Take Your Vitamin Z

Pray for Greg Laurie And His Family

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:28:00 +0000

Pray for Greg Laurie and his family. His son was killed in a car accident today.

For those of you who might not know, Greg Laurie is an evangelist who oversees the Harvest Crusades.

Corey Garrett - Senegal

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:36:00 +0000

When I do these residency classes at Covenant Seminary it is always fun to meet so many different people coming from so many different ministry contexts. One of the most interesting people I have met this week has been Corey Garrett. Corey and his family are missionaries in Senegal. Last night Corey chatted with myself and some other guys for awhile and we all found it fascinating. He said the best summary of his ministry was in this video below. I would encourage you to check it out:

A New Open Letter to Egalitarians

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:54:00 +0000

David Kotter:

Mike Seaver at the blog Role Calling understands the shaping effects of sound doctrine, and is facilitating a conversation about gender roles and God's design of men and women. His recent post A Semi-Pragmatic, Less Theological Open Letter to Egalitarians has a list of 10 questions that hopefully will help egalitarians and complementarians explore the intersection between doctrine and daily life. The comment section is open now, and later this year he will provide a summarizing post.

For example, Mike would like to hear from egalitarians who are willing to weigh in on insightful questions: If the Titanic disaster were to happen again, would you desire 50% of the seats on the life boats to be left for men?

His list is not limited to hypothetical questions. For example: Do egalitarian parents train their boys that it is okay for them to be "stay at home dads?" If so, does a lot of domestic training happen with these boys?

I am eager to read the comments and gain additional insights into the inner workings of egalitarian marriages. To wit: If two egalitarians are married with children, and they hear a noise downstairs at night, should the man or the woman go downstairs to investigate, or would it depend on who had done it the last time?

To the many egalitarians who regularly read and give us feedback at Gender Blog, I would like to thank you for engaging with us in this ongoing dialogue. I would appreciate if you would invite your friends to comment over at Role Calling to help complementarians better understand the practical outworking of the egalitarian doctrinal position.

Thanks in advance; I look forward to reading your comments there.

AmazonMP3 Daily Deal - Massive Attack - 100th Window

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:01:00 +0000

Massive Attack's, 100th Window, $2.99.

Indicatives and Imperatives - Get this down

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:47:00 +0000

Glorifying the Father of the Fatherless

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:10:00 +0000

Jason Kovacs:

In Psalm 10:18 we are commanded to “do justice to the fatherless.” And Isaiah tells us to “Defend the cause of the fatherless” (1:17). James writes, “religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans…in their affliction” (1:27).

Surely this means not only caring temporarily for the needs of orphans, but also permanently caring for them through adoption.

We have an incredible opportunity in adoption to live out God’s compassion and so eternally change the life of a child.

A year after we adopted, my wife gave birth to our third child, a beautiful baby girl. The wonder and beauty of becoming a parent through birth and adoption are incomparable and yet each is just as sweet and amazing and wonderful.

I encourage any of you who are praying about growing your family to consider adoption as a way of magnifying the “Father of the fatherless.”

And for those of you who aren’t called to adopt there many other ways to care for orphans such as foster-care, financially supporting those who are adopting, visiting orphanages, sponsoring a child, and praying.

The question will never be whether you should care for orphans. The question is how you will care for them and in doing so reflect the compassion of God for the least of these.

Read the whole post.

Jason Kovacs is the Director of Ministry Development for The ABBA Fund. He also blogs about orphan care and adoption and is on the steering committee for the Together for Adoption Conference.

A New Era of Religious Liberties

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:00:00 +0000

I am not trying to be alarmist here. Perhaps cases like this will only be isolated and infrequent. I just don't want us to be surprised if situations like this start to happen more often.

Alan at STR.org writes:

The legalization of same-sex marriage will usher in a new era where religious liberties will increasingly become restricted.

In the last year, the state of New Jersey revoked the tax exemption status of a church property because it refused to allow a lesbian couple to perform a civil union on its grounds.

The attorney representing the lesbian couple argued that the church discriminated against his clients and "could no more refuse to accommodate the lesbians than a restaurant owner could refuse to serve a black man." And the court agreed. This is just a hint of what is to come in California.

There’s one word that explains why this will happen: Consistency.

In order for California to be consistent with its new legislation on same-sex marriage, it must restrict the religious liberties of Christians, Jews, and any other group that upholds a one-man-one-woman view of marriage. These groups enjoy privileges and protections given by the state, which now also endorses same-sex marriage. Since the law supports both same-sex marriage and groups who oppose the new legislation, it’s only a matter of time before pro-gay lawyers exploit the inconsistency.

That’s what happened in New Jersey. A tax exempt church refused to allow a same-sex civil union on their grounds and so it was argued that the state subsidized discrimination.

At stake are the tax benefits given by the state to churches, non-profit parachurch groups (i.e. STR) and clergy. But there are other examples with more at stake than tax benefits. And when religious beliefs clash with state laws that protect gay rights, can you guess who wins? Here’s a hint: It's not the party who’s found guilty of "discrimination."

Sean Lucas' Analysis of Joel Osteen

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:54:00 +0000

Dr. Sean Lucas from Covenant Seminary:

Last night as I was flipping the channels during a second straight depressing late-inning loss by my Cardinals, I happened onto Joel Osteen's program. As someone professionally-trained as an American religious historian, it was striking to watch Osteen once again and note both the themes of his message and the manner of his method. In both respects, his popularity is not the result of originality, but his skillful repacking of positive thinking/self-esteem and Pentecostal/charismatic elements. [On this particular episode, his wife Victoria was presiding at the Lord's Table. While watching that gave me the shivers, it was also striking how much less skillful and how much more plastic she was compared to Joel.]

While there were a lot of things to critique, I couldn't help but ask the historian's analysis questions: why does this message appeal to so many (upwards of 15,000 attend services at Lakewood Church each weekend)? what are the verbal and facial cues that draw people in? why does it seem that Lakewood is amazingly interracial (a fact that is much more common in Pentecostal-oriented churches than Reformed); how do you account for that?

I think the driving reason that Osteen is hugely popular is that he sells hope. Books like Your Best Life Now and Become a Better You provide a message of hope that my life does not have to be the way it is right now; that God is powerful and able to change my life; that God is profoundly interested in my life and is near to me. And while that message of hope is packaged in the code language of the prosperity Gospel and positive psychology (like the phenomenally successful book by Tal Ben-Shahar, Happier), at the end of the day, people leave Lakewood feeling as though there is a greater meaning and purpose for their lives.

As I thought about all this, though, I couldn't help but think about John Piper's question from God is the Gospel (and other places): do you delight more in the fact that God makes much of you in the Gospel or that the Gospel frees you to make much of God? The fault in Osteen's message is that it overplays and wrongly prioritizes the fact that God makes much of us (and God does make much of us: as I read in my morning worship today, God cried out to a wayward Israel, "How can I give you up, O Ephraim?...My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender" Hosea 11:8).

The biblical priority is that God in the Gospel rescues, delivers, frees and sustains us to make much of God. He is the great good in the Good News--and it truly is amazing: that God would save his wayward children for the fame of his name; would shape worshippers who will find their deepest satisfaction in making much of God; and would gather together a worldwide body of worshippers who hallow his name!

And that is the great hope: not that our material position would be better or our relationships grow stronger. Rather, our great hope is that the steadfast, committed love of our God is transforming us into worshippers who find their hearts satisfied in God himself.

I Am Looking Forward To This Book

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:06:00 +0000

This book is one that I am looking forward to getting: Dr. Michael Horton's, Christless Christianity It is now available for pre-release orders.

Product Description
Is it possible that we have left Christ out of Christianity? Is the faith and practice of American Christians today more American than Christian? These are the provocative questions Michael Horton addresses in this thoughtful, insightful book. He argues that while we invoke the name of Christ, too often Christ and the Christ-centered gospel are pushed aside. The result is a message and a faith that are, in Horton's words, "trivial, sentimental, affirming, and irrelevant." This alternative "gospel" is a message of moralism, personal comfort, self-help, self-improvement, and individualistic religion. It trivializes God, making him a means to our selfish ends. Horton skillfully diagnoses the problem and points to the solution: a return to the unadulterated gospel of salvation.

Michael Horton (PhD, University of Coventry and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford) is J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California. He is the main host of The White Horse Inn radio broadcast and editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine. He is the author/editor of more than fifteen books, including Putting Amazing Back into Grace, Too Good to Be True, and A Better Way.

(HT: Jared Wilson)

AmazonMP3 Daily Deal - Peter Gabriel - So

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:01:00 +0000

Another classic from the 80's. Remember the songs, Sledgehammer, Big Time, and In Your Eyes? That is this record. Get it today for $2.99.

What Do We Learn From "Dark Knight"?

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:28:00 +0000

I'll let Margie Hack do the deep reflection on the movie for me. I think she is right on here:

In the movie, The Dark Knight, The Joker declares, “You know who people are in their last moments,” and I wondered who actor Heath Ledger was in the last moments of his life. When I saw him as the Joker on the set of The Dark Knight I looked with concern and wonder, knowing he was no longer alive, knowing that most think he committed suicide after the movie was filmed, although that can’t be proved – he died of a drug overdose, a toxic cocktail of pain and sleep medication. I watched him, trying to perceive, is this just acting or is this partly witness to the pain and darkness of his true beliefs in the meaninglessness of life as he pursues The Batman across Gotham City detonating everything in his wake?

At the end of the Dark Knight I was left in want of a hero large enough to make life meaningful again, someone who could bring light to the set, who could heal the lives ruined by injustice, crime, ambition, violence. The Batman, the faltering, finite hero we love, disappears into the night still determined to try to fix the world, but everyone, including him, knows how impossible and grievous this calling will be.

The movie underscores how hopeless this task for human heroes – to heal the earth of all its injustices, to offer choice even to The Jokers of the world. We wait for consummation, like Simeon the priest waited for the Consolation of Israel. Dostoevsky describes it perfectly in The Brothers Karamazov:

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.

Great Question

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:49:00 +0000

In our devotional this morning at Covenant Seminary, Dr. Bob Burns asked our class this poignant question:

Are you as intentional about your relationships as you are about your theology?

His point was this: If we think we have good theology, but this theology doesn't lead to good relationships, then our theology is probably not as good as we think it is.

One Reason To See "Dark Knight"

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:40:00 +0000

So we went to Dark Knight last night on the IMAX. I’ll spare you of all the cultural analysis and pontification. I won’t be reading into the true meaning of the plot and what it points to. Go see this movie for one reason alone: Heath Ledger.

Some have said he is a "force of nature" in The Dark Knight. I’ll define that a bit further: He is a cinematic tsunami. He completely takes over. I can’t remember that last time I was so moved by the artistic expression of an actor in a movie. When the movie was over I immediately wanted to watch it again and I credit most of that sentiment to Heath Ledger’s performance. It actually makes me sad that we won’t be able to experience his gifts as an actor any longer due to his recent death. If he doesn’t get the Oscar for best actor I’ll boycott movies for the rest of my life. (Are you tiring of my overstatements?) It really was that good. Freaky good. And The Joker was freaky. Probably one of the scariest characters ever on film but oddly one that I couldn’t get enough of. When he wasn’t in a scene I found myself wondering when we would get to see more of him.

You have probably read a lot about this movie if you have not seen it by now. When it comes to Heath’s character, it’s all true. Go see it for all the reasons that you probably have already heard of, but if you don’t believe those go see a very special artist pull off a performance that you’ll likely never forget. And sadly we know that we’ll never see one like it again.

Song of The Day - Shai Linne - Atonement Q and A

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:17:00 +0000

Want to hear a great catechism in the form of a cool Hip-Hop song? Check out Shai Linne's Atonement Q and A. What a great way to help kids (and adults) be reminded of the great truths of God's word through music and rhyme. Check this out for sure.

You can listen to a sample here on AmazonMP3 or on

Garden Of Eden Revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:10:00 +0000

Dr. Dan Zink, spoken today in my seminary class on Marriage and Family Counseling:

Every couple assumes that they would have a great marriage if the other person would just change. It's the Garden of Eden all over again.

New Radiohead Video

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:10:00 +0000

Steve McCoy:

Radiohead continues to do weird 'n' wonderful things. Like in their new "House of Cards" video...

AmazonMP3 Daily Deal - Ray Charles - Genius Loves Company

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:41:00 +0000

Ray Charles, Genius Loves Company, 12 songs with a variety of other artists joining him, $2.99.

St. Louis On The Horizon

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:31:00 +0000

I am off today for a week long residency class at Covenant Seminary. I am taking Marriage and Family Counseling. I will be accompanied by three other staff guys from Desert Springs church who have just started the same Masters program that I am almost finished with. I'll try to stay up on the blog while I am there.

PushUpdate - End of Week 4

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:27:00 +0000

Week 4 ended well. It was not that much of a jump from week 3. Now we are onto the week 5 of death. Here is what I have to do tomorrow:

40, 32, 30, 25, Max - at least 40. I am scared. And these 5 sets have to be done with only 60 seconds rest between sets. Most guys have failed on this set and have had to repeat week 5. We'll see how I do...

Dark Knight Of The Soul

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:04:00 +0000

Brant Hansen has an interesting take on the new Batman movie. He writes:

"The Dark Knight" is cultural rigormortis. It's what happens when we are done, and we are done. Jacques Barzun had it right, when he wrote a history of western culture up through the 1990s, and said, certainly, that our age is defined by boredom. We are excited by nothing, really, but maybe for a moment here, or a moment there, we can try to be turned on. Sex can do it (or fake sex, much more likely) but brutal violence can work, too, if for a short time.

Our culture is lying on the table, and "The Dark Knight" is just another jolt before the flatline resumes.

At least give us this: Our mass-market (which included me, yesterday) is willing to pay for it, but also demands some sense that it was all, ultimately, high-minded, that it was making some statement, that it was horrific, yes, but redemptive, blah blah blah. Expect many hip Christian types to write as much, because 1) That's the essence of being hip, and 2) Who doesn't like Batman?

But it's not redemptive...unless...

Unless we can emerge in the sunlight, after ALL THAT HYPE for this masterwork, this penultimate expression, this marvel-ous creation, saying, "Really? That's as good as it gets?"

Then we walk out into the sun, and decide it's infinitely more interesting than what we just paid to see.

I think I get what he is saying here, but I don't find myself bored by experiencing great art. Perhaps he doesn't classify this film as "great" art". I guess having your expectations in line is probably the first step to not being bored or disappointed. When I see this movie on IMAX on Monday night (God willing) I don't expect to have it change my life or makes all my problems go away, but I do expect to marvel in the creative gifts of the hundreds of different people that collaborated to make this movie. When I observe this kind of artistic expression I find myself pointed to the ultimate Creative One and I find satisfaction in that. The finite creative expressions of humans point me to the infinite Creator. I don't think we have to disparage the former to see and worship the latter.

This line of thinking for reflecting theologically about movies certainly has it's limits. Can watching porn draw my attention to the beauty of God's ideals for sex? Certainly not. Should a movie be watched that seems to simply glorify violence or torture? Probably not. Decisions about what kinds of movies should be viewed need to be made with much prayerful discernment and wisdom. Perhaps the artistic bad will outweigh the good in Dark Knight. I guess I'll have to wait until Monday to see...

JUMP!!! (But make sure it's in tune when you do)

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:01:00 +0000

This is one of the funniest things I have seen in awhile.

Brant Hansen:

I laugh a lot, but not this hard in some time. Van Halen, LIVE, wrapping up their big show with "Jump", here. One problem: The synth runs at 48k instead of 44.1k. That means, try as Eddie might, he can't possibly get in tune with it. It gets better and better and better...

Cost-Benefit Analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:15:00 +0000

“It’s interesting that we’re more willing to do a cost-benefit analysis of having children than to do a cost-benefit analysis of eagerly participating in a culture of narcissism.”

- “Children and Happiness” | Alan Jacobs | The American Scene

(HT: ADIAPHORA)

I Find This Greatly Encouraging

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:31:00 +0000

(HT: Jared)

This Is Funny

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:59:00 +0000

Go to Google’s mainpage and type in: “How do I find Chuck Norris?”

Then click, "I’m feeling lucky".

(HT: B-Lo)

New Frontiers

noreply@blogger.com (Vitamin Z) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:44:00 +0000

Here is a new band that you might want to check out: New Frontiers. Think solid pop/alt-country/rock with a melancholy edge that you know I dig. If you like the Doves and Keane, I think you'll dig this.

You can listen to clips here on AmazonMP3 or on .