Why Do Billionaires Want to Live Forever: Tim Challies begins a deep reflection with this question, “Why is it that billionaires always seem to want to live forever? Why is it that the 1% of the 1% almost always seem to veer from their core businesses into attempts to prolong their lives indefinitely?”
Why Mainstream Scholars often Differ with Evangelical Pastors on the Gospel: Having attended a mainline seminary, I resonated with George Sinclair’s reasoning here. Near the end of the post he shares, “There is a rich, thick, deep history and literature of Christian thought which shows not just the truth and reasonableness of miracles, but the importance of them for a wide, humane, and beautiful understanding of the world—one which leads to human flourishing.”
Fertility is Not a Disease: D Eaton writes, “This desire to have sexual pleasure without constraint has culture suppressing the truth of not only biblical revelation but also science. To justify the extermination of the child, we must classify the child in the womb as either not a human in its natural course of existence or not alive. It is impossible to deny either scientifically, yet logic and truth must be sacrificed on the altar of sexual autonomy.”
The Last Gift My Father Gave Me: This is an excellent piece from Mike Cosper. He shares how his father’s death allowed him to finally experience the gift of grief.
Your Money Will Trick You: Trevin Wax reminds us, “Jesus says ‘Watch out!’ and ‘Be on guard’ as if there’s a silent, stealthy enemy creeping up on an unsuspecting person, ready to pounce. We like to think of wealth and possessions as inanimate objects, helpful to us if we use them correctly, but basically neutral.”

1. 5 Dangers of Being Deprived of an Involved Father: Eric Geiger condenses 55 findings of researchers. He begins with two physical impacts: "Children who suffer the loss of a father have, by the age of nine, a 14% reduction in telomere length – the most reliable predictors of life expectancy. The more frequently a father visits the hospital of an infant who is born prematurely, the more quickly the infant is released from the hospital."

2. To Spank or Not to Spank: My friend Benjamin Vrbicek with a healthy and nuanced perspective on the topic: " Yet this post isn’t part of my crusade to get you to spank your children. I’ve never written about this before and don’t plan to do it again. I certainly don’t want to be another polemical voice in the already overly opinionated milieu of Christian child-rearing. Instead, I’d like to talk about how parents can spank their children rightly." All 13 of his nuggets are worth considering.

3. Why to Take Your Vacation: Ben Healy reports on the positive benefits of taking vacation and the negative impact of viewing other people's vacations. I don't think that not sharing vacation photos is the solution to the envy issue, but it's worth considering. Two of the positive benefits are: "From 1974 to 2004, those men who took at least three weeks of vacation were 37 percent less likely to die than those who took fewer weeks off... Vacation can yield other benefits, too: People who took all or most of their paid vacation time to travel were more likely than others to report a recent raise or bonus."

4. Teaching Our Daughters Positive Self-Talk: Tracy Lane considers how we ought to protect our daughters from the natural tendency of negative self-talk. She says, " I don’t want criticizing our looks or our bodies to be a natural inclination. Instead, I want the truth of who God made us to be, to become the natural overflow that we believe about ourselves."

5. Foster Care and the Fear of "Getting Too Attached": Jason Johnson considers perhaps the biggest barrier to foster care, that it will be too hard because you will get too attached and concludes, "Yet despite all of that, over and over I've found the remarkable stories of those who also have this pain branded into their souls all consistently on some level sound the same - the goodbye was devastating and the grief is hard. Extremely hard. But so, so worth it. No question. These kids are worth it."

This Week's Recommendations

Father's Day Recommendations