Articles on Parenting & Family
The Therapeutic Nation: It’s All About Parents
I promote my books as much as I can because I’m a nobody with no platform to speak of, so if I don’t do it, no one else will. Yes, I know, ontologically before God I am not a “nobody,” but you know what I mean. Getting attention without “a name” isn’t easy. I feel...
Christianity and Our Generational Faith
Even as a young man without children at the time, one of the things that attracted me to Reformed theology was that it was specifically a generational faith. For the first five years of my Christian life I was by default a Baptist, as are most Evangelical or...
Anti-Natalism, Secularism, and The New Definition of Dystopia
Imagine a world without children. Now that would be a dystopia! It’s increasingly happening in countries throughout the world. I wrote a piece recently about the demographic apocalypse currently enveloping the world and one British woman’s choice to wait too long...
Persuasive Christian Parent: Teach Your Children Christianity is True!
If you want to be a persuasive Christian parent, and you want your children’s faith to endure for their entire lives, teach them Christianity is true. It’s pretty simple, actually, but it takes work. I’ll justify that briefly below, but having written a book about...
Education and the Myth of Neutrality
I use the phrase, “the myth of neutrality” here from time to time when addressing issues related to culture and politics. It also very much has to do with how we educate our children in America. This myth is the fruit of the secularism bequeathed to us by the...
Wisdom on Marriage from Luther and Mangalwadi
Having officially been married to my wife Sarah for 36 years on August 15, I think I know a thing or two about the institution, and when I read the thoughts on marriage by these two men of God they instantly become fodder for a blog post. It so happens when I went to...
Three Cheers for Patriarchy! And “Why Sally Can’t Preach”
Since my last post was on the hot topic of Christian nationalism, I figured I’d follow it up with something about another "controversial" topic, patriarchy. I love thinking about the heads exploding at that title! It’s like throwing holy water on a vampire to some...
My Post-Mill Conference Experience and the Children
If you had told me a year ago that I would be attending a conference on Theonomy & Postmillennialism I would have told you to say no to drugs. But there I was in Georgetown, Texas last weekend with about 500 other people who seem to also have drunk the post-mill...
Our Granddaughter Eleanor Geline Lewis Was Baptized Today!
When I was born-again a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, by default I became a baptist. I was born and raised a Catholic and so baptized as an infant, but born-agains don’t do infant baptism, so I got re-baptized. It made sense to me at the time because...
The Beginning of Christian Nationalism: The Family
Christians throughout history have had different ways of contending with this fallen world. On one end of the spectrum, you might have monks who completely isolate themselves from the world, while on the other millenarian apocalyptic fanatics who mean to usher in the...
Another Berlin Wall Falls: Roe v. Wade Overturned
It looks like we’ve had another Berlin Wall moment in Western culture with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade yesterday in its Dobbs v. Jackson decision. In the 1980s there were very few people who took Ronald Reagan’s words to tear down the Wall...
The Number One Responsibility of Christian Parents Raising Kids in a Secular Age
I had a wonderful experience, and privilege, last week, of being on a podcast with a couple British lads discussing my international best seller, The Persuasive Christian Parent (I'll do another post about the discussion, great fun). In the podcasts I do, I always...
And They Said It Wouldn’t Last: Happy 34th To My Bride!
Instead of giving my wife flowers or taking her out to a nice dinner for this the 34th anniversary of our marriage, I thought I'd give her a blog post. It's easier, and less expensive. Not to mention that it will last longer. It's this kind of thoughtfulness that has...
Marx is Smiling: On The Importance of Fathers
Somebody told me there is this thing called Father's Day, and I couldn't believe I actually get my own day! If greeting card companies were going to make up a day in which to sell a lot of greeting cards, having a day for fathers is a mighty fine way to do it. They...
Act Like Men! It’s Right from the Bible
We know in this excessively "woke" age we live in that the Bible is terribly regressive, and of course we Neanderthal's wouldn't have it any other way. One thing we know that our overly-educated elite refuse to admit, is that there is a biological, psychological, and...
A Response to The Misunderstanding of My Critics, Part 3
This will be my final word in writing about the issues introduced on my book page, and discussed on Take 1, and Take 2. I'm kind of proud that I've been able to get Calvinists and Arminians to agree about something regarding salvation. In my experience discussing...
A Response to The Misunderstanding of My Critics, Part 2
In my first post I addressed part of this misunderstanding, that "there is absolutely no correlation between faithful (or reasonably faithful) work in this with the outcome of personal faith." The "work" is a reference to raising our children in the faith. The concern...
Persuasive Christian Parenting: A Q&A with Mike D’Virgilio
When we lived in Illinois we had gone to a church for a number of years that was large and typically Evangelical, but not Reformed. That was frustrating for me, a couple years before we left for Florida I started looking for a church that preached the doctrines of...
If We Want to Win the Culture War, Have More Kids!
It's kind of apparent that we are in a culture war. Make no mistake, conservative Christians didn't start it, but we can't escape it. Christianity had a great run in Western civilization as the default view of reality, over 1,500 years! That, of course, is no longer...
As Our Son (Doesn’t) Goes Off to College, I Am Confident his Faith will Endure and Thrive
I’d been waiting to write a post about our youngest son going off to college, but because of a ridiculous overreaction to a certain virus he’s not going.
Watch Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters” With Your Kids!
Well, probably teenager kids. It's Woody Allen, after all. My wife and I recently re-watched Hannah and Her Sisters with our two sons (our daughter wasn't available; she's married), and it was an incredibly wonderful apologetics moment. I've argued that a secular...
Religious Parenting Best Practices: What About Truth?
I recently came across an article at The Public Discourse called "The Best Practices—and Benefits—of Religious Parenting." Given I have some interest in the topic, I was curious to see what these best practices might be. We learn that religion in general has positive...
A New Guitar, and Why My Son Knows God is Real
One of the easiest ways to persuade our children that God is real is the evidence of his incredible, amazing, mind-blowing design in nature. Paul tells us in Romans 1 that "God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being...
No Christian Young People, Sex Before Marriage it NOT Okay
I had an experience recently with a Christian young man who shall remain nameless, and it inspired a blog post. He looked me in the eye (which I respected) and told me that it's okay for Christians to have sex before marriage. I was taken aback, and asked him why he...
“The Gift of Children”: Children are Not a Choice!
It probably won't be a surprise to anyone that an author of a book on parenting is a big fan of kids, and of families having lots of them, especially Christian families. As we drove up to our church on Sunday, a young family got out of a car in front of us, and they...
Creation and the Justified Confidence we can Build In our Children an Enduring Faith
My youngest, our 17 year-old son, came to me the other day and said I had to watch the beginning of this short video: The mechanism that allows human beings to hear is insanely complex. Either we are incredibly lucky, or that mechanism was created by an all powerful,...
40 Days for Life: Don’t Eat the Babies, Save the Babies!!!
In case you are not aware where "Eat the babies" came from, watch this priceless satire of the leftists' absurd obsession with "climate change": The woman was a plant at an AOC townhall, and she appears distraught at the "three months" we have before "climate change"...
Another Way to Look at The Bullies In Our Lives
Nobody likes a bully. I had my fair share growing up, and would much prefer life without them. The problem is that there can be no life without bullies because we live in a fallen world in a fallen body among fallen, sinful people. On this side of eternity, there will...
What Parents and their Children Can Learn from the Train Wreck of Amy Winehouse’s Life
If you're at all familiar with popular music in the last decade or two you surely know of Amy Winehouse. This young talent died of alcohol poisoning in July of 2011 at the ripe old age of 27, joining the pantheon of young musicians who've died before they got old. My...
Joshua Harris: You Can’t Escape The Fall
A lot of Internet ink has been spilled about author/pastor, Joshua Harris, so I figured I might as well add to the torrent. And given my bent, I'll orient it toward apologetics. Harris recently decided to jettison the ideas in a book he wrote about sexual purity and...
Acts 2:37-41 – Repent and Be Baptized: “The promise is for you and your children . . .”
At my other blog I'm writing my way through the Bible, one of the best things I've ever done, and something I highly recomend for anyone who loves Scripture and likes to write. The last couple mornings I've been focused on this passage in Acts, and I make the case...
The Cure for Loneliness: “Be Fruitful And Multiply”
When God created the universe and put this little ball in space in the metaphorical middle of it, he created these things, us, we call human beings. After he created man, "male and female he created them," we read: God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and...
The Wedding Supper of the Lamb, and My Daughter’s Wedding
We had the incredible privilege last weekend of enduring the traumatic experience of hosting our daughter's wedding. Until one actually does such a thing, you have no idea the insanity of such an undertaking, but the blessings and memories among the all the craziness...
Now I lay me down to sleep . . . Teaching Death to our Children
I grew up as I think of it as a typical Catholic of the 60s and 70s. We attended Mass every Sunday, I went to Catechism, and did my first Communion and Confirmation. Otherwise, our faith was not particularly relevant to the rest of our lives. But my mother did pray...
Toxic Masculinity: Teaching Your Boys To Become Men
All the secular left-wing isms of our day (feminism, progressivism, liberalism, cultural Marxism, secularism, etc.) have culminated in a phrase so oxymoronic it must have been invented by Satan himself: "toxic masculinity." To be masculine in the fevered, relativistic...
A Christian Case for the Necessity of Classical Education – Take 4: Why We Need It and Now
Classical education as I've described it in previous posts is the antidote to secular progressive education. Too many Christians think that if they add religious words and concepts onto the progressive education model, that will make all the difference. It's better...
A Christian Case for the Necessity of Classical Education – Take 3: What It Is
In my first post on classical education I explored modern progressive education, and why it's a disaster. In my second, I shared how I came to not only appreciate classical education, but have become an evangelist for it. Here I want to give a brief introduction to...
A Christian Case for the Necessity of Classical Education – Take 2: My Epiphany
In my previous post, Take 1, I didn't relate that I was late getting on the classical education bandwagon. I've always been a fan of the liberal arts, the humanities and such, but the term "classical education" meant little to me even into my 50th year. I was so...
A Christian Case for the Necessity of Classical Education – Take 1: Progressive Education
That's actually another book in my brain, and one I think needs to be written (and there are plenty already out there, but I may have something unique to add to the conversation; we'll see . . .), but right now a blog post, or two, is the best I can do. I was inspired...
Christians: Have more kids!!!
When I saw the announcement of our latest Supreme Court Justice nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, I couldn't help notice that this practicing Catholic family had only two kids, daughters. As precious and cute as they were, I wondered why only two. Not too many years past,...
Americans Read an Average of 16.8 Minutes Per Day; Spend 166.2 Minutes Watching TV
One of my apologetic strategies for my children has been to annoy them, and if you ask them they will tell you I'm really good at it. Of course since the annoying has a purpose, they are willing to endure the annoyance of it all, most of the time. One thing I'm really...
There’s Nothing “Wrong”: It’s Called Life! Or The Curse and the Christian Life
Do you have a bad attitude? Do your kids have bad attitudes? If you and/or they do, I know why: wrong or faulty expectations. It's probably hard to overestimate how many people suffer from a bad attitude (sometimes it's called depression or anxiety or frustration or...
The Growth of the “Nones” Is No Threat to Our Kids Faith
The title of a recent piece at Scientific American tells us the "Nones" juggernaut continues: College Freshmen Are Less Religious Than Ever: Data from a nationwide survey shows students who list their affiliation as "none" has skyrocketed "Nones" are people who when...
Hey, Bill Nye, Fake Science Guy, There Are No “Extra Kids”
Who is this Bill Nye guy anyway? I only became aware of him recently, but it seems he's a popular "science educator." He got his moniker, "Bill Nye the Science Guy" from a PBS children's science show in the 90s, and we know that anything that has the word "science"...
God To His Exiles, Strangers in a Strange Land – Do Not Decrease!
In my previous post I made the argument that, for Christians, having children is not an option. Just this morning I was reading Jeremiah and discovered God actually agrees with me! I'll admit, though, that I did get the idea from him first. The book of Jeremiah is a...
Christians: Having Children Is Not an Option
No, I haven't turned into a Catholic, but Catholic teaching regarding having children is something Evangelicals should embrace. I thought of this when I read a piece recently by John Stonestreet at Breakpoint: "Fur Babies:Pets, Children, and the Triumph of...
The Importance of the Family Mirrored in the Trinity
Since the Enlightenment and the drive by Western cultural elites to make secularism the default plausibility structure of reality, the family has been under attack. It may not have appeared this way to the average mom and dad in the street until the 1960s, but many...
God and the Evidence Agree: Good Old Nuclear Family Still Best
Unless you are wedded, no pun intended, to a left-wing ideological agenda you know intuitively that the traditional family of a married mother and father with children works best for the children. This is simply indisputable, and we can add more recently released...
Musician Sir the Baptist: I’m Anti-Religion, Not Anti-God
There is much talk in American culture about young Christians going off to college or into life and abandoning their faith. I'm sure there are many reasons why this is so, but I think one consistent reason is that teenagers see their parents and people in church live...
Polyamory for All!
The gay "marriage" ruling, the gift that keeps on giving. As one headline read: "‘Sister Wives’ family points to same-sex marriage cases in arguing against Utah polygamy ban." Of course they would, and they would be perfectly logical to do so. In fact, the Obergefell...
Notable Quotation
We are relearning that marriage is not optional. The evidence started piling up in 1965 with Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report on the breakdown of the African-American family. In 2012, Charles Murray took us on a walk through Fishtown where we met a white (often...