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A
full day of vacation yesterday, and another today. The piano was
delivered and all is well. Some of Jana's young students commented
on the different feel and sound.
I went to the hardware store twice to buy an extension ladder. First I bought the medium-sized ladder, roped it to the top of the van, and argued with myself all the way home. Should have bought the longer one. Got home. Left the ladder tied to the van. Did other things. After lunch I still wanted the longer ladder, so I went back and exchanged. Now today I'll see if I really meant to work on those second story chores or not.
Important bushes trimmed. Nap taken. Sermons pondered. I'm preaching in Olathe this week and Grand Island next.
I've
been reading the collected Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy
Sayers. I'm a fan of Dorothy Sayers. Her book on the artist's
creative process is very good. (What's the name of that thing?
She describes the artistic process as an imitation of the creative process
of the Trinitarian Godhead, but our human artistic inner trinities are
flawed, and various imbalances show up in different kinds of flawed art
...) But I'm not connecting with Lord Peter, somehow.
1/2
day of vacation
1 new outlet in linen closet for a light.
2 knobs replaced in upstairs bathtub
3 trips to the hardware store
Another try with hot glue for broken glass doorknob
(no kidding, it really might work this time)
Couldn't find my long, thru-the-wall drill bit
Made do without it
Found the bit
Used power tools, no injuries.
(Well, a sore back.)
My wife Jana is a wonderful pianist. She plays for Zion, accompanies the choral groups at LHS, and also teaches lessons in our living room. We bought our Kimball studio upright back in 1977 or so. It is almost fully depreciated. So Saturday we looked at pianos. We looked at a local for-sale from the classifieds. Then we drove to Omaha to visit a couple of places we had not been before. To make a long story short, we found a used Yamaha P22 (the most common school upright) in great condition and they deliver it tomorrow. I don't have much of an ear for such things, but Jana is happy with it's nice, bright sound, clear bass, and solid key action. At long last. The Kimball has been a growing embarrassment.
I didn't know that you could buy an electronic attachment for any piano that will automatically play the piano from special CD's. This is the digital update to the old player piano concept. The improvement here is that the CD captures all of the subtleties of tempo and dynamics of the artist who records the piece. Way cool. We listened to a couple of Gershwin tunes in the store. We did not purchase this option with our Yamaha (is it only for grands?), which adds several thousand dollars to the price.
The relationship between faith and
works is always good for a hot discussion. How do we reconcile Paul and
James? Some in Reformed circles have recently been defending an
extreme form of "faith-alone-ism", jealous to guard the
magnificent grace of the gospel against any confusion with meritorious
works of man. How about this:
A man runs into town says, "Believe me, the dam has burst upstream and the river here will surely be over its banks tomorrow." The man urges everyone to believe his report. Some say they believe him, but continue to sit on their porches sipping iced tea. Others say they believe him and get busy piling sandbags between them and the river. Now you could say that even the first group really does believe the news, but since they don't act upon their belief, their faith is worthless.
John the Baptist says "repent and believe the gospel." Those who "believe" but do not repent are like those who hear the news of a coming flood but do nothing to prepare. Will that faith save them?
(There's always something wrong with an illustration, but this one just means that intellectual assent alone is not faith the way the Bible uses the term.)
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We
looked at Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry. The TCM host
says this is one of the rare Hitchcock movies that lost money. It
certainly is not what you might expect from Hitchcock, but I have a
feeling that big Al really indulged himself here; you probably see more of
what amused him as an audience of one. The dialog is so absurd in
places it sounds like Waiting for Godot. It is interesting as
the first movie Shirley McLaine made, and also features a very young Jerry
Mathers, I would guess just before he started on Leave it to Beaver.
Also interesting for the way some physical token of the dead man is
present in (almost?) every scene: the shovels, the rabbit, the sketch, the
shoes: they carry Harry and these tokens with them everywhere. (Hitchcock's trademark cameo comes the first time you see the limo stop at
the vendor stand. As the millionaire examines the paintings, Hitch
walks by on the road in the background.)
To
"lay hands on" can have either (1) a sacramental meaning, as
when the high priest lays his hands on the head of the scapegoat and
confesses the sins of the nation over it, or (2) a magisterial meaning: to
lay hands on a criminal is to apprehend him and bring him to court.
Many translations simply render the phrase as "arrest" when it
has the second meaning. Both phrases have at their root something
like "bring/put under the power of."
There is some significant confusion and overlap that is lost by translating "lay hands on" as "arrest" in some cases. Luke 22:53 Jesus tells the priests, "When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me." Now, come on. Priests -- in the temple -- laying hands on the lamb of God -- then sending him to death. The priests, while they mean to act as prosecutors, are unwittingly acting sacramentally. They really are laying hands on the sacrifice that will atone for the sins of the people.
A similar kind of contrast shows up in Acts 4 and 5. The priests lay hands on the Apostles in 4:3, arresting them after Peter's sermon. But soon they are out again, and many signs are performed "at the hands of" the apostles (5:12). A nice contrast between what the hands of the priests do and what the hands of the apostles do. (Though it doesn't show up in the ESV, which translates 4:3 as "arrest.")
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We
got the 1947 film version of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe story The
Lady in the Lake from TCM. (I read the book, now see the movie
...) There is some curiosity value for the whole movie shown from
the first-person Marlowe POV, but the novelty wears thin after about a
minute, and the movie is absolutely tone deaf. It plays for cute
instead of tough, and if Marlowe ain't noir, then why bother. We
turned it off after about 10 minutes.
Well, I Google for everything else, so today I Googled "Keith Ghormley" to see if this Blog has been indexed. (It has.)
But lo and behold what a trail I have strewn across various web pages over the years. I have an actor's page for the Nebraska Independent Film Producers, a couple of entries on the Shakespeare listserv ...
And check it out, I'm on a Knights of Columbus page about Lent, right along with the rosary and the stations of the cross. My name is listed alongside Woodrow Kroll as co-author of The Twelve Voices of Easter, a radio project I worked on many years ago. In fact several Christian resource pages on the web link to the Back to the Bible RealAudio for that program
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This morning I attended a memorial service for a baby "born at rest" to a young family in our congregation. Too sad. I think about pastoring full-time, and I wonder if I could get through such a service. I choke up pretty easy.
Is this a great day for preachers or what? The one thing you
never hear in the blather of popular culture is authoritative, categorical
speech. Everything is nuanced and qualified and shorn of anything
that might offend. You never hear any of the talking heads on TV, or read any
of the editorials, or catch any of the mainstream commentators saying
anything in bold, uncompromised, unqualified statements. They always
qualify, always soften, always choose inoffensive words, always looking
nervously over their shoulders at the professional victim classes who parse every
statement carefully, ever alert for the telltale slur. As a result,
clear, cold, hard-edged language is rare in the land. It is a priceless
gift that has been consciously despised, and therefore free for the
taking. The preacher who will pick it up and give it to his people
will be thought a genius and instantly hated or
loved
If you preach, you should collect strong words like gems, treasure them, and give them freely to your people. Keep a list of words that offend our culture make sure they find their way into every sermon manuscript. Quote Jesus' most offensive statements often. You know, the stuff that the world hates to hear. "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels", and "Whoever hates me hates my Father also", or "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day."
It will refresh your congregation like a cool drink in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Band
of Brothers is one of the best things I've ever seen. I borrow
our neighbor's copy, not feeling free to spend $80 for the set myself.
The series uses an understated technique of storytelling. By that I mean that instead of having characters tell us what's going on through expositional dialog, and by not having a voice-over narrator explain what is going on beneath the surface of the characters, the movie just invites you watch. Admittedly, this causes some confusion for us. There are times when someone in our living room will say, "Wait, wait! Pause it! Why are those guys all angry with him?" So okay, sometimes understated storytelling confuses the audience.
But at its best it makes a point that would never come across another way. I think of the scene after Bastogne when Easy Company is up in the woods preparing to attack the town of Foy. This episode focuses on Sgt. Lipton who is holding his men together in spite of the distressing absence and incompetence of Captain Dike. We see Dike's shortcomings in several ways. One of the most painful is when Dike finally appears to be making an effort to make some human connection with his Sergeant. Dike asks Lipton about home. Lipton says he doesn't like to think about it, it's too painful. Dike encourages him to go ahead. We get a closeup of Lipton. As he begins to remember, you can see his longing. With some effort Lipton reigns in his thoughts and returns the question: where is Dike from? At that moment the camera shows us that Dike isn't even standing there any more; he left somewhere in the middle of Lipton's reminiscence. The story doesn't tell us what to think about Dike. It doesn't try to name Dike's behavior. It simply shows us Lipton's pain.
It is interesting to think how differently the scene would have played had Dike stayed with Lipton and shared his own painful longings for home. That would have changed Lipton's experience completely. Instead of his anger at Dike for unnecessarily exposing his pain and then leaving, there would have been some shared pain, and as a result a new bond between the two men. Saint Paul tells us to weep with those who weep. We are called to walk into the room of another's pain and share it with them. For in this Christ loved us, that he bore our sorrows on the tree. And he even invites us into his pain, that we should take up our crosses and follow him, Col. 1:24 "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church."
Well, that's the best I can explain it. Maybe it comes across better with understated storytelling, like Band of Brothers, or the Gospel of Matthew.
When
I was a kid, we would come home from school, turn on KMTV channel 3 Omaha,
and watch The World's Greatest Cartoons, which was a local program mostly of old
Warner Brothers and Popeye cartoons. My sisters and I can still sing
"I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumble Bee / Won't my Mommy be so
proud of me." And we can still say "O wishing well!
O Wishing Well! I wish I had a meeeellion dollars!"
The WB cartoonists would occasionally put celebrity caricatures in their cartoons, so our first introduction to the likes of Mae West, Clark Gable, and the Marx Brothers was in cartoon cameo. There was one celebrity caricature that I never connected with the real-world person until last night. In the cartoon, somehow a bleary-eyed crab comes out of his shell, smoking a cigar, to say in a flat monotone, "I never go anywhere, I never do anything, and I never have any fun." Well, that's Ned Sparks. Last night I saw him in Lady for a Day, a 1933 Frank Capra movie about an boozy old apple vendor who has led her daughter in Spain to believe that she is a rich society woman. But now the daughter is coming for a visit, bringing along her fiancé and his father, the Count, who "wants to meet her family." A mob boss who never does anything without buying a lucky apple from Annie decides to set her up in a swank hotel with all the trimmings so she won't have to disappoint her daughter and ruin her chance for a happy marriage. Ned Sparks is the "it'll never work" sidekick.
By the way, Gary Sinise looks a lot like Sparks. And by the way, this version of the story is a lot better than the 1961 remake that Capra did with Bette Davis as Apple Annie, Pocketful of Miracles.
At our Session meeting yesterday, one of the men said "My love language is conflict." It made a good point in a way I don't think I'll ever forget. This man knows that it takes a lot of love to raise difficult and uncomfortable issues. And here we're not talking about conflict in the sense of the childish kind of picking and quarreling that are too common in many troubled relationships. That kind of sniping is selfish, not loving, and almost never accomplishes any good. Rather, we're talking about the kind of confrontation that the giver would rather not give. (In fact, that's a pretty good test: if you want to criticize and you feel good or justified in doing it, it's almost certainly destructive. But if you loathe to bring up the subject and it is painful and difficult to say what needs to be said, then there's a much better chance it will be helpful.)
Most people avoid conflict. But faithful are the wounds of a friend. Rare is the man who has someone in his life who will get into his face and confront him over an issue that needs attention. But this is often the way God appoints for our spiritual progress. We are not left alone to analyze ourselves. Rather, we are placed in families and churches among those who love us and can see us in ways we cannot see ourselves. And those who truly love us will not leave us to blunder along in blindness and self deception. Because the language of love is conflict. In this we know that God loves us. That Christ confronts us, "Why do you call me Lord, Lord, but do not do what I tell you?" He will not be satisfied until every sinful and rebellious practice is confronted, confessed, and subdued.
We
watched the 1952 Tracy/Hepburn flick Pat and Mike. It is
typical Hepburn feminism. As she chafes under the chauvinist sway of
her insensitive fiancé, Pat, an uber-talented country club athlete is taken on by Mike, a
low life sports promoter / gambler. She is successful both as a
golfer and tennis player, and, of course, realizes by the end of the movie
that she must break off her engagement with the chauvinist and end up with
Mike, whom she brings to heel. The most interesting aspect of the
movie is the footage of Hepburn hitting golf drives and tennis balls. She
really had an athletic gift, and they let the cameras show her doing some
pretty good stuff. This was 1952, before really big money and
immersive pre-teen sports training, so it is just plausible that a really
gifted amateur could actually compete with the pro's. Today I don't
think you could find an actor who could play the part of a tennis pro with
any convincing footage of competition. The movie includes
appearances by real-life golf and tennis champs Gussie Moran, Babe Didrickson Zaharias, Don Budge, Alice Marble, Frank Parker, Betty Hicks, Helen
Dettweiler and Beverly Hanson.
We are going to the MNA Church Planters Assessment week after all. The selection committee wasn't of one mind about our case since they can already see that we have significant, er, "gaps in our gift mix." Nevertheless, understanding the condition that we are very narrowly focused on what we want to do, they have duly invited us.
So I can keep dreaming about church planting scenarios. Recently I've had some ideas about a possible location for a new church. There's a building in town that was new in the '60's as a movie theater, but has since been a restaurant / dance club, ... and maybe other things, too. I do remember seeing Dr. Zhivago there on the amazing wide screen in what, 1966? Now it's been empty for some time. (A couple of years at least -- I didn't pay much attention to the dance club). I suspect it's something of a pink elephant for the owners: not good for movies, since it was built for exactly one screen and auditorium, and it's isolated from the other multi-plexes in town. And it's not good for other uses, since it feels like an auditorium. So I guess the owner could tear it down and build something new -- but what? -- it's completely boxed in on about 2 acres. Anyway, I can imagine they might be willing to rent or lease or ultimately sell to a church. (Believe me, I can imagine plenty.) And I have no idea of what kind of renovation and remodeling it would need. It might be really trashed inside. I have no idea. You would want a good designer to make it feel like a church inside. I envision faux arches and backlit stained glass. Something. (Would an organ fit in the projector booth?) Because I don't see a whole lot of potential in trying to have church services week after week in a dumpy old movie theater. So don't scrimp on the makeover. And it's in a decent location, plenty of parking, and ... well, I think about such things.
I'm not blogging today just so I will have a missed day on record and I won't feel like I have some kind of unbroken streak to keep alive.
Though if I do hear from the MNA Assessment center, I'll blog the results. We have heard that they have a long list of applicants for a short list of spots in the assessment week, so I continue to adjust my expectations downward.
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Holy cow! I know I said I wouldn't blog today, but that was
before I saw Peter Leithart's brilliant piece on Enemies.
How does he cram so many brains into his head? It must bulge
noticeably at the back, Jeeves-like, owing no doubt to an abundance of fish
in his diet.
I wonder if potato chips work the same way? I'm kind of banking on it.
Jeff Fortenberry won handily. Yay. The ho-hum establishment Republican was second. The next strong pro-lifer third. Fortenberry got more votes than the Democrat on the other side of the primary, though I don't know how much you can read into that. I think he'll be a good candidate and should do many years of good service in Washington.
But politics ain't the answer, folks.
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I played my last night of bubble doubles at the Woods Tennis Center
last night. The last "winter" session is over. This
summer I play a weekly match in the Ace Bandage Tennis League. The
name says it all. Tennis is a fickle mistress. You hit a few
really nice shots and you think, "Finally. I'm playing the game
like it should be played!" But of course in the next set you
cover yourself with shame. To be precise, if you don't play enough to
become really consistent, then you have to take the roughs with the
smooths.
Doug Wilson blogs about a recent book The Myth of the American Superhero [John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett, Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002]. He reports that the authors observe that the typical American story follows this pattern:
"A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil; normal institutions fail to contend with this threat; a selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task; aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisiacal condition; the superhero then recedes into obscurity" [p. 6].
Well, this is hardly a new observation. In fact, it is screenwriting 101. Pick up any "how to" book on screenwriting, and they tell you on page 10 to put your story in that form. It is the formula, and if you break it, your story will not feel right. And the reason it feels right, is because it is the shape of the gospel story, and our cultural story mind grows out of the gospel. Which, by the way, is why Japanese films often feel weird and unfinished and give you the feeling "huh? did I miss something?"
For the rest, well, what Wilson says.
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Jana and I may go to the PCA Church Planters Assessment in Atlanta later this month. But only if we're invited, and I thought yesterday was invitation day. The assessment committee has had our folder of tests and forms and recommendations, and they may decide that there are good reasons not to invite us. It is a limited capacity week-long event, and there could easily be plenty of others who look to be better fitted to what they need.
The general idea is that the Zion Session has requested us to get this evaluation so they can look at the red flags on our chart and make a better decision about another church plant in Lincoln. Zion is getting closer to the time when we want to send out a planter and a core group and get Lincoln's third PCA started. This assessment in Atlanta will help them identify the soft spots in my gift mix.
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Today is the Nebraska primary election. We Nebraska Republicans are choosing a candidate for House of Representatives to fill the seat of the retiring Doug Bereuter, who has been our rep for as long as I can remember. (We moved back to Lincoln in 1982). Anyway, the best pro-lifer seems to be Jeff Fortenberry. But there are a couple of other good pro-lifers, and they may split the strong pro-life vote and give the nomination to the ho-hum establishment Republican.
We
rented Timeline yesterday. Modern archaeologists are
transported to 14th century France and dodge a lot of swords, arrows, and
battleaxes as they attempt to ... well, here it gets a little
muddled. It's a bad movie. My main gripe is that the
characters must be much stupider than the audience in order to blunder
their way through all the plot points. After they do the ninth
stupid thing in a row that nobody you know would ever do, you start to
hope that the next battleaxe headed their way won't miss. But
it does. And so on and on. For a movie to work, you have to care about the
characters, and if the characters repeatedly frustrate you with their
stupidity, well, you just quit caring.
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I heard news recently of a church that may be ready to close its doors
after many years. They may not be able to find the way ahead after
this most recent disappointment. My heart goes out to those who have
soldiered on through the years and come to the end with a feeling of
futility. We who look on have a tendency to ask "why" as
we try to learn the lesson, and point out how things went wrong, and
speculate that they shouldn't have done the one thing when they should
have done the other. But this is not the time for analysis.
Instead we take a place next to Jeremiah and lament. "How
lonely sits the city that was full of people."
It makes me think of Band of Brothers. The guys who survived the war were not necessarily any braver or smarter or faster or stronger. And the guys who fell were not necessarily stupid or careless or wicked. Your buddy goes down. It doesn't mean that he was a bad soldier or that he never did anything right or that this isn't a real loss. "My eyes cause me grief at the fate of all the daughters of my city."
If
you really had a chance to start afresh in the church -- and by that I
mean that you wouldn't have all kinds of attitudes and traditions already
in place -- then I think you would want to pass a common cup through the
rows for
communion. But since I've never been to a Presbyterian service where
they passed a common cup (everyone always uses the trays of little
individual cups), any attempt to use a common cup *instead* of the
thimbles would be resisted as new and strange. Such a change could
be made, but changing a tradition is not always easy, and depending on
what other, larger questions are facing a congregation, changing to a
common cup might not be worth the trouble. But we should at least
admit that in
the larger history of the church, it is actually the individual cups that are the
novelty.
So I like the idea of the common cup for two reasons: (1) it's the way Jesus did it. He took "the cup" (singular) and gave "it" (singular) to his disciples. Also Paul: "the cup (singular) of blessing that we bless, is it (singular) not a communion in the blood of Christ?" (2) it makes a better point about the way the church shares together in the cup. We are not a collection of individuals, each drinking his own measure in his own isolation, we are a family, drinking one drink, out of one cup.
But the common cup is not only different than what we're used to, it also offends our modern sense of hygiene. We don't want to pass germs around. At first that sounds very sensible and modern and scientific, except modern scientific studies have shown that the passing of a common cup is a less efficient way of passing germs than plain old shaking hands. http://www.anglicanjournal.com/126/08/canada04.html In fact, studies show that the germ count in a common cup goes up significantly only if the communicants also practice intincture (dipping the bread into the wine in order to take the bread and the wine together in one act).
Of course in a worship hall of 300, passing one cup through every row would be impractical. But if each elder or deacon passed one cup (just as he now passes one tray), then I don't see a problem. The elder or deacon who is serving could have a napkin and wipe the rim of the cup after each row, and nothing could possibly go wrong.
A thread I'm following on the Biblical Horizons list treats the question
"When did Satan fall?" Well of course the Bible doesn't say
exactly, so this all comes under the category of speculation, but there are
more clues than you might think. For example, the Bible does say that
God created everything in the space of six days and all very good.
That implies that on day 6, Satan/Lucifer had not yet fallen and was still
part of the "all very good" judgment that God pronounced on all of
his creation. We can also suppose that as an angel, Lucifer's job was
to tutor Adam and Eve, leading them to greater maturity. After all, we
know that "the law was delivered by angels" (Acts 7:53), and so
such an intermediary role would fit Lucifer, the garden's
light-bearer. So when Satan, more cunning that all the other beasts,
comes to quiz the woman, it could well be that this was legitimate tutoring;
part of what he was supposed to do. Indeed, even his first question to
the woman sounds like a catechism question: a teaching device to prompt the
woman to consider the nature and implications of God's command. If
that is true, then it is also possible to read her first reply, which
expands God's command, not as faulty and wicked (as I have always been
taught and taught "she was wrong in that she added to God's
command!"), but as progress towards a maturity that would eventually
bring men and women to glory, putting them over the
angels.
So Satan's agenda may have been innocent (or possibly mixed) in 3:1, but it seems like it is not until his outright contradiction of God's command, when he decides to derail man's progress towards maturity and glory in 3:4 that he is utterly fallen. After all, God announces judgment on the serpent in 3:14 "because you have done this..." referring to his leading our first parents in rebellion, not for some previous fall and rebellion from among the hosts of heaven.
Makes sense to me. I guess I like it because it helps us understand what was going on in terms of information that the Bible actually gives us. I like that better than extrapolating some Fall of Satan that has very little direct basis in the text.
I'm scheduled to preach in Olathe on May 30, in Grand Island on June 6,
and at Zion a couple of times at the end of June. I like the routine
of preaching, because while I never study as I should, at least when I'm
preaching I study more than usual. In Grand Island, the pastor has
been doing a series on the Psalms. So I asked for Psalm 20: "Help
in the day of trouble." That Psalm has been a real encouragement to me,
and it's also my favorite fallback when counseling people who are going through a day of
trouble.
And as a special added bonus, 20: 7, 6, and 8 (in that order) are the words of one of the first scripture songs I ever learned. Back in 1976 it was a new and wonderful thing for me that the church could worship God by singing to him the very words of scripture straight out of the Bible. I must remember that early gift gratefully, even as these days I keep pressing forward with a certain impatience, anxious for the church to sing whole complete Psalms straight out of the Bible, "just the way God wrote them." But there are a few significant obstacles. (1) Psalms are "long" -- many in the church would feel uncomfortable singing or chanting through a complete Psalm. (2) Psalms have "non-happy" verses in them. Today's scripture songs are almost exclusively just the happy verses, and anything troubling or dark just doesn't get picked by the praise band. (3) We don't have a tradition in western music that accommodates the irregular line length and meter of the Psalms. Instead we have the tradition of metrical Psalms, with their awkward Yoda-like inversions ("The Lord my shepherd is"), or we have to chant like the Orthodox or Romanists, who make many among us instantly uncomfortable, so nobody wants to do that. So we pretty much are stuck. Still, I'm not convinced we can't try some new things.
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There is now an easier URL for this blog: http://www.snurl.com/presbyteer. Snurl.com makes free, permanent short-name url's out of longer ones, and lets you choose your own name for the last part.
Non-inclusive me. I take a certain
pleasure in my preaching and teaching over the promiscuous use of politically
incorrect pronouns. It's a pleasure like that of taking off a pair of
too-tight shoes. For example, I have no hesitation at all in saying
"God requires <<all men>> everywhere to worship him through his son
Jesus Christ." In fact I prefer that expression to the neutered
not-quite equivalent "God requires all people (or 'all persons,' or
'everyone') everywhere to worship him through his son Jesus
Christ." And I prefer it because in spite of the feminist political
agenda, the third person singular
masculine pronoun will always be a perfectly acceptable way to refer to an unspecified person
regardless of his (sic) actual gender. It will always be acceptable
because that's the way the Bible uses pronouns, and the mind of the Bible
will always govern the mind of human language. And not only is it
acceptable, it is preferable, because at the simplest levels of discourse,
it makes and maintains a point about headship and covenant inclusion.
Each man is included in Adam, each Christian is included in Christ, and
women are included in "men," in "mankind," and in all
the generic "he's." Those are the facts and they are not
unimportant.
I can barely keep from laughing (or screaming) at the silly efforts of the feminist revisionists to re-cast the church in gender neutral terms. And so at Christmas I sing "Good Christian Men, Rejoice" in spite of the Newspeakers who have painted it over in pink and seem actually to think that it sounds just as good to sing "Good Christians All Rejoice." I can't decide which is worse: that they can't tell the real difference, or that they feel virtuous in their little program of neutering the hymnals, eager scissors in hand. Snip, snip, another "he" becomes an "it." Now we're making progress.
One of the most pathetic cases of religious neutering I have witnessed happened during an Epiphany service I visited in a certain church. The pastorette didn't give an actual sermon; she gave a puppet talk to a few embarrassed children who were cutely invited to the front of the church to hold the cardboard camels and other props. The language in this church had been carefully neutered at every point, so male pronouns were mighty hard to come by. The most ridiculous moment came as she was telling about the magi. She caught her neutering impulse in mid-snip as she said, "... the Wise Ones-- er, Men from the East..." The lady's natural habit of spontaneous neutering was so strong she could barely bring herself to tell the story using the gender-specific language that survived even in her inclusive language Bible translation.
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Thomas Sowell for Emperor. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20040506.shtml
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A teacher who works with younger elementary students in the public schools made a comment that surprised me. She said that the kids from the difficult homes are actually more sensitive to her disapproval, and more responsive to correction. Thus if she tells a kid from a healthy two-parent family "you know what you did a moment ago really upset me", it may not make a very large impact, because the kid isn't hungry for school emotionally -- he gets plenty of food at home. But if she says the same thing to a kid who doesn't have much of a life at home, it has a much bigger effect. The emotional connection he has with her is probably one of the best things in his life, and he immediately responds because doesn't want to jeopardize that relationship. This is just about all he gets, and he knows how hungry he'd be without it.
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Since my ordination in 2002, I have been asked to officiate at a few weddings. Weddings are fun. Everyone is having a good time. Plus cake and nuts. Now I have made it a goal to follow up with each couple every year by sending a pastoral anniversary letter. So now I'm coming up on a couple who wanted to be married in the church, and made all the right noises about their faith in Christ, and stated very clearly that they intended to make church a part of their married life. I was a bit skeptical at the time, and, alas, time has verified my suspicions. These kids wanted the church for their wedding, but they didn't really want Jesus for their marriage. So when I write them (they live in another city), alongside my protestations of friendship and good will, I will include a rebuke for their apostate ways. "Why do you come to the church on your wedding day and say 'Lord, Lord' but you do not do what I tell you?" It is like a man who is outside the church and complains that the church is full of hypocrites. Well, never more so than back on his own wedding day.
This from the enormously interesting site/listserv "World Wide Words" where Michael Quinion, British philologist extraordinaire, explains all manner of things about English usage. Here he explains the origins of the phrase "Pleased as Punch" ...
I guess long before Road Runner was blowing up the Coyote, violent, cartoonish entertainment was clearly known to be what kids enjoy. Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain are the efforts of today's "childhood experts" who would sissify every child, imagining that violence of any and every kind is always unsuitable for kids. If modern kids aren't able to watch dad slaughter the hog or mom wring the neck off the chicken, then Punch, Road Runner, and Tom and Jerry are not bad alternatives. There is something almost wholesome about the pleasure we get when we see Tom get smashed over the head with a shovel....Though Punch and Judy puppet shows are by no means unknown outside the UK, and the term "pleased as punch" is also common, the tradition of the entertainment of that name is mainly a British one, associated in most people's minds with childhood memories of sitting on the sand during summer holidays at the seaside, watching the antics of puppet Mr Punch in his candy-striped booth.
Though no two shows are quite alike and the story has evolved a lot in the last four centuries, the traditional plot has Mr Punch kill his infant child, then beat his wife Judy to death. He is thrown in prison but escapes using a golden key. He then kills a policeman, a doctor, a lawyer, the hangman, death and the Devil. He murders everyone with huge pleasure, each time squeakily repeating his catchphrase, "That's the way to do it!
It's the enormous satisfaction of Punch with his awful deeds that led to the idiom "as pleased as Punch" appearing at the beginning of the nineteenth century for somebody who was delighted. Punch's pride in outwitting every figure of authority also led to "as proud as Punch" as an alternative... (Emphasis mine).
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Tonight I teach the Kindergarten class at Zion. I like ACTION ("All Church Things in One Night") nights (hmm.. a bit of redundancy there) each Wednesday. I lead the opening songs for the whole group, and then lead the K/5 class. I have fun, but must govern my impulse to get too silly with the kids.
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www.freebooks.com
has David Chilton's commentary
on Revelation, Days of Vengeance, online. Chilton was in
Tyler Texas with the Ray Sutton / Jim Jordan / Gary North gang back in the
80's. Lots of good things have come downstream from those
days. This commentary, from 1990, so far impresses me as an
excellent treatment, and a refreshing antidote to the impoverished Left
Behind pessimillenialism that is the only thing American Christians are
generally given these days. One curious note: Chilton sees a 5-fold
covenant model in the structure of Revelation, and shows it's similarity
to the same 5-fold model from Ezekiel, and, of course, from
Deuteronomy. Chilton attributes his acquaintance with this 5-fold
model to the work of Westminster Seminary's Meredith Kline who is pretty
famous for his earlier work (early 60's) when he identified a 5-fold
suzerain treaty model behind Deuteronomy. I think the book there was
The Treaty of the Great King. I remember my prof at Trinity
seminary c. 1977, Walt Kaiser, telling us to beg borrow or steal Kline's
book (out of print at that time), because it was THAT IMPORTANT.
(And evidently someone did, because the copy in the seminary library had
been missing for some time.) So here's the interesting part: Kline's
5-fold model sees Deuteronomy as a type of Ancient Near Eastern treaty
common among the nations round about. But is that a good
thing? Is the Bible really supposed to be some kind of copy of
Hittite political structures? So enter Jim Jordan. Jordan
says, no, don't go to the ANE suzerainty treaties, go to Genesis 1, where
a the same 5-fold structure is evident in God's creation work.
That's the real and original source -- everything else, including
Deuteronomy and the suzerainty treaties are downstream from that.
For a sample of the discussion, you can jump into the middle with one of
Jordan's essays here:
And now I understand a little more why the 5-, 6-, and 7-fold patterns are so common in Jordan's other work. And they do show up everywhere.
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Where Things Lead. S. M. Hutchens, editor of Touchstone journal, has some true and painful observations on the tendencies of "seeker-friendly" worship here: http://tinyurl.com/2tu6z
INDEX BLOGTHERS ALSO ONLINE...
May 2004
June 2004
July 2004
Leithart.com
BLOG and MABLOG
Just Mark
Barlow Farms
annie's blog
Rabbi Saul
Hierogrammate
sacra doctrina
KataJohn
Carrifex
Annecdotes
The New Pantagruel
The Presbyteer - Keith Ghormley - Lincoln Nebraska