The God of love and peace be with you on this fine day.

There’s quite an extensive list of Kindle deals to check out today.
Logos users have one more chance to vote for a winner in March Matchups.
(Yesterday on the blog: When “All Things” Don’t Feel So Good)
To Ben on World Down Syndrome Day
I loved Andrea’s tribute to Ben on World Down Syndrome Day. “You stay the same, but you are constantly changing others. Your positive influence on people cannot be overstated. You, in your weakness, have had a greater impact on your world than many of us with advanced degrees and strong skill sets.”
Every Story needs Tension
Every good story needs some tension to be interesting and fulfilling. But as Peter Muturi asks, “Why is it then that we like our stories to be flat? To get all our prayers answered the way we want, when we want and how we want them. To move from point A to Z on a straight line.”
Expressive Individualism in the Church
The new issue of the 9Marks Journal is all about expressive individualism. There are lots of good articles and reviews to read!
Please Waste Some of Your Prayers
George Sinclair encourages you to regularly “waste” your prayers on those you deem unlikely to repent and believe.
That Bible Book You Don’t Like and What to Do About It
“Here’s a question you may not be asked very often: what’s your least favorite book of the Bible? Which book do you avoid reading, or skim over lightly when it shows up in your Bible reading plan? Which book confuses you, frustrates you, or (let’s be honest) bores you?” This article tells you what to do about it.
Do blogs still matter?
Aaron Armstrong: “But blogs… they don’t matter anymore. Or at least we don’t think they do. They’re slow; unlike social media, they take you out of the moment. You can’t have an instant reaction on a blog. They take a lot of work. They require a kind of thoughtfulness, at least in theory, the kind that plays against all the algorithms.”
Flashback: 8 Ways God Turns Temptations to Blessings
The more furiously Satan tempts, the more fervently the saint prays. A running deer sprints as soon as it discerns the presence of the hunter and, in the same way, the soul that comes under fire from Satan’s darts runs faster to the throne of grace.

Wise is that Christian parent who begins every morning with the word of God and fervent prayer. —Theodore Cuyler

If there is any word used to describe masculinity in our day, any adjective commonly used to modify it, it is almost invariably “toxic.” We hear almost nothing of positive masculinity or healthy masculinity. But we hear endlessly of its toxicity. It would not be wrong to conclude that society really has no vision for a masculinity that is noble and good (unless it is essentially indistinguishable from femininity). It would not be wrong to conclude that society considers masculinity one of the great problems that human progress must overcome.

Nancy Pearcey has many thoughts on this subject and her response is the cleverly titled The Toxic War on Masculinity. For her great concern is not the toxicity of masculinity itself, but the toxicity of the war against it.
It’s not like Pearcey is writing from some Utopia in which she has only ever seen positive examples of masculinity in action. To the contrary, she grew up in a home with a father who was cruel to his family. She was subjected to an extremely harmful form of masculinity that was abusive toward her and her siblings. It was largely because of the contrast between her dad in public (moral, upright, religious) and her dad in private (cruel, unjust, violent) that she abandoned her religious upbringing when she was a teen, turning instead of the writings of the feminist movement. It was only when she stumbled upon L’Abri and the ministry of Francis Schaeffer that she recommitted to the Christian faith and began the long process of healing.
Through Christian eyes, she was able to see the issues with the feminism that had once been attractive to her. And with those same Christian eyes she was able to see that abuse exists within the church and is sometimes even tolerated by it. But now she could look to Scripture to see that the problem is not with masculinity itself, but with its distorted forms. What God has created is good and must be celebrated. But it must also be fostered and protected, not allowed to be twisted and perverted.
Her book is an attempt to understand the God-given pattern for men and to define a truly healthy masculinity. But it goes beyond that to consider how Western culture lost its vision for a healthy masculinity and to propose how it can be recovered. Taking a “show, don’t tell” approach, she blends history and sociology with personal stories and outside examples. It makes for a powerful and compelling package.
In the book’s first part, she dispels some false assumptions to show that while most people believe that conservative Christian men are patriarchal and domineering, studies continue to disprove this. To the contrary, Christian men who are truly committed to their faith (in contrast to those who attend church merely out of tradition or for the sake of appearances) have very low rates of divorce and domestic violence. She takes this as proof that the Christian message has power to help men thrive as husbands and fathers.
In the second part, which constitutes the bulk of the book’s content, she examines notions of masculinity and how they have changed over time. She travels through major periods of history to show how society changed the ways men function in the world, workplace, church, and home. She explains how a biblical understanding of masculinity was slowly but surely replaced by a secular one.
In part three, she shows that many people who claim to be Christians, but who are only nominally so, exhibit some of the worst and most toxic behaviors of all. These nominal people skew the statistics to make people think Christianity itself produces a toxic form of masculinity when, in reality, that tends to be men who embrace terms like headship and submission, but who understand them through a secular lens of power and control. Then, at the end of it all, she suggests some ways forward—some solutions to the crisis of masculinity within the church.
It makes for a compelling book and one that serves its purpose. Well-researched and exhaustively documented, well-written and endorsed by a diverse collection of authors, I expect that it will be widely-read and that it will help spark many good conversations within the Christian world. Best of all, I hope it will help provide a positive, hopeful, biblical vision for masculinity.
Publishers are sometimes known to change the release dates for their books. I read The Toxic War on Masculinity with the understanding that it was to be released at the end of April. It wasn’t until I had read it and begun to write a review that I saw its release date had been changed to June. That means that the manuscript is still prone to change, and hence I have not quoted from it or interacted with it too deeply. So for the time being, I will leave you with this overview and hope that it interests you. And that perhaps it will convince you to pre-order the book so you can read it for yourself.
Buy from Amazon

I have said it before: gossip is a “respectable sin” among Reformed Christians. The Christian world, and perhaps especially the Reformed Christian world, is absolutely chockablock with gossip. From the pulpit to the pew, from the conference green room to the conference hallways, gossip is rampant. It is whispered in the name of important information and blogged in the name of discernment—both ways of dressing it up in respectable apparel. But if it isn’t true and it isn’t edifying and it isn’t necessary, it is gossip. Truly, gossip may be the besetting sin of this movement and a major contributor to her current or coming collapse.(1)

I don’t want to make it sound as if I am immune to this sin or that I’ve never participated in it. In fact, recent experiences in my life have shown how quick I am to initiate conversations that soon tip into gossip and how slow I am to redirect conversations initiated by others that also dwell on what is little better than tittle-tattle. I write to myself as much as anyone else.
If you love the Reformed faith, which is to say, if you value Reformed doctrine, then I offer this exhortation: Make it your goal to talk about Jesus, not celebrities. Make it your goal to tell about the perfections of the Savior more than the failures of the famous. Make it your goal to describe what God has done, not what Christian personalities have failed to do.
This is not to say that there are no circumstances in which it is appropriate to discuss current events and even the foibles and failures of those people who rise and fall within this corner of the Christian world. Sometimes such conversations can be good and necessary, provided they are carried out within the bounds of Christian character and that they go no further than the established facts. Paul named names when appropriate and I’m sure he sometimes gathered his protégés around himself to discuss what had gone wrong with Demas or Hymenaeus or Alexander and what they could learn from those who had first followed and then fallen away.
But a moment’s introspection should show that the great majority of our conversations about people are neither helpful nor edifying, neither concerned with truth nor spoken in love. The great majority of our conversations that revolve around those who have stumbled or fallen are speculative at best and slanderous at worst. The great majority of what has come from our lips and what has come to our ears is unnecessary and unprofitable. I am certain this is true of you because it’s true of me and true even of so many of the people we look up to. (Trust me—I’ve been around our heroes and I can attest from personal experience that they are as prone to this as any of us.)
I have often wished I could remove from my mind all the evil things I have heard about others—things that were whispered in my ear at a conference or delivered as a message into my inbox, but things I now associate with those individuals. I have often wished that person hadn’t told me, “I know his wife and she says he has an anger problem,” or “I spent time at her house and you should see the size of it.” I have often wished I could obliterate all those pieces of information that could be true or untrue, accurate or pure fiction. I have often wished I had asked that person to just stop, that I had had the strength of character to resist hearing it. And, of course, I have often wished that I myself had only ever spoken what was true, what was necessary, what was genuinely meant to serve Christ’s cause.
Though this movement was once defined by its doctrine, I fear it is increasingly defined by its celebrities. So now, rather than aligning with truth we align with people. This being the case, to participate in Reformed Christianity is to discuss personalities rather than theology. Need proof? When was the last time you had a conversation about the five points? But on the other hand, when was the last time you spoke about that guy who was accused of that transgression? When was the last time you marveled about the facts of the five solas? But then when was the last time you speculated about that pastor who has fallen under his church’s discipline? This kind of gossip is a blight on our theological tradition and a reason many abandon it. There are many who reject Reformed theology not because of its doctrines but because of its adherents—because of you and me and the way we blather on about people, people, people.
We will be a blessing to the church if instead of spending our time discussing the failures of celebrities we spend it going deeper into those precious truths that undergird it. We will be a blessing to the world around us if instead of obsessing about people we fix our hearts on Christ. So take this as my call to you and to me and to all of us: Let’s stop the gossip. Let’s stop the gossip and instead make it our delight to speak about who our God is and about what our God has done.