1. Masculinity in a Can, Fight Club at Your Church, and the Crisis of Manhood by R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
Put simply, many of the most significant man-making institutions of our society are either gone or in big trouble. Military service is now both voluntary and no longer male-only. Organizations like the Boy Scouts attract more opposition and fewer boys. Even as the Boy Scouts of America marks the organization’s centennial this year, that proud American institution that shaped the lives of so many boys is marginalized and under attack.
Add the absence of fathers to all this and this society faces a challenge unprecedented in human history. A society cannot survive without a means of assisting boys to grow into responsible manhood. The same is true, of course, of the church — only in the church the stakes are even higher.
2. Russell Moore explains why he decaffeinated.
So why am I, a lover of all things coffee and Coke Zero, cutting back to almost nothing?
It’s simply because I didn’t know how much of it I was consuming. A friend asked me not long ago how much coffee and soft drinks I drank in a day. I sat down and recounted it all, starting with a full pot in the morning that I’d just drink without thinking about it being there. And that was just getting started. I hadn’t thought about it at all. It was just there, and I liked it, so I drank it, and slowly over time the amount ratcheted upward and upward.
Because I wasn’t mindful of how much caffeine I was consuming, I also wasn’t mindful of what it was doing. A little bit of lots of things are beneficial: a little bit of sleep, a little bit of work, a little bit of meat. But there are consequences that come with too much or too little of almost anything, consequences that ought to keep us on balance.
3. Here’s a great video on “The Missional Church: Simple.”
4. James Robertson, Jr., professor at Virginia Tech as well as Civil War historian extraordinaire talks about religion and the Civil War. Fascinating!
5. The fuss about the Focus on the Family’s Tim Tebow commercial by the abortion-rights people was over this?
