500 Handy Hints For Every Husband Order Printed Copy

Author: Bob Barnes
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About the Book

"500 Handy Hints for Every Husband" is a comprehensive guide packed with practical advice and tips for husbands. Written by Bob Barnes, this book covers a wide range of topics from communication and romance to finances and household chores, offering valuable insights to help husbands improve their marriage and become better partners. With simple and easy-to-follow suggestions, this book is a helpful resource for husbands looking to strengthen their relationship with their wives.

John Knox

"The sword of justice is God's, and if princes and rulers fail to use it, others may." He was a minister of the Christian gospel who advocated violent revolution. He was considered one of the most powerful preachers of his day, but only two of the hundreds of sermons he preached were ever published. He is a key figure in the formation of modern Scotland, yet there is only one monument erected to him in Scotland, and his grave lies beneath a parking lot. John Knox was indeed a man of many paradoxes, a Hebrew Jeremiah set down on Scottish soil. In a relentless campaign of fiery oratory, he sought to destroy what he felt was idolatry and to purify Scotland's religion. Taking up the cause John Knox was born around 1514, at Haddington, a small town south of Edinburgh. Around 1529 he entered the University of St. Andrews and went on to study theology. He was ordained in 1536, but became a notary, then a tutor to the sons of local lairds (lower ranking Scottish nobility). Dramatic events were unfolding in Scotland during Knox's youth. Many were angry with the Catholic church, which owned more than half the real estate and gathered an annual income of nearly 18 times that of the crown. Bishops and priests were often mere political appointments, and many never hid their immoral lives: the archbishop of St. Andrews, Cardinal Beaton, openly consorted with concubines and sired 10 children. The constant sea traffic between Scotland and Europe allowed Lutheran literature to be smuggled into the country. Church authorities were alarmed by this "heresy" and tried to suppress it. Patrick Hamilton, an outspoken Protestant convert, was burned at the stake in 1528. In the early 1540s, Knox came under the influence of converted reformers, and under the preaching of Thomas Guilliame, he joined them. Knox then became a bodyguard for the fiery Protestant preacher George Wishart, who was speaking throughout Scotland. In 1546, however, Beaton had Wishart arrested, tried, strangled, and burned. In response, a party of 16 Protestant nobles stormed the castle, assassinated Beaton, and mutilated his body. The castle was immediately put to siege by a fleet of French ships (Catholic France was an ally to Scotland). Though Knox was not privy to the murder, he did approve of it, and during a break in the siege, he joined the besieged party in the castle. During a Protestant service one Sunday, preacher John Rough spoke on the election of ministers, and publicly asked Knox to undertake the office of preacher. When the congregation confirmed the call, Knox was shaken and reduced to tears. He declined at first, but eventually submitted to what he felt was a divine call. It was a short-lived ministry. In 1547, after St. Andrews Castle had again been put under siege, it finally capitulated. Some of the occupants were imprisoned. Others, like Knox, were sent to the galleys as slaves. Traveling preacher Nineteen months passed before he and others were released. Knox spent the next five years in England, and his reputation for preaching quickly blossomed. But when Catholic Mary Tudor took the throne, Knox was forced to flee to France. He made his way to Geneva, where he met John Calvin. The French reformer described Knox as a "brother … laboring energetically for the faith." Knox for his part, was so impressed with Calvin's Geneva, he called it, "the most perfect school of Christ that was ever on earth since the days of the apostles." Knox traveled on to Frankfurt am Main, where he joined other Protestant refugees—and quickly became embroiled in controversy. The Protestants could not agree on an order of worship. Arguments became so heated that one group stormed out of a church one Sunday, refusing to worship in the same building as Knox. Back in Scotland, Protestants were redoubling their efforts, and congregations were forming all over the country. A group that came to be called "The Lords of the Congregation" vowed to make Protestantism the religion of the land. In 1555, they invited Knox to return to Scotland to inspire the reforming task. Knox spent nine months preaching extensively and persuasively in Scotland before he was forced to return to Geneva. Fiery blasts of the pen Away from his homeland again, he published some of his most controversial tracts: In his Admonition to England he virulently attacked the leaders who allowed Catholicism back in England. In The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women he argued that a female ruler (like English Queen Mary Tudor) was "most odious in the presence of God" and that she was "a traitoress and rebel against God." In his Appellations to the Nobility and Commonality of Scotland, he extended to ordinary people the right—indeed the duty—to rebel against unjust rulers. As he told Queen Mary of Scotland later, "The sword of justice is God's, and if princes and rulers fail to use it, others may." Knox returned to Scotland in 1559, and he again deployed his formidable preaching skills to increase Protestant militancy. Within days of his arrival, he preached a violent sermon at Perth against Catholic "idolatry," causing a riot. Altars were demolished, images smashed, and religious houses destroyed. In June, Knox was elected the minister of the Edinburgh church, where he continued to exhort and inspire. In his sermons, Knox typically spent half an hour calmly exegeting a biblical passage. Then as he applied the text to the Scottish situation, he became "active and vigorous" and would violently pound the pulpit. Said one note taker, "he made me so to grew [quake] and tremble, that I could not hold pen to write." The Lords of the Congregation militarily occupied more and more cities, so that finally, in the 1560 Treaty of Berwick, the English and French agreed to leave Scotland. (The English, now under Protestant Elizabeth I, had come to the aid of the Protestant Scots; the French were aiding the Catholic party). The future of Protestantism in Scotland was assured. The Parliament ordered Knox and five colleagues to write a Confession of Faith, the First Book of Discipline, and The Book of Common Order—all of which cast the Protestant faith of Scotland in a distinctly Calvinist and Presbyterian mode. Knox finished out his years as preacher of the Edinburgh church, helping shape the developing Protestantism in Scotland. During this time, he wrote his History of the Reformation of Religion in Scotland. Though he remains a paradox to many, Knox was clearly a man of great courage: one man standing before Knox's open grave said, "Here lies a man who neither flattered nor feared any flesh." Knox's legacy is large: his spiritual progeny includes some 750,000 Presbyterians in Scotland, 3 million in the United States, and many millions more worldwide.

What Is Life’s Ultimate Good

Dear Dan, I agree; any view that has God as the foundation of morality — like the Christian view I described in my last letter — will have further, serious issues to address. In fact, your two objections get at the most central ones. Let me respond to both. What Makes God’s Laws Good? Your first objection has a great pedigree and can be traced all the way back to Plato. Namely, what makes God’s moral laws — his moral values — good? Does he like these laws because they are good? Or are they good because he likes them? Either way seems to spell trouble for Christianity. Take the first option. Are God’s laws good because they meet some separate standard of good, one “outside” of God? If so, God has to defer to — is beholden to — some higher authority. And that’s impossible, according to Christianity. But the alternative seems just as bad. If God’s laws are good because he likes them, it makes morality seem arbitrary, dependent merely on his personal tastes or whims. After all, what if he had preferred things like murder, rape, and torture? Would these therefore be good? Do we really want to define “good” as “what God likes,” similar to the way “coolness” is just whatever the cool kids like? Wouldn’t this rob statements like “God is good” of all significance, reducing them to saying merely that “God is the way he is”? Again, neither choice looks very promising. So, which horn of the dilemma should the Christian choose? Goodness Is Godness I think the second option is the right one: God’s laws are good because he likes them. That is, anything that God likes or values is good by definition. Goodness just is Godness. So then, is the phrase “God is good” nothing but an empty tautology, saying no more than “God is God”? “Anything that God likes or values is good by definition. Goodness just is Godness.” Well, no. In this specific context, where we’re defining “good,” “God is good” tells us something informative — namely, that God’s values are what make things morally good. But in most other contexts, when we say, “God is good” we can generally take for granted which properties or characteristics go on the “good” list. In these ordinary cases, “God is good” expresses something different — for example, “Here’s what God is like: he hates lying, murder, stealing — things we all agree are bad.” But then, if goodness is defined as whatever God likes, doesn’t my view mean that murder and rape would have been good if God had liked them? In a sense, perhaps; at least their advocacy would have been included in his moral laws. But remember that we’re currently defining “good,” and I think some of the rhetorical force of the wouldn’t-rape-therefore-be-good objection comes from ignoring this context. After all, it seems that regardless of what we say ultimately “makes” something good, if that “good-maker” were different, good would be different. And in any case, the traditional Christian view of God holds that he couldn’t have liked these things, that it’s logically impossible for God to be different than he is, just as a square couldn’t fail to have four equal sides. It turns out, therefore, that things aren’t as nearly as bad as the objection initially implied. Why Follow God’s Moral Law? Then there’s your second objection: why should we follow God’s laws? Is it because, if we don’t, he’ll submit us to everlasting punishment? Should we follow God’s laws simply to avoid pain? Does it turn out, after all, that morality is merely a matter of might makes right? Well, I think Christians should acknowledge that avoiding pain and suffering is a good reason to follow God’s moral laws. Moreover, I concede that this would be a genuine problem — if this were the only reason for obeying God. And as I said, even this reason isn’t without its virtues. After all, if we think of God as a parent — which the Bible encourages us to do — it’s a perfectly good reason, morally as well as rationally. As children we often obeyed our parents, in part, to avoid discipline. In fact, this was the reason for discipline in the first place — to help motivate us to obey. But of course, our obedience wasn’t merely motivated by a fear of discipline. We also obeyed our parents because we loved and trusted them. We knew that their requirements were an integral part of their deep love and affection for us, that they gave us these rules to benefit us. Their laws were evidence of our parents’ love. This interweaving of love and law, this close relation between our love for our parents, their love for us, and their moral values (that is, their moral loves) usually resulted in us adopting their morals; their values naturally became our values. We liked these values. And it didn’t stop with moral values; we sometimes adopted our parents’ values about sports teams, movies, and music — again, sometimes simply because we loved them. So, according to my view, we ought to follow God’s laws because, ultimately, we want to — and the main reason we want to is that we love him. In this way, morality is ultimately personal and grounded in what we love. Meaning of Life The personal aspect of value isn’t limited to moral value; it’s a component of all value, including life’s ultimate value. What we might call life’s ultimate meaning or purpose is perhaps the most important topic of all. So, what is our ultimate value, meaning, purpose, or goal in life? Well, suppose you’re right that there’s no God. The meaning of life, then, would be like all value in a godless cosmos: subjective and relative. And because each person has his own values, there would be as many meanings of life as there are persons. In such a world, there would be no objective meaning that life has. But according to Christianity, humans have been made for something, for a purpose. Moreover, this purpose does not depend on us, and so, in this sense, it’s objective, human-independent. And because we were designed for a specific purpose, humans will only truly flourish and thrive by fulfilling this purpose. Fulfilling God’s purpose for us is life’s ultimate meaning. That doesn’t mean that, in a world without God, humans could not find some measure of meaning or value in things like family, work, art, gardening, or whatever. But unless these individual goods are put into the context of the much larger, overall purpose, they will never be as meaningful (to us) as they could be. Only by fulfilling this ultimate purpose is our meaning of life maximized. What Are Humans For? What is this larger context or purpose? What were we made for? We find a hint by noticing that, for many of us, relationships and community are what we most value, where we find our greatest fulfillment. We flourish best in community with people we love. And this fact is entirely in line with the Christian view that our ultimate purpose is to know and love the ultimate Person, God himself. Christianity is of one voice on this. As one famous confession says, our ultimate purpose “is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Indeed, God is a loving relationship, as odd as that sounds. The mysterious doctrine of the Trinity says that the Godhead is an intimate community of three (divine) persons. That’s what he is. (This is one reason why monistic religions can’t truly make sense of the view that God is love: Who was God loving before he created persons other than himself? Such a being couldn’t essentially be love; at best, he would need creatures in order to love.) “Our ultimate purpose is to know and love the ultimate Person, God himself.” Notice that the centrality of relationships is also evident when Jesus sums up all of God’s laws in just two: love God and love your neighbor. The moral law — and, not coincidentally, life’s ultimate meaning — is about relationships, both human and divine. God, then, created humans for his own purpose. Our purpose — the meaning of life — is also importantly objective, just as morality is: it is human-independent. Yet it’s obvious that we can and do reject God’s purpose for us. In fact, the gospel message — and the entire Bible — is predicated on such rejection. But God has given us another chance to truly flourish, to find ultimate meaning through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He has made this possible at an immense cost to himself. Dan, I get why you would reject Christianity, viewing it as you do from the outside. I hope you’ll continue to consider all this and at least begin to sense that genuine atheism might be a lot different from your current “kinder, gentler” version. I also hope that in the process you’ll reconsider Christianity’s claims — in particular, Jesus’s offering of himself and the relationship you were made for. Article by Mitch Stokes