I am reading Hostage Lands with my son. He is assigned this for his 3rd grade reading in school. In the book, a Celt named Calum tells a Roman centurion, named Rusticus, about his conversion to Christ while a attending the games in the Coliseum. He tells him of Chirst’s kingdom and how it is truly eternal over and against the supposed eternal city of Rome. Calum mentions other empires that had fallen, such as the Persian, Syrian, and Assyrian, that once thought they were invincible.

This reminded me of a Malcolm Muggeridge quote that I have often heard Ravi Zacharias repeat in the past. So… off to Google I went to find this quote. Along the way, I found some others worth noting. Here’s the first:

Television was not invented to make human beings vacuous, but is an emanation of their vacuity.

Further:

On television I feel like a man playing piano in a brothel; every now and again he solaces himself by playing ‘Abide with Me’ in the hope of edifying both the clients and the inmates

Thoughts and quotes like this about television haunt me mostly because I believe them to be true. There may be good arguments for some redeeming qualities of television but I just have the sneaking suspicion that they are overwhelmingly overpowered by its deleterious effects. I have read Postman and somehow remain inactive, mostly due to football. Anyway, this is just my bent. I cannot help but think we’d be better off as a society without television.

Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.

May God grant us ears to hear.

Here is the quote for which I was searching. It is long but well worth it.

We look back upon history, and what do we see? Empires rising and falling. Revolutions and Counterrevolutions. Wealth accumulated and wealth disbursed. Shakespeare has written of the rise and fall of great ones, that ebb and flow with the moon.

I look back upon my own fellow countrymen, once upon a time dominating a quarter of the world, most of them convinced, in the words of what is still a popular song, that the God who made them mighty, shall make them mightier yet.  I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian announce to the world the establishment of a Reich that would last a thousand years. I have seen an Italian clown say he was going to stop and restart the calendar with his own ascension to power. I’ve heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin, acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as wiser than Solomon, more humane than Marcus Aurelius, more enlightened than Ashoka. I have seen America, wealthier and in terms of military weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that had the American people so desired, they could have outdone a Caesar, or an Alexander in the range and scale of their conquests. All in one lifetime, all in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.  England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy. Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy. Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by fears of running our of those precious fluids that keeps their motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate.

All in one lifetime, all in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.

Behind the debris of these solemn supermen, and self-styled imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one, because of whom, by whom, in whom and through whom alone, mankind may still have peace: The person of Jesus Christ.

The Telegraph is reporting that Dutch Catholics are re-branding the Lenten Season as the Christian Ramadan. They say this is an effort to reach the young folk who are more familiar with the Muslim holiday. This is honestly quite hard for a newly converted postmillennialist like myself. This seems surely to be a sign of the Apocalypse. Altars to foreign gods are seemingly being erected all over Christian lands. However, as I heard a local minister preach, perhaps my first thought should be to repent. May the one, true and Triune God grant us His abundant mercy.

If this stream of consciousness is too random for you, it is not my fault. A group of my friends visited the Everett Brothers’ Bluegrass Barn this past weekend at the behest of Mr. Beadlemania and his lovely wife. My lovely wife and I couldn’t stay too long due to our even lovelier daughter’s inability to stop crying. However, those few minutes did get my mind to thinking.

Why do we spend so much of our time amusing ourselves with things that do not edify? I suppose that could be a trick question. The word amuse means not to muse, meaning further, to not engage our minds. Now, this is no philologist’s painstaking etymology of the word but it gets to the gist of it. Our entertainments today, our leisure time, is spent far too often on things that simply do not matter, things that do not enrich our lives or those of others.

My first thought after entering the barn was that this place had a reality about it, an earthiness, that just doesn’t come across (can’t come across) in most high-priced concerts featuring mega-stars. The reason for this was that it was local. The musicians were just guys from the area with day jobs or retired from day jobs. In their leisure time, they like to get together and jam and to take you along with them. They’re not the least bit concerned with the latest fad, fashion, or latest pop culture phenomenon that has the staying power of a vapor. They’re too busy interacting with standards and passing on tradition.

Anyway, I starting thinking of my group of friends. We have enough musicians among us (though I am clearly not one) to simply get together and sing and play. They can drown me out. Why don’t we do that for “entertainment”? If we did, we could probably forgo a baby-sitter and pass down some traditions ourselves.

Okay, so this is a cheap post linking to someone else. However, the topic is important. I don’t pretend to understand a great deal of economics but the more I learn, the more frightened I become for our present condition. Here is another great reason to vote for Ron Paul. Just in case you miss one of the comments to this linked post, I am copying it here:

Dr. Paul has great big brass ones, and more integrity than all the rest of Washington combined. He rocks!

By the way, in case you don’t know it, Bernanke doesn’t and he is lying.

As long as I am merely pointing you to other post, be sure to visit this one. It helps to upack this line of thought a bit better. Here is a quote Chad pulls from an article he links to (some good links in his post):

Consider this: In 2000, when Bush took office, gold was $273 per ounce, oil was $22 per barrel and the euro was worth $.87 per dollar. Currently, gold is over $700 per ounce, oil is over $80 per barrel, and the euro is nearly $1.40 per dollar. If Bernanke cuts rates, we’re likely to see oil at $125 per barrel by next spring.

Inflation is soaring. The government statistics are thoroughly bogus. Gold, oil and the euro don’t lie. According to economist Martin Feldstein, “The falling dollar and rising food prices caused market-based consumer prices to rise by 4.6 per cent in the most recent quarter.” (WSJ)

That’s 18.4 per cent a year, and yet Bernanke is still considering cutting interest rates and further fueling inflation.

Keep saying 2% over and over Mr. Bernanke. Seriously, he is lying.

Given Jamie’s recent post about cars and his and my conversation with Greg about scooter’s, I’d like to take this time to introduce you to Date-Dabitur.  This blog is written and managed by a gentleman named Chad Degenhart.  He is a remarkable guy.  I don’t know him really at all, just a few e-mails back in forth in the past.  He is a man that lives his convictions and his writing has challenged me on many more than one occasion.

At any rate, after we had spoken about scooters, Greg asked what kind of mileage I get in my 3-door Civic.  I only get consistently 34 to 36 mpg.  Well, that stinks compared to Chad’s 98 Jetta TDI.  I have to admit, I don’t know anything about diesel engines.  However, Chad’s reference to waste-vegetable oil (WVO) is really interesting.

I won’t be trading in my Civic anytime soon.  It is 7 years old and probably will not hit 225K at 15 years.

Stop by Chad, Jamie, and Greg’s blogs often.  They are well worth the visit.

Our boasting should only be in the Lord, I know. As the psalmist says:

Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory,
for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!

This is all, of course, very true. This boasting too is really in the gracious blessings of our Lord. I just cannot help it. I am one proud daddy. I have had a little fun playing around with iMovie 08. There is a simple button that allows you to load video to YouTube. Here is our first foray into going viral.

Ain’t she cute?

I am continually amazed at the brilliance shown in the works of C.S. Lewis. I am currently reading Out of the Silent Planet. This is the first volume in the space trilogy by Lewis. The silent planet is Earth and the character who is “out of it” is Ransom. He is abducted and taken hostage to Malacandra (Mars) where he encounters a creature named Hyoi. Hyoi is a member of one of three rational races of creatures. His being called Hrossa. Chapter 12 contains interesting dialogue between the two as Ransom tries to understand hrossan ways from the perspective of his own fallen human nature.

The conversation turns to thoughts on pleasure and memory. The hrossa seem to be a contented folk and this confuses Ransom a bit. Ransom wonders why they would not want more of a pleasure. The direction of his wonder has a hedonistic bent. Ransom is basically wondering if their desire for pleasure would be insatiable enough to war with the other races to satisfy it. Hyoi simply does not have the categories in his mind for this kind of thought. If you have read Lewis enough, you can see how his thought on ordinate and inordinate desire has made its way into the story. Hyoi simply asks Ransom:

Would he (hman, man) want his dinner all day or want to sleep after he had slept?

Ransom then questions Hyoi wether they must be merely content to remember a pleasure if it cannot be repeated and Hyoi replies:

A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hman, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing… What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure.

Hyoi uses the occasion of their meeting to illustrate this point.

When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days until then – that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it. You say you have poets in your world. Do they not teach you this?

The “growing” is not mere fish story. We grow in our understanding and appreciation, the depth of the thing. I believe this could add insight to our view of the Lord’s Table. Christ told us to partake in remembrance of Him. As Hyoi shows in the next quote, this involves expectation and memory. What kind of changes would take place in our churches if we came to the Lord’s table expectantly?

And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back – if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?

As my friend Jamie said, probably not enough people are reading the space trilogy.

Being a father is simply and obviously one of the greatest things with which I have been blessed.  Too often though I find myself agitated and impatient.  Doug Wilson has shared that our goal is to have our children love our standards and not merely adjust their outward behavior.  In other words, it is primarily a heart issue and the behavior will necessarily follow.  In this pursuit, I quite often forget about having genuine fun or simply allowing myself and my children to be goofy.

The other day I was driving with my oldest daughter and pleaded that we listen to my iPod.  She wanted to listen to Jason Mraz’s “Geek in the Pink.”  So, we rolled down the windows and cranked up the volume and sang our hearts out.  Neither one of us can really sing well nor do we know the lyrics but boy we sure had fun letting our arms “snake” and “wave” outside the windows. 

This incident made me think of my own childhood.  My father was a musician and was the cool dad on the block.  We had speakers outside our house and music constantly going.  “Saturday in the Park” will never be just a song by Chicago.  Some of my greatest memories are tied to the music we enjoyed as a family in general and specific songs in particular.  I am thrilled to be building like memories for my own family.

So, for your enjoyment and fun, here is the video for “Geek in the Pink.”  Have fun and be goofy.

My good friends give me a bit of grief for not being much of a blogger. They are teasing me about my lack of prodigious output. This, of course, is true as one can tell by looking at my three postings. I am not exactly burning up the blogosphere. I am not a rocket man and I am not burning out my fuse up here alone.

Part of the teasing is spot on. As my wife often says, there is much truth in jest. We are a mixed bag of sinful and righteous motives. As David prayed, we have enough trouble with our presumptuous sins let alone our secret faults. One of my secret faults and one of the reasons I don’t like blogs is that I want folks to think that I write well or am smart. There is nothing at all wrong with wanting to write well or to increase in knowledge and wisdom. These are holy pursuits. Blogging, journaling, writing are disciplines and we are to renew our minds by God’s word and be transformed.

Somewhere in my mixed bag of motives I want to be grand without the discipline, so much of the time I won’t take the first step. I fall into the trap of those in Judah who despised the day of small things.

Well, today was one of the days where I took part in a mundane, seemingly ordinary, teeny-weeny thing. I helped to clear out an office or storage closet, depending on how you look at it. However, my friend Shane has reminded me that God reigns over all things, even the smallest of them, and He does. Clearing this office was faith in action. It was walking in the Spirit and allowing God to reign in the small things. We were helping to organize the office for the headmaster of Dominion Classical Christian Academy.

Thinking on these things recalled to mind a quote that I often heard was attributed to Luther. In my memory, the quote went something like this: “To God, a maid changing a diaper is just as glorious as the preaching of the gospel.” A quick internet search turned up Luther’s sermon The Estate of Marriage. The search also landed me on Gene Edward Veith’s blog, Cranach. He had culled out the following from the sermon which drips with the glory of the mundane:

Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason, takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife [emphasis mine, the husband is doing this, WOW.], provide for her, labour at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves? What, should I make such a prisoner of myself? 0 you poor, wretched fellow, have you taken a wife? Fie, fie upon such wretchedness and bitterness! It is better to remain free and lead a peaceful. carefree life; I will become a priest or a nun and compel my children to do likewise.”

What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, “O God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers. or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labour, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.”

Now you tell me, when a father goes ahead and washes diapers or performs some other mean task for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool, though that father is acting in the spirit just described and in Christian faith, my dear fellow you tell me, which of the two is most keenly ridiculing the other? God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. Those who sneer at him and see only the task but not the faith are ridiculing God with all his creatures, as the biggest fool on earth. Indeed, they are only ridiculing themselves; with all their cleverness they are nothing but devil’s fools.

Drudgery? Bitterness? Ingratitude? Complaint? These are the flags of unbelief. They are a sure sign of a lack of faith. Notice how Luther compares that clever harlot natural reason with acting in the Spirit. He is talking about worldliness versus Godliness. He is looking at the Martha and Mary problem from a different perspective or perhaps a more correct one. Remember, Martha was so concerned with keeping house while Mary was at the feet of Jesus. We tend (at least I do) to think of Mary in a Thomas Kinkade light of detached reality. We think this way about doing things in the Spirit too. Our age is still a very gnostic one. Mary was listening to Christ’s teaching not merely staring at him all glassy-eyed. She was having her faith built up for action. As James tells us faith must be active, must be accompanied by works. I have heard Doug Wilson say several times that faith flies from our fingertips. I like that.

The Brethren of the Common Life created schools based on classical methods and, as a result, sowed seeds in the 14th century that led, in part, to the Reformation of the 16th century. I am certain that they were entrenched in a great deal of monotonous drudgery and may have even had to move furniture. O Fie! But they had faith and were obedient in the Spirit. We, their heirs, had the Reformation for gain.

So, we were not merely moving furniture. We were laying a foundation that 200 years hence will bear similar fruit not because we are good but because God is faithful. We were and are standing on the shoulders of giants. We are always reforming, Semper Reformanda.

Zerubbabel has his plumb line in hand. The stones of the living temple are being put into place. Soon the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as water covers the sea.

“Then mark my words,” said Mr. Beaver, “he has already met the White Witch and joined her side, and been told where she lives. I didn’t like to mention it before (he being your brother and all) but the moment I set eyes on that brother of yours I said to myself ‘Treacherous.’ He had the look of one who has been with the White Witch and eaten her food.“

I was reminded of this passage from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe while listening to Douglas Wilson’s What I Learned in Narnia. He was discussing the idea of nobility and the picture of it that Lewis expressed throughout The Chronicles of Narnia. Wilson had mentioned a positive picture of nobility as seen in the face of Prince Rillian as he came up from the underworld into Narnia in The Silver Chair. The Narnians recognized the truth of Prince Rillian’s claim to nobility by the look of his face, not his mere physical features, but his countenance. The same held true for Edmund in a much more sinister way.

Though Wilson’s focus was on nobility, what struck me was the connection between Edmund’s eating of the witch’s food and his growth in sin, as Mr. Beaver pointed out, treachery. Edmund had communed with the White Witch. He was, in a sense, in covenant with her. He had joined her side. The Turkish delight was his sacrament. He was not merely eating candy. Edmund ate the witch’s food and took on a countenance born of his spirit which was in union with her. He grew in the characteristics of his queen. His countenance was a sign that was clearly understood by a discerning observer.

This turned my thoughts to the Lord’s Table and our communion with Christ.

You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons (1 Cor. 10:21).

Interestingly, the demons and the Lord both have tables. Lewis’ portrayal of Edmund’s temptation with Turkish delight has shown me that both tables lead to union and either growth in holiness or depravity. The antithesis, the enmity between the seed of the serpent and the Seed of the woman, is real.

The Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 76) states that when we partake of the body and blood of Christ we “become more and more united to His sacred body.” This is in line with John 6:55, 56 where Jesus states, “For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” The Westminster Confession of Faith (XXVII) states that the sacraments as a sign place “a visible difference between those that belong unto the Church and the rest of the world.” This difference can be considered our separateness and, as such, part of our holiness.

When we come to the Lord’s table, we are dining with the King and feeding on Him. Here is the purest picture of nobility. Here is grace indeed. To dine at the King’s table is a great privilege. The table is not mere empty ritual or memorial. It is our life as Jesus further explains, “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever (Jn. 6:57, 58).”

This helps me look forward with great anticipation to participating in the Lord’s Supper weekly. As my friend Greg pointed out recently, “How badly we need God’s grace!” In the Supper there is life, grace, and all the benefits of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension. When we dine with our King, we take on more and more of His character. May our countenance and actions show it.