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Monthly Archives: November 2007
Going back to XP should be called an upgrade.
Imputation (ruthlessly stolen from someone smart enough to find the quotation)
A further objection is to the idea that Christ’s righteousness can be imputed to us. One person cannot be good in another’s stead. Transferring credit from one person to another is a very external and formal type of transaction inappropriate in the matter of our spiritual standing with God.
However, our relationship with Christ is not detached. The individual believer is actually united with him.
With regard to my spiritual status, a new entity, so to speak, has come into being. It is as if Christ and I have been married or merged to form a new corporation.
The imputation of Christ’s righteousness is not, then, so much a matter of transferring something from him to me, as it is of bringing the two of us together so that we hold all things in common.
In Christ I died on the cross, and in him I was resurrected. Thus, his death is not only in my place, but with me.
SOURCE: Millard Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine, 2nd ed. (Baker, 2001), p. 264.
Good thing Erickson described a common view of imputation as “a very external and formal type of transaction inappropriate in the matter of our spiritual standing with God” rather than as a “cold piece of business,” because, if he had, that would have been highly naughty, and it would be the responsibility of those in control of Reformed micro-denominational webzines and professional Calvinist conferencers to spank him repeatedly, and try to keep anyone who read Erickson with any appreciation away from the ministry.
More Apple propaganda
The Jamster Scam
In December of 2004 I was searching on Google for lyrics when I noticed amongst my search results an offer for free ringtone downloads. I’m not the kind of person who cares much about having a fancy ring on my cell phone (after all, my Nokia 3310 only plays monotone rings, and besides, I’m too old for such silliness), but it said “free” so I decided to explore.
When I found the song I wanted to download, the instructions said, “Enter your cell phone number to get this on your phone.” A few moments after I did so, my phone beeped indicating I had a text message. The message informed me that the ring tone had been downloaded to my cell phone. Then I simply selected my new ringtone for my “Normal” profile on my phone, and voilà, Smoke on the Water plays whenever I receive a call!
A great free service, right? Not so fast! By all appearances it was free. After all it said it was free. And I never gave them any means by which to charge me—I mean they don’t even know my name, my address, certainly not my credit card number, and I never entered into any legal agreement with them. The only information I gave them was my cell phone number (in fact, what’s to keep me from putting in someone else’s cell phone number?). It was inconceivable to me that it could be anything but free.
One additional comment. People need to realize that there are ways of exploiting people where the cost of redress exceeds the value of the loss. It is important to understan that in our complex mass market economy, IN EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THOSE SITUATIONS SOME COMPANY/ GROUP/ PERSON WILL FIND A WAY TO TARGET THESE AREAS OF VULNERABILITY AND MILK THE POPULACE. There is simply no way to get around this. If it is possible to get away with something that provides profit, that thing will be done.
That’s why the blogosphere and the web can be really important. It is a way of increasing the price of those little incidents so that they are understood to be something much bigger.
Bureacracies and objective decision-making
This post from Jon Barlow reminded me of this Time Magazine story about a new aircraft.
I hope you won’t take this the wrong way — you, the mom on the cell phone flipping your check card to your kid so she can buy the jeans that say SPANK ME on them — but you’re going down, witch.
Just for old times’ sake, I wandered through the 4-6X section. It was just an arm’s length away, but it was the difference between a Happy Meal at the playground and bulimia at the bar. So far, these clothes had been left mercifully untouched by the wand of the skank fairy, whom I envision as looking a lot like Tara Reid.
Instead of being able to buy pretty things for my daughter, sweet somethings in ice cream colors, I must now shop at big, boxy unisex stores where you can still buy shorts that don’t say DELICIOUS on the bottom or T-shirts that are plain instead of, swear to God, a size 7 belly shirt with MADE YA LOOK on the front. Look at what? There’s not supposed to be anything to look at on a seven-year-old. Because they’re children.
Sweet Jesus, what I’d do for a lousy ladybug collar on a smocked dress. Instead, this season’s Easter look consisted of sequined and chiffon body-hugging sheaths. I know that my daughter and I will fight about clothes in a few years, perhaps horribly, but, for now, there will be none of this Little Ladies of the Night look.
And while moms and daughters have always fought over clothes (let’s face it, even Marcia Brady wore some shockingly short dresses, and those baby-doll pj’s in front of stepbrother Greg were icky), the clothing wars were usually taking place between mom and teen, not mom and first-grader.
When you see a size 7 shirt that says SEXY! or a mom and her little girl strolling through the mall in matching shorts with JUICY scrawled across the butt, you have to wonder what the hell is going on.
The saddest part about all this is that if you dress like you’re a twenty-two-year-old going out to a club after a tough day at work in the city, you don’t get to enjoy being a little kid.
Deliver me from an outraged third-grader who thinks she’s entitled to the entire line at Abercrombie & Fitch. Put on a normal pair of jeans and go play kickball, you brat! And tell yo mama I said so.
But I guess it all depends. As a member of the Evangelical ghetto (the few, but the oh so proud), I’ve got a subculture that usually reinforces something a little less insane. I haven’t asked Jennifer, but I think there are places to shop outside New York City that give better options.
Puritan & Sacrament
Rich Bledsoe’s latest
Assurance during the sixteenth-century reformation
Luther had issues regarding the assurance that God loved him and would welcome into resurrection glory.
It is pretty easy to assume that widespread issues of assurance in the following decades were of the same sort.
But maybe not.
There was another factor that needs to be given due weight.
Suddenly there were leaders opposing one another claiming the other was a sure way to damnation and they were revealing the way of salvation.
For the illiterate majority that had to decide who to trust, it must have been a pretty unnerving dilemma.