One Book

This has been bouncing around the blogs I read.
I didn't get tagged, but I stole it fair and square


1. One book that changed your life: James B. Jordan's
_Sociology of the Church_. I was a happy little semi-
fundy evangelical til I read that.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
Tolkein's _Lord of the Rings_. I need it every
time I get a whiff of Mordor in the wind.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
Jon Barlow's answer "A book of hymns or folk songs."
Chesterton's answer "A book on boat building."
Both are better than my thoughts.

4. One book that made you laugh:
James P. Blaylock's _The Last Coin_
One must become like a little child to
enter the kingdom of God.

5. One book that made you cry:
Solzhenitsyn's _The Gulag Archipeligo_
How can people do that to each other?
Would I be able to resist? What of my
children? That was a Christian people,
why did their faith evaporate?

6. One book that you wish had been written:
_The Collapse of Mohammed's Relgion:
How 1.5 Billion People Turned to Jesus_

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
Karl Marx's _Das Kapital_ but, maybe the post-
enlightenment revolutionary spirit was so wide-
spread that _DK's_ absence really wouldn't have changed
things much.

8. One book you’re currently reading:
I'm in the process of picking one. The big
boys are studying Modernity; I'll probably
read something on the Enlightenment/
French Revolution to start with.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
John Calvin's _Institutes of the Christian
Religion._

ofs

History Notes

As Vizzini says in _Princess Bride_, "Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia." Well, America is not exactly in an Asian land war, but it's close.

Afghanistan and Iraq have ancient histories of fighting invaders. In Afghanistan's case with bloody success against the British and the Russians. The authors of _Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias_ track the histories of Afghanistan and Iraq as well as Somalia and Chechnya up to the present battles they have waged or are waging against foreign invaders. These countries are peopled by tribes, clans, ethnic groups, and religions that all fight amongst themselves - never quite for conquest, but for the glory of a good raid. Heroics and stolen camels become the stuff of legends and vendettas. The only time all these little groups band together is when a larger group attacks them. The parable of "my tribe against the world, my clan against the tribe, my family against the clan, my brother and I against the family, me against my brother" is their motto.

As hit and run raiders, they don't present themselves in the field of battle the way a trained army would. They attack, disappear, ambush, decoy, and blend in. It doesn't take many of them to tie down a modern army. The added mixture of Islam with its eternal rewards for fallen "martyrs" and a multi-generational commitment to the battle makes fighting the ITMs facing America very difficult.

If fact, that difficulty is the main weakness of the book. The authors do not discuss the lessons of history for defeating tribes/clans/family warriors. It may be that the way to do it is far too horrible for western countries to consider, but we need to know our options. The below picture is from the British suppression of the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857. It is one of those too horrible options.



Other than that, the book is quite good. Although, there tends to be a lot of repetition because the case study peoples are so similar, but repetition aids learning in my tired old brain. The book also lacks and sorely needs a bibliography.

ofs

Shallow or Deep End?

Saw Shyamalan's _Lady in the Water_ last night with my two biggest boys. It wasn't the smoothest movie ever made, but we enjoyed it.

SPOILER ALERT!

The terms - narf, scrunt, and tartutic - for the the fairy tale creatures seemed too cartoonish and childish. Every time they were used, I winced. The kids also thought the sprinklers kicking on happened too often.

We did enjoy the characters. They were likeable, oddball people. Only the grass wolf was mean and nasty. The death of the harmlessly officious film critic was funny, but not all that necessary to the plot.

I don't know Shymalan's faith, but there did seem to be some Christian elements in the movie. The Narf came from the Blue World. Part of the Blue World is certainly the waters below the earth, but when the eagle takes her away, she goes to the sky and the sky blue waters above the earth. The narfs explain to man how they should properly live - what the rules are. The narf, Story, is called an angel and the role of narfs seems to be that of the angels of the OT. "For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation." However, Biblically, angels are "a flame of fire" and I don't remember associations with water.

The scrunt is a creature of the land. And represents the curse on the ground and Satan the god of this world. He brings death and destruction and is ultimately defeated by the Tartutic threesome. The Tartutic (one name for three) seems to represent the Trinity. They come from the trees as Jesus brought deliverance and judgement from The Tree. But, they are described as evil and monkey-like. Not the usual descriptions of God.

Of course, the pool, shower, sprinklers, and rain bring baptism images to mind.

Probably Shymalan would wonder "where did he get those ideas? I didn't mean that", but I saw them anyway. The movie is mildly scary, but has no "cursing, violence, nudity, or the death of a major character." It is a good fairy tale because you would want to be in it.

ofs

A Psalm for Me Today

Psalm 121
A Song of Ascents.
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.
ESV

Mortality

I have grown morbid. Deaths and illnesses in friends
and family lately have left me pessimistic of my own
health. Last week, I developed a new, troubling symptom.
I made the mistake of diagnosing myself via Google
links. The first 35 entries of about 36 all pointed towards
a major, chronic, eventually fatal disease. I bit.

Thankfully, God took pity on my weakness and
faithlessness. He made it possible that my doctor
was in town (he travels extensively). My doctor does
not think my diagnosis correct, but will throw a few
tests at it just to make sure. As of right now, he
gave me my favorite diagnosis: "Tough, live with
it."

Our help is in the Name of the LORD who
made heaven and earth.

ofs

Glad to have a church with good liturgy and good preaching

[I just copied this from Mark Horne's blog
because I don't know how to link to just this
article there.-ofs]

From Jim Jordan's _The Reconstruction of the
Church_
The link above will take you to an HTML version
of the book.

The Church in America today is in disarray. Apart from the
evil influence of secular humanism and theological liberalism
(which are the same thing), the problem is due to two factors:
an ambiguous attitude toward public worship, and the devel-
opment of parachurch organizations.

The first factor is that the institutional Church has not stressed
the importance of "command performance worship" and the
sacraments. As a result, people are not sure why the Church
is important. They can hear good preaching over the radio or
television. They can read good Christian books, and get guidance
for life. Home Bible studies frequently provide better fellowship.
Often the Church seems kind of dead compared to other Christian
works. Thus, the institutional Church seems relatively unimportant.
We have to say that this is the Church's own fault, for failing to
make its purpose clear to the people.

It is important for us to see briefly how this came about. During
the Middle Ages, because of a superstitious view of the sacrament,
people stopped partaking of it. They removed it from their children,
and stopped drinking the wine. Toward the end of the Middle Ages,
the Italo-papal nationalization of the Church was pretty much
complete, and the Church was almost wholly corrupt in its ministry.
Lay preachers,monks, and other types of reformers conducted
ministry outside the boundaries of the institutional Church, though
they always directed people to engage in formal command perform-
ance worship on Sunday. At this time it was still understood that
public worship was as important as private worship.

[It was the laity, not the clergy, who rejected the cup, out of fear
of spilling it. It was also the laity who stopped bringing their
children for communion, for the same reason. Until the later
Middle Ages, children were welcomed at Jesus' house for a
weekly dinner with Him. All baptized children, from infancy
on, were present at the Table.]

With the Reformation, the preachers triumphed, and took
over the Churches. The political hold of the Italo-papal court
over the rest of Europe was broken. Since the Reformation grew
out of a preaching movement, it was natural for protestants to
emphasize preaching in their worship services. At the same time,
people were not used to taking communion more than once or
twice a year, if that often. Though the major Reformers, such
as Luther, Calvin, and Bucer, greatly desired weekly (even daily)
communion, they were completely unable to persuade the people to
go along. Quarterly communion was the most they could get.

As a result of all this, protestant people came to think of preaching
as the most important aspect of the institutional Church. This was a
mistake, because God has not given many gifted orators to the Church.
(St. Paul was ridiculed for his lack of oratorical skill, and Moses had
the same problem; see Exodus 4:10ff. and Acts 20:7-9; 1 Corinthians
2:1-5; 2 Corinthians 10:10.) The proclamation of the gospel needs
the pastoral context of the whole body life--of the Church, and
particularly needs the seal of the sacraments. By its exaltation
of preaching as a charismatic art, the Reformation moved in the
direction, subtly and unintentionally to be sure, of undermining the
Church itself.

As time went along, this unhealthy opposition of preaching to
sacramental pastoral ministry became more pronounced. The Puritan
opposition to prayerbook worship wound up, in practice, often pitting
preaching against a more wholistic view of the Church. [It should be
noted that all the Reformers had been favorable to prayerbook worship.
The more radical Puritans departed completely from the Reformation at
this point.] This opposition broke out into the open, in America, during
the Great Awakening. Roaming preachers caused tremendous disruption
in the normal pastoral life ofthe Church. As Hofstadter has written,

In truth, the established ministers found it difficult to cope with the
challenge of the awakeners. The regular ministers, living with their
congregations year in and year out under conditions devoid of special
religious excitement, were faced with the task of keeping alive the spiritual
awareness of their flocks under sober everyday circumstances. Confronted
by flaming evangelists of Whitefield's caliber, and even by such lesser tub-
thumpers and foot-stampers as Gilbert Tennent and Davenport, they were
at somewhat the same disadvantage as an aging house-wife whose husband
has taken up with a young hussy from the front line of the chorus (Anti-
intellectualism, p. 67).

Because this is so important, and because there is so much mythology
about how wonderful the Great Awakening and subsequent revivals were,
I want to insert here some comments on George Whitefield; but since I
dare not criticize him myself, I shall let the eminent Charles Hodge do it
for me:

It is impossible to open the journals of Whitefield without being painfully
struck on the one hand with the familiar confidence with which he speaks
of his own religious experience, and on the other with the carelessness with
which he pronounces others to be godly or graceless, on the slightest
acquaintance or report. Had these journals been the private record of his
feelings and opinions, this conduct would be hard to excuse; but as they
were intended for the public, and actually given to the world almost as soon
as written, it constitutes a far more serious offence. Thus he tells us, he called
on a clergyman, (giving the initials of his name, which, under the circumstances
completely identified him) and was kindly received, but found "he had no
experimental knowledge of the new birth." Such intimations are slipped off, as
though they were matters of indifference. On equally slight grounds he
passed judgment on whole classes of men. After his rapid journey through
New England, he published to the world his apprehension "lest many, nay most
that preach do not experimentally know Christ ."

. . . White field was much in the habit of speaking of ministers as being
unconverted; so that the consequence was, that in a country where "the
preaching and conversation of far the bigger part of the ministers were
undeniably as became the gospel, such a spirit of jealousy and evil surmising
was raised by the influence and example of a young foreigner, that perhaps
there was not a single town; either in Massachusetts or Connecticut, in which
many of the people were not so prejudiced against their pastors, as to be
rendered very unlikely to be benefited by them" (from a Letter to Whitefield
from Edward Wigglesworth, in the name of the faculty ofHarvard College,
1745). This is the testimony of men who had received Mr. Whitefield, on his
first visit, with open arms.

Hodge also comments on the belief, new at the time, that anyone had the right to
set himself up as a gospel preacher, over against the ministry of the Church. The
perspective which Hodge sets out here, which has been the universal catholic
view of the Church of all ages, is almost completely lost today, and seems very
odd to the modern reader:

Whitefield. . . assumed the right, in virtue of his ordination, to preach
the gospel wherever he had an opportunity, "even though it should be
in a place where officers were already settled, and the gospel was fully
and faithfully preached. "This, I humbly apprehend," he adds, "is every
gospel minister's indisputable privilege." It mattered not whether the
pastors who thus fully and faithfully preached the gospel, were willing to
consent to the intrusion of the itinerant evangelist or not. "If pulpits should
be shut," he says, "blessed be God, the fields are open, and I can go without
the camp, bearing the Redeemer's reproach. This I glory in; believing if I
suffer for it, I suffer for righteousness' sake." If Whitefield had the right here
claimed, then of course Davenport had it, and so every fanatic and errorist
has it. This doctrine is entirely inconsistent with what the Bible teaches of
the nature of the pastoral relation, and with every form of ecclesiastical
government, episcopal, presbyterian, or congregational. Whatever
plausible pretences may be urged in its favor, it has never been acted
upon without producing the greatest practical evils .

Thus, the Great Awakening went far toward breaking down the historic
connection between the wholistic ministry of the local Church and the
preaching of the gospel. Subsequent revivals have only worked to further
the disaster. Piety came to be seen exclusively in individualistic terms--
individual souls responding to the ministry of the preacher--and
corporate piety as the public performance of worship visibly on the
earth before the throne of God for His glory, was increasingly lost
from view