I won’t recap all of the news surrounding Miss California and the Miss USA Pageant. Just one observation. Why is it that many conservatives are very quick to defend Miss California’s words but few seem to be expressing concern over what she was doing to begin with? 

Two statements jumped out of a NY Times Debate page

Ben Finzel said: “Beauty pageants tend to rely on a fairly conservative audience not generally assumed to be supportive of equal marriage rights.”

If true, that is very sad. What in a beauty pageant resonates with biblical living?

Maggie Gallagher said: “…she chose truth over the tiara.”

Yes, but she shouldn’t have been pursuing the tiara to begin with. Let me modify Tertullian for this situation: what hath the pageant floor to do with righteousness?

I’m reading Mark Dever’s Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. Mark six is a healthy understanding of church membership. He encourages churches to keep the membership list current, including those people who are active, trimming those who are voluntarily inactive. A person who is involuntarily inactive would be someone sick or unable to leave their home for some reason.

Here is part of his argument:

Membership is the church’s corporate endorsement of a person’s salvation. Yet how can a congregation honestly testify that someone invisible to it is faithfully running the race? 

What is the biblical method for Christians to practice Sabbath? My quick comment – and I hope to write more on this later – is that there is no direct continuation between the Christian and the Jewish practice of Sabbath. In part because the Sabbath observance was part of the Mosaic law, and in part because Christians have begun participating in the eternal Sabbath rest.

Update: I wrote more.

First a note about these In Brief posts. My tendency is to post long. The In Brief posts still aren’t exactly short but they are a way of trying to make myself post more often by keeping the posts fairly brief. I won’t go as far as Abraham Piper but brevity has its merits. On to the post.

Even after jumping into the Calvinist camp I’ve continued to struggle with the point on Limited Atonement. It has been hard for me to see a clear reason to adopt the point. Reading James White’s article Was Anyone Saved at the Cross? has helped clarify the issue.

I tend to dislike brief statements that push opposing views to their extremes but for the brevity I mentioned above I’ll do it here. Because of their views about limited atonement the Calvinist is assured that somebody was saved by the death of Christ while the non-Calvinist cannot be sure that anybody was saved.

One problem the organized church faces is the great temptation to seek the growth of the organization rather than the growth of Christ. I support the organized church and think everyone should be part. But how do you avoid the natural tendency to want to see the organization do well, even more than you want to see people grow in the Lord? Sometimes we confuse the two without even realizing it and because of that all too many churches fall into the fatal trap of building the wrong empire.

What do you say to people who come up to compliment your sermon? On the one hand positive feedback is good and necessary, when the sermon merits it. On the other hand, we seek to proclaim the truth of God by the power of God, not by our own wit and wisdom. What do you say to the person who tells you that you’ve done a good job? “Thank you” seems to take credit. “Only by God’s grace” seems a little pompous. I usually go with “thank you” or “keep praying for good sermons” and leave it at that. Perhaps I should try “Thank [or Praise] God if this word has been used to bless you.”