Live Action put together this helpful film on what Planned Parenthood actually tells people.
Posted on July 24th, 2010The Missional Hail Mary
Being “missional” is all the rage these days. Are you missional? Is your worship missional? Do you sing missional songs? All words are prey to sloganeering, and it appears that this one is in a bear trap. The more places I see it, the more it’s becoming obvious that those promoting it are the least missionally minded–that is, willing to confront unbelief with the Gospel of God’s grace.
My most recent encounter occurred at a “Reformed” church where the pastor talked (I can’t say preached) about his pet gerbil and lessons he learned about God from his weightlifting. In doing so, he robbed me of hyperbole. I just can’t top it. It’s funnier now. At the time I whispered to my wife that we need to come up with a point at which we leave the service. When does blasphemy lite become too much? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on July 7th, 2010Thimble to Bathtub
In June’s Wired, Nicholas Carr writes about the effect the internet has on our minds. It’s an “interruption system. It seizes our attention only to scramble it.” I would comment further, but I need to flit to another web page.
Posted on July 7th, 2010The depth of our intelligence hinges on our ability to transfer information from working memory, the scratch pad of consciousness, to long-term memory, the mind’s filing system. When facts and experiences enter our long-term memory, we are able to weave them into the complex ideas that give richness to our thought. But the passage from working memory to long-term memory also forms a bottleneck in our brain. Whereas long-term memory has an almost unlimited capacity, working memory can hold only a relatively small amount of information at a time. And that short-term storage is fragile: A break in our attention can sweep its contents from our mind.
Imagine filling a bathtub with a thimble; that’s the challenge involved in moving information from working memory into long-term memory. When we read a book, the information faucet provides a steady drip, which we can control by varying the pace of our reading. Through our single-minded concentration on the text, we can transfer much of the information, thimbleful by thimbleful, into long-term memory and forge the rich associations essential to the creation of knowledge and wisdom.
On the Net, we face many information faucets, all going full blast. Our little thimble overflows as we rush from tap to tap. We transfer only a small jumble of drops from different faucets, not a continuous, coherent stream.
Pornographic Impotence
G. K. Chesterton once said that free love was the first and most obvious bribe of a slave master. It turns out that pornography is exactly this–the shackler of real sex. Naomi Wolf writes that porn does “not [make] men into raving beasts. On the contrary: The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.” Wolf’s entire article is worth reading.
It’s true that porn does sometimes lead men down a path to greater and grosser sexual perversions. Ted Bundy talked about the shaping influence it had on him from an early age. But mostly what we ought to think of when we see pornography is impotence, and this should be a protection to men who are tempted by it.
Posted on July 7th, 2010
Supreme Injustice
Elena Kagan not only supported partial birth abortion, also known as killing-a-baby-as-he-or-she-being-born, she did it outright dishonestly. But who would doubt lying when murder is openly embraced? From Worldmagblog:
When Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was a domestic policy adviser at the Clinton White House, she wrote a memo in the midst of the debate over Congress issuing a ban on partial-birth abortion. Her 1996 memo cites a statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a medical group that eventually opposed a ban on partial-birth abortion, which reads: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on July 1st, 2010Open it up
The book of Ecclesiastes is an enormous freight train driving toward a glad station: “Go, eat your bread in joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved your works” (9:7). How contrary this is to the beret-clad, cigarette-flared brooder who takes it all for meaninglessness!
Young men, in their insecurity, are prone to doubt and question, and thus waste their years of strength. So Solomon drives it home for them in particular: “Rejoice, O Young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheers you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment” (11:9).
What am I supposed to be doing? Rejoicing. Having fun. Doing what your heart desires. How? Remembering that God is everywhere and will judge. If your heart is clean and your eyes are filled with light, your desires are trustworthy to bring true delight without destruction. What gets in the way of this? Over-thinking: “The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (12:11-12). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on July 1st, 2010bomolochos
Leon Kass on the scrounger:
Posted on July 1st, 2010A buffoon in classical Greece is a bomolochos, from bomos, “altar,” and lochos, “one who lies in wait.” The bomolochos was, in its original meaning , a fellow who lurks about the altar, the place of sacrifices to the gods, looking for the scraps of food one can get there–that is, a beggar. Metaphorically the term was applied also to that fellow who would do any dirty work or say any outrageous thing to get a meal–a lickspittle, a low jester, a clown a buffoon. Though such men live by their wits, they are in their speeches and deeds usually ribald rather than witty, coarse rather than fine, bumptious rather than deft. For these confident demythologizers, a bone is a bone and meal a meal, containing no possibility of anything high–neither mental nor sacred. Indeed for them a meal is not even a meal–an integral unit–but merely an aggregate of scraps, a heap rather than a whole (analogous to the view of the anatomized human body that is often the butt of their coarse humor). (The Hungry Soul, p. 179)
Devil, I must sleep
Martin Luther dealing with his depression:
When I go to bed, the Devil is always waiting for me. When he begins to plague me, I give him this answer: “Devil, I must sleep. That’s God’s command, ‘Work by day. Sleep by night.’ So go away.” If that doesn’t work and he brings out a catalog of sins, I say, “Yes, old fellow, I know all about it. And I know some more you have overlooked. Here are a few extra. Put them down.” If he still won’t quit and presses me hard and accuses me as a sinner, I scorn him and say, “St. Satan, pray for me. Of course you have never done anything wrong in your life. You alone are holy. Go to God and get grace for yourself. If you want to get me all straightened out, I say, ‘Physician, heal thyself.’”
Posted on June 21st, 2010
Abraham does not know
Martin Luther cites Isaiah in the explanation of his shorter catechism, addressing the necessity of praying only to God.
Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and beautiful habitation. Where are your zeal and your might? The stirring of your inner parts and your compassion are held back from me. For you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not acknowledge us; you, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name. –Isaiah 63:15-16
No where does Scripture commend the idea of praying to the dead or anyone else other than God. The witch of Endor is as surprised as anyone that Samuel actually shows up, and she is hardly an example to follow (1 Sam. 28). But efforts to communicate with lost loved ones are as common as they are tragic. Many of those seeking to contact the dead are searching for consolation and peace, for things to be said and heard, to make up for things done and left undone in the wake of the loss of someone. Instead of healing the wound, such attempts at communication are futile and misleading if not worse. Abraham is the father of the faithful, and from Jesus’ parable about the rich man and Lazarus (Lk. 16:19-31), we know that Abraham’s bosom was the destination of the faithful departed. Who else could hear us if not Abraham? But Isaiah is clear. Neither he nor Israel know what is going on. This is okay because God our Father does know us and our issues. This means that though the pain of loss and separation are real, so is his knowledge and comfort; his grace is sufficient for this trial. It also means that whatever conflicts, issues or sins remain unaddressed between people who are separated by death, they will be resolved if they need to be in the future, and until then there is peace to be had in the here and now.
Posted on June 15th, 2010Burn the Milquetoast
James Adam’s calls for praying the Psalms:
God plainly declares that it is His purpose to bring down the evil empire in due time. But how has He chosen do so? Through the prayers and work of His saints–your prayers and mine! We must end the wishy-washy, milquetoast prayers of our own philosophies and learn again to beg for the overthrow of Satan’s domain. (War Psalms of the Prince of Peace)
The imprecatory Psalms are rarely sung in the church today and this is to the detriment of the cause of justice. It is said that God has come to this world to save his people and set the world to rights, and this is precisely what the Psalms call for which are then taken up by the writers of the New Testament and Jesus himself. Sickened by sex trafficking? Cantankerous over corrupt politicians fleecing the poor? Take up and sing the Psalms.
Posted on June 14th, 2010
