
Mark Driscoll writes a good article for The Washington Post on American manhood. There are a lot of points that resonate; it is worth the read.
"Steven Spielberg's character E.T. is, I think, a genuine Christ figure: recall the themes of preexistence, growth, teaching, miracle, healing, death, resurrection, and ascension. Spielberg denied this parallel, but in my view it is objectively there, even if Spielberg was unconscious of it. The reason is that the human mind has a need for the gospel like that of the New Testament. Those who don't accept the gospel often instinctively give to their idolatrous inventions powers parallel to those of Christ."
---John Frame (P&R 2008) 902
"If we are obligated to do something, there will be a biblical command to that effect. If there is no biblical command , there is no obligation. Once we have obeyed all those specific commands, we might imagine, we will be right with God. So it might be possible to codify our obligations fairly concisely. But a number of incidents recorded in the Bible discourage such a project."
"Were these men ethically obligated to perform this action? One looks in vain for any text of the Torah or elsewhere in Scripture that commands such a thing."
"The same question can be asked about the widow in Mark 12:44 who gave two small coins, all that she had, to the temple treasury. The law mandated only a tithe. Was she, then, performing a work of supererogation, doing more than the law requires, adding to the work of God? Or was she doing something she was not actually obligated to do?"3. Barnabas selling his property and giving it to the church, see Acts 4:37.
" Moral heroism is an obligation. Because overall obligation is to be like Jesus: to love as he did (John 13:34-35; 1 John 4:9-12) in his most extreme sacrifice, and to serve others as he served us (Mark 10:45).
---John M. Frame Doctrine of the Christian Life (P&R 2008) 196-199
"Part of the problem is that modern people have lost touch with the supernatural and preternatural. They have become skeptical of any world or any beings beyond those that are detectable by our senses. Christians believe in God, But they have absorbed enough of the antisupernaturalism of modern culture that belief in angels seems foreign to them. It seems that belief in God is hard enough. Why add further difficulty by bringing angels into it? And if God is sovereign, what need do we have for preternatural beings? God is the one who judges and blesses us, sometimes in extraordinary ways. Why are angels important?But Scripture itself mentions angels over three hundred times. This suggest that we need to take angels into account in our ethical decisions. Being a modern person myself, I don't pretend to have gotten very deeply into the doctrine of angels, but I would cautiously venture the following thoughts."The main ideas are as follows:1. "The doctrine of angels rebukes the smallness and impersonalism of our cosmology."2. "Angels participate in kingdom warfare. The main point here is that we should not base either our hopes or our fears on the empirical situation alone."3. " Angels are witnesses to human salvation. Although angels participate in the redemptive drama, there is another sense in which they are spectators rather than participants. Redemption doesn't extend to them." He goes on to say, "It is our privilege to teach the angels by our words and life."4. "The doctrine of angels is a measure of the greatness of our salvation in Christ, for salvation lifts us above the angels."See Hebrews 2:9 and the implications of the church sharing in Christ's exaltation.---John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life (P&R 2008) 253-256
"The movement in the 1970s ad 1980s toward greater Christian involvement in social issues was spearheaded, not by Reformed amils and postmils, but by Arminian premils like Jerry Falwell and Pat Roberson. This is an embarrassment for us reformed people, who like to think that we have a corner on Christian political thought and action, and tend to look down our noses at "fundamentalists" for their lack of a "full-orbed Christian world-and- life view." Of course, fundamentalists like Falwell and Robertson may have been influenced , at a third or fourth hand, by Reformed people like Rousas J. Rushdoony, Gary North, and Francis Schaeffer. But it was the evangelical premils who took the lead in the actual movements for social change, and we should give them credit. Here we see another reason why the church should reexamine its divisions. Full implementation of Christianity in out time requires the gifts given to people in all Christian traditions."
---John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life (P&R 2008), 280