Mike Wittmer

Category: Ethics

  • good sex

    Piles of grading have prevented me from blogging this week, but I did manage to finish this racy devotional for Our Daily Journey. It seems particularly appropriate given the winter storm that is burying us. If you’re single and snowed in, there’s always Scrabble. read > Proverbs 5:1-23 Drink water from your own well—share your…

  • the end of innocence

    Meredith Baxter played the mother on the television show, Family Ties, and today on Today she announced that, after three marriages and five children, she had decided that she would try being a lesbian. There goes what’s left of my childhood.  I don’t know what’s true anymore.  I suppose that next I’ll learn that Alex…

  • the manhattan project

    In light of our recent discussion about homosexual practice, I thought that you might want to know about and even sign The Manhattan Declaration, a joint statement from Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Christians (it was written by Robert George, Timothy George, and Chuck Colson) which defends our religious freedom to live by the teaching…

  • sexual sins

    Thank you for your provocative and helpful comments on my previous post (“three questions”) concerning homosexual practice.  I learned from you that churches and religious organizations are legally allowed to discriminate against practicing homosexuals and that no, there is no solid ground for a gay-friendly redefinition of marriage. I didn’t think I needed to say…

  • three questions

    Perhaps in part because of the recent election, the past week produced another round of finger wagging at conservatives who oppose gay marriage.  From the religion columnist of the Grand Rapids Press to Newsweek and Jon Stewart, we were reminded again that we are mean-spirited, afraid, stupid, and hopelessly out of date. I support the…

  • repentance isn’t funny

    I watched David Letterman a lot in the early 90’s when I was working third shift to put myself through seminary. I have only caught snippets of his show since then, and usually I was disappointed in what I saw. It seemed like Dave had stopped trying, and was content to make fun of how…

  • protestant tetzels

    In honor of the indulgence seller Johann Tetzel whose famous jingle “When the coin in the coffer clings a soul from purgatory springs” angered Martin Luther and helped to ignite the Reformation,  here is a N Y Times article which demonstrates that buying salvation never went away, it just went Protestant.  My friend and student…

  • adventures in fideism

    I am enjoying our first and perhaps last full week of summer in Michigan (every day sunny and in the 80s), so I am trying to get outdoors as much as possible. Since I don’t have a research assistant, and if I did he or she would be at the beach anyway, I’d like to…

  • keep a ring on it

    This week’s Time magazine has an insightful cover story, “Why Marriage Matters.” Along the way it claims that “There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers’ financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation…

  • time to sell

    I’m catching up on the reading that piled up while I was playing miniature golf in Myrtle Beach (and thinking that churches should implement their own version of Jungle Safari’s stroke limit—“You’ve been hitting this sermon for 30 minutes, Pastor Woods, and it’s obvious that this one isn’t going in the hole. A large group…