The British decide: The rules for English have changed

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While the world holds it breath waiting to see what happens in Iran following its elections, a revolution has taken place in Britain. From The Associated Press:

It’s a spelling mantra that generations of schoolchildren have learned — “i before e, except after c.”

But new British government guidance tells teachers not to pass on the rule to students, because there are too many exceptions.

The “Support For Spelling” document, which is being sent to thousands of primary schools, says the rule “is not worth teaching” because it doesn’t account for words like ‘sufficient,’ ‘veil’ and ‘their.’

Jack Bovill of the Spelling Society, which advocates simplified spelling, said Saturday he agreed with the decision.

But supporters say the ditty has value because it is one of the few language rules that most people remember.

The gospel does away with pride in my abilities

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Thanks much to Of First Importance for this:

“The gospel . . . is the wisdom of God because it doesn’t praise our intellects or advertise our strengths. It causes us to fall on our knees and acknowledge our weakness, our dependence, our terrible need. It causes us to look up to God as the great Savior. ‘It is by his doing that we are in Christ Jesus’ . . .. The gospel teaches us that our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption, and our wisdom are all gifts of God. The message of the gospel scuttles human pride because it reminds us that our life did not start with our choosing God but his choosing us. Therefore, all the glory is God’s.”

– Thomas Schreiner, “The Foolishness of the Cross” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology (Fall 2002)

Humility: Clothes I’m having a hard time wearing

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Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

I Peter 5:5-7

Here’s the thing. God, I trust. He knows everything. He is all powerful. He is all wise. He is loving. He is holy. But a man, like me, is sinful. I know that I am a wretch. I have loved these verses for almost all my life as a Christian. I understand the need to be humble. I know God will take my anxieties and care for me because he is great. The part where I stumble is the first part, where it says to be subject to my elders and to clothe myself with humility toward another. And it makes me miserable.

I’m miserable because it shows my trust in God is a lie, and I’m not fooling anyone. Well, maybe myself until I see how I cannot trust God to work in a situation with another person. So, I act like I think God is big and I’m small and yet you’re somehow smaller than me. It’s not a good thing, and I see it like cancer in myself and people around me. These are clothes that we don’t want to wear, this humility to one another. Yes, it is so easy to see the sinfulness in those around us. But that is not the point. The point is to be humble to God, who made that person, and trust him to work things for our good and his glory.

Wrongful birth: Parents sue over doctor’s ‘mistake’

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From Wesley J. Smith, who has moved his Secondhand Smoke blog to First Things, comes the story of an Oregon couple who are suing because a test during missed that their child had Down syndrome. Had they known, they would have aborted the child. From the story:

In the months before their daughter was born in 2007, Deborah and Ariel Levy worried the baby might have Down syndrome. They say a doctor at the Legacy Center for Maternal-Fetal Medicine assured them that a sample of tissue taken from the placenta early in the pregnancy ruled out the developmental disability, despite the results of later testing that showed the fetus might have it. But within days of the birth of their daughter, the Southwest Portland couple learned the baby did have Down syndrome. Had they known, they say, they would have terminated the pregnancy. Now they’re suing in Multnomah County Circuit Court, seeking more than $14 million to cover the costs of raising her and providing education, medical care, and speech and physical therapy for their daughter, who turned 2 this month. The suit also seeks money to cover her life-long living expenses.

In the story the parents, who declined to be interviewed, say they love their daughter as much as her older siblings. Yet they are also aware of being seen as heartless for wanting to sue because she was born instead of being terminated by abortion. There is an indication that there is something in these people’s souls that tells them what they were seeking was wrong — after all, they realize that killing the child is a heartless act, at least in the eyes of some. However, the idea that suing for a botched test, even if that test would have led to something like killing your own child, supersedes  their moral hesitancy.

Even with tests that are highly accurate, there is no guarantee that parents can definitely know whether their child will have Down syndrome or not. It is not about botched tests all the time. Sometimes you just can’t tell. But where science or medicine falls short, others can step in. Instead of covering doubt with abortions or recommending abortions, perhaps doctors should be pointing parents to places that can help them cope with life with a Down child. In the Oregonian article, a word of hope and of caution is sounded:

The Northwest Down Syndrome Association in Portland encourages doctors to send parents expecting a baby with Down syndrome to her organization, said Executive Director Angela Jarvis-Holland, because it is equipped to answer questions about what life will be like.

“Because what constitutes a good life?” Jarvis-Holland said. “I don’t think doctors can answer that in a two-minute conversation.”

Prenatal tests can’t discern the severity of Down syndrome, and it varies widely by individual. Jarvis-Holland said involved parents with the right resources can greatly improve their child’s development.

She said the ability to test for a growing array of conditions means many more women will be faced with the question of whether they want to be tested for everything from autism to an alcoholism gene (tests are in the works), and what they’ll do if the results come back positive.

“Down syndrome is really the canary in the coal mine,” Jarvis-Holland said. “It will be everybody’s question before we know it.”

Jarvis-Holland, who has a 10-year-old son with Down syndrome, worries about what she calls the “tyranny of perfection” if parents one day will be able to test for virtually every conceivable disadvantage facing their fetus.

“If you keep growing the list, where and when do we grow uncomfortable about that list?” Jarvis-Holland said. “I’m not sure where this is taking us.”

HT: Zach Nielsen

American Idolatry: When your pleasure becomes your god

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There is a danger every day to make an idol out of something or someone in our lives. Because I live in a country and in a time when there is such a great deal of luxury and leisure time, it is a great danger. With that in mind, John Piper has written about 12 ways we can recognize the rise of covetousness in our lives:

Most of us realize that enjoying anything other than God, from the best gift to the basest pleasure, can become idolatry. Paul says in Colossians 3:5, “Covetousness is idolatry.”

“Covetousness” means desiring something other than God in the wrong way. But what does that mean—“in the wrong way”?

The reason this matters is both vertical and horizontal. Idolatry will destroy our relationship with God. And it will destroy our relationships with people.

All human relational problems—from marriage and family to friendship to neighbors to classmates to colleagues—all of them are rooted in various forms of idolatry, that is, wanting things other than God in wrong ways.

Piper goes on to identify 12 ways we can do this when it comes to enjoyment. He says enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when:

  1. It is forbidden by God.
  2. It is disproportionate to the worth of what is desired.
  3. It is not permeated with gratitude
  4. It does not see in God’s gift that God himself is more to be desired than the gift.
  5. It is starting to feel like a right, and our delight is becoming a demand.
  6. It draws us away from our duties.
  7. It starts to awaken a sense of pride that we can experience this delight while others can’t.
  8. It is oblivious or callous to the needs and desires of others.
  9. It does not desire that God be magnified as supremely desired through the enjoyment.
  10. It is not working a deeper capacity for holy delight.
  11. Its loss ruins our trust in the goodness of God.
  12. Its loss paralyzes us emotionally so that we can’t relate lovingly to other people.

This is just the list, read the article to get the full explanation. Be happy in God.

Take Five: Still cool 50 years later

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Dave Brubeck, now at 89, explains in an NPR interview the thinking behind his classic jazz hit “Take Five,” which topped the charts in 1959. I enjoyed listening to Brubeck and his music in the interview, and it reminded me of what I’ve told to my children as they’ve grown up and learned to play instruments that music is a lifelong skill. What I mean is that you can learn to play or sing and it is something you will have your entire life. Brubeck, talking about playing as much as he can and looking forward to his next gig, is an example of that. On the other hand, Brett Favre, at age 40, is nearing the end of his athletic career.

And now, some words for the nonrevolutionaries among us

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Ted Kluck, by way of coauthor Kevin DeYoung’s blog, has some words for you in an excerpt of their latest great book, Why We Love the Church:

A search on a popular Christian bookseller’s Web site revealed no less than sixty-two items with the word manifesto in the title and hundreds containing the term revolutionary. There are revolutionary books for teens. Ditto for stay-at-home moms. There’s a book about how Jesus was a revolutionary communicator, and how you can use His revolutionary communication skills in your home/business/church. The question then becomes, If we’re all revolutionaries, are any of us an actual revolutionary? Being a revolutionary used to mean that you overthrew a government; now it means that you’re a courageous enough visionary to have church on a golf course or in someone’s living room.

My point in all of this is not to make not-so-subtle jabs at revolutionary culture (maybe a little bit); rather, it is to encourage the scores of nonrevolutionaries in our midst, of which I am one. I want to encourage those of us who try really hard to pray for our families and friends, try to read our Bibles consistently, and share the gospel with those around us. Those of us who aren’t ready to chuck centuries worth of church history, and years of unglamorous but God-glorifying growth in the name of revolution.

I’m also a part of the generation that has produced more memoirs before the age of thirty-five than any other in history. We’re crazy about Christian narrative nonfiction, especially those “on the road” stories, no matter how trite or contrived they may be. We’re journeyers. We’re wanderers. We still haven’t found what we’re looking for. Jack Kerouac’s (or Donald Miller’s…or Lauren Winner’s) wayward children are all over the Christian book landscape.

These narrative titles all follow a similar pattern, in that in them experiences are had (a cross-country road trip, a self-finding excursion through Europe, a documentary chronicling the lameness of American Christians, a chronicle on how the author dropped out of church and subsequently “found” Jesus), and then those experiences are shared in book form. Many of these books are supposed to tell us that “community” is the answer, and individualism is bad, but at the end of the day these books are largely about the individual and his or her discoveries.

I am looking forward to this book. Both Ted and Kevin have a great way of getting right to the point in a helpful way. Don’t go find yourself. Find God and love the church.

 

Breakthrough: Restoring sight by adult stem cell treatment

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Adult stem cell technology is amazing in what it can accomplish. The video below shows how sight is being restored using contact lenses coated with the person’s own stem cells. WARNING: There is eye surgery shown in parts that may be hard to watch for the squeamish.

That is great news. Josh Brahm comments on that and points out that you should be careful when reading stories about these breakthroughs. As a headline writer myself, I can say that biases aren’t always there when headlines are written. But I also know that subtleties can be lost when readers look at headlines and don’t read stories all the way through. Also, while headlines can be innocently vague, it does irritate me when stories are vaguely written or edited. That is shoddy journalism. Saying stem cell research when it is actually adult (or ISP) stem cell research is either laziness or brazen misrepresentation. Either way it’s wrong.

What sustains us — God’s grace

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Matt Perman says this is his favorite John Piper sermon. I would agree with him. And, in light of what I posted yesterday, I say this not because it is John Piper preaching it, but rather because it gets me thinking about God’s grace — his sovereign grace, as Piper puts it – and how wonderful it is. I love the examples Piper uses in this sermon, but we could all come up with other great examples of God’s grace in our lives. Here are four good points to take away from it:

Jeremiah 32:36-41

Now therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel concerning this city of which you say, “It is given into the hand of the king of Babylon by sword, by famine, and by pestilence,”  “Behold, I will gather them out of all the lands to which I have driven them in My anger, in My wrath, and in great indignation; and I will bring them back to this place and make them dwell in safety. And they shall be My people, and I will be their God; and I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me always, for their own good, and for the good of their children after them. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; and I will put the fear of Me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from Me. And I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will faithfully plant them in this land with all My heart and with all My soul.” For thus says the Lord, “Just as I brought all this great disaster on this people, so I am going to bring on them all the good that I am promising them.”

Four Promises of Sovereign, Sustaining Grace

Notice four promises of sovereign, sustaining grace.

1. God Will Be Our God

God promises to be our God. Verse 38: “They will be my people and I will be their God.” All the promises to his people are summed up in this: “I will be your God.” That is, I will use all that I am as God—all my wisdom, all my power, and all my love—to see to it that you remain my people. All that I am as God, I exert for your good.

2. God Promises to Change Our Hearts

God promises to change our hearts and cause us to love and fear him. Verse 39: “I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me always . . . (v. 40b) I will put the fear of me in their hearts.” In other words, God will not simply stand by to see if we, by our own powers, will fear him; he will sovereignly, supremely, mercifully give us the heart that we need to have, and give us the faith and the fear of God that will lead us home to heaven. This is sovereign, sustaining grace. (See Deuteronomy 30:6; Ezekiel 11:19-20; 36:27.)

3. God Promises We Will Not Turn Away from Him

God promises that he will not turn away from us and we will not turn away from him. Verse 40: “I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; and I will put the fear of Me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from Me.” In other words, his heart work is so powerful that he guarantees we will not turn from him. This is what’s new about the new covenant: God promises to fulfill by his power the conditions that we have to meet. We must fear him and love him and trust him. And he says, I will see to that. I will “put the fear of me in their hearts”—not to see what they will do with it, but in such a way that “they will not turn from me.” This is sovereign, sustaining grace.

4. God Promises to Do This with Infinite Intensity

Finally, God promises to do this with the greatest intensity imaginable. He expresses this in two ways, one at the beginning and one at the end of verse 41: “And I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will faithfully plant them in this land with all My heart and with all My soul.” First he says that he will exert this sovereign, sustaining grace with joy: “I will rejoice over them to do them good.” Then he says (at the end of verse 41) that he will exert this sovereign, sustaining grace “with all [his] heart and withall [his] soul.”

Don’t let your mind get flabby. Give it some exercise.

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I do a lot of pointing at this blog. I know it. There is a lot of garbage out there and you don’t have to look hard to find it. Conversely, there are many good things that people are writing and saying that I feel are worthwhile and worth not only reading but passing along. That said, I want to remember for myself and point out to you, the reader, that reading worthwhile things (or some not so worthwhile) isn’t a substitute for using the brain God gave you.

Kevin DeYoung, blogging at DeYoung, Restless and Reformed, follows up a great post by John Piper with some great thoughts concerning hero worship and emulation that happens among Christians. Here is a part I found hit home with me, maybe you too:

Learning from a great teacher does not eliminate the need to think for ourselves. We need to make sure we are really convinced of the things we espouse, that we don’t simply believe what the men and women we respect believe. Don’t make the “celebrities” into a new magisterium. Respect their wisdom and experience, but always go back to the Scriptures. And don’t expect them to settle all your issues, because they haven’t faced all your issues. And besides, the men we look up to don’t always agree with each other on how to tackle certain issues.

This is something to really think through. We can appreciate great people we know, but ultimately remember that it’s God who is great and him we need to know best.