February 06, 2006
Our God is sovereign and will meet out a perfect justice in the great and final judgement. He doesn't need me to burn your house down just because you blaspheme Him. In fact, He calls on me to warn you of your sin and (wonder of all wonders) to urge you to embrace the One you have mocked and disgraced as your own Saviour from sin and its punishment.
And that is the bottom line. Christians get upset when our faith is mocked and ridiculed (and ponder the irony of the tolerant ones who mock it). Christians will protest to the powers that be. We will boycot. But save in the isolated examples of a few whack-jobs that decided to demonstrate their pro-life sentiments by killing someone, we don't kill people over it. Haven't since the Inquisition (and before you start on THAT -- my forefathers were killed in those, too. My spiritual heritage includes a lot of Lollard blood.). We follow closely the words of the apostle Paul in Romans
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be conceited. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." To the contrary, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
(Romans 12:14-21 ESV)
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February 04, 2006
One thing that sets Protestants in general apart from Catholics is the idea that each believer is a priest in his own right, and can approach God directly through prayer with no intermediary. Unfortunately, many Protestants who believe this in theory don't believe it in practice.
How often do we rely on ministers to pray for us, as if their prayers get answered first? How many televangelists have made fortunes from people buying prayer cloths that somehow give them "special access" to God? How many of us believe that the pastor has some form of special revelation from God because he is the pastor? How often do we neglect personal ministry because we think that's the pastor's job?
John to the seven churches that are in Asia:Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.Christ has made us all priests, according to this passage. Peter writes that we are "... a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." (1 Peter 2:9 ESV)
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
(Revelation 1:4-6 ESV)
What does that mean? The priests offered sacrifices to God in the temple -- they were the only ones who could do that. This function of the priest is no longer needed, though, as the greatest sacrifice of all has been made for us. The atoning sacrifice has already been made for us by Christ.
Priests were also set apart for service. Paul makes it clear in his letter to the church at Ephasus that we are all called to service: "And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, "(Ephesians 4:11-12 ESV). The work of the ministry is the job of every believer -- not just a priestly class.
The priesthood of all believers places a huge responsibility on the shoulders of all believers -- we are all responsible for the ministry of the Gospel. If you know of a ministry that your own local church needs, the question shouldn't be "Why isn't anyone doing that?" but "How can I help start that?" If we all had that attitude, Christian churches would be far more effective in ministering to their communities.
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February 02, 2006
Now, 'Will and Grace' is trying to get the evangelical "Stamp of Evilness" affixed to their latest effort:
Britney Spears will guest star on an episode of "Will & Grace," NBC announced Tuesday.I'm used to the GOP pandering to Christians. I'm not used to Hollywood doing it.The pop star will appear as a Christian conservative sidekick to Sean Hayes' character, Jack, who hosts his own talk show, on the April 13 episode, the network said.
Jack's fictional network, Out TV, is bought by a Christian TV network, leading to Spears contributing a cooking segment called "Cruci-fixin's."
Don't get me wrong -- I don't think the folks at 'Will and Grace' like us at all. (Don't really care what they think about me, but that's another post.) And they're hoping that we'll hate them now more than ever, and will demand boycotts and everything, so that maybe someone will say "Hey -- those evangelicals don't like that show very much. Must be pretty good! Think I'll tune in."
We need to get a clue. There is no such thing as bad publicity to a TV show. All they care about is that we spell the name right, and link to the web site. The less attention we pay to the idiots in Hollywood who want a reaction from us, the better off everyone will be.
After all, it was our complaining that led them to even think about airing 'The Book of Daniel' to begin with.
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January 29, 2006
One of my biggest gripes is that so few "big" preachers podcast. They have their tapes, which are offered on their web sites, but they don't have a podcast. The recording is there, but so many of them would rather charge people for it. I've never understood that. I've always chalked it up to a lack of understanding of what a podcast is.
One of my favorite preachers is podcasting now. Alistair Begg is offering daily podcasts of his radio show. Head over to the Truth for Life podcasting site and register. It's free, and they'll give you the RSS feed address so you can plug it into your favorite podcastcher. If you have iTunes, you can just search for Truth for Life in the podcast section and subscribe straight from there.
John MacArthur is also podcasting. You can subscribe to the GraceLife podcast using this RSS URL (thanks, Phil!)
Al Mohler also podcasts his daily radio show. More information is at his website -- the link to subscribe to the podcast is on the right.
Fill those iPods you got for Christmas with good programming. And don't forget about the Pewcast and Sunday at First Baptist -- I've just about got the hosting problems worked out, so both will be updated VERY soon!!!
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January 28, 2006
She was not a teenaged girl experiencing her first pregnancy; she was a mother already, and in her thirties. She didn't have to answer to her parents for what she did. She wasn't concerned about what the father would say. She had options.
She chose to give the child up. To carry the baby in her womb for nine months, and deliver it. She delivered it on January 26, 1968, at a bit after 6 in the morning.
And never saw him again.
Just wanted to post a quick thanks, and let her know I turned out just fine.
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The sorrow of losing a parent is only tempered by the assurance that you will meet again in heaven.
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Please pray for that my family members and I can have place to live and food to eat, please pray for that we can apply for compassionate rehousing in God's will, may God have mercy upon my family members. (9)Please pray for that my brother will not go on drinking the wine and gambling. (10)Please pray for that God can purify me and help me to have spritual growth up, and please pray for that my family members and I will not be hurt by my colleagues, classmates, church members and friends include Christian colleagues, so that they can be helpful for me to live out a good witness before my family members, my grandmother, my father, my sister, my brother and my relatives can all accept the Jesus Christ, and my mother and I can have a spiritual growth up and can strenghthen our faith.
And I am sorry for any inconvinience and wrong I made to submit my prayer request above, pray in the name of Lord Jesus Christ, A-men.I just added my 40th member a few days ago. And you'll notice that none of the SBC big-wigs have been added yet. I decided that I would contact each blogger personally by email to invite them, or accept current SBC members who wanted to join. And I just haven't asked Al Mohler or Russ Moore if they want to join yet -- and the site has probably slipped under their radar. I'll get around to asking the SBC leadership if they want to be included later this year -- probably before the convention.
If you haven't read any of the blogs I've included in the aggregator, you need to head over there and do it. Things are hopping right now!
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I guess the IP number shows up as being based there. I figured it was pretty close, but I was wrong. It's over 450 miles from here, in northern Pennsylvania.
So I'm asking the techno-savvy readers out there -- WHY in the WORLD is it showing up like this????
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January 27, 2006
Truth to tell, exposing sin is easier than applying grace; for, alas, we are more intimate with the former than we sometimes are with the latter. Therein lies our weakness.
I think this explains why so many Christians do what they do. Why we leave our wounded on the battlefield. Why we'd rather find reasons to separate from each other than find ways to work together. We'd rather expose sin.
Sometimes I think it's simply because we like to know that other Christians are sinning -- even doing things worse than what we do ourselves. We'd rather expose the preacher down the street for his financial problems than deal with the fact that we cheat on our taxes. We'd rather hear about how the televangelist was caught in sexual sin than deal with our own addiction to pornography. It makes us feel better if someone else is doing it, too.
We also do it because we get hurt when people are exposed. We're angry when our favorite preacher is exposed as a mere human, dealing with temptations daily. We feel let down, we're hurt, and we want them to pay. So we pile on. And we hunt others that have the same problem. We don't want to extend grace.
And we do it because we've been attacked ourselves. I see this in many of the comments on the IMB/Wade Burleson controversy: former Southern Baptists who are feeling vindicated now that the dogs have been loosed once again. Many of them are trying to keep their "Told ya'"s quiet, but it's clear from reading that the sentiment is there.
It's a self-perpetuating thing. We don't show grace, we aren't shown grace. We aren't shown grace, we don't show any. Somewhere, the cycle has to stop -- but we aren't willing to stop it.
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January 26, 2006
Fair use has always been a forward-looking doctrine. It was meant to leave room for new uses, not merely "customary historic uses." Sony was entitled to build the VCR first, and resolve the fair use questions in court later. This arrangement has worked well for all involved -- consumers, media moguls, and high technology companies.Now the RIAA and MPAA want to betray that legacy by passing laws that will regulate new technologies in advance and freeze fair use forever. If it wasn't a "customary historic use," federal regulators will be empowered to ban the feature, prohibiting innovators from offering it. If the feature is banned, courts will never have an opportunity to pass on whether the activity is a fair use.
Fair use redefined. "Historic use" will kill innovation. "Historic use" is a joke. Write your senator about this now while it's still in draft.
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January 24, 2006
Which is a bigger drain on American jobs -- illegal immigrants who are taking jobs that we really don't want to do anyway, or corporations who are taking jobs overseas by the hundreds legally?
What is middle class? Lou Dobbs says that the Ford layoffs are a blow to the middle class families in America. Union auto workers make $45 to $50 per hour -- that's between $90,000 and $100,000 per year. If that's middle class, then I'm living in abject poverty.
When did they end the earned income tax credit? Oh -- they didn't? Then why do I hear so much about tax breaks for the poor? They pay no taxes.
Just ranting here. I'll do some real blogging later on. I don't do politics very much (unless you count the SBC stuff I've been doing lately), so every so often I have to vent.
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January 19, 2006
Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet - people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the number of the shoe shops were increasing. It's a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops.
I was looking through my blog stats today, and was kind of surprised by what I saw. Ever since I started blogging about the IMB/Wade Burleson controversy, my hits have increased by about 20% each day. Now, that's not as big an increase as it sounds, but it's still significant. The number of hits I get from searches on the subject, and from other blogs who are talking about it, is fascinating to me.
It got me thinking about the Shoe Event Horizon, and it's application to blogging. There are some events and some subjects that, once people start blogging them, end up taking on a life of their own. Traffic increases, and bloggers, being the attention hounds that we are, write more about that subject. Blogs start up just on that subject. And it continues.
I'm not saying that the topics aren't important -- I think that this current controversy is very important for all Southern Baptists , especially those of us who are going to be in Greensboro this year. It's just an interesting sociological phenomenon. I think that we're close to the IMB Event Horizon, where many of us aren't willing to write on any other subject lest we lose the new audience that we've found. I wonder how many will stick around ...
I wonder if the Internet will ever hit Blog Event Horizon -- where there are so many blogs that it becomes unfeasable for anyone to introduce any 'Net application not geared toward bloggers. Of course, some people think we're already there.
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A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel; observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth. -small";>From the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message
The autonomy of the local church is one of the distinctions that separate Baptists from most other Protestants. There is no centralized authority that has any jurisdiction over a local church -- the churches decide individually what doctrines they adhere to, what they teach and preach, what materials they use, etc.
Even within the Southern Baptist Convention, each local church is autonomous. The national Convention does not tell us what to do -- in fact, the purpose of the convention each year is for the local churches to establish the direction of the Convention as a whole.
But is it Biblical? Briefly, let me offer some Biblical support for the idea of local church autonomy. more...
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Time to pull out my favorite short story. "Harrison Bergeron" should be required reading for teachers AND students. It shows us that, no matter how bad competition might be, and no matter how much better we all feel if everyone is equal, it really doesn't work in real life. We need to accept the fact that there are people who excel, and people who don't. The people who do are going to be rewarded for their abilities in life, and the people who don't won't be rewarded.
Mainstreaming in education has given us a society that accepts mediocrity. There are no more "honors" or "advanced" classes, so there is no motivation to achieve. Smart kids get good grades with little effort. Kids who need the help don't get it, because there are too many other kids in the classes who don't need help. Teachers can't spend class time focusing on one or two kids who don't get it. They can't spend class time trying to challenge the gifted kids. The majority of their time has to be spent with the majority of the kids.
When I was in school, there was no mainstreaming. The advanced kids were in advanced classes. We did more work, and wrote more papers. We were challenged. The kids who needed extra help got that help, because they were in separate classes. And we actually learned things -- all of us did.
We are so worried about offending someone, telling them that they aren't "gifted" or that they need extra help, that we are sabotaging their education. We worry more about self-esteem than self-sufficiency. And then we wonder why our kids don't learn.
This needs to change. We need to reward performance, and do something to help kids who aren't performing. We need to give kids something to shoot for, rather than making the target so big that anyone can hit it.
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January 18, 2006
Darrow is tired of hearing about how heroic Aiden is. About how he defeated the giant Golia -- I mean Greidawl, and helped drive the Pyrthan invaders out of Corenwald. He's threatened -- he thinks Aiden is after the throne.
So he sends Aiden on a quest, to prove his loyalty. Aiden is sent to retrieve a legendary flower that is said to have the ability to cure the King's depression. But the flower is located in the heart of the Feechiefen Swamp -- and nobody who has ever entered the swamp has come out again.
Aiden isn't worried -- he has the friendship of the feechies, and the mark to prove it. But as he progresses, he grows more and more worried. There's something wrong in the Feechiefen Swamp -- there are feechies who pay no attention to the feechie laws, and who use metal weapons. And there's a new king in the swamps.
The Wilderking.
I enjoyed this book even more than the first one. For one thing, it's less derivative than the first book, even though the close friendship between Aiden and Steren was predictable, as was Darrow's depression and hatred of Aiden. But the focus of this book is on the feechies -- which should please Rogers' fans.
The feechies really make this series. Their simplicity, their sense of honor, and their commitment to their values illustrate everything that is wrong with civilizer society. And they're really funny to read -- especially out loud.
This series is high on my must-read list. I've got to make sure I get a copy of Book 3 (Amazon says it should be out in May of this year) so I can find out how this ends.
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Now there's another option. Jonathan Rogers has written The Wilderking Trilogy, and offers us a series for young readers that is fun, exciting, and based on Christian ideals and principles.
Book 1, The Bark of the Bog Owl, was actually released back in 2004. The premise is familiar to Christians -- a young boy, Aiden Errolson, tending his father's sheep, is chosen by a mysterious prophet to be the next King -- the Wilderking, who comes to lead his people back to prominence in the world, and to reclaim the traditional ideals that the people have forgotten.
The only real weakness in this first book is that the main plot is far too predictable. Once I read that Aiden was a shepherd, I had a feeling that this would be the story of King David retold. Then the Phillist -- I mean, the Pyrthens -- show up with their "peace treaty," which leads to war. Then Aiden goes to his brothers at the front carrying cheese and other food. And guess what? There's this giant ...
That said, I really enjoyed this book. The subplots involving the aboriginal "feechies" is very enjoyable, especially the Feechiefeast that Aiden enjoys. The characters are familiar, but still deep. It's going to be interesting to see Aiden mature over the course of the next two books, and it's a relief to read about a boy who is actually boyish -- he likes to roam, play, and have adventures. He's a twelve-year-old who writes to the King volunteering his services as "an adventurer." And suddenly, he's got a huge responsibility dropped on him. He reacts the way any normal kid would react.
Rogers has a Ph.D in 17th Century English Lit, but this book reads as if he'd spent his academic career studying 18th Century American literature instead. The differences in dialect between feechie and 'civilizer' are distinct, American dialects, and the setting certainly reminds me of the American southeast -- fitting, since Rogers grew up in Georgia. The series has promise, and after I finished this book I was relieved that I'd gotten the second one to review as well. THAT review will be up in a half hour or so ...
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January 17, 2006
Friday, January 13, 2006 was the third birthday of everyone's favorite burninator, Trogdor. Celebrate by watching this Flash-media montage. Or maybe you'd like to see the first appearance of Trogdor. Or even play the game.
And I have kept my promise to post something non-SBC-related. Homestarrunner is about as far from the SBC as you can get...
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Ryan DeBarr over at xIFBx has a heartbreaking story of a missionary couple who have been asked to resign because of the new policies at the IMB.
Ryan and I come from similar backgrounds in fundamentalist churches; in fact, he attended the church I was baptized in (though he was there after we moved south). And I think we're both getting an uncomfortable feeling of deja vu with a lot of things that are happening right now in the SBC. We're forgetting that there are some things worth fighting for, and some things that we need to simply agree to disagree about.
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January 16, 2006
(Acts 8:36 ESV)
And Phillip answered and said, "The International Missions Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, because you must be baptized in a local church."
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{edit: Note that Burleson STILL does not name names or discuss confidential information. Still no evidence of slander or any wrongdoing on his part, other than disagreeing with the power lobby on the trustee board.}
(Hat tip goes to Ryan at xIFBx)
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