I was living in Canada when Molson came up with this commercial, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a reaction to an ad. I got to thinking about it the other day, for who knows what random reason, and decided to post it. Call it a memento, of sorts.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
On this blog in history: October 2007
Continuing this series of retrospective posts, there’s rather a gap after May 2007; the one post worth noting from June, 1 Timothy and the misdirected conscience of the West, is one I actually reposted in full not that long ago, and after that one the summer got very busy (both in town, and in my search for a new call). It was October before I got posting again.Madeleine L’Engle, RIP
A belated tip of the hat to an author from whom I learned much.Meme tag
In retrospect, I don’t think this meme was really all that helpful; but I do think my positive section here, drawing on James 1, is worth remembering.Good news—no boundaries
A post about the mission organization Words of HOPE, which I served as a board member for three years; this is basically a brief introduction to one of the best ministries I’ve ever come across.Meme Reversi
My wife’s response to the meme above was to toss it back the other way, with a challenge that I could wish had gone all the way back down the chain: if you’ve identified problems and how things ought to be, what are you going to do about it? This is my answer to that challenge.
Minor shameless plug
I have a bit of a project going with regard to our church’s website, with which I’m still dissatisfied. One of the things I’ve decided to try is creating a sermon blog on which to put the texts of my messages and to link to that from the main website. It’s not my preferred option, since it sends traffic off the church site and over to Blogger; but unless we’re willing to expand the budget for our site by a considerable amount, it looks to me like it will work better than anything else I’ve come up with.In any case, that blog is now up and running, and has the entirety of my just-concluded sermon series on Philemon and Colossians posted (more will follow over time); I’ve called it Of a Sunday, playing off the huge role that Billy Sunday and his wife had in the founding and early growth of WLPC, and each sermon is “posted” under the date on which it was preached. These are the straight texts I took into the pulpit, so they don’t include whatever changes I made in the course of delivery, but the essentials are all there. A number of them have provided material for blog posts, so those who read this site with any sort of regularity will find some familiar thoughts and ideas.
Is this how we pray?
More often than we’d like to think, I suspect.
Interesting comment on being right
from this comment thread over on Lookout Landing (on a post well worth reading if you’re a baseball fan), from a commenter named Milendriel:
Bottom line is, there are people who want to be right and approach new information objectively, and then there are people who don’t want to admit they’re wrong—which is necessary to eventually be right; none of us were any good at evaluating from the outset.
Beautifully put, that. To be fair, I think we all need to realize that even the best of us spend at least some time in the second category—this isn’t a justification for beating up on people; we need to keep in mind that this isn’t about better people vs. worse people (which tends to mentally devolve to “us vs. them,” which is completely counterproductive), but rather about differing mental attitudes and approaches. As long as we do that, though, this formulation does as good a job of contrasting the approach that produces real growth and understanding (the former) with that which merely produces pride and folly (the latter) as anything I’ve seen. It’s not that we shouldn’t be concerned about being right; it’s that our concern should be for the real value of truth, and should thus be essentially disinterested and not about ourselves, rather than for being believed to be right, which is not about truth at all but rather about ego.
In case anyone is wondering . . .
. . . I really haven’t dropped off the face of the earth; but between being sick myself, having a sick wife and (for a while) a sick daughter, and major computer work at the church (which will be well worth it, when it’s done), I haven’t had a great deal of time or energy to put into this blog. (I’m also behind on e-mail as a result of the same issues, so if I haven’t gotten back to you, please, don’t give up on me.) A more normal posting schedule will no doubt resume when circumstances permit, but it probably won’t be until next week.In the meantime, I’ve been meaning to comment on Tyler Dawn’s recent post on the nature of prophecy, so I’ll recommend you go read it. Even if you believe the gift of prophecy ceased with the death of the first apostles, she has some good things to say about the nature of our relationship with God, and about what real Christian leadership looks like.
Further thought on submission and expectations
Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.—Colossians 3:18-21One of the things we often miss about this passage, and its parallel in Ephesians 5 about which I posted earlier today, is that as he addresses different groups of people, Paul directs his comments to them—for instance, his comments about wives are addressed to wives, and his comments about husbands are addressed to husbands. This might seem obvious, but we often tend to read them the other way around—as if Paul had written, for instance, “Husbands, your wives are supposed to submit to you as to the Lord”; we focus on what others are supposed to do for us, rather than on what Paul commands us to do. Verse 20 isn’t addressed to parents, to use as a stick with which to beat our children, but to the children themselves; yes, we need to teach our children to be obedient, but you know, the reason really isn’t “Because I say so.” It’s not because I say so, it’s because God says so, and because I in my place am trying to do the best I can to teach them to do what is wise and good and pleasing to God. And the first sentence isn’t written to tell husbands what we have the right to expect; the word to us is, “Love your wives.” In Ephesians, Paul takes it a step further: “Love your wives as Christ loved the church.” It’s an absolute command; it isn’t contingent on anything anyone else does or doesn’t do. Our job is to do our job, not anyone else’s. That’s just how it works.
Brief meditation on submission and marriage
And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, wives to husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also should wives submit in everything to their husbands.Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without stain or wrinkle or any other mark, that she might be holy and unmarred. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. Whoever loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am talking about Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself,
and let the wife see that she respects her husband.—Ephesians 5:18-33That first paragraph above is Ephesians 5:18-24, and if you’re used to English translations, it probably looks weird to you. Your typical English Bible will put a full stop after “our Lord Jesus Christ,” then set verse 21 off as a separate paragraph: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Then you’ll have a heading, most often Wives and Husbands, and then verse 22 will read, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.”The only problem is, that verb in verse 22 doesn’t exist; inserting it, and the heading, makes it sound like a new and separate command from everything that’s gone before, and it just isn’t. It’s a particular application of a broader command: the command to mutual submission. To the world, this sounds like a really strange concept, since what the world has in mind when it thinks of “submit” or “be subject” is one person bossing another around—I tell you what to do and you do it, and that’s that. It’s a one-way street. What Paul means is something very different: all of us as brothers and sisters in Christ are supposed to submit to one another as part of being filled up by the Spirit. What this means is, submission isn’t about hierarchy, and it isn’t a matter of most of us doing what a few people tell us to do. Instead, it’s a matter of how we as Christians relate to one another and care for one another. It’s a matter of heeding Paul’s words in Philippians 2: “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” As the ultimate example of this attitude, Paul points to Christ, who had more right than anyone to insist on his own way and his own prerogatives, but chose instead to give them all up and accept crucifixion. It seems to me that the command to submit to each other doesn’t mean that we have to do whatever anyone tells us to do, but rather that we don’t have the right to dominate others; we can’t insist that we are more important than they are. Instead, we should be willing to let others be more important, we should be ready to let others have their way, and we should be as concerned for the good of those around us as for our own good.This is the context in which Paul turns to address wives and husbands. Many argue that this is a special case, that mutual submission is only the rule outside of marriage, and that inside marriage, submission is a one-way street. The reason I’ve usually seen offered for this is that Paul doesn’t go on in either of these passages to tell husbands to submit to their wives, and that therefore this must be a special duty for wives, not husbands. On first read, that makes sense; but if that’s the correct reading of these passages, then what do we make of the fact that Paul tells husbands to love their wives, but never tells wives to love their husbands? Clearly, he doesn’t mean that wives don’t need to love their husbands. This suggests—especially in light of the command in Ephesians to mutual submission—that he doesn’t intend submission to be just one-way, either; after all, one element of loving another person is being willing to put them and their will and their good ahead of ourselves and our own. Rather, it seems likely that Paul emphasizes submission to wives and love to husbands for some other reason.My guess is that that reason is the cultural situation he’s dealing with, which enshrined the legal superiority of husbands over wives. Husbands had, at least in theory, absolute power over their wives—and, for that matter, their children; and we all know what absolute power does: it corrupts. It corrupts those who wield it; it also corrupts those who are under it. Paul’s driving concern, then, is to address both halves of this relationship and tell both husbands and wives how to deal with the situation as Christians. The key principle here is that this should be all about Christ, and doing what pleases him (which includes not submitting to things which clearly do not please him); along with this, we see the truth that greater authority doesn’t mean a greater opportunity to get your own way, but rather a greater opportunity to love and serve. Thus Paul tells husbands, “Love your wives as Christ loved the church.” How did Christ love the church? He laid down his life for the church. That, and nothing less, is the standard.
This is a strange world we live in
and every advance in technology seems to bring a new opportunity for the human race to find new ways in which to sin.Second Life affair ends in divorceHT: TMH
Camille Paglia on Sarah Palin
Even though I don’t agree with Camille Paglia on very much (if anything) politically, I admire her greatly for her honesty, the clarity of her perception, and the true independence of her mind, and also for her great gifts as a writer. Her latest column in Salon shows her at the top of her form, particularly in this telling observation about Barack Obama:
As I’ve watched Obama gracefully step up to podiums or move through crowds, I’ve been reminded not of basketball, with its feints and pivots, but of surfing, that art form of his native Hawaii. . . Obama’s ability to stay on his feet and outrun the most menacing waves that threaten to engulf him seems to embody the breezy, sunny spirit of the American surfer.
It also shows her refusal to close her eyes for the sake of ideology, as she expresses concern over
the mainstream media’s avoidance of forthright dealing with several controversies that had been dogging Obama—even as every flimsy rumor about Sarah Palin was being trumpeted as if it were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai.
She mentions specifically the evasiveness of the Obama campaign, and the unanswered questions about his association with Bill Ayers and (especially, to her) Bernardine Dohrn, writing,
We don’t need another presidency that finds it all too easy to rely on evasion or stonewalling. I deeply admire Obama, but as a voter I don’t like feeling gamed or played.
Those two sentences, comparing the behavior of Sen. Obama and his campaign to that of the hated President Bush and his administration, have to have cost her. Paglia spends a fair chunk of her column on Ayers and Dohrn, whom she clearly finds disturbing; and from there she turns to Gov. Palin, writing,
Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don’t know their asses from their elbows.Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology—contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is—and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn’t speak the King’s English—big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns—that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee—what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry’s nod for veep four years ago? And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama’s pick and who was on everyone’s short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin’s. Whatever knowledge deficit Palin has about the federal bureaucracy or international affairs (outside the normal purview of governors) will hopefully be remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies.The U.S. Senate as a career option? What a claustrophobic, nitpicking comedown for an energetic Alaskan—nothing but droning committees and incestuous back-scratching. No, Sarah Palin should stick to her governorship and just hit the rubber-chicken circuit, as Richard Nixon did in his long haul back from political limbo following his California gubernatorial defeat in 1962. Step by step, the mainstream media will come around, wipe its own mud out of its eyes, and see Palin for the populist phenomenon that she is.
It’s a powerful smackdown to groupthink and cant from someone who’s as free of both as any columnist around (on either side of the political aisle); the fact that it’s also a powerful defense of someone who both needs and deserves it just makes it better.