The Tulip Driven Life

By: Thomas F. Booher Photo By: Jocelyn Booher I do not want to give anyone the impression that raising children in the Lord is an easy thing. It's a hard thing. It's fulfilling the call to take up your cross and follow Christ. It is entering into suffering for the sake of His Kingdom. It is bearing the curse of sin, because there is pain in child bearing, and even covenant children are wicked sinners.  This past year has been the hardest for me personally, and for my wife. We left all friends and family to come to a place we did not know. Then our first child, Peter, was born two months later. My sin and weaknesses became clearer against the contrast of being a father, husband, provider, and seminary student all at once. How do you handle everything when you do not have family to help you? How do you stay sane and patient with your child? When do you sleep when the baby cries all night? How do you study when you hear his screams and your wife's cries as she t...

By: Thomas F. Booher I suppose you have heard the Geerhardus Vos quote, "The best proof that God will never cease to love us lies in that He never began." This delightful truth is confirmed in Scripture, for God has loved us from everlasting (Jer. 31:3). His love for us never began. It has always been.  I was thinking about why God would choose me for salvation and not the guy down the street. I don't deserve salvation, he doesn't deserve salvation, yet I get grace and he gets justice. God Has mercy on some and hardens others (see Romans 9). Why was I the object of His love? Why was I made a guest? Why were you? I don't have the ultimate answer. It is a great, glorious mystery. The answer I can give you is little more than a sophisticated "because He always has loved you, and has never loved the reprobate." That may seem redundant, but I do think there is some insight to be seen here, and that insight goes back to the infra versus supral...

             By: Thomas F. Booher             I was a bit concerned that John Macleod’s Scottish Theology would be a hard and dry read given it was taken from lectures. There are some expected deviations and rabbit trails but most of them were interesting, and it was pleasant to read MacLeod’s Scottish way of putting things. This is essentially a summary of four hundred years of Scottish theology, from the time just before the Reformation to 1938 when the addresses were delivered. The goal will be to highlight some of the major changes in Scotland’s church history and see how they compare to our own history in the United States.             Prior to the Reformation Scotland was a free and independent nation, but aristocrats ran things poorly and the clergy itself was wealthy and immoral. Scotland’s freedom had the benefit of allo...

By: Thomas F. Booher  I am working on another book, which will tentatively bear the title of this post. Anyone interested in reading the whole book in advance and is willing to endorse it can do so. It would be much appreciated. That goes for anyone who is reformed, famous or not, married or single. Below is an excerpt from the book, containing part of chapter 1:  ​The hope I want to offer you, dear young and single Calvinist, is that God sets us free from having to compete with others in order to win the girl or catch the guy’s eye. Yes, the liberating truth of real Christian marriage is that in Christ you have been accepted as His bride, and because of that, you can be acceptable to any likeminded believer. ​What am I saying? Am I saying that we can cut through all the red tape of having to find the person with the perfect personality, gorgeous eyes, financial stability, similar sense of humor, and same career goals? ​In a word, yes. Yes. Because Chr...

By: Thomas F. Booher I was compelled to write this piece after reading this  article by none other than Russell Brand. The reason I was compelled is this: he bemoans the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman and blames drug laws for making drug addicts seem immoral  (drug addicts being victims of a disease that could "attack" anyone). Indeed, the subheading of his post claims that Hoffman is another victim of extremely stupid drug laws.  Why are drug laws stupid? To quote Brand, "If drugs are illegal people who use drugs are criminals. We have set our moral compass on this erroneous premise, and we have strayed so far off course that the landscape we now inhabit provides us with no solutions and greatly increases the problem."  Then Brand makes the wild assertion that those who make the drug laws are "deliberately creating the worst imaginable circumstances to maximise the harm caused by substance misuse."  The war on drugs is politically mot...

By: Thomas F. Booher             How is the Gold Become Dim chronicles the decline of the Presbyterian Church, U.S., from its original intention to be faithful to the Westminster Standards and Reformed faith. The book was first published when many conservatives in the denomination were enacting measures to form a Continuing Presbyterian Church, which would become known as the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). At its founding the Southern Presbyterian Church was committed to the spirituality of the church, but over time and due to war, it began to leave its true calling for a social gospel and political agenda which consequently lead the denomination away from its Constitution and the Word of God.             By the mid 1930’s the PCUS began to seriously depart from its distinctives (22). The Hay Watson Smith case of 1929 opened doors for the denomination to beco...

                                          By: Thomas Booher Seeking a Better Country Hart and Muether’s Seeking A Better Country was written for the 300 th anniversary of Presbyterianism in America. The book traces American Presbyterianism from its inception, and rather than writing a revisionist history to celebrate and glamorize the men who were integral to the formation and growth of Presbyterianism, the author’s wrote for accuracy and to critique, not wishing to allow Presbyterians to distort the reality of their heritage, but rather to see it with its warts and bruises intact. The authors believe that all denominations of American Presbyterianism can and should trace their roots to the first presbytery in America in 1706, the Presbytery of Philadelphia, and t...