traditional urbanism," as Bess calls it.

Designs for a good urban experience, Bess explains, would take into consideration the ecological, economic, moral, and formal well-being of a neighborhood. Whether on the outskirts of a city or in the urban core, each neighborhood would enjoy "a walkable and mixed-use human environment wherein many if not most of the necessities and activities of daily human life are within a five- to ten-minute walk for persons of all ages and economic classes." Such neighborhoods would embody the best social and aesthetic features of historic urban life, and to bring this vision to fruition would be to occasion human flourishing. Good urban planning is good theology.

The enemy to this vision is Suburban Sprawl. [...]

Suburban sprawl, Bess contends, dissociates daily communal life from physical place. It is environmentally unsustainable and unjust; it makes people slaves to their cars. Usually it is also ugly; useful and mostly durable, yes, but architecturally unbearably dull. ....

And on church architecture he reviews Mark Torgerson's An Architecture of Immanence.:

.... Torgerson asserts: our "built realities can both shape theological understanding and unleash or restrict practice and ministry." No architecture—no building, no design—is ever neutral. And that style of church architecture which Hope Chapel [note: Taylor's church] shares with most of Western culture in the 20th century he calls "immanent." An immanent style is that which gives emphasis to the presence of God in the people gathered.

A simple way to tell the difference between immanent architecture and its opposite, transcendent architecture, is this: one is a House of the People God, the other is a House of God. In the one we give emphasis to the nearness of God, in the other to the transcendent holiness of God. Here is the house church, there is the Gothic cathedral. The history of church design then is a history of swaying back and forth between one and the other. The 20th century for its part represents a striking turn towards immanence.

I very much agree that the physical setting for worship is not neutral, but I disagree that the direction of church architecture toward "immanence" in the 20th century was positive. I'm inclined to think that the pendulum has swung much too far in the direction of the people and away from God Himself. To paraphrase Chesterton, those who worship the "presence of God in the people" may - and often do - end up worshipping themselves.

The Good City - Books & Culture

Credo

Reviewing a book by Anthony Thiselton, Scot McKnight discusses what it means to "believe" something and observes that:

.... Orthodoxy, then, is not just something we confess when we say the Nicene Creed; orthodoxy is the disposition that we confess and live and perform in such a manner that anyone who denies what we "believe" will see our response in word and deed. We are not orthodox because we have never denied orthodoxy; we are orthodox because our disposition of belief, what we say and how we live, reveals our orthodoxy. .... [more]

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works." James 2:18, ESV

Belief that doesn't affect behavior is not belief at all.

Performing Orthodoxy | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Giving is better

Greg Gilbert at 9Marks:

We as Christians can very easily become more concerned about whether other people are loving us, than we are about whether we are loving other people.

I know that being and feeling loved are important needs for any human being. That’s how we’re made. But it’s worth noticing, especially in the context of the church, that the Bible’s command is to “love one another,” not “to be loved by one another.” The language is active, not passive.

Church Matters: The 9Marks Blog

Know how you ought to answer

Tom Gilson offers good advice to Christians who become involved in discussion of Intelligent Design. It is also good advice for any of us involved in almost any controversy. Excerpts [read it all]:

Here are the three most serious mistakes to avoid:

1. Speaking Of What We Do Not Know ....
2. Speaking Without Respect and Courtesy ....
3. Not Speaking of What We Do Know ....

For those who are Christians, Colossians 4:6 summarizes it best:

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

Thinking Christian » How Not to Support “Expelled;” How Not to Attack Evolution

Anger

A good reflection on anger and sin at Better Living: Thoughts from Mark Daniel:

Q: Is it wrong for Christians to become angry?

A: For some people, anger is a way of life. Filled with a sense of personal inadequacy, unable to cope with life, they lash out at others, usually spouses or children. Through outbursts of anger, they think that they can control their lives.

But anger isn't always bad. This may come as a surprise to some people, Christian as well as non-Christian.

If you are a Christian, you may have had the experience of becoming angry with a family member or co-worker and then hearing them indignantly say, "And you call yourself a Christian?"

The Christian may feel ashamed, thinking that they've given a bad witness of their faith because they lost their cool.

But they may have no reason for shame. An interesting passage in the New Testament tells us, "Be angry but do not sin." The very phrasing of that admonition should tell us that there's nothing inherently wrong or sinful about getting angry. It's possible to be angry without engaging in sin.

One clearly legitimate reason for being angry is when we see an injustice. ....

We can also be angered when a person treats us inconsiderately. Is that wrong? Not, apparently, if we use our anger as an occasion to work things out with the other person. "Be angry, but do not sin." Anger can lead to sin when we nurse it, feed it, and allow it to cause us to be sanctimonious or to be disrespectful of the person with whom we're angry. It's a sin to be self-righteous or hateful.

The same New Testament verse that advises, "Be angry but do not sin," says that when we do get angry we shouldn't let "the sun set on [our] anger." In other words, resolve your differences. [read it all]

Thanks to Mark Olson for the reference.

Better Living: Thoughts from Mark Daniels: Q-and-A: Is It Wrong for Christians to Become Angry?

Being forgiven

Jared Wilson:

Darryl Dash said it. ....

It's popular to say that we need to forgive ourselves, but is that a valid concept?

I'd suggest that the desire for ourselves to be forgiven is a valid one, but we don't have the power to forgive ourselves. Telling someone that they have to forgive themselves before they forgive others doesn't make sense, just like forgiving myself for a debt I owe to the bank is silly. Forgiveness has to come from outside of myself.

[....]

I have found in my own life that when I am most burdened by the sins and failures of my past, it's not because I am not forgiving myself, it's because I am not yet grasping how immense God's grace is and I have not yet really trusted that He has forgiven me.

There's an ironic pride in there, a sense of thinking that, well of course Jesus died for the sins of the world, but it's as if my sin is too big for Jesus to cover.

The Gospel-Driven Church: You Don't Need to Forgive Yourself; You Just Need to Repent

"You are not ugly to me"

It is easy for those of us who are not suffering to offer insufferable false comfort and easy spiritual justification for the existence of pain. Those who are suffering are far better qualified to reflect on its meaning.

William Stuntz at Less Than the Least:

.... Job – the book of the Bible that is centrally about pain – makes the link clear as can be. In Chapter 1, Job suffers the death and destruction of nearly all he holds dear – which is a pretty clear signal not to stand in Job’s vicinity: suffering, like the ugliness that follows in its wake, is catching. Then in chapter 2, Job himself gets boils so bad he sits scraping his own dead skin with broken pottery, “as he sat among the ashes.” Death and dirt and disgust are joined in equal measure, and all attach to Job’s person. Job hurts, Job is repulsive, and – last but definitely not least – Job is repulsive BECAUSE he hurts.

My back and right leg have hurt, nonstop, for several years now. Since the surgery to remove the tumor, my gut hurts worse than either. And I cannot shake the sense of ugliness. It clings to me, like a stain that cannot be cleansed. My friends and family members may not see the worst of it, but I see – and even I’m repulsed. God only knows how repulsive it must be to one who can see more clearly.

Which is why I’ve come to believe that the sweetest sentence in the English language is not “I love you”: that one’s too simple; love is too often utterly blind. No, far sweeter are the words “you are not ugly to me.” I hear those words and think: really? Nahh, it isn’t possible. Too good to be true.

And then I read the rest of Job’s story, and I think: Far from being this awful tale of a cold God gambling over his creatures’ pain, this may be the kindest, most loving story I’ve ever read, short of the gospels themselves. For what happens at the tale’s end? God wraps His arms around the ugly one, the one who picks at his sores in the ashes. He calls him “my servant Job” – makes him a member of the divine Household. Beauty and ugliness are turned upside down, inside out.

I think this is an important piece of redemption that contemporary Christian culture mostly misses. We’re very big these days on the idea that Jesus died for my sins – and He did, and that matters enormously. But more is going on here than a transaction involving the Creator, lots of individual creatures, and a balance sheet. Supreme ugliness entered the universe a very long time ago, and attached itself to us and to our world in the deepest ways imaginable. Inexpressible Beauty could have turned His back on all of it, but He didn’t: He wrapped His arms around it – more amazing still, he dove into the worst of it, swam in it, emerged with it dripping from His very pores. And, somehow, the ugliness itself was changed. .... [more]

Pain and Ugliness-- Stuntz (Less than the Least)

"Do pastors rebuke any more?"

Jared Wilson:

Okay, okay, it's not very pastoral. :-)

We should restore sinners gently (Gal. 6:1). But I do think that sometimes, in our desires to bear burdens, extend grace, restore gently, counsel toward disciplines, we can inadvertently coddle some who best need stern rebuke.

Do pastors rebuke any more?

Thanks to Jared Wilson at The Gospel-Driven Church, not only for the video and comment, but also for Mark Driscoll's account, which set the context.

The Gospel-Driven Church: Just Stop It

Belief and behavior

One of the central facts that Christians acknowledge is that we are sinners, both in commission and omission. Moreover, each of us knows non-religious individuals who live highly ethical lives - people of absolute integrity and people who display sacrificial altruism.

One of the frequent indictments of Christianity is that, in Christopher Hitchens's words, "religion poisons everything." He contends that it is perfectly possible to have ethics without religion and that, moreover, religious belief makes people worse. Logan Paul Gage at Touchstone responds to that and to this from Dawkins:

“There’s not the slightest evidence that religious people in a given society are any more moral than non-religious people.”

Gage reviews what the social sciences have to say about the social impact of religious belief.

Civic engagement—reading the newspaper and voting, for example—and participation in voluntary associations also increase with frequent church attendance. For every one voluntary association—like a civic club or PTO—among the non-religious, there are 2.4 such associations among those who attend religious services more than once per week.

Thus, Smith concludes: “Religious involvement is associated with, and probably promotes, civic engagement. . . . Those participating in a faith community are more likely to vote, belong to voluntary associations, and carry out altruistic acts than the nonreligious.”

The latter claim may seem presumptuous, but according to the 2002–2004 GSS, for every 100 altruistic acts—like giving blood or letting someone ahead of you in the checkout line—performed by nonreligious people, the religious perform 144.

.... Weekly church attendees volunteer more often in their communities, both through the church and through secular organizations.

The correlation is most striking among men. The volunteer rate for weekly-attending men is nearly ten percent higher than for weekly-attending women, whereas on the whole women volunteer much more than men. And while income has very little connection with volunteering, among those with higher incomes (i.e., a family income of $100,000 or more), weekly attendance noticeably correlates with volunteerism. ....

... For nearly 40 years, psychologists and sociologists have studied the connection between religion and various negative outcomes in adolescents. According to one meta-study (a study of the studies), 97 percent of studies found a negative relationship between religion and sexual activity; 94 percent claimed a negative link between alcohol use and religion; and 87 percent alleged a negative correlation between suicide and religion. ....

Using a sophisticated methodology, Pennsylvania State’s Jeffery Ulmer, Purdue’s Scott Desmond, and Baylor’s Christopher Bader tried to answer why religion tends to inhibit delinquency. Following psychological research showing that self-control is like a muscle, which will grow or atrophy with use or disuse, they concluded that religious observance inhibits deviant behavior in two ways: It increases individuals’ self-control, and it provides moral norms. Religious youth display higher self-control against cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana than their nonreligious peers.

In addition, religion significantly correlates with fewer violent crimes, school suspensions, and a host of other negative behaviors. [more]

I remember reading something like this once [I no longer remember where]: "If you were walking alone at night through a dangerous neighborhood and up ahead, walking toward you, was a boisterous group of young men, would your concerns be allayed if you knew they had just left a Bible study?" It seemed to me that the question answered itself.

Touchstone Archives: Staying Power

Guidance

Mark Dever on "The Bondage of 'Guidance'":

The way many Christians practice seeking God's will before they make a decision amounts to spiritual and emotional bondage. Christ has died to give us liberty and freedom (Rom. 6; Gal. 5; I Peter 2). We can only know the truth about God's will by what His Spirit reveals to us. He has revealed God's mind authoritatively in His Word. We should give ourselves to study what He has revealed. Personal reading, meditation, sermons, friends and books are all available to us to help us to better understand God's revealed will.

I do believe that God's Spirit will sometimes lead us subjectively. [....]

Most decisions I've made in my Christian life, I've made with no such sense of subjective leading. Maybe some would say that this is a mark of my spiritual immaturity. I understand this to be the way a redeemed child of God normally lives in this fallen world before the fullness of the Kingdom comes, Christ returns, and immediate, constant, unbroken fellowship with God is re-established.

A subjective sense of leading - when we've asked for it (as in James 1:5 we ask for wisdom) and when God freely gives it - is wonderful. The desire for such a subjective sense of leading, however, is too often, in contemporary evangelical piety, binding our brothers and sisters in Christ, paralyzing them from enjoying the good choices that God may provide, and causing them to wait wrongly before acting.

Together for the Gospel

The importance of fathers

We have reached a point in time when things that used to be thought obvious need to be proven. No one used to doubt that the most ideal family arrangement involved children with both a mother and a father. Fathers tended to be idealized rather than ridiculed in film and on TV. Now a very large number of children are growing up without a father in the home. That is not a good thing, as this article from ScienceDaily makes plain:

Active father figures have a key role to play in reducing behaviour problems in boys and psychological problems in young women, according to a review published in the February issue of Acta Paediatrica.

Swedish researchers also found that regular positive contact reduces criminal behaviour among children in low-income families and enhances cognitive skills like intelligence, reasoning and language development.

Children who lived with both a mother and father figure also had less behavioural problems than those who just lived with their mother.

The researchers are urging healthcare professionals to increase fathers' involvement in their children's healthcare and calling on policy makers to ensure that fathers have the chance to play an active role in their upbringing.

The review looked at 24 papers published between 1987 and 2007, covering 22,300 individual sets of data from 16 studies. 18 of the 24 papers also covered the social economic status of the families studied.

The smallest study focused on 17 infants and the largest covered 8,441 individuals ranging from premature babies to 33 year-olds. They included major ongoing research from the USA and UK, together with smaller studies from Sweden and Israel.

"Our detailed 20-year review shows that overall, children reap positive benefits if they have active and regular engagement with a father figure" says Dr Anna Sarkadi from the Department of Women's and Children's Health at Uppsala University, Sweden.

"For example, we found various studies that showed that children who had positively involved father figures were less likely to smoke and get into trouble with the police, achieved better levels of education and developed good friendships with children of both sexes.

"Long-term benefits included women who had better relationships with partners and a greater sense of mental and physical well-being at the age of 33 if they had a good relationship with their father at 16."

Thanks to Ryan Anderson at First Things for the reference. He also provides a link to the journal article.

Children Who Have An Active Father Figure Have Fewer Psychological And Behavioral Problems