I had no idea how to describe it, but I like what Felicia Day wrote recently:
I’ve decided to turn the phrase “stressed beyond belief” to “coping with a wealth of opportunities”.
So pray that I cope and that the wealth becomes something more tangible. Like yesterday. And that I have patience.
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Filed under: What's going on
First day of school began with me still in Louisiana. I had a pulpit supply job and then the plane was late so that I had to stay overnight. Got up at 4:15 am this morning to various conflicting reports as to whether my flight was cancelled and when I needed to be at the airport.
I’m here now but have a bunch to do and two hours of prep tonight for my online job, so I am not sure how much the kids will see of me. And then tomorrow I may end up working a full day at my new part-time job to make up for the hours I missed today.
Happily, Jennifer produced some photopraphic evidence. Here’s one from my youngest’s first day with her siblings.
You can read more about their first day at Jennifer’s blog.
I’m really happy to be getting some new opportunities (that I hope in turn will lead even to better opportunities), but I have a lot of balls in the air right now. Not least I have five people I don’t want to become strangers’ to even while I endeavor to get requisite shelter, clothing, and transportation needs met.
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Filed under: What's going on, kids
I was ordained in 1998. I was in seminary from 1995 to 1998. I was in the PCA as a member from 1989 onward.
I loved the PCA. I was so excited about the Reformed Faith and about the PCA as a place for it that I recommended it to friends and family. I was happy when a former college roommate joined a PCA church. I was thrilled when my fiancee told me that my brother had told her that he had become a TULIP calvinist and that “It wasn’t because of him.” True younger brother spirit, that; but I knew that the borg was winning and it made me happy. He has since become a ruling elder and is raising his children in the PCA. My parents also joined and became members of the PCA as the result of my evangelism.
By the way, it was also in the PCA that I was introduced to G. K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc and enjoyed them without fear or recrimination. In fact, literarily and theologically I used to find the PCA a place of faithful Reformed commitment coupled with a liberality of mind and generosity of spirit. In fact, the first time that impression was ever seriously challenged was with the introduction of the internet. In all too many ways I now see I fit all to well into that different environment. I was young and loved to argue and hadn’t yet realized that email lists were merely foreplay to ecclesiastical lynchings. The Bible warns what happens when evil words spread, but foolishly expected them to be contained to cyberspace (including my own).
[Addendum sidenote: Another difference was that it was commonly understood that different eschatological views were all allowed. No one had invented the internet/conference word “transformationalist” to represent post-millennialists as beyond the pale in the Evangelical Reformed world.]
But more broadly, before the specific lessons I began to learn in seminary with my first email membership, I also knew that the PCA, being human, was a place where horrible things could happen. This again precedes the FV hysteria and is unrelated to it. I’ve never gone into details and I won’t begin to do so now. But not everything can be proven in a church court. Strangely, it never occurred to me that all my accusations should be posted in an anonymous attack blog.
When I look at the way the CREC and Doug Wilson are treated, and every story from every malcontent is repeated seriously by pastors and elders with pretentions of godliness, if makes me ill. I cannot believe this toilet bowl of gossip and tale-bearing is regularly siphoned as if it were confirmed news (a recent example). And it never ends.
Nor does such a breach of ethics stay confined to the purposes of the original pioneers. That kind of behavior will do far more damage to the “established” Reformed churches than it will to the original victims. God is not mocked.
And in the meantime, it is obvious that the “established” denominations are already under judgment. “And children shall lead them.” This blogging behavior is just another form of arrested development in the church.
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Filed under: Tumble
This post is true and necessary and cathartic (if tragic) on so many levels, I really don’t know what to say.
But I do want to point out what I thought was her most ominous observation:
In recent conversations with a couple of my girlfriends, I expressed an extreme disinterest in Christian guys of my generation.
“I’ve pretty much had it with Christian guys,” I said. “The main problem is that they are ‘guys’ for too long and never become men.”
They are, I theorized, stuck in the youth group culture. The church has encouraged them to never leave that mentality, and so it takes until about age 35 for them to extract themselves into adulthood-land where the women have been waiting for years and have been steadily growing fed up. Men not raised in this evangelical youth culture, I’ve noticed, tend to be vastly different in maturity level.
Youth group culture is a place of video games and pizza parties and perpetual “here we are now entertain us” (thanks for the lyrics, Cobain). When youth leave the appropriate age level (i.e. graduate from high school), they face a difficult moment, a moment made difficult because of age segregation, which I’ll talk about next.
Instead of helping them get on into adulthood, we’ve introduced single’s groups — in the name of helping the unmarried, of course — which are mainly youth groups for those in their 20’s. Which, instead of helping people not be single actually encourages them to never grow up and, instead, use the group as their relationship fix. I see this particularly with Christian guys, this stunted maturity, and it somehow seems to permeate Evangelical culture today.
As someone who has lived and done church in South Florida, Julie, I can tell you it is not always only the men who are so affected. But women tend to be much more aware of the passing of time and opportunities in their twenties, while men go blithely forward into bad habits that make marriage less and less likely. So the point is well taken.
I wonder when we are going to start noticing the brain drain in the Evangelical churches. “Maturity” is either not even on the horizon, or is used to justify stupid doctrinal geekiness which is anything but mature, or doctrinal. between those two traps, who will be left?
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Filed under: Bible & Theology
In short: if you love GWB, you’ll love President Saakashvili. Therefore it’s no surprise John McCain is portraying the Georgians as the good guys and demanding that Russian troops leave “sovereign Georgian territory” without preconditions or delay. After all, when your chief foreign policy adviser has up until very recently been a paid shill for the Georgian government, what else could we expect? As I’ve pointed out on a few occasions in this space, Mad John has been spoiling for a fight with the Russians – in the Caucasus and elsewhere – for years, going so far as to travel to Georgia to proclaim his sympathy for Saakashvili’s cause.
What’s really interesting, however, is how Barack Obama has taken up this same cause, albeit with less vehemence than the GOP nominee. As Politico.com reported:
“When violence broke out in the Caucasus on Friday morning, John McCain quickly issued a statement that was far more strident toward the Russians than that of President Bush, Barack Obama, and much of the West. But, as Russian warplanes pounded Georgian targets far beyond South Ossetia this weekend, Bush, Obama, and others have moved closer to McCain’s initial position.”
While calling for mediation and international peacekeepers, Obama went with the War Party’s line that Russia, not Georgia, is the aggressor, as the Times of London reports: “Obama accused Russia of escalating the crisis ‘through it’s clear and continued violation of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.’” While his first statement on the outbreak of hostilities was more along the lines of “Can’t we all get along?”, the New York Times notes:
“Mr. Obama did harden his rhetoric later on Friday, shortly before getting on a plane for a vacation in Hawaii. His initial statement, an adviser said, was released before there were confirmed reports of the Russian invasion. In his later statement, Mr. Obama said, ‘What is clear is that Russia has invaded Georgia’s sovereign – has encroached on Georgia’s sovereignty, and it is very important for us to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.’”
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Filed under: News, political-economy
Perhaps I should say this more plainly than I have in the past. Big-name (in the Calvinist ghetto) Reformed theologians who complain about the influence of the blogosphere on the discourse and propagation of theology are in the bowels of Tridentine thinking.
Reformed theology was never about textbooks. It was about pamphlets. It was a blogosphere that dethroned the Pope.
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Filed under: Bible & Theology
1. LAW
The Apostle John writes, “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.” And the Westminster Shorter Catechism defines sin as “any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.” Early in my comprehension as a Reformed believer, this criteria for determining whether or not an action was sinful was mistakenly understood as a definition of the essence of sin. Sin was wrong, in this view, because it simply violated what God commanded. And nothing else really mattered.
This was right, to a degree, of course. We must obey God and all disobedience is, by definition, sinful.
But this way of looking at God so exclusively tended to submerged all His holy character under the aspect of power. All ethics boiled down to the fact that God gave orders and He can unimaginably punish anyone who disobeys.
2 GRATITUDE
When the Apostle Paul spells out the apostasy of the human race, he points out that it is fundamentally ungrateful. “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” And this new awareness in my life was helped a great deal by the Heidelberg Catechism and its dynamic of grace and gratitude. This same content is also in the Westminster Standards, but Heidelberg was used in God’s providence to help me notice it.
This, again, was right, to a degree. God is the giving God (James 1.5). He never asks anyone to obey him whom he has not already loaded down with good gifts. He makes us first, before we can obey, and establishes us as Lords of Creation before making any demands of us. Even when Moses put “life and death” before the Israelites (Deuteronomy 30), the fact is that God has already given the Israelites life both natural and supernatural by rescuing them from slavery by miracles.
But this way of looking at God so exclusively, tended to leave creatures with a “suck it up” commission. No matter what God puts us through or assigns to us, we must “suck it up” because we are getting better than we deserve. How dare we be unsatisfied with what God demands? Are we not grateful enough? John Piper talks about this as a “debtor’s ethic,” and points out some problems that it can lead to.
3 FAITH
The Fall of the Human race occurred when our parents stopped trusting that God meant well for them. We see this over and over in the Bible. In Genesis we see the patriarch’s had to trust amazingly grand and glorious promises that they never saw come to fruition in their life times. Indeed, in many cases, unless one trusted that God’s promises were good, one would have relatively little to be thankful for. And Israel’s failure in the wilderness was, time and again, a failure to trust that God would keep his promises to them.
Paul sometimes does use grattitude to motivate Christian behavior, but in explaining why Christians must obediently endure in the face of suffering, he never tells anyone to “suck it up” because they actually deserve worse and they need to be grateful that the didn’t get what they deserve. On the contrary, he motivates believers by assuring them that God is being faithful to them even in the midst of suffering–”for those who love God all things work together for good.”
When people disobey God, it is because they don’t trust Him. Like Satan told Eve, they think God is all about power and all about making unreasonable demands rather than about loving his children and caring for them. But God assures us that he knows what is good and right for us. He cares about us. He is faithful/trustworthy. Any response to him but faith and trust is an outrageous attack on his character.
These three are one
These different ways of looking at the nature of sin, are not in competition to one another. I did not leave “law” behind to accept “gratitude” and then abandon it for “faith.” The law reveals the commands of a generous God who has done much for us and who promises us much more. Law, gratitude, and faith go together. But in terms of motivation and understanding God’s character, I do believe that faith should be given prominence among the three.
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Filed under: Tumble
OK, I still use my tumblog for most stuff, but I’m not satisfied doing so. I like the interface but I’m not as happy with the lack of a sidebar.
Speaking of sidebars, I’m not happy with the fact that when I tumble a video it messes up this template.
Speaking of sidebars some more, I added a new blog to my “lingastuff” below on the outer right hand side: All Greek to you.
I’m also getting antsy about the title. I occasionally get an impulse to go with “Dr. Heretic’s singalong blog.”
I’ve been busy and just hope that continues. I’ve been too busy to update my business blog very much, which needs to change.
All the best.
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Filed under: What's going on
My parents have FIOS. Which means they have fast internet. Which means I can actually watch hulu.com.
It is a wonderful thing, except for the part where I have to travel to Texas.
They also have an elliptical machine with a board fastened to it so you can watch your laptop screen while you pedal or step or whatever, and sweat.
All this is to say, I watched Prophecy Girl tonight. Again for first time.
Background here: first off, nothing I’m about to say is meant to imply that Whedon is anything close to a Christian. He’s not. The ending of Angel was as much a Norse apocalypse as one could ask for. And according to this spoiler summary, the new comic book season 8 shows Whedon just can’t let go of Lesbian soft p0rn cliches. But Whedon knows a good story, and Gospel’s story of sacrificial death and resurrection is too good to pass up. Season 5 was marred by only one thing, that it didn’t end the show. The end of season 6, however, also did the them almost as well, with the carpenter saving the world by being willing to die at the hands of the one he loved.
But I came into Buffy through reruns and never saw it in order. When I finally saw season 1, I was amazed at how poorly it was done in so many ways. Prophecy Girl itself features a three-headed muppet worm that screams “low budget” in a tri-vocal wail. So I saw Prophecy Girl and thought it stood out, but I didn’t really pay much attention to it.
I must have been blind.
[spoiler warning]
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Filed under: SF&F, TV/movie, culture & value
Dark truth (really more like an amber truth): I’m getting tired of this blog. It wearies me. So, for the time being, if you have bookmarks or RSS feeds aimed here, you might want to change them to:
No dire predictions about when or if this might change. Don’t really care. Just trying this out. My twitter and friendfeed should both channel through the new site.
So there it is.
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Filed under: Tumble
I somehow messed this up so that my tumblr comments and this blogs comments were all on one page. Not knowing how to undo the problem, I decided to disable the plugin.
I’m not sure what to do with Tumblr anyway. I rarely use it if ever. I like it a lot, but others have to get on board or that doesn’t matter. Friendfeed and twitter are the winners right now, and Friendfeed thought up stuff that Tumbr should have done already
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Filed under: Tumble
Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you into the glory of God.
– Romans 15.7
Note that my translation of the Greek is slightly different than that of the common English Bibles. In my opinion, this exhortation has a eucharistic overtone since it is the climax of an argument beginning in Romans 14.1 about not judging or despising fellow believers over dietary matters at meals. The argument is that, if God has welcomed Christians to His table, so should we (14.3).
So what if God “graciously invites us” to grovel before him on our knees while he puts a morsel on out tongues? What sort of hospitality would we tend to demonstrate to others in that case? Or, closer to my personal home, how about if God gave us a fraction of a snack and told us to hold it and try to drudge up enough contemplation of our sin and Christ’s sacrifice because if we didn’t do so long enough (how long? no guidance) the crumb would either do us no good or actually poison us?
Of course, God being God and we being both creaturs and sinners, there is a place for confession and even self-condemnation when one meets with God. But, if in the case of actual theophanies, God quickly raises up those he meets, how much more should we be confident that we have moved beyond such considerations after a brief confession of sin and a promise of absolution?
How does Luke 14 read to you? Does Jesus say, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and give them a tiny crumb and make them pray and meditate on their sinfulness and Christ’s death for a long, long time before they partake.”? No, Jesus freely reclined with others, including his disciples when he instituted the Lord’s Supper.
Sure, you’re a sinner. And God has raised you up to sit at his table. If he forgets your sins what business is it of yours to remember them? Have a full glass of wine (by which I mean, wine, not grape juice) and know that God loves you. Then maybe you can learn how to treat other people as guests at your table.
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Filed under: Bible & Theology
If you don’t have vivid memories of reading this book, this post will be pretty much useless. And I can’t recommend the book due to content issues, though I also can’t deny I read it more than once.
But for anyone out there that read the graphic novel, Elektra Assassin, by Frank Miller: When you hear some of the Obama commercials that are coming out, don’t you suddenly get flashbacks about another presidential candidate? Remember Ken Wind?
I’m not claiming this proves anything. I’m just saying that the pretentious commercials naturally bring to mind the rather extreme slogans of a fictional candidate.
