Following-up on his essay on women in combat, John Piper concurs with the exhortation that we not minimize the sacrifice of the American women who have died in combat:

The exhortation is a good one that we not minimize the sacrifice of the American women who have died in combat, even if we think their presence on the front lines is a powerful commentary on the cowardice of our male military and political leaders. It is not a commentary on the cowardice of women. I do not commend women in combat. But I commend the sacrifices of love in a cause of truth and justice.
My whole position assumes that competencies and character are not the criteria for who fights the enemy. Women may be more courageous than men in any given situation. They may have nobler vision. They may be smarter. That is not the issue. What God has written on our hearts and designed for our survival and our joy is the issue. Manhood puts itself forward between the women and the enemy. That is part of what manhood means. That is who we are by God’s design. The courage of women will show itself in a hundred ways. But when a man is around, he will not exploit that courage to fight the battle where he belongs.

Alex and Brett Harris, having hosted a pre-screening of the movie Bella, post a bunch of links about it:

Brett and I had the honor of hosting a pre-release screening of Bella at an event in Salt Lake City last month. The small-budget film shocked the film world by taking the People’s Choice Award at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival last year. It is a powerful film on the true meaning of love, life, redemption, and family.
Written, produced, directed, and starring some of the most talented and Christ-focused young men we have met, Bella is a film that will reach the heart of any person, regardless of their political or religious views. What makes us so excited about this film is its potential to change hearts and save lives.

Writing for the most recent issue of World Magazine, John Piper starts a brief essay with these riveting words:

If I were the last man on the planet to think so, I would want the honor of saying no woman should go before me into combat to defend my country. A man who endorses women in combat is not pro-woman; he’s a wimp. He should be ashamed. For most of history, in most cultures, he would have been utterly scorned as a coward to promote such an idea. Part of the meaning of manhood as God created us is the sense of responsibility for the safety and welfare of our women.

Piper also points to an interesting new book by Kingsley Browne, a law professor at Wayne State University in Michigan: Co-ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn’t Fight the Nation’s Wars. Kingsley argues that evolutionary psychology is the best explanation for male reluctance to follow women into the battlefield. Piper responds:

If you leave God out, the perceived “hard-wiring” appears to be “evolutionary psychology.” If God is in the picture, it has other names. We call it “the work of the law written on their hearts” (Romans 2:15). We call it true manhood as God meant it to be.

While I find the biblical data to provide clear and compelling support for the complementarian view, I welcome broad support for complementarianism from scholars like Browne who, while blind to the wisdom from God’s special revelation, nevertheless witness the inescapable evidence from God’s general revelation. In the wisdom of God, men and women are “hard-wired” differently: equally glorious, divine image-bearers, but significantly different in a myriad of ways. God designed us this way so that His glory would shine all the brighter: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them…..and it was very good.” (Gen 1:27-31)

Rick Scarborough, President of Vision America, announces his support for Mike Huckabee:

“I have chosen to cast my support for Mike Huckabee, not because he is perfect, but because I believe him to be competent, and I have known him for more than 30 years. I have watched his life up close and from a distance for the entire time. We attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary together in Ft. Worth, 30-plus years ago. It was and still is the largest evangelical seminary in the world, and at the time there was significant liberalism on the campus.
Among the students, there were three basic groups: 1) Those that sat in awe of the professors and drank the “Kool-Aid” of the latest liberal theological fad, 2) Those who were conservative but who chose to go about their business of getting their education quietly with as little conflict as possible, and 3) Those who were there on a mission to prepare to change the world and for whom Christ was their first love and winning souls their passion.
Mike and I gravitated to each other because we hung with students in the third category.”

Commenting on the delay of many Christian leaders to come out in support of a particular candidate, Scarborough notes:

“Over and again I have been encouraged by men I admire to be patient. But I submit that our patience has moved beyond prudence, and we are increasingly being viewed as irrelevant. I would submit that our mistake has been that we have been looking for perfection in a candidate, which can only lead to frustration.”

I totally agree. But Scarborough also tackles a gnawing issue that I too have been wondering about: Where was Pastor Huckabee during the “conservative resurgence” in the Southern Baptist Convention?

“During those early years, the ‘conservative resurgence’ in the Southern Baptist Convention was taking place. Always the warrior, I jumped in with both feet, doing all I could to expose theological liberalism in our denomination. In 1989, I ran for president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. In the process, I ran an aggressive campaign, naming names of liberals in both churches and educational institutions. In the end, I was defeated by a significant margin. Mike took a different approach in Arkansas, which resulted in his being elected to the office of president of the Arkansas Baptist Convention.
Some have tried to diminish his conservative credentials because they say he was a “no-show” for the theological wars of the Southern Baptist Convention. While that charge is not completely accurate, his gentler approach certainly proved prudent in God’s wider agenda of providing a leader for the whole state of Arkansas. And after three doses of Bill and Hillary Clinton, people of both sides of the theological wars in the SBC, as well as people of many faiths in Arkansas, voted for and elected a Baptist pastor, Mike Huckabee, to state-wide office three times.”

Read the whole thing. You may not agree with everything Scarborough says, but I think his endorsement is significant. So is the fact that Huckabee raised more money in October than in July, August, and September combined.