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The Art of a Calm Heart
My Bible class started to read through The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment the last Quarter of the year. We didn’t quite make it halfway, but I wanted to start rereading it again for myself this summer anyway. Though a repetitive Puritan (is that redundant?), Burroughs convicted me many days in class. If I can keep up the reading I’m sure I’ll have more quotes to share.
The following one made me think about a few things: social media and Matthew 15:10-20 and emotional control.
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Not by Self-Promotion
In a fallen world it is possible to mess just about anything up, including the good things. That said, there are some things that can help us mess up less.
The weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper could get messed up. It could become stale ritual, a heartless motion-going. Worse, it could become a source of self-righteousness and superiority over others who don’t do it as often or who use grape juice or tiny, dry cracker bits.
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Truth-Tubes
Ignorance of God makes idolators or weak worshippers. Knowledge of God, like knowledge of one’s spouse, increases and intensifies love and praise for God.
But it is easy to seek knowledge as an end, or maybe more accurately to seek knowledge for the praise of our knowledge. This is a subject that I’ve spoken about repeatedly, a subject that I believe is relevant for our flock, and a subject that regularly requires repentance.
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The Weight of Irritability
The author of Hebrews urged his readers to run the race of faith by first laying “aside every weight, and the sin which clings so closely” (Hebrews 12:1). Jon Bloom wrote a series of articles that start with the idea of laying aside the weight of something, and I’ve had this particular post banging around my head since 2014: Lay Aside the Weight of Irritability.
He gives some examples of our selfish justification for being irritable:
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Unfinished Stories
Here is a story I wrote for the final assembly. It references a bunch of books our students read this year, so your appreciation may vary.
In the year of our Sayers 71, a small group of children and adults prepared to enter something they called Summer Break. To initiate this sense of freedom they performed a variety of very old rituals. They exchanged ashen colored vestments for royal colored ones, they sang and chanted verse, they ate meat grilled over fire, and many of them sought to hold back tears of exhausted gleefulness.
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Quite Some Ride
Today we passed another milestone. A small group of us finished the sixth and final year of the Omnibus curriculum.
My wife says she knew about Omnibus before we started the school, and I believe her. She was even interested in trying it out as homeschoolers. I also remember the summer before ECS started, our Headmaster along with our first full-time teacher went to the national ACCS conference and learned about Omnibus.
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The Enthusiasm Industry
I was listening to a podcast episode recently, I can’t remember which one even though I don’t actually listen to a bunch, and the hosts referred to the “enthusiasm industry.” They were talking about people who write and talk about apps (mobile, desktop, whatever). These aren’t necessarily the developers or even marketing employees of a company, these are people who make their living trying out and reviewing apps and services. They are professional buzz makers, stoking enthusiasm that sustains the creation/consumption cycle.
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The Government of Stability
We’ve been reading Brave New World in Omnibus the last couple weeks, and eww, and ouch, and it’s provoked some thoughts for our communion mediation. The goal of the gospel is more than stability, it is unity. While it’s true that those who fear the Lord will be like well-rooted trees, ready for both storms and dry seasons, salvation establishes more than individual calm.
The State wants control in order to (attempt to) enforce stability.
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Empire of Bones
5 of 5 starts to Empire of Bones by N.D. Wilson
2018: What Lewis’ That Hideous Strength is to The Abolition of Man, so N.D.’s Empire of Bones is to Death by Living. I reread this along with the Capstone class at our school for sake of leadership training. Great truths enfleshed in great characters. Makes you want to sing while they cut your heart out. You have a life. The time to spend it is now.
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The Vanishing American Adult
5 of 5 stars to The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis—and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance by Ben Sasse
Reread this again with the ECS Board. Fantastic all the way through.
This book is fantastic in almost every way. If the Senator would have used BC and AD instead of BCE and CE, and not capitulated on the age of the earth, then it would have been amazing.
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Brave New World
3 of 5 stars to Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Huxley portrays how brutishly selfish mankind is, and it is shameful. As Lewis would later say, we are far too easily pleased. While Orwell shows in 1984 how capably the State can control it’s subjects through power, punishment, and fear, Huxley demonstrates how the State can enslave us by our own passions.
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As Thin as the Wifi Signal
The fruit of the Spirit are one. That is, Galatians 5:22 says “fruit” (singular) while seven pieces are listed. The first few are more often remembered because we say them more often (love, joy, peace); we trail off halfway through figuring that our friend knows that we know the rest.
It is the last piece that I want to call our attention to for now: self-control.
In the world we live in, there will be control.
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Blessed New World
Here is the charge I gave to our graduates at yesterday’s commencement.
Good evening to our candidates for graduation, to their parents and families, to the Board and teachers at ECS, along with loved friends, supporters, and guests. How great is this?!
It is funny to think that when both Gabby and Kara were starting school in Kindergarten, ECS was still seven years away from becoming a school. The school was birthed when both of you entered your junior high years.
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Board Lit
I love our school board. While so many books and articles about productivity lament the bane of meetings, I always look forward to our time together. (I have the same attitude about our church’s elder board meetings). We do have enough minutia to discuss, but since we’re still in the early institution stage we’re always happy to connect the details back to big ideas.
We also are always reading and discussing something together.
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Do Justice
I am not a social justice warrior. I may not even know exactly what it means. I believe that many injustices are being done in the name of justice. I understand being skeptical of those who brandish the phrase like a two-edged sword in front of others’ necks, let alone of those who beat others over the head with it like a sledgehammer of guilt.
And. (Here’s just one example of there being more than only two colors).
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More Than Two Colors
Why do those who acknowledge subtlety compromise? And why are those who have little capacity for nuance wrong?
This is a false dichotomy. Not everyone who sees a spectrum of options always slides to the negative side. Likewise, those who live in only big categories can choose correctly, though it is more obvious when they’re wrong.
Or, which is better, a framing carpenter or a finish carpenter? Doesn’t it depend on what you’re trying to accomplish?
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Aiming Senior Arrows
One trend that has bugged me for more than a decade is parents, and pastors, encouraging their kids to move away. This is not the same as encouraging them to move out. Yes, raise kids who grow up and take more and more responsibility for themselves, and then commit to a spouse, and start a family, probably in their own house. All that is great. It is the post high school move-away-if-you-can that concerns me.
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Where He Starts
We know that God’s ways are not our ways and that His thoughts are above and beyond our thoughts. We know, mostly because He told us, that we don’t know everything about how He works.
We have problems right from the start. I mean that not from the start of our creaturely condition with finite limitations, though those comparisons do explain part of our problem. What I mean is that we don’t even get where He starts.
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The Bottom Line
Money has become a god for many men. You can tell by how they praise it, love it, sacrifice for it. Money chokes out the seed of the gospel (Matthew 13:22). You can see the fruitlessness from those who claimed faith but no longer. Money is the root of all kinds of evils (1 Timothy 6:10). You cannot serve God and money (Matthew 6:24).
But God also says that those who have money are not supposed to burn it, or even bury it.
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What of a Man's Profit
I’m re-reading Joy for the World with the guys who come to our church’s men’s meeting, and we recently finished chapter 7 about work and money and the economy.
Does God care about these things? There was a day when I might have answered “Meh.” I didn’t have a category to say that God is interested in them, and certainly not to such a degree that we are wrong if we’re not.
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The Code of the Coders
[caption id=“attachment_8797” align=“alignright” width=“300”]Or, A Glitch in the System[/caption]There is no neutrality. It’s not if there is a code, but which code will be written, and then followed.
Tracy Chou is an “entrepreneur, software engineer, and diversity advocate.” (I can get excited about at least two out of three of those.) Almost a year ago she wrote about why every tech worker needs a humanities education. The foundational questions she asks are crucial for anyone involved in creating, consuming, and educating others about either of the previous two.
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The Disconnect of Discontent
Because we are learning to be content in whatever condition we’re in, we are also making great progress out of the condition we’re in. The two conditions are not the same, otherwise the statement would contradict itself. One condition is our station, the other condition is our fellowship.
If we allow false standards to rule our thinking about “higher” callings (think 1 Corinthians 7:17-24) then we will not have true communion.
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No Lifehacks for Obedience
I have read a variety of books about productivity and getting things done and how to figure out what’s best next. I kind of like the genre. I have tried a lot of task apps, todo systems, and techniques for processing information. These have a place. We are created for good works, and being able to plan and organize and aim our good works is a good thing.
But. There is often a but.
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Resubscribed
Phil Johnson announced today that he is stoking the coals in the Pyromaniacs fire pit.
I really appreciate Phil. He is one of my favorite people in California and certainly among those involved at Grace Community Church and Grace to You. I like his family, I like his writing style, and I like his wry, humorous sarcasm.
I also really liked the Pyromaniac back in the day (he started in 2005?
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Et Liberi, Et Libri
Do my kids keep me from being productive?
They could, perhaps, and I used to lean more toward that irritation. I prefer quiet for reading and writing, for study and sermon preparation, you know, for the “important” work. But, along with being married and talking with my wife, my kids give me a greater reason to think about things and figure out how to say them. In other words, I may not crank out more words, but God uses my kids to crank me.