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The Evolution Is Worse Than He Knows
Thank you to Mr. Powell for his recent article exposing the evolution of confusion about gender identity on Marysville School District campuses. I’m afraid the evolution is much worse than he knows.
Down the hall from the 6th Grade Health class the Shop teacher has been dealing with a similar but more serious confusion. It is a growing problem throughout the nation and parents have been grilling school boards because the nuts and bolts are going through an identification meltdown.
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Remove the Rust
Yesterday our church held a seminar about fellowship. When we have fellowship it means we have a close association with those who share mutual interests. Christians share in Christ. He is our central and essential interest. All of the parts of the body get signal from the Head of the Body. Each living stone is built on and leans on the Cornerstone. Every spiritual planet revolves around the Son. We will share a fellowship in heaven for eternity that realizes the unity of God in three Persons.
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An Ambitious Mission
“The pastor’s task is to guide the believer into a full and complete awareness of these infinite riches that have been bestowed on him by sheer grace, and to present that believer to God in full maturity. It is quite an ambitious spiritual mission, but it should be the mission of every pastor.”
Douglas Wilson on pastoral care
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What Other Table?
Whether we recognize it or not, whether it is obvious to others that we recognize it or not, God is really among us. In our liturgy we acknowledge the call into His presence together from the start of our service, and our aim is to share communion with Him in the Lord’s Supper. The cup of blessing is a participation in the blood of Christ. The bread is a participation on the body of Christ.
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Not The Stages of Outrages
You’ve probably seen the comic of a man sitting at a desk in front of a computer and his wife asks him when he’s coming to bed. He says he can’t come to bed yet because “someone is wrong on the Internet.”
More than someone is wrong on the Internet. And what’s even more problematic, everyone you know is wrong about something they think, let alone how they act. You might not be talking about their wrong thing, you might not even know what their wrong thing is, but you can be sure that if you talked long enough, their wrong would pop up like sponsored ads on Facebook.
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"Bless Me, what do they teach them at these schools?"
Or, (Students + The Trivium) × Teachers
The following notes are for a talk I gave at our school’s Information Night.
Our school board recently finished reading through and discussing the Chronicles of Narnia together. I’m also part of another group of adults, many of whom are parents of current school students, working through the Chronicles as secondary reading for something we call Omnibus Tenebras. Then we have our annual Fiction Festival coming in March and the theme is going to be all things Narnian and Lewisian.
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No Lesser Bread
One of the things Paul valued about clarity was how it brings “upbuilding and encouragement and consolation” (1 Corinthians 14:3). When the Spirit gives words to His people for the good of the body it brings comfort.
Communion is also a consolation, a comfort. The Lord’s Supper is not a consolation prize, mostly because it isn’t a prize, and also because we aren’t competing to get it. Communion is a grace from God.
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Blessing-ficiaries
I can’t remember if I’ve asked this question before during an exhortation to confession. We’re now over 400 times of corporate confession on the Lord’s Day, and while there are a lot of things that require repentance, some of them need more repetition.
Who do you confess your sin for? Who benefits when you “say the same thing” (homologeo) as God? You are certainly one who profits. Sin separates us from fellowship, forgiveness granted restores fellowship, so if you want fellowship you need forgiveness which comes through confession.
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bahookie
Added to my commonplace book today:
BAHOOKIE
n. Scottish informal, “a person’s buttocks”
also, “an ass“
Example usage: “try that again I’ll be kicking your fury, brown bahookie” –McSquizzy’s Army Scene, in “Open Season”
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The Punchline
I do not really like hockey. I do not really like podcasts. (I also really do not like a couple of the words used in this episode.) But FOR REAL IF YOU LIKE SPORTS AND STORIES AT ALL YOU SHOULD REALLY LISTEN TO THIS!
The Punchline
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Fellowship: A Mess Worth Making
Our church has another seminar scheduled a few Sundays from now. This will be our fifth seminar, the first two were about parenting and the last two were about marriage. We asked for feedback and ideas after last year’s seminar and one of the suggestions was to talk about fellowship. Fellowship is an easily misunderstood and often misused word. For many folks it means food, probably in a basement with a tiled floor (or industrial carpet) with all sorts of casseroles and bitter coffee.
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Open Communion, Closed Membership
We love celebrating weekly communion at our church, and it is having multiple desired effects. It proclaims the Lord’s death (1 Corinthians 11:26). It unites the body as we participate in the blood and body of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16). It encourages us to keep short accounts (1 Corinthians 11:28). And it makes people ask questions, including our kids, who wonder when they will get to share in communion.
This is a feature, it doesn’t have to be a frustration.
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Our Father Who Judges
When we come to our time of confession as part of our worship we come to confess our sins to our Father. God is holy, God is righteous, God is just, God is the judge of the world. But to all who believe in His name, “he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).
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On Carrying My Own (Digital) Man-purse
I am not a perfect minimalist, but I am drawn to it in certain contexts like iPad writers are to Starbucks. In my time as a more severe dualist I thought it very sanctimonious to carry the least amount of things with me as possible. My wife can not only bear witness, she has often had to bear my load.
When we would travel together, I would let her bring a bar of soap, and I would borrow.
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NoDiscontentDecember Postmortem
It’s been a couple weeks since the official end of our family’s finishing hashtag of 2018. I posted about it a few times, and here is an autopsy report.
The focus, agreed upon by every member of the family, was fitting and helpful. December was "richly scheduled," as Anese Cavenaugh likes to say, and it was good to take fussiness off the table as an acceptable response. That's not to say no one was ever fussy, but it was nice to have the zero tolerance policy clearly in place.
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The Telos of Jealousy
The Headmaster at our school recently wrote about Raising…and Being the Cool Kids. Here are a couple key paragraphs:
All of Paul’s ministry had a telos of jealousy. He was working hard (as a Jew!) to make Jews jealous of the glorious blessings the Gentiles were enjoying….and there were plenty of blessings to go around! All the Jews needed to do was repent and embrace their Savior, and they would share those glorious riches with their Gentile brothers.
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Spiritual Gifts: What They Are and Why They Matter
3 of 5 stars to Spiritual Gifts: What They Are and Why They Matter by Thomas R. Schreiner
Good. Brief. Mostly Cessationist. I’d gladly recommend it without completing agreeing with it.
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Breaking the Vicious Cycle
3 of 5 stars to by Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Intestinal Health Through Diet by Elaine Gottschall
I LOVE ALL THE CARBS IN THE WHOLE WORLD
I also have had (or have) some GERD and general gut problems, though not as extreme as the cases of Crohn’s and Celiac Disease that Gottschall addresses.
So…that makes the Specific Carbohydrate Diet interesting, and/or frightening (#cauliflowerpizzaisnotrealpizza). Ha. I’m very glad I finally read the book, but I’m not sure if or when I’ll be implementing the diet.
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All a Pitter-pattering
Is love more science or more story? Is love an historical fact or a philosophical idea? Is love a Platonic ideal, an abstract quality existing Up There, or is love an Aristotelian reality, expressed Down Here in hands and lips and bodies? Where do you learn about love best? Reading the dictionary? Reading the Bible? Hearing a story? Getting a timely hug from your dad?
As much as I love a good dictionary, dictionaries don’t inspire.
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Perpetual Shortfall
There are a couple sure-fire ways to get almost any Christian to feel guilty. One way is to ask a believer about his prayer life. A recurring response is that, “It could be better.” Well of course it could. You don’t really need to sleep, right? Jesus spent whole nights in prayer…what is your excuse?
That’s an easy one, but the one exhortation to rule them all is not about Bible reading or prayer, it’s not about church attendance, it’s not about how many dates you’ve taken your wife on in the last year, it’s not if you’ve ever spoken to your kids in impatience or anger.