You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August, 2008.
I’m on the hunt for the strangest school mascot. The ones I had growing up were pretty normal: the Rockets, the Braves, and the Yellow Jackets. I will say, however, that there was a middle school in my district called Possum Middle School. Their mascot was an eagle. Possum Eagles. Go figure.
What were your mascots?
Given our recent discussion of Christians and tattoos, I was interested in this post by R.R. Reno at First Things. He observes the contemporary erosion of binding realities like marriage, family, loyalty, and patriotism, and then draws the connection between that decay and the accompanying hunger in our culture for signs of permanence on our bodies. I think his argument is compelling. He writes:
So we are free, freer than any people have ever been in the history of humanity. The old bonds of commitment hang loosely about us. How this came about would require telling the complex history of modern western culture, but the current consequences are not hard to identify. A free soul is a slave of desires for success, desires for social acceptance, desires for all the goodies that our wealthy economy so efficiently provides, to say nothing of our primitive passions. Increasingly uncommitted—free from the limits of marriage, children, faith, devotion, and loyalty—we are more purely and more entirely defined by our social roles as productive workers and eager consumers, and by our passing desires for satisfaction and pleasure. Again, I ask myself, is it surprising that in an age with so few binding commitments postmodern men and women seek symbols of permanence etched into their bodies?
C.J. Mahaney offers a penetrating analysis of Mark Dever’s second-story home office.
But after that, he includes an excerpt of an interview he did with Mark back on June 6, 2007. The excerpt focuses mainly on the value of a pastor choosing a flock and growing old with it:
C.J. Mahaney: Do you plan on staying at Capitol Hill Baptist Church?
Mark Dever: Lord willing.
CJM: Lord willing what?
MD: The rest of my life.
CJM: As a member of the pulpit committee, Matt Schmucker remembers a particular statement you made in that regard. You said to Connie, “The next place we go, we’re buying…
MD: …cemetery plots.” Because we had been moving around and wherever we lived my heart got entangled with the people. I just hated moving and it was just horrendous for me. I had been studying the Puritans and realized that the basic model was to just stay someplace—like a marriage to a congregation. It is not exactly the same, it is not sin to leave it necessarily, but you don’t assume churches are a career ladder you are climbing. You are at one church for two years to work on some skills and when you run out of your bag of tricks you move to another church for three years, they hear all six of your sermons and then you move someplace else. No, I would like to know their children and their grandchildren. So I made clear when we were talking to the pulpit search committee that if I came I was intending, Lord willing, to stay. I had no further plans and actually planned to have no further plans.…
I remember, during a Wednesday night church potluck very early during my time here, I got my food and sat down. An older woman (probably in her mid-70s, late 70s at the time) who had been at the church for decades gets her meal and sits down right next to me. She looks at me and says, “I don’t like young preachers.”
CJM: And you are probably 33 years old?
MD: Thirty-two or 33. And I just looked at her. I said, “Really?” She said, “Yep. Of course I’ll make an exception in your case.”
CJM: Did you ask for an explanation why?
MD: I just started eating my food and then I said, “I guess you expect to outlast him at the church, don’t you?” She said, “Yep. Always have.”
And then I took some more food and then said, “Well, I think you may have met your match.”
CJM: Oh, outstanding.…Thank you for the compelling example you provide of a commitment to this church, and provoking other pastors to follow that similar attitude and approach. You introduced me to the description of Puritan pastors, that they were “looking for a place to settle.”
MD: A great example of that is when John Cotton, I think it was when John Cotton died, their church needed a pastor and began negotiating with the First Congregational Church up in Ipswich. Both churches entered a season of prayer for their pastor, John Norton, coming down to Boston. So it was not at all a kind of cloak-and-dagger secret committee goes and attends, tries to scout out the talent, and then steals them away. It’s two families, two congregations, praying about where would this brother be best used—which is a great way to approach it.
CJM: What are the unique joys of pastoring?
MD: Well, for me, that would include that specific decision to stay here. It was a great opportunity to destroy the “god of options,” which I think young men and women who are successful in our culture tend to be addicted to.
I watch young people in this church when they are 25 and they don’t want to do anything that closes any options. At 27, 31, 33, the same thing. At some point life begins forcing itself on you and you have a wife and kids and some options just close. But I think the young folks in our culture who are doing OK by the world’s standards are enslaved to worshiping at the altar of this god of options.
So by saying I wasn’t interested in going anyplace else, I meant to send out a wide signal to say, “Please don’t tempt me by asking me about other options, because this is going to be slow, hard work and it’s worthy of a life.”
This may sound a bit trivial, but it is significant for me. I’ll explain:
If you were to ask Crystal one of the reasons she didn’t date me in high school, she would tell you it was because I wore pleated pants.
Thankfully, God helped her overcome that folded obstacle and marry me. However, this issue has continued to be a source of no little tension (albeit playful) in our relationship. I still own a pair of pleated Dockers khaki slacks which about make her gag.
The tension came to a head on Saturday when we were getting ready to go to a wedding. She had asked my advice on an outfit she should wear, and I gave it while wearing the aforementioned pleated wonders. She then gave me her unsolicited council about what I should do with my pants…like, throw them in the trash or something.
This comment spurred a string of playful banter on the inherent goodness and evil of pleated pants. The highlight of the exchange was a dueling parody of “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid (”Flippin’ your pleats you won’t get too far…”)
I wore the pants to the wedding, and we brought up the issue with a couple we sat next to. I pointed out that the husband was himself wearing pleated pants. Little did I know that I was about to embark into uncharted territory….
For the majority of my adult years (and perhaps longer), I thought pleated pants were pants that had a crease down the middle. Oh no. According to Wikipedia, a pleat is “a type of fold formed by doubling fabric back upon itself and securing it in place. It is commonly used in clothing and upholstery to gather a wide piece of fabric to a narrower circumference.”
All this time, I thought Crystal’s problem with my nerdy wardrobe was the crease down the middle of my pants. This could not have been further from the truth. Her problem was and is the bunched up and folded fabric around my waistline.
The effects of this revelation have been almost Copernican for me.
But it still doesn’t settle the issue entirely for me. I’m not convinced that pleats are altogether bad in a pair of dress pants. Crystal is sure almost all women disdain them.
So here is the question: Ladies, do you prefer pleated or flat-front in men’s fashion? Fellas, do you have anything to say in my defense?
Saturday night Crystal and I got together with some friends to watch an episode of Francis Schaeffer’s video series “How Shall We Then Live?” The series surveys significant eras of Western History, including the Roman Age, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and others. The episode we watched was on the Reformation. It was helpful and its quality was only augmented by Schaeffer’s very blatant pair of knickers (that’s actually him on the front cover of the DVD if you click on the link above).
Amazingly, the Reformation churned out some very great art. This raised the question for us of what the church’s role in art should be today. Should we see Christians being some of the world’s preeminent artists?
In a similar vein, we talked about what Christian art should look like. Take the movie industry, for example. Must a Christian script an expressly evangelistic film for his work to have redemptive value? Or is it possible to view all of the world as belonging to the Lord (Ps. 24:1) and craft a movie out of that framework?
And where do you draw the line? Crystal asked us if a Christian could have written and directed “The Dark Knight.”
What do you think?
Al Mohler has the details:
The greeting card features two male torsos in tuxedos. The message is clear — Hallmark is ready to join the celebration of same-sex marriage.
According to the Associated Press, America’s most prominent greeting card producer decided to roll out a line of same-sex greetings after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May. The company had released a line of “coming out” cards last year.
The AP article Mohler cites reports:
The nation’s largest greeting card company is rolling out same-sex wedding cards — featuring two tuxedos, overlapping hearts or intertwined flowers, with best wishes inside. “Two hearts. One promise,” one says.
Hallmark added the cards after California joined Massachusetts as the only U.S. states with legal gay marriage. A handful of other states have recognized same-sex civil unions.
The language inside the cards is neutral, with no mention of wedding or marriage, making them also suitable for a commitment ceremony. Hallmark says the move is a response to consumer demand, not any political pressure.
“It’s our goal to be as relevant as possible to as many people as we can,” Hallmark spokeswoman Sarah Gronberg Kolell said.
Mohler interprets the significance of this move by saying:
…the decision to market the same-sex marriage celebration cards reveals some tipping point in the culture. The normalization of homosexuality and homosexual unions is significantly enhanced when a company like Hallmark joins the revolution.
- An organ transplant
- Arriving at your gate after the plane took off
- Turning in an application after the deadline
- CPR
- An anniversary card
- Running out of gas and then thinking about re-feuling
- A high-competition job interview
- Doing the speed limit after being clocked at 20 over
- Drinking expired milk
- Depositing money after bouncing a check
In each of these situations, it seems, “better late than never” won’t work because late is never.
Can you think of any others?
To be honest, I thought corporal punishment was a thing of the past. However, CNN reports today that more than 200,000 children have been spanked or paddled in U.S. schools during the past year, according to human rights groups.
Apparently this form of discipline is still legal in 21 states. 13 practice it regularly.
Alice Farmer is among those who oppose the practice altogether:
“Every public school needs effective methods of discipline, but beating kids teaches violence, and it doesn’t stop bad behavior,” wrote Alice Farmer, the author of a joint report from Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. “Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehavior and at times even provokes it.”
James Dobson, however, isn’t so comprehensive in his denunciation. He believes spanking can be effective with younger students:
“Corporal punishment is not effective at the junior and senior high school levels, and I do not recommend its application,” Dobson said on the organization’s Web site.
“It can be useful for elementary students, especially with amateur clowns (as opposed to hard-core troublemakers). For this reason, I am opposed to abolishing spanking in elementary schools because we have systematically eliminated the tools with which teachers have traditionally backed up their word. We’re now down to a precious few. Let’s not go any further in that direction.”
What do you think? Is spanking an effective means of discipline in school, or should physical punishment be left to the parents’ discretion? Were any of you — I mean, were any of your friends — ever spanked at school?
Did anybody catch the brief segment on NBC last night about those who are losing sleep because of the late (or early) viewing hours for the Olympics? I was fascinated by one of the men NBC interviewed who testified to the effect that his loss of sleep wasn’t a sacrifice because he was getting to watch the Olympics.
Sounds a lot like David Livingstone’s address to students at Cambridge University in 1857:
For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice. (Quoted in John Piper, Desiring God, 243. Italics author’s.)
Sometimes when I hear an objection to Christianity, I feel like the burden of proof is on me to demonstrate the validity of my belief in the face of that objection. This is true, but it is not the whole story. The truth of the matter is that the objection itself is the expression of another set of beliefs, which must likewise be validated for there to be any meaningful dialogue. An objection always springs up out of the ground of prior convictions. Or, to say it another way, a doubt is a sprout.
Here is how Tim Keller explains it in “The Reason for God“:
But even as believers should learn to look for reasons behind their faith, skeptics must learn to look for a type of faith hidden within their reasoning. All doubts, however skeptical and cynical they may seem, are really a set of alternate beliefs. You cannot doubt Belief A except from a position of faith in Belief B. For example, if you doubt Christianity because “There can’t be just one true religion,” you must recognize that this statement is itself an act of faith. No one can prove it empirically, and it is not a universal truth that everyone accepts. If you went to the Middle East and said, “There can’t be just one true religion,” nearly everyone would say, “Why not?” The reason you doubt Christianity’s Belief A is because you hold unprovable Belief B. Every doubt, therefore, is based on a leap of faith. (xvii)
BBC reported on the 7th of this month that Ken Smith from Bucks New University is advocating the acceptance of commonly misspelled words as “variant spellings.”
In the original article at Times Higher Education, Smith provides ten candidates for orthographic leniency:
- Arguement for argument.
- Febuary for February (and Wensday for Wednesday).
- Ignor for ignore.
- Occured for occurred.
- Opertunity for opportunity.
- Que for queue, or better yet cue or even kew.
- Speach for speech.
- Thier for their (or better still, why not just drop the word their altogether in favour of there?).
- Truely for truly.
- Twelth as twelfth.
His final exhortation is: “Remember, I am not asking you to learn to spell these words differently. All I am suggesting is that we might well put 20 or so of the most commonly misspelt words in the English language on the same footing as those other words that have a widely accepted variant spelling.”
If Smith is onto something, then a paragraph like this one could become common fare:
“On the twelth of Febuary a fierce arguement occured between two gentlemen standing in a que at First National Bank. The altercation began when the man in front chose to ignor the importunate speach of the man behind him, who earnestly desired to advance to the window more quickly by taking his place. The heated exchange lasted until the bank closed in the afternoon, thus preventing either man from doing the business he had come to do. It was a truely lamentable event. Thier hope is to try again this Wensday, when they plan to visit the bank at separate times.”
What do you think? Is Smith’s proposal merely an accommodation to sloth or is it an inevitable outworking of the adaptability of human language (think Shakespeare vs. today)?
The Fool’s Gold made #18 on WordPress.com’s list of growing blogs for today. Thank you to everyone for stopping by!
Feel free to click on the link in the side bar that says “Subscribe in RSS Reader” if you would like to subscribe (for free) to The Fool’s Gold. This would allow you to read new posts through a feed reader like Google Reader.
Abraham Piper from 22 Words gives 22 reasons why subscribing to blogs is a good idea. He even links to a how-to article he posted on getting started with Google Reader.
There are some things you understood better when you were younger. Things like the privileges of adulthood, employment, schooling, marriage, parenting, etc. Or at least you understood aspects of those things better, mainly because you were on the outside looking in. Everything was magical. It was all behind a glass door and locked tight.
After becoming an adult, an employee, a student, a spouse, a parent, etc., it’s important to access those younger insights so that you don’t become unimpressed by the glories of life in God’s universe. You know. Just kinda being used to the way things are. You need to remember how spectacular your situation is.
You can access these insights in two ways:
1. Personal relics
These would include things like journals, pictures, home videos, or memories. The only downside to these is that you can’t interact with them and ask them questions. They don’t respond. They just exist as carryovers from a day long gone.
2. Other people in anticipatory situations
What I mean by this is people who are now in a state of life you used to be in. A child. An unmarried friend. A childless couple. They aren’t you, granted, but you can interact with them and ask them questions. You can hear the thrill in their voice as they talk about looking forward to where you are now.
Ideally, you can use both of these approaches so that each one’s deficits are supplemented. The point of it all is to make you remember that your current state is not as ho-hum as it sometimes appears.
After all, you once knew better.
The New York Times has a bubble map that indicates by size how many medals a particular country has won so far in the Olympics. On top of that, it also depicts the medal distribution for past summer Olympics dating back to the first official Games in 1896.
It’s pretty cool.
If I’m honest with myself, suffering for Jesus scares me. By “suffering” I mean here things like imprisonment, torture, starvation, death. People really experience these things because of their faith. Take Paul’s list in 2 Corinthians 11. Imprisonment. Countless beatings. Lashes. Rods. Stones.
On top of all that, Peter says that such treatment is not abnormal. “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:12-13).
All this makes me wonder how I would hold up under that kind of pain.
I’m helped by the testimony of Brother Yun, a Chinese Christian who endured deep affliction for the gospel and wrote about his experiences in the book “The Heavenly Man.” Here is his description of God’s faithfulness during a four-year prison sentence he had just been released from:
I had experienced so much in those four years, but God had been faithful. I’d suffered some horrible tortures, but God had been faithful. I’d been dragged in front of judges and courts, but God had been faithful. I’d been hungry, thirsty, and had fainted from exhaustion, but God had been faithful.
Through it all, God was always faithful and loving to me. He had never left me nor forsaken me. His grace was always suffiecient and he provided for my every need.
I didn’t suffer for Jesus in prison. No! I was with Jesus and I experienced his very real presence, joy, and peace every day. It’s not those in prison for the sake of the gospel who suffer. The person who suffers is he who never experiences God’s intimate presence. (187-188)
Amen. God will be faithful, and I have nothing to fear. They may lock me away, but Jesus will stand by me. They may starve me, but Jesus will be my bread. They may torture me, but Jesus will be my solace.
They may kill me, but Jesus will be my life.
“Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death” (Revelation 2:10-11).
- Take your vitamins!
- I ran out of whitewash and had to use this instead.
- You know…I am far too ethnocentric.
- How’s my penmanship?
- I think Aristotle had a point.
- SM + RW = Sempiternal affection (with a heart around it, of course)
- Deep down, I’m a preservationist.
- I think you’re great!
- Oops…sorry. You can paint over this.
- Romans 13:1
- There. I just drew a perfect circle.
This past year I have had the privilege of teaching a Sunday School class for older folks at Bethlehem. They are called “The King’s Friends.” The title is a vestige from an older era at Bethlehem, and I’ve been happy to serve under it. After all, Hushai the Archite was the king’s friend (1 Chron. 27:33). More importantly, so were the disciples (John 15:15).
This Sunday marks my last day teaching the class, as I will be transitioning to a different pedagogical post in the fall. In their honor, here are nine reasons I love my elderly friends:
- They remind me that the world got along just fine before 1983 (the year I was born).
- They lived through a lot of the stuff I read about in school.
- Most of them have walked with Jesus longer than I’ve been alive.
- Death is a more pressing reality for them. Going to be with Jesus isn’t an abstract concept they consider in pensive moods. Many of them will see him in ten years. Some even sooner.
- A smile on their face is - in some ways - more profound than a twentysomething’s grin, because it can’t be attributed to painless joints, career advancement, or an iPhone.
- They’ve had room in their hearts for a young whipper-snapper like me.
- They know how to cook.
- They love my wife.
- They consistently remind me that my youth is not perpetual.
Praise God for his aged saints. They have unique capacities to display Jesus’ worth, and I am thankful they let me share their Sunday mornings with them.
On Monday BBC featured an article called “10 Things That Make Blokes Cry.” It’s an interesting list. Here is the run-down:
- Making parents proud.
- Birth of first child - or grandchild.
- Tribulations of loved one.
- Letting a loved one down.
- Saying sorry.
- Letting yourself down.
- Being dumped.
- Beaten in a hard-fought game.
- Winning a hard-fought game.
- These aren’t tears. It’s just bits of dust.
Today BBC featured “80 More Things That Make Men Cry.”
Apparently we aren’t such a stoic bunch after all. At least 90 things make us cry. I find this a heartening statistic.
Men, what things other than the ten above make you tear up? Women, where do you see yourselves differing from men in weepability?
What’s the best way to respond when you’re talking with someone and they’re telling you a story you know they’ve told you before?
The winner of the August 2008 Fool’s Gold Book Giveaway is:
Jen Owen
Here is what Jen had to say:
I don’t have a blog. I work at Howse & Thompson during the day…. except on Sun and Sat! I am reading too many books right now. The latest addition to my list: the The Decline of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. Quite interesting and too long for me to finish before it’s due at the library, but we’ll see how far I get!
According to Stephanie Gilbert, Jen also intends to visit the Caribbean soon. Perhaps her new book will be good beach reading (or snorkling reading, if she has a really good Ziploc baggie).
Congratulations, Jen! Be on the lookout for next month’s giveaway, and as always, feel free to suggest any books you would like to see being offered.
To celebrate the dawn of August I’m giving away a free copy of “The Missionary Call: Find Your Place in God’s Plan for the World” by M. David Sills. Sills is a professor of Christian missions and cultural anthropology at Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY. The purpose of his book is to explore what it means for God to call a person into missions. As a former missionary to Ecuador, he is able to address the issue as one with experience.
Book Description:
Here are the chapter titles for the book to give you a feel for where Sills is going:
- Understanding the Missionary Call
- How Can I Know God’s Will?
- Is There a Biblical Basis for the Missionary Call?
- Historical Understandings of the Missionary Call
- How Specific Does the Call Have to Be?
- Timing and the Missionary Call
- What Should I Do If My Spouse Does Not Feel Called?
- Getting to the Field
- Hindrances to Getting to the Field
- Challenges on the Field
- Missionary Heroes and the Missionary Call
- Understanding and Answering the Missionary Call
As you can see, Sills aims to be pretty comprehensive in his approach. I would recommend this book to anyone who is planning on going into missions, supporting those who go, or anyone who is unsure about what they should do. I think you would find it to be a helpful resource.
Giveaway Details:
Between now and midnight on Sunday, August 3 (Central Standard Time), send an e-mail to thefoolsgoldblog@gmail.com. In the e-mail, include your name, the name and address of your blog (if you have one), what you do during the day, a book you’ve read recently, and a country you have either visited or would like to visit. I will then randomly select an entry and e-mail the winner to ask for his or her mailing address. The winner will be announced sometime on Monday, August 4.
Enjoy!
