Ethics, Theology & Culture
For those of you in the Memphis area, I will be speaking at Bellevue Baptist Church on July 23 at 6:30 for their Women’s Ministry Girl Talk event (sorry, women only–except me). We will discuss how to engage the culture with biblical truth. I will note relevant current events and how to engage an unbelieving world. Hopefully you will find this beneficial.
For more information and to register, go to http://bellevue.org/upcomingspecialevents.
For those of you in the Greenville, SC area, I will be on the Knowing the Truth radio program Tuesday, April 2 from 11:00 am until 12:00 noon (EDT). Pastor Kevin Boling is the host of the program, and it is a live, call-in radio show. The main part of our discussion will be a response to Matthew Vines and his attempt to make a biblical argument supporting homosexuality.
I was interviewed by The Christian Post back in the fall for an article on this issue. I also published on series of articles on my website expanding my answers to Mr. Vines. In recent days, Vines has launched the Reformation Project, which is a “Bible-based, Christian non-profit organization that seeks to reform church teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity.” I take issue with Vines’ description of his organization as “Bible-based,” and this will be part of my discussion with Pastor Boling tomorrow.
If you live in South Carolina, you can listen to the program on AM 660 or 92.9 FM. If you are not in the listening area of those stations, you can stream the audio live or download the recording at www.knowingthetruth.org.
I am excited to announce that I have a new article that was just published in the Fall 2012 issue of the Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood addressing the challenges that homosexuality creates for gender roles. I would like to thank Denny Burk and the editors at JBMW for including my article in this issue.
My article deals with the intersection of homosexuality and biblical gender roles. I make the argument that homosexuality is not compatible with gender roles as they appear in Scripture. By application, then, support for homosexuality requires a redefinition of gender roles. Here is a summary of my article from the introduction:
While much of the current debate has centered on gay rights and same-sex marriage, it is imperative to understand how the issue of homosexuality impacts a biblical understanding of gender roles. By its very nature of describing a relationship between two members of the same sex, homosexuality seems to make the question of gender roles irrelevant. Thus, there are vast challenges that homosexuality creates for a biblical discussion of gender roles. If believers are going to address these challenges both within the church and in the culture, they must first understand the impact that homosexuality has on a complementarian view of the sexes. Homosexuality denies the God-ordained nature of gender roles as revealed in Scripture by rejecting the complementary nature of sex, by subverting the complementary nature of marriage, and by distorting the complementary nature of the Christ-church relationship.
You can view and download the entire issue of the journal at the website of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood at www.cbmw.org.
_________________________
Evan Lenow, “The Challenge of Homosexuality for Gender Roles,” The Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood 17 (Fall 2012), 28-35.
It’s not a shock to anyone who knows me that I am a Texas Rangers fan. However, this post is a little off the beaten path for me.
I noticed for the first time during last season’s MLB playoffs that I could not log in to Twitter or Facebook during the Rangers game. I blamed it on my 3 year old iPhone. Well now I know the real answer with data to back it up.
CNN Money posted an article about why you can’t get wireless service at sports games. With help from app maker SwayMarkets, we now have research showing the best and worst times to access your cellular data service during a Major League Baseball game.
Here’s some research from the article:
The company’s founders went to Fenway Park on May 31 to catch a Red Sox-Tigers baseball game, armed with iPhones on three different wireless phone networks: AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. Using SwayMarkets’ CarrierCompare software, they constantly pinged the various providers’ networks to measure their speed and response times.
The results were revealing. And very, very bad.
Sprint (S, Fortune 500) and especially Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) became so overwhelmed that their wireless networks were practically unusable throughout most of the game. Verizon actually had several network failures during the game, meaning download requests simply weren’t able to go through.
AT&T’s (T, Fortune 500) network was the only one that worked from start to finish, but its performance was still dreadful. Download speeds during the baseball game dropped to a third of what they were just minutes before and after the game. Refreshing Twitter or Facebook, which took about 6 seconds before the game’s start, took more than 20 seconds at the worst points and sometimes failed outright.
The most interesting information in the article relates to the times that service became the most dreadful. Since the researchers went to a Red Sox-Tigers game at Fenway Park, much of it had to do with how well the Red Sox were playing.
Network performance on all three carriers fell through the floor as people filed into their seats just before the 7:10 p.m. start time. They were texting, calling, uploading photos to social networks — everything you’d expect people to do when there’s not much going on.
Then, as people got into the game, they used their phones less and service got progressively better. The Red Sox quickly took the lead in the second, and lost it in the third. (That’s not surprising if you’ve been following the Sox this year).
In the bottom of the third inning, just after the Red Sox tied it up again, Tigers catcher Alex Avila took a foul tip off his facemask, knocking him out of the game.
During the extended injury timeout, people flocked to their phones, and service slowed to a crawl. The speeds on AT&T’s network plummeted to less than half its gametime average. Verizon and Sprint’s networks virtually crashed, with speeds sometimes falling below 100 kilobits per second. If you’re older than 25, think about dial-up modem speeds. That’ll give you an idea of how slow the wireless networks were.
As play resumed, network quality quickly bounced back from “dreadful” to “poor.”
But when the seventh inning stretch hit, people went right back to their phones, and wireless service quality plunged. A pitching change one batter into the bottom of the seventh led to another short bout of degraded service.
Detroit scored another run in the top of the eighth, gaining a two-run edge over the Sox, and many of the Fenway faithful started to lose hope. As they filed out, service dramatically improved.
After the Tigers scored another two runs in the top of the ninth inning, taking a 7-3 lead and thoroughly dispiriting the remaining fans, service almost returned to normal.
Tonight I’ll be spending a few hours with 45,000 of my closest friends at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a tweet or text out a time or two, but it might be touch and go, especially if Josh Hamilton crushes his 27th homer into the upper homerun porch. Since Rangers fans are more loyal than BoSox fans, we won’t leave the stands early no matter what the score. However, I fully expect to see the Rangers win, and I’ll tweet once I am safely back at the house.
Go Rangers!
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram published a nice article on yesterday’s grand opening of the new MacGorman Chapel on the Fort Worth campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The article was accompanied by a front page photo and description. It was a wonderful day of worship and celebration at the chapel yesterday. I had the privilege of singing with the Birchman Baptist Church choir in the morning worship service (If you look closely in the picture of the choir on the Star-Telegram website, you can even see me). Students, faculty, staff, and visitors brought life and vitality to the dedication service through their worship of our Savior.
For those of you unaware of the new chapel on our campus, it is a 3,500-seat auditorium that will serve as the location for our regular chapel services, graduations, and other campus events. It is also available to be rented by organizations. In a couple of weeks, we will hold our first indoor graduation on campus in 34 years. In the summer, it will be the location of our Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit.
These are exciting times at SWBTS, and I am thankful to be here.
_________________________
Terry Evans, “Fort Worth seminary opens 3,500-seat concert hall,” Star-Telegram, December 2, 2011.
Photo Credit: Star-Telegram/Joyce Marshall
Ethics as Worship 