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Thanks Lyds! I appreciate that. What it all comes down to is what floats one’s own boat. Not all beams and drafts are the same. People of faith are as different and yet the same as individual snowflakes, tension and contradiction, all at the same time. I think it’s probably a very human trait to want to persuade others to ‘believe’ as we believe. And failing that? So? So what? The older I get the more I realize that a shared and common humanity is way more important than division over religious belief systems and what the Bible says and / or does not say.

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Bridget wrote:

It is 109 degrees in Redding. I hope this is helpful.

The fact that I’m not in Redding (or Reading either, for that matter, where it’s also rather warm for my liking) is most helpful.

#lovecold

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

The original and most famous Stonehenge was, of course, built to celebrate England’s World Cup win.

Which of course is the explanation of why it is designated an ancient monument.

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Ken wrote:

Does the American team wear red socks by any chance?

They’re more likely to wear red sox.

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Okrapod wrote:

We may not be able to celebrate the 4th tomorrow because we forgot to get a watermelon.

lol! You can still celebrate, but it definitely won’t be the same. It’s my all-time favorite summer food! I think it’s so refreshing!

Happy Independence Day, Okrapod!

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@ Gram3:

Two things totally verboten as a kid were spitting and cursing. So, July 4 on the Uncle’s farm we were allowed to go out into the pasture with a big watermelon slice and spit the seeds to our hearts content. Too fun!

Then on trips to Ky DAM, we said it over and over and over and over. What bores we must have been. :o)

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@ AmyT:

May Almighty God direct Providence to work her magic on your nephew’s behalf…

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@ AmyT:

Poor precious little boy. May God sustain him and all the family and bring healing to him and comfort to all the family.

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@ AmyT:

Praying…

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@ AmyT:
I’m so sorry. 🙁

Since it’s still Independence Day (for us United States folks) for a few hours, here’s a picture of a dog who looks like he’s … enjoying? … himself in the holiday spirit:

https://www.facebook.com/itsdougthepug/photos/a.700677076683788.1073741828.700671623351000/863897590361735/

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__

Muff Potter,

hey,

– a catheter, a ventilator, and all human hands, i.e.  anything that that should come in contact with the patient, must be kept clean in order to reduce the risk of infection.

Sopy

—

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@ numo:

Note the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches and the Assyrian Church of the East always had married priests.

The ancient rule is that to be a priest you must prior to your ordination marry a virgin while yourself remaining a virgin, and it must be your first marriage. If you divorce or necome widowed you can still be ordained but cannot remarry, and worse, you might be asked to serve as a bishop; bishops can be widowers. Most bishops are monastics however. In Ethiopia men and women commonly observe a monastic rule even if living at home if their spouse dies and are fed by the community.

There were at one time married bishops legimiately recognized as ancient hierarchs and as saints by the Church but they seem to have disappeared by the fourth century and eventually the institution was banned, and strict celibacy imposed upon the episcopate to the extent of having a cell attendant with the bishop 24 hours of unimpeachable character who could vouch for the celibacy of the bishop. This was probably a response to the abuses of bishops like Paul of Samosata, who also was one of the earlier deniers of the divinity of Christ in addition to his promiscuity and palatial dwellings…he would have done well on that reality show about the Prosperity Gospel preachers. The title cell attemdant os still used in some denominations to refer to the priest or deacon who is the private secretary of the bishop but bishops live a more physically comfortable life now. Perhaps too comfortable in some respects.

The old way of finding the most pious and ascetic man in the city, and unless he managed to escape, forcing him against his will to be bishop (see the lives of St. Isaac the Syrian, St. John Chrysostom and St. Ephrem the Syrian, who did escape being made bishop by pretending to lose his mind), and if he doesnt manage to escape, then ordaining him as such and granting him his mitre and crosier, seems ro me somewhat ideal. This really was how the early Church did things.

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In further other news, I have trained my son in the use of two important power-tools thus far during the summer holidays.

Last week: The washing machine (a girly power-tool).
This week: A medium-duty concrete breaker (a tough and manly power tool).

The latter, which is consistent with proper biblical manhood, came from the local tool hire place in aid of my efforts to replace the broken slabs in the driveway. It’s biblical because it involves penetrating and conquering (though not planting).

#andpeoplebelievethatstuff

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I’ll put this here to avoid diverting the main threads.

My mother passed away on July 5th. Thank you to those who have/are donating to the fund to help pay for my mother’s cremation/memorial (Dee graciously put a link in the blog banner). My sister and I have no financial means to cover it and my mother was on SSI with no insurance.

This has been a rough couple of months. 7 weeks ago, I was bitten by a black widow and did not know it, so went through the symptoms, not knowing what was going on (and not missing work as cannot afford to). I discovered the culprit by accident (or providence?) 3 1/2 weeks after I was bitten. It was summarily dispatched with extreme prejudice.

And I have been informed this week that I no longer have a job at the end of the month.

Again, thank you to Dee for placing my need in the banner and thank you all for any assistance you might be able to give. This online community is amazing.

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@numo, I finished “Fortitude” series 1 – wow ! It was very gripping, a three dog horror show! There were a few tired memes – the overwrung emotional black man, the drunken ‘devil may care’ crazy Russian, the hard drinking red neck Scots, etc. But I loved the storyline, and needless to say, the Glacier Hotel isn’t one place I’ll be wanting to stay at… It was also good to see Sophie Grabol in an English-speaking role, I’m not sure why exactly, but it was a change from her role in “The Killing”, she had a few more facets to her character. I’m ‘dying’ to see if there’ll be a series 2 now.

Another film I watched last night was Brendan Gleeson in “Calvary”. I think it was originally to be titled, “The Priest”? (Gleeson was also brilliant in “The Guard”, an Irish spaghetti western). I watched it with an older man who was abused by a nun who took ‘special interest’ in him – and has struggled with the effects for the rest of his life. I’m curious what you may think of the film. It has very black humour and naturally doesn’t end well (graphic murder alert). It highlights in an extreme way the damage that the Catholic church has wrought in Ireland – the paedophile priests and sadistic nuns – and following that, the church’s response.

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@ AmyT:

That is so good to hear, Amy.

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@ Haitch:
Re. Fortitude, i can’t help wondering what some of the other scientists are up to. Nothing good, i think! The vet *could* have been interesting if his character had been better written, i think. They left him hanging; also Jessica Raine. Too much silence betwern them, and not enough backstory, i think.

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@ numo:

Left a comment for you over at the movies thread.

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Muff Potter wrote:

the movies thread.

There’s a movies thread? How have I missed this?

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Muff Potter on Sun Jul 19, 2015 at 06:21 PM said:

Lydia wrote:

Since he has bragged for years about not being able to do one good thing, you would think he would be proud of his wife for the same?

“Can you elaborate or provide a link? Or is it just the usual reformed stance that you can’t do anything good because you’re hopelessly sullied by sin, and any good that comes out of you is not really good and doesn’t count?
Yeah I know that’s quite a mouthful, but their whole depravity thing will collapse like Gothic arches unless buttressed by special pleading and circular reasoning.”

First of all, I have found TT to be mostly full of platitudes and his delivery really influences people not to look closer to what he is actually saying. I am going by reading summaries of his books, sermons and tweets. I can barely stand to listen/read. (Although I have noticed his tweets changing since the scandal) He tends to understand scripture through the Penal Substitutionary Atonement lens which leads to major problems in practice and fits perfectly with total depravity.

He tends to see our right behavior through a “self salvation” filter. It is the same old story that Christians who believe in right behavior are “self righteous”. He just has a more popular and cool delivery. It is interpreting scripture through the dualistic paradigm. He even claims that common sense is not Christian. And all this based upon his paradigm of Grace and his interpretation of scripture.

All through his teaching is that them of cheap grace: we are saints while we are horribly sinning. Some are legalists and some are lawless to a fault. Hey chosen by Jesus? You can do anything you want.

That is why I was a bit shocked to see him throw his wife under the bus so readily in public. He sounded like Adam in Gen 3 instead of his typical sermon of not being able to do anything good. I have no doubt he will clean this up in the days ahead but at the same time I don’t think people see it because of his charisma and delivery. It is a variation of the Piper problem but not to the same extent.

All I know is that I will be more likely to trust people who do the right things whether they profess Christ or not. Too bad we cannot expect it from Christians. And when most people read something like that they tend to focus on silly mundane things we must do right. I am looking at a much bigger picture.

And, I don’t see that as something to be ashamed of or that there is a reason to brag that we don’t do the right things. But then, I see sins as actions or non actions on a different playing field than he does. I do not see total depravity but hard choices in an often hard environment. I don’t see God as determining our actions but us determining our responsibility while we are here.

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@ Lydia:

Thanx Lyds! Doing a little homework on Tchividjian will show enough to give a cursory outline. One which reads like a Byzantine opera in the 4th & 5th centuries when the Church Fathers fought each other for supremacy:

Coral Ridge is a bastion of well heeled white folks in the upstrata formerly ruled by the late D. James Kennedy, an outspoken culture warrior who battled Godless liberals and vile Sodomites. His passion was to reclaim America for Christ through political activism.

How Tchividjian got installed as Kennedy’s successor escapes me, but the record will show that Kennedy’s daughter and her followers spearheaded an ill fated coup d’etat to remove him. Probably because he was not in full accord with her father’s vision of right wing political activism.

To his credit, Tchividjian could see that the future of Coral Ridge lay not in an old guard bent on reclaiming America for Christ, but in a brave new world of young lions feasting on reformed doctrine and making it their own. He even adopted the bluto-look (several days of needing a shave) to look cool for his young charges. It made me think of T.E. Lawrence in full Arab regalia.

Disclaimer !
The following link to Peter Enns’s article on the Tchividjian imbroglio in no way implies that I agree with everything Enns writes. But in this case I think he’s right on the money:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/05/tullian-tchividjian-the-gospel-coalition-and-a-rather-obvious-theology-problem/

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If anyone should be interested in the whole Kent Hovind/Paul Hansen thing here is a website done by somebody who is following this.

http://www.hovindology.com/

I’m now done unless something new comes up.

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@ Muff Potter:

Great article by Enns!

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@ Muff Potter:

I’ve noticed bother with Patheos too. Your problem may be RAM-related.

On a Mac, the problem is that the large number of video-based adverts are extremely RAM-hungry – I’ve known it to chomp nearly 4 gigs if I’ve had several tabs open. This may be different on a PC, but I suspect it’s not. By the same token, if your local interweb connection is a little slow, then filling up a’ tha’ RAM takes time and the page will be slow to load. I upgraded our Mac’s RAM to 8 gigs a wee while back and Patheos is a lot more manageable now.

Bottom line is that if you have an older machine with much under 4 gigabytes of RAM, Patheos is likely to be a problem. If you open several Patheos tabs at once, the problem gets steadily worse because each one demands its own pound of flesh/RAM.

On the plus side, boosting the RAM is much cheaper than replacing your machine, and relatively easy to do… The only other thing I can suggest is that if, like me, you keep thinking That Throckmorton post looks interesting, I’ll open it as well, you may need to change your approach and keep fewer tabs open. Obviously, if you’re only opening one tab at a time as it is, that won’t be any use.

I hope this is helpful.

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@ Muff Potter:
Or you could use ad-blocking extensions. It will still take a bit toload, but almost all of yhe nuisance things will not be displayed.

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for Muff Potter: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html

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@ numo:

WoWee! Thanx numes, I’ve been wondering where this site was.
One final thought on science:
The measuring grid of science is a great and wonderful thing. It has lifted much of humankind out of the mud and offal of ignorance and superstition, and for that it deserves all the accolades it can get. But the measuring grid can also get confused with what’s being measured, and when we do that we lose out on the mystery and magic of the universe.

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@ Muff Potter:
Hey Muff – it’s not the one i posted a few years back, but it’s close – and might be an updated version of it. I knew you would love it!

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@ numo:
They’re also available for Chrome.

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A software application wrote:

… His Words is God-breath…

Actually, I propose we formally adopt the phrase “God-breath” as a useful shorthand for any dogged attempt to turn a debatable view on a secondary (or lower) doctrine into a primary doctrine or a vital defence of “biblical” truth.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

Actually, I propose we formally adopt the phrase “God-breath” as a useful shorthand for any dogged attempt to turn a debatable view on a secondary (or lower) doctrine into a primary doctrine or a vital defence of “biblical” truth.

Nick yer’ crackin’ me up again laddie!

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So, another update for those who are following 🙂

We finally had the “gender roles” session in my small group. My wife’s reaction: “Hogwash”. Accurate assessment imo.

It had all the stuff you’d expect, with an extended bit on Grudem and his expert credentials and how much he’s written on the subject. He explain he’d written hundreds of documents on the subject and has done more work than anyone regarding the exegesis of gender roles in the scripture and that kephale definitely means “authority” (there was no discussion of the implications of this or an acknowledge of disagreement, it was just kind of tossed in there. Kind of like “I’m Wyane Grudem, I’ve studied a lot about gender roles. I believe the husband is the head of wife, and kephale means “authority”). It was a weird inclusion for anyone not versed in the debate.

At any rate, of course the group was totally on board with all of this, but when I expressed reservations and stated my own view it was well received and the general consensus is “this is a secondary issue and I’m glad we have diverse opinions”.

It was VERY interesting to hear one complementarian woman and my wife talk about their different views, as the complementarian woman was very clear about how she needed her husband to be confident or she would “take the reigns”. Whereas my wife countered with the thing that she is drawn to most about me is completely the opposite- she loves my vulnerability (which necessitates that I’m transparent about the times I’m not sure at all, ie. much of the time I’m NOT confident). I quipped that “I’d married the right one”- LOL.

Anyway, it was a positive experience. I did have someone challenging me with the “slippery slope” about how I was looking at scripture, and I replied that when we wanted to “sit down and meet for coffee” I’d surely get into exegesis, but we just didn’t have time in the discussion. But that he could rest assured I still hold scripture in high regard and my belief is reasoned. I plan to engage him later on this to more fully explain. I did say there is a tension in scripture and I acknowledge it, but there is tension for both positions, and both sides ought to be wrestling and not claim that their position is the “clear teaching of scripture”.

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FYI, the Grudem stuff was from the video we watched before the discussion.

The folks who chose the series said they welcomed my feedback on the course and I explained a few of my objections to the teachers.

I specifically brought up Baucham’s statement on affairs with younger women and pointed out how that knowledge made the charge to “date your daughters” in the materials pretty creepy. They agreed 🙂

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Who’d have guessed the two posts on the complementarian nonsense would run a combined 1,300 comments. I didn’t see that coming.

Now to see if there will be a comment thread anywhere near that long with no mention of piper, that would be a record. I am so tired of that man, sorry I brought him up.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

I must be very stubborn and rebellious today because I have a very stiff neck.

I thought the British were supposed to be stiff necked?

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@ Jeff S:
About the secondary issue thing. What that means is that anyone is allowed to disagree but they are not allowed to voice that disagreement or their reasons for that disagreement because Unity. Your pastor, for example, might allow you to voice your differences, but he will never give voice to the dissenting view from the pulpit. Or if he did, he would be subject to discipline by the presbytery. Or, if the presbytery allowed him to have doubts, then the General Assembly would discipline the presbytery. That’s how that works. Because gender “roles” is not a secondary issue, in fact.

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British Israelism has alwaya amused me quite a bit, especially in light of the Samaritans, who can credibly claim descent from the tribes of Levi, Ephraim and Manessah, based on their meticulous geneology (the Samaritan high priesthood, which dates in its pressnt post-exilic, poat-Alexander the Great incarnation, if memory serves, to 327 BC, is, I have read, the oldest extant official office still filled), and also the Beta Israel or Ethiopian Jews, who some have argued are descended from the tribe of Dan, which is a possibility, and some of the Indian Jewish communities (the ancient Cochin Jews and the Bene Israel), which have been linked to Zebulon. Of course in the case of the Indian and Ethiopian Jewry there is a definite link as well to the Jews proper, that is to say, to the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. We muat also not forget that within the Jewish ethnoreligious group there are probably as many as a million Levites, and a very substantial number of Kohanim (all Kohens are Levites but not vice versa if memory serves). Albeit in all cases one can assume intermarriage has occurred to some extent, but geneticists have linked the so called Y chromosome to Aaron, and one finds this amidst the Samaritans, the Ethiopian Jews, the Indian Jews, and of course among the Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Yemeni, Egyptian, Syrian, Boukharan and other Jews (including the Egyptian and Syrian Karaite Jews, but not to my knowledge among the ethnically Turkic Karaites of Crimea).

I am a supporter of the State of Israel but lament one side effect it is having is the watering down of distinct Jewish ethnic groups like the Mountain Jews of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the Boukharan Jews, and other groups, and their distinct liturgical and religious customs, and also I very much lament the rapid decline of vernacular Aramaic among those Jewish communities that historically lived in Palestine, Iraq and so on. Among rabinnical or orthodox Jews, everything seems to be becoming Ashkenazi or Sephardic with other cultures disappearing. These cultures are of interest to Christianity. because unlike the fantasies of British Israelists, these are the real cultures on the fronges of Judaism and also in many cases if studied peovide valuable insights into the Christian liturgy and indeed the comprehension of the Old Testament. For example, the Jewish liturgy favors a form of prayer that strongly resembles that used by Esther in the Additions to Esther found in the Septuagint, but alas. Hellenic Jews are extinct, and the closest living community, the Romaniote Jews, whose rabbis wear vestments that resemble those of Eastern Orthodox Christian priests, are critically endangered.

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god wrote:

A software application wrote:
… His Words is God-breath…
Actually, I propose we formally adopt the phrase “God-breath” as a useful shorthand for any dogged attempt to turn a debatable view on a secondary (or lower) doctrine into a primary doctrine or a vital defence of “biblical” truth.

I was curious as to how Nice Kekbulb got it to show “A software application”
But thought I’d link this example of God-breath here in addition to the latest 9Msrks thread: http://9marks.org/review/book-review-the-prodigal-church-by-jared-c-wilson/
Even though Wilson is properly gospel-centered and complementarian, the 9-Marks book reviewer marks him down for failing to include God-breath membership and discipline!

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William G. wrote:

British Israelism has always amused me quite a bit,

As well it might – it’s got nothing to do with Me.

Best regards,
God

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

William G. wrote:

British Israelism has alwaya amused me quite a bit

I, too, find it sadly amusing,

I was under the impression that some of my German brethren annihilated most of the British after Rome withdrew in AD 410 and the only real British left are in Wales. Would that also explain in part why you and I have the same hairdo?

So if the British are Jewish then the Germanic invaders were Jewish and that will be a big surprise. Hitler must be rolling in his grave.

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William G. wrote:

The Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox alas do not recognize any of these movements as legitimate, although the Copts received into communiom the British Orthodox Church which before becoming Coptified had some British Israelite and Crypto-Orthodox mythology in its shall we say ecclesiastical salad.

Twas’ the Copts who murdered a heroine of mine — Hypatia of Alexandria (415 A.D.)

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@ Jeff S:
I read a book on “Biblical” manhood with my pastor and another guy in my congregation. Both were comps (I was undecided at the time), and we all agreed that everything the author said about manhood could just as easily apply to womanhood.

I’m probably more egalitarian leaning now, but I’m the lone wolf since all my friends are comps (not sure how many of them follow CBMW though).

I haven’t read Grudem, but my impression of him based on the way others portray him is that he uses a lot of overblown rhetoric to make a point. Case in point: he claims that if 1 Tim 2:12 was only contextual then the authority of the Bible is undermined.

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Ivan wrote:

I’m probably more egalitarian leaning now, but I’m the lone wolf since all my friends are comps (not sure how many of them follow CBMW though).

Honestly, I don’t thank many people know or care about CBMW. It’s kind of frustrating, because CBMW is like a club that a lot of people belong to who end up influencing evangelical leaders, but if you directly critique CBMW all I get is “well, that isn’t something I know anything about”.

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@ William G.:

We (you & I) come from vastly different world views which in turn are informed by radically different ideas. We could argue back and forth from now until the ice sheets start moving South again and the one would still not convince the other. What we can do however is agree to disagree peacefully and realize that the mistakes of the past do not have to be repeated.

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@ Nick Bulbeck:

P.S. Forgot to sign off:

I hope this is helpful.

I hope this is helpful.

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“Pray for Julie McMahon. It appears her ex-husband’s lawyer wants a formal accounting of the donations from Go Fund Me. I am trying to figure out how to respond”

Has Tony ever gotten a love offering from anywhere in all his years of speaking and milking the system? Did he report it as income for child support purposes?

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I enclosed a copy of Dee’s post about Tony Jones’ attorney M. Sue Wilson wanting to have the information about the GoFundMe donors for Julie McMahon (the Wartburg Watch generated fund) when I wrote to the Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice and Associate Justices today.

Here they are: http://www.mncourts.gov/SupremeCourt.aspx

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And I filed a complaint against M. Sue Wilson’s law license with this state agency, Minnesota’s Lawyer’s Professional Responsibility Board,
http://lprb.mncourts.gov/Pages/Default.aspx

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Re: Tony Jones’ attorney in Minnesota M. Sue Wilson and her failure to adhere to the legal ethics of her profession found in Minnesota Professional Rules of Conduct:

“A lawyer’s conduct should conform to the requirements of the law, both in professional service to clients and in the lawyer’s business and personal affairs. A lawyer should use the law’s procedures only for legitimate purposes and not to harass or intimidate others. A lawyer should demonstrate respect for the legal system and for those who serve it, including judges, other lawyers, and public officials. While it is a lawyer’s duty, when necessary, to challenge the rectitude of official action, it is also a lawyer’s duty to uphold legal process.”

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@ Nick Bulbeck:

Thanks for the further info Nick! It’s sad that the KISS rule (keep it simple stupid), a cardinal rule of engineering across all the disciplines, has taken a steep decline in recent times.

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Velour wrote:

Re: Tony Jones’ attorney in Minnesota M. Sue Wilson

What right does the attorney even have to request this information? They can go to the Go Fund Me site to see the amount of money that was given. It is none of their business who gave, or how much they gave. I can’t believe the gall of the lawyer to even ask for this information.

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@ Jeff S:
Oh, and the guys who said they had not heard about Piper’s video also post regularly on blogs and are in a position, believe me, to know what Piper says and what the buzz is in Christian circles. Your guys are awfully naive if they don’t know about T4g or TgC.

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@ Gram3:

At first I wasn’t going to read it just because of the picture that was presented with the title. I read it and was then confounded that Jared did exactly what he was “preaching against” in the article. I wrote a comment about that very fact. It has not posted yet. I’ll post it here later if doesn’t show up. Not holding my breath.

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@ Bridget:
Your comment has been posted, Bridget. Great comment btw.

The article could have been effective without the picture. The image, however, makes Jared look silly as he resorted to such a silly, cartoonish, caricature.

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^I gave the CJ the letter that M. Sue Wilson got approved, via Order from a MN. Family Court judge in this case (some reports say that judge is the former law partner of M. Sue Wilson’s and if “yes” the judge had an ethical obligation to recuse herself from this case) and I asked why a MN Family Law judge is doing this in the US and other countries? It’s time for the Minnesota Supreme Court to shut this nonsense down and investigate them all.

I have yet to meet an attorney – no matter how much bravdo they have – who EVER wants to be reported to their state’s supreme court and regulatory agency. It puts the fear of God in them like nothing else will.

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Bridget wrote:

@ Velour:

Did the judge approve TJ’s lawyer obtaining the information at the Go Fund Me account? If so, that would be unbelievable. What business would TJ have with that information?

Bridget wrote:

@ Velour:

Did the judge approve TJ’s lawyer obtaining the information at the Go Fund Me account? If so, that would be unbelievable. What business would TJ have with that information?

Dee here at The Wartburg Watch knows the answer to that (if it was authorized by the Minn. Family Law judge).

But it’s really high time that the Minnesota Supreme Court intervened in this case and put a stop to the whole thing: Marked Tony Jones as a vexatious litigant, took action against M. Sue Wilson’s law license, and took action against the Minnesota family law judge. I described this world-wide pattern of harassment and intimidation of bloggers around the world, in multiple countries (Canada, United States, Australia to name a few), and that Tony Jones, M. Sue Wilson and the Minnesota family law judge have made a mockery of the Minnesota Judicial system in countries around the world and spawned outrage.

Given the sanctions that Minnesota has imposed on other judges for unethical and illegal conduct (not monitoring time cards of court staff, not living in the correct district, being rude to appointed criminal defense attorneys in cases and not following the law, and many other things that I read the other day on their state’s website), I think the Minnesota Supreme Court will take action in this case. How would they know about it if somebody like me doesn’t file a complaint and inform them?

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numo wrote:

@ Velour:
Who hired you to do this, if you don’t mind my asking? Julie?

Or are you firing off letters on your own? Seriously, it comes across as very strange for a private citizen with no actual connections to this case to send these sorts of letters.

numo wrote:

@ Velour:
Who hired you to do this, if you don’t mind my asking? Julie?

Or are you firing off letters on your own? Seriously, it comes across as very strange for a private citizen with no actual connections to this case to send these sorts of letters.

numo wrote:

@ Velour:
Who hired you to do this, if you don’t mind my asking? Julie?

Or are you firing off letters on your own? Seriously, it comes across as very strange for a private citizen with no actual connections to this case to send these sorts of letters.

@numo,

No, I wasn’t hired by Julie. Apparently you don’t know about legal ethics, I do. Apparently you don’t know about the months and months of attacks on people around the world to remove blog content, etc.

These are very serious violations of legal ethics and judicial ethics. Since they didn’t adhere to the ethics of their professions and licenses, I filed formal complaints against them give them M. Sue Wilson thinks that she can act with impunity (and just demanded from Dee here an accounting of all of the donors to The GoFundMe account that Dee set up for Julie).

While you may not appreciate the bounds of legal ethics, I do. I have turned other attorneys in before and one judge for violating ethics. Several attorneys were disciplined, one was disbarred, and the judge was removed from the bench.

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Velour wrote:

his conduct is grounds for an attorney to be disciplined or disbarred. M. Sue Wilson apparently thinks she can operate with impunity. She can not and will not.

If I remember correctly, the judge used to be a partner in the same firm as this lawyer.

Citizen advocacy is a good thing. We need more of it. Unless we want to simply agree that those with the most money have better access.

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@ Nick Bulbeck:

Me: Well, we’ve won The Ashes.
My daughter: Oh good.
…. is that cricket?

Clearly I have work to do.

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Lydia wrote:

Velour wrote:

This conduct is grounds for an attorney to be disciplined or disbarred. M. Sue Wilson apparently thinks she can operate with impunity. She can not and will not.

If I remember correctly, the judge used to be a partner in the same firm as this lawyer.

Citizen advocacy is a good thing. We need more of it. Unless we want to simply agree that those with the most money have better access.

@Lydia,

I did state that in my formal letter of complaint to the Minn. Supreme Court Chief Justice: That the family law judge may be the former law partner of M. Sue Wilson’s and that the Chief Justice needs to order an investigation of the whole thing. If “yes”, that family law judge had an ethical duty to recuse herself from the bench in this case. I pointed out to the Chief Justice the troubling Orders in this case that the family law judge is issuing, including to uninvolved parties around the world.

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Velour wrote:

I think the Minnesota Supreme Court will take action in this case. How would they know about it if somebody like me doesn’t file a complaint and inform them?

Thanks for your work on this, let us know how it progresses. Using the legal system by TJ and his attorney to intimidate is another form of abuse.

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All,

Here is the link to download a FREE copy of the Minnesota ethics rules for attorneys. You DO NOT have to be a member of the Minnesota State Bar to obtain a copy. (This pertains to M.Sue Wilson, a Minn. attorney, and her representation of Tony Jones and Wilson’s incessant, and unethical, demands upon bloggers around the world to remove content about this story, the Tony Jones/Julie McMahon marriage/divorce, and most recently M. Sue Wilson’s demands from Dee here at the Wartburg Watch for an accounting of the donors who provided monies in The GoFundMe Account at the top of the page.)

http://www.mnbar.org/publications/ebooks/legal-ethics#.VcZw3PbbIiR

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@ Bridget:

“Greek,” autocorrect, it is a word.

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All,

Here is an article about the record numbers of Minnesota attorneys being disciplined for ethics violations. This is one of the agencies that I have turned Minn attorney M. Sue Wilson in to and filed a formal complaint against her law license (along with reporting her to the Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court):
http://www.startribune.com/rising-number-of-minnesota-lawyers-punished-for-misconduct/207070851/

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Brad, a poster over at Julie Anne’s Spiritual Sounding Board, came up with a new term for this contempt for women in NeoCal churches:”Shehad” (sounds like Jihad but is the “war on women in hyper patriarchal cultures).

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brad/futuristguy wrote:

@ Velour:

Thanks for that note, Velour. Wow … what a descriptive term. Really fits the situation!

“Shehad” – Yes, it’s a spot on term, Brad.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

British Israelism has alwaya amused me quite a bit
I, too, find it sadly amusing, in part because Lesley and I met someone near here a while back who is obsessed with it. And I mean, obsessed.

Closely resembles one of the most strangest and racist man I have ever met – all talk and no listen, constantly banging on about phrenology, British Israelism and other random conspiracy theories and looked like he was separated at birth from the Unabomber. Sigh.

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@ Velour:
I do not wish to continue this discussion. Sorry for brining it up in the 1st place. It’s not my fight.

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Would like to see the Deebs discuss this at some point in the future. Franklin Graham and his enormous salary reinstated at BGEA. Like Pablo Eisenberg says in the video, no matter what the recommendations of the board, Franklin could always say NO.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/religion/article30505932.html?utm_content=buffer3e328&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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@ Jeff S:
How encouraging to hear from the wife in response to your post. I do think that some people are starting to question this teaching. Or maybe they are just starting to go public about their doubts. I had some women and one man approach me positively when I addressed this in a small group. Interestingly, only one of the women has pursued the doubts while the others have dismissed them for whatever reason. Cognitive dissonance must be resolved, and people are social by nature.

We will have to disagree about whether a pastor needs to be aware of problems in the greater church landscape. I don’t see how it is possible to live in the community of the local church and minister there effectively without knowing the other influences which the church people are exposed to. But perhaps it is a matter of degree.

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Gram3 wrote:

That’s how ideas spread

I am in the process of reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladstone which deals with how things (ideas and epidemics and such) spread. Interesting book.

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@ Nick Bulbeck:
Are you saying something radical like the Holy Spirit gives different gifts to the pewpeons which they are then expected to use to benefit the body and that good and perfect gift does not come down to the pewpeons from the Lead/Senior/Executive Pastor/Elder/Bishop? If that is the case, then I am quite certain I have the gift of Bishopship.

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Gram3 wrote:

Are you saying something radical like the Holy Spirit gives different gifts to the pewpeons which they are then expected to use to benefit the body and that good and perfect gift does not come down to the pewpeons from the Lead/Senior/Executive Pastor/Elder/Bishop?

Hmm… I suppose when you describe it like that, it does seem rather silly. I obviously didn’t mean to imply that the Holy Spirit actually exists, no.

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@ Nick Bulbeck:

Good thoughts, Nick.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

I obviously didn’t mean to imply that the Holy Spirit actually exists, no.

Oh my, Nick, we would need to bannish you for even suggesting such a thing.

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With all the bad news, this is certainly some good news about polio possibly being eradicated in Africa.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/12/health/a-milestone-in-africa-one-year-without-a-case-of-polio.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

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@ Lydia:

I should have added he was a parent volunteer coach who was very frustrated.

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@ Muff Potter:

I remain skep-tickle. The people who said heavier-than-air machines couldnae fly were eventually trumped by heavier-than-air flying machines. The magic propulsion units haven’t yet managed to produce thrust that would realistically move anything – the thrust figures they’re claiming are of the order of micro-newtons – tenths of a milligram – which is about 1/100th the weight of a raindrop. TBH, I remain skep-tickle that these numbers represent more than experimental error. At least the new physics (i.e. aerodynamics) that the early aviators were playing with could demonstrate some basic potential – after all, 30 mph winds can do some damage. 1/100th of a raindrop? Hmm.

If they get enough funding to launch one of these things into Low Earth Orbit, and then accelerate it by magic to a higher-energy orbit in a realistic timescale, that’ll be a Wright Brothers moment. At that point, the theoreticians can try to explain why it works.

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@ Nick Bulbeck:

Much agreement here Nick. And as the old saying goes, the proof will be in the pudding if and when it ever happens. Until then I will agree that a healthy skepticism is prudent. But on the other hand…

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@ OldJohnJ:
The econd Muff should have been Haitch.

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@ Nick Bulbeck:
Other than using 20 years instead of 30 in your adage I view this the same way you do. However there is one method of confinement that works, gravitational. However implementing this here on planet Earth appears to be well beyond our current technologies although it does keep us warm.

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@ OldJohnJ:

It’s true that gravitational confinement has been an outstanding success for around 6,000 years. Perhaps instead we should say: Sustainable power from fusion is 93 million miles away, and always will be.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

It’s true that gravitational confinement has been an outstanding success for around 6,000 years.

Since you brought up the YEC subject, I’d like to point out how science tends to treat extreme claims. I believe there is a lesson in this for the YEC community. The previously mentioned cold fusion and propellantless electromagnetic space craft drives are my examples. More examples can be found in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_science
Cold fusion (CF) as a subject is approximately 25 years old. When first introduced it caused quite a stir in physics. If such a thing was possible and eventually lead to a viable power generation technology our energy woes would be over. The effects first reported were small, near the limits of measurement. Experiments proved to be unrepeatable and there were significant theoretical problems. Eventually, the field of researchers dwindled to a few and nothing more is heard about the topic.
Propellantless Drives (PD) is a current example of an extreme scientific claim. If claimed effects are real and can be optimized significant gains in space travel will be obtained. Generating adequate energy in a self contained spacecraft will continue to be a problem. The effects observed so far are quite small and repeatability of experiments hasn’t been demonstrated. PD is inexplicable by current theory. I expect this topic will eventually also become part of pathological science record.
Rather than fading away, YEC has become almost a required belief in many parts of evangelical Christianity. Its proponents refuse (most likely are unable) to subject their claims to the scrutiny of science. In spite of claiming to be science, YEC by choice is not science and seems content to attempt to justify its claims with bad theology. If YEC and anti-evolution proponents want scientific acceptance they will need to do science. Produce reproducible evidence that supports their claims and document them as scientific, not theological, papers.
In the likely absence of such science, continuing to promote YEC claims brings discredit and ridicule to the core of our faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior in a world that desperately needs Him.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

I heard a minister hear…

Tush and pshaw! That should read a minister here.

#blimeythisplaceisslipping

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Meanwhile in Canada…
The story of a good Samaritan who did not turn a blind eye to abuse:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/malyk-bonnet-teenage-hero-saves-woman-from-kidnapping-1.3191795

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@ refugee:

Looked interesting but, unfortunately, “The uploader has not made this video available in [my] country”.

🙁

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My mission to educate the USA continues:

wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravelly_Hill_Interchange.

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In other news, a mixed day for UK sport. Scotland faired rather better than England in their respective Rugby world cup warm-up games. England’s innings defeat in the final Ashes test shows just how far – the series victory notwithstanding – they still have to go.

In an intriguing semi-final lineup in the Cincinnati Masters, Murray faces Federer whilst Djokovic plays Dolgopolov.

And in the World Athletics in Beijing, there were a couple of moments to dispel the gloom over the sport as a two-time convicted, and utterly unrepentant, drugs cheat (is this reminiscent of anything?) marches inexorably towards the men’s 100 metres title (and quite likely the 200 meters as well). Firstly, famously-named Ghirmay Ghebreslassie * won Eritrea’s first ever World Championship gold with a dominant last 5k in the men’s marathon. Mo Farah retained his 10,000 meters title with an equally dominant display, despite coming hair-raisingly close to being tripped with 350 to go. Olympic champion and working mum Jessica Ennis-Hill leads the heptathlon after four events, with Liverpool lass Katerina Johnson-Bomson-Thompson in second. Pre-competition favourite, the equally double-barrelled Brianne Theison-Eaton of Canada, is in fourth after a disappointing high-jump. But it looks likely that the 800m tomorrow will be a real race for the medals.

I hope this is helpful.

* OK, he’s not THE [Haile] Gebrselassie. But hey – he’s not bad, and he’s only 19.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

My mission to educate the USA continues:

wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravelly_Hill_Interchange.

Thanks, Nick, to you there across The Pond.

Here are the nature cameras of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Monterey Bay here in California.
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals-and-experiences/live-web-cams

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@ Velour:

Nice!

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What is Calvinism?

L. The belief that all dissenters are *destined for Hell*.

M. The belief that the senior pastors/associate pastors/elders take the place of the Holy Spirit in peoples’ lives.

N. The belief that the local senior pastor is crowned as “The Pope” and the other pastors/elders are “The Cardinals”. (For all that the NeoCals say that they can’t stand the Roman Catholic Church, they have created one in structure just like it!)

O. The belief that the local senior pastors/elders should be able to excommunicate/shun all dissenters and that they hold *the keys* to the kingdom.

P. The belief that Jesus’ blood was good enough to atone for Adam’s sin but to not atone for Eve’s sin. Thus, in the NeoCal thinking Eve is more powerful than Jesus!

Q. The belief that the NeoCal authoritarian gang is better than all other Christians and are something *special*. Pride. Contempt, etc.

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Debi Calvet wrote:

Sopwith wrote:

Q. What is Calvinism?

The belief that God sovereignly created many (perhaps most) humans for the express purpose of torturing them for eternity.

Debi Calvet wrote:

Sopwith wrote:

Question. What is Calvinism?

R. The belief that God sovereignly created many (perhaps most) humans for the express purpose of torturing them for eternity.

Your spot on contribution is letter R.

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@ M. Joy:

I agree. Graham’s compensation currently is near $900k, and has in past years well surpassed a million $.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

1) ION
2) IHTIH

Nick, I don’t speak acronym fluently. Perhaps you could help me out.

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@ OldJohnJ:

ION = In Other News
IHTIH = I Hope This Is Helpful

… two phrases without which I would be lost. It’s just possible that either of them could become A Thing!

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Debi Calvet wrote:

Debi

Dear Debi,

Your acceptance speech for the letter “R” was lovely and followed all of the requisites of speech-making (be sincere, be brief, be seated).

Tip-toeing thru the TULIP(s) of Calvinism,

Velour,
Alphabet Awards Committee Co-Chair

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“Tullian Tchividjian joins Willow Creek Church staff in Florida.”

This sounds about right. Typical.

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Lydia wrote:

“Tullian Tchividjian joins Willow Creek Church staff in Florida.”
This sounds about right. Typical.

A new gig faster than I can say “Tchividjian”.

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@ Velour:

There aren’t many Wartburgers who are openly Scottish-resident (I’m an expat Englishman, as you probably ken). Aff the top ae’ mah heid, ah kin ainly think on three…

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@ Lydia:
We’re so delighted to welcome Tullian Tchividjian to the staff of Willow Creek Church. A graduate of Columbia International University (philosophy) and Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando (M.Div.), Tullian is a best-selling author, having written seven books on the gospel of Jesus Christ and its liberating implications. Most recently, Tullian served as the senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and founded Liberate, a ministry devoted to connecting God’s inexhaustible grace to an exhausted world. He loves the beach, loves to exercise, and when he has time, he loves to surf. He’s also a huge fan of both the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Heat.

What’s missing?

I hate to sound judgemental, I certainly would not want to deny forgivenness to anyone who has genuinely admitted sin and turned from it and therefore been put right with God again, but isn’t this sending the wrong message around the world? Divorce is not the unforgivable sin, but even if a man is the innocent party, which is not applicable in this case, doesn’t this permanently disqualify him from a more public ministry? Or doesn’t this matter too much provided you are a fan of the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Heat, blessings be multiplied unto them?

The personal morality and character of the CEO’s and Management Boards of huge corporations are not usually of interest to the shareholders when they appoint them, but shouldn’t the church have other criteria for who is to lead it?

We’ve been thinking about returning to our local church despite its connections with WC, but this really puts me off. If the root is rotten …

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@ Gram3:
Thanks for that, Gram3, I had assumed it was ‘branch’ of the Willow Creek, and therefore a reflection of the Chicago church’s thinking, which it turns out not to be.

Incidentally, regarding Our Discussion(TM) and the less than savoury comments I was starting to complain about, this did not include you. Even when I detect you are getting a tad exasperated with me, you have always been civil and pleasant. Which is appreciated. 🙂

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Ken wrote:

Divorce is not the unforgivable sin, but even if a man is the innocent party, which is not applicable in this case, doesn’t this permanently disqualify him from a more public ministry?

Nope. If he was the innocent part he is without reproach. He would be wise though to leave some denom which would limit his ministry since he is responsible to God for the stewardship of his life.

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Oops, maybe I should have posted this link here instead. Please delete my comment on the other thread, if it is a disruption, and I apologize for the bother.

Just saw on SSB’s Twitter update links that Doug Wilson’s pedophile protege is in the news (the one he introduced to a young woman in his congregation, oversaw the courtship, and performed the marriage):
http://www.correctionsone.com/corrections/articles/9369232-Idaho-sex-offender-allowed-to-return-home-with-child/

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Article referenced in the Doug Wilson church (Moscow, Idaho) pedophile blog article today. Wilson’s friend Tim Bayly on his blog has taken an affront to two women bloggers who blogged about this:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2015/09/02/the-subordinate-place-of-supreme-honor-response-to-douglas-wilson/

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I posted on one of the threads that I had shot a copperhead snake Tuesday while my husband stood by and watched. My husband skinned the snake and took it to a man (Mr. A) at church today. We had a Chuch breakfast this morning. When we walked into the kitchen/fellowship building, Mr. A said, “There’s our Annie Oakley!” Not only did he tell of me shooting the copperhead in the head, he also went on to tell that that wasn’t the only snake I’ve shot in the head! A couple of men thought it was great, but several walked away, appearing to me to be a bit disgusted. Boo-hoo.
Please pray for our church. We had a speaker today who quoted both John Piper and David Platt. I’m really getting worried.

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Great analysis of how C.J. manipulates the pew-sitters.

“Now back to the function behind C.J.’s moral narcissism…C.J. has no intention of acting consistently with his proclamations. He knows full well that he considers some sins greater than others. He knows full well that he does not count his sins among the greater-disqualifying-failings. The sole function of his moral narcissism is to vet his superior self-assessment compared to other men (who fail to stare at their own bellybutton with sufficient intensity-Bill Belichick, Larry Tomczak, Charles Schmidt) so he can manufacture whatever doctrine he chooses. C.J. knows full well that he considers his conduct a manifestation of character, of his longstanding capacity to do GOOD. C.J. knows full well that he considers that moral superiority a qualification for his governing authority. And more importantly, if he were such a wretched, genocidal, homicidal, pedophilic sexual degenerate-that is if he were really the worst sinner-men demanding “accountability” to any ethical standard would have deposed him long ago.

The fact that there is no formal letter circulated by PDI/CLC/SGM for C.J.’s patterns of sinful behavior illustrates the fraud of the moral demagoguery. The only reason El Primo Doctrinal Mover and Shaker gets away with this schizophrenia is because his moral narcissism seduces us to mindless non-mental non-reflection. We lay down our minds and tolerate absurdities. And this is the evil goal of the whole charade. Make no mistake. His moral narcissism is in service to this end: He wants people to accept their theoretical fallibility by emulating his theoretical guilt. The words are platitudes and worse than lies because it is moral navel-gazing designed to perpetrate a powerful manipulation: to get you to defer critical evaluation to accept any moral assertion, which is exactly how C.J. used the above preamble in the original article. And herein is the wreckage of moral clarity. Think of the enormous power this gives a man. He manufactures anything into the highest moral failing and in the very next moment can do anything and be guilty of no disqualifying action because “he’s just the worst sinner he knows.” This one-two punch is the power to disqualify any virtue and trivialize any vice. This ultimately destroys all human value. Here is the practical result: There is no objective standard because there is no attainable virtue. This is the root of moral relativism and the flip side of the antinomian coin. This is exactly how all authoritarians justify slaughter on one hand and condemn men to hell for the most trivial manifestation of “sinful attitude” on the other. This is how leaders play down the actions of a child molester, (because he can admit to being the greatest sinner) but condemn the parents of the molested child because they were unforgiving. This is how the most incompetent people in church remain in charge. Performance, ability, and measuring objective outcomes are all subordinate to being able to parrot self-sacrificing, self-deprecating rot. People are not rewarded equal to their competence (or incompetence) but rather granted authority based on a public confessional statement. This elevates the achievement of doctrinal precision over the lives of men. This is how we can make the pursuit of doctrine a greater value than human life and let the invalid lay on the mat because to heal him would violate Torah. This is how Man ignores that the “Sabbath was created for man, not man for the Sabbath.” This is exactly how the church strains at gnats and swallows camels. It wrecks all ethical standards by wrecking man.

Immel, John (2011-12-21). Blight In the Vineyard: Exposing the Roots, Myths, and Emotional Torment of Spiritual Tyranny (Kindle Locations 3090-3117). Presage Publishing. Kindle Edition.

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Cults are easy to get into and hard to get out of. Covenant Life Church is hard to get into and easy to get out of. -Robin Boisvert

Immel, John (2011-12-21). Blight In the Vineyard: Exposing the Roots, Myths, and Emotional Torment of Spiritual Tyranny (Kindle Locations 3191-3193). Presage Publishing. Kindle Edition.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

As I type, in September 2015, I wish to draw your attention to two current attempts to row the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Cairns, Australia.

Wow. Last I heard, there were 3 hurricanes between the U.S. And Hawaii.

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@ Nancy2:

Hurricanes have indeed been a problem for both boats, albeit indirectly. The hurricanes, which at one point were all Category 4 storms, are some thousands of miles to the north and thus don’t threaten the rowers specifically. The problem is that they have sucked all the life out of the southern east-to-west trade winds, which means that in a zone where the rowers should have some help from the wind, it is hindering them.

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Velour wrote:

Hi Todd,
If you have the time, would you also mind posting any good books you would recommend at the top of the page under the Interesting tab, and then the Books section?

OK, will do.

Here is another great quote from “Blight in the Vineyard.”

Under Platonist/Augustinian assumptions, the fivefold ministry is really nothing more than a bureaucratic spiritual death panel ever advocating that man’s lot in life is inability, insufficiency, and inequity. This makes fivefold ministry an endless appeal to individual self-destruction measured by increased levels of subordination. Since we don’t advocate the bullet in the head brand of suicide, the Christian definition of death means “equipping the saints” to ever increasing surrender.

To whom?

The current Church marketing and packaging says it is surrender to God, but since He isn’t holding office hours and since you are incapable of getting to Him on your own, that leaves those He charged with governance in His stead. Men who stand in the very Stead of God are the manifestation of God’s Grace for your civil and spiritual life.

Immel, John (2011-12-21). Blight In the Vineyard: Exposing the Roots, Myths, and Emotional Torment of Spiritual Tyranny (Kindle Locations 4321-4327). Presage Publishing. Kindle Edition.

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Todd Wilhelm wrote:

the fivefold ministry

The five-fold minstry of Apostates, Profits, Event organisers, Manipulators and Entertainers has little to do with Platonist/Augustinian assumptions.

It’s important that people realise this …

(I would never dream of sending up genuine ministries, but the fake deserves a little humour.)

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mirele wrote:

There are a lot of people predicting Bad Things Are Going to Happen This Month (September). Specifically, there is supposed to be an economic collapse next week

… One woman supposedly bought 55 pounds of M&Ms to take along in her hand cart. I’m absolutely gobsmacked.

Some guy (Jonathan Cahn?) was on 700 Club (Pat Robertson’s) show earlier today being interviewed about this. I’ve seen him on other Christian shows the last 2, 3 years discussing these things too.

I didn’t follow closely, but from what I did catch, I think he was saying there’s going to be some kind of economic melt down this month? He’s promoting his new book, something with “Shemitah” in the title.

I can’t make too much fun of the M&M lady. I’m a chocoholic.

I think anytime is a good time to buy 55 LB bags of M&Ms, and I don’t need a religious reason to do it, hee. 🙂

What’s- his- name uses his program to sell huge buckets of dried food so that Christians can have something to eat when the Anti Christ cuts off all the food and electric.

I’ve watched some of his shows before. They’re kind of strange.

He’ll usually have a Christian author on to hype whatever new book they’re selling, then one of his adult children sings a song, then he pitches his dried food or solar powered generators.

Disgraced televangelist now selling food for the apocalypse
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2014/09/16/disgraced-televangelists-now-selling-end-world-biscuits/

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

squad of ducklings

And the answer to last week’s quiz is:

A group of ducks can be called a flock, brace, raft, team or paddling.

That’s it for today. There now follows a party political broadcast …

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

NASA are still refusing to give an opinion on what the spots are, which is odd given that any fool can now see they were caused by a giant flour bomb.

I baked bread today. I know I’m messy, but ……

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The Daily Beast has an article up many of you will want to see: Texas Church Hires Man Accused of 29 Counts of Sex Abuse.

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Mae wrote:

or a, brood of ducklings

I’m sorry, but the competition has already closed, and the successful entrant allocated. The $$$$ winnings have already been sent to the winner, a lady called ‘Deb’, who lives in the Internet…

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TWW TOP TIPS

If, like me, you love running and live in Scotland, you will often have to deal with the problem of small insects flying into your eyes. The best way to remove them is with the round end of a paperclip: ideally-sized, and completely rigid without harbouring sharp edges.

IHTIH

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P.S. Djokovic to win the final in 4 sets, obviously, along with the sun continuing to rise in the east.

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Beakerj,

Re an interim, I can only tell you what worked/works for me, since I don’t know you very much at all. But maybe it’ll help…

I simply gave up on religion. No Bible, theology, spiritual booklets, worship services, etc. I thought that probably there was a God because I deeply wanted one and the need for a Christ-story made sense to me when I considered how both precious and pathetic we humans are. That was as much as I could muster without falling into the brain fuzz, so I told God, “Ok, Your turn.”

I walked through my days ready to hear but not expecting anything at all. Felt the sun/rain/wind, noticed the shape of an eye, flare of a nostril, swing of a step. Spent a fair amount of time smelling, of all things (my dog’s fault because she lerrrrvvvesss smells, esp awful ones). I wept a lot—-not heaving cries, but a tremendous lot of leaking. I didn’t inquire after it.

Eventually, the good/dear things didn’t seem so terribly fragile anymore. One day it occurred to me to make mention of them. So, “Wow, good one, God, lol” Maybe I’d add a question or two, then let it lie. Now/then I riffed off a lovely bit, such as what I might do if I were God and could mess with it.

I realized some time later that this might be might was is meant by “prayer”. But after noting, I let it go–didn’t add a thing to it.

This took ~3-4 years.

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Brenda R posted about Clara Hinton’s blog Finding a Healing Place, in the wake of all of these church sexual abuse scandals and the horrible abuses that so many churches have heaped upon the victims and their families.

Clara’s son Jimmy Hinton, a pastor, turned in his pastor-father for sexual abuse of children at their church. The father is now serving a long prison sentence.
Their family advocates for abused children and how to protect children from being abused.

Here is Jimmy Hinton’s video on how to protect children.
http://www.findingahealingplace.com/resources-that-will-help/

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Beaker, if you don’t mind, I have a couple more thoughts which you can take or leave.

You wrote: “I prayed for 20 years that God would change me so that what he has given would be sufficient for me to feel like I really knew who he was, really loved him for that and trusted him with my life…”

I don’t think God wants to change you. I am fairly certain He likes you as you are—He created you, you know?

IMO, the problem is that of being on this earth. The only explanation I can find for how things are, is that this place is prelim learning. I suspect that God is putting us through our paces, looking for us to choose the good and lovely in face of destruction and waste, and in the face of apparent absence.

IMO, how we are made, what we do here, and the secret desires that form in our hearts, will combine to determine our life on the New Earth, when we will finally see Him face to face, and know Him as we have longed to do.

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lydia wrote:

Whitaker Chambers, avowed athiest/communist saw a glimpse of perhaps a Divine Creator in the intricate design of his baby girls ear while feeding her.

I didn’t know that, Lydia. Thanks, I’ll check it out.

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@ Beakerj:
What temperature is God, hah.

As someone with both intellectual and creative capacities, if you’ve spent most of your religious life on the analytical/academic side, then yeah, you need to give as many years to the creative.

Plus, it sounds like your job drags you through constant tragedies and evils. Implacable doctrine has little to say about such things, even though it dearly wishes to be pertinent. “Mostly giving up religion” sounds like letting the land lie fallow. Seems to me a good thing to do, along with applying wads of gentle kindness, like clover bringing nitrogen to soil.

I don’t know any good stories particularly about God. I love Walker Percy’s “The Second Coming” for reminding me of purpose/value. Also enjoy Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy for reminding me of man’s capacity and the glories of creation, particularly geology. (It’s sci-fi. Robinson is atheist.) I own most of Anne Tyler’s novels because she is very tender towards humans and their failings, which is how I suspect God looks at us, and she has given me patience.

Oh, I regularly re-read Job and Ecclesiastes. I pick them up as separate books, not part of the Biblical canon.

I’m sure others have books too, and possibly more specific. If I think of any others, I’ll post them here.

If there is anything I can do, at any time, I’d be glad to do it. You seem to me to be one of those people who make one proud, rather than mortified, to be human.

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Beakerj wrote:

I am, maybe unusually, a creature of analysis as well as imagination, which has often been reflected back to me. It does seem I often need ‘extra’ dimensions to truly understand something, which links to imagination & complexity.

I would suggest All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. The guy’s prose is hauntingly beautiful (he won the 2015 Pulitzer prize for fiction). No alter call and no genuflection to the great and powerful OZ, just real life that reaches in, grabs you by the innards and makes you glad you’re alive.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

P.S. Djokovic to win the final in 4 sets, obviously, along with the sun continuing to rise in the east.

And so he did. It’s Kevin Anderson that takes him to 5 sets.

Any prophetic utterance on the identity of the captain who will hold the William Webb Ellis trophy aloft? (Assuming of course that the tournament is not abandoned due to rugby riots.)

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Beakerj wrote:

I hope my theology sorts itself out, & I was wondering if anyone knows of any seriously good novels that they feel are useful for helping to think about God? Who might I read that touches on these subjects in an interesting way?

Someone whose advice I value suggested reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov”. I have not yet read it – it’s in a pile of about a hundred unread books accusing me of slothfulness – so I can’t say any more about it.

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Beakerj wrote:

… what temperature is God?

There are some theoretical reasons for believing that God’s temperature must be at least 10^28 eV, or around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 °C. However, consensus is lacking on this.

IHTIH.

BIPI…

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lydia wrote:

Whitaker Chambers, avowed athiest/communist saw a glimpse of perhaps a Divine Creator in the intricate design of his baby girls ear while feeding her. He writes about it in “Witness”. An ear caused him to contemplate the possibility of a Divine Creator!

When I first met my neighbour he was at least an agnostic and may have been an atheist. He is a professional engineer. His powerful intellect and inquiring mind were obvious from the first conversation. A few years later he and I were chatting about his recent open heart surgery and a series of miraculous interventions (that is the only accurate description for what happened) that saved me from death, or at best the loss of an arm, at an isolated spot on the Zambezi river. He had spent hours inquiring into the functioning of the heart and marvelled at the precision of its operation which he, as an engineer, ascribed to a remarkable feat of design. That persuaded him of the existence of God as creator. My story helped him to believe that God did indeed take an active interest in individual human beings. He came to faith in Christ.

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OldJohnJ wrote:

I though this was the Planck temperature?

You know, I almost mentioned you in that comment, Oldjohnj! I thought you’d recognise it.

Obviously, I have no idea what connections might exist between the Planck scale and God. But it’s fun to speculate.

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@ Muff Potter:
What Patrice said. I think there is much more to the Jewish understanding of The World to Come than we might crefit.

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@ Patrice:
I do not think this is true of all Protestants, though outside the high church denoms, pretty much. But there *are* Catholics who think like this, too, wnd Orthodox doctrine is extremely strict regwrding how icons should look – highly stylized, almost dematerialized. It took a long time for representational art to take hold in Russia, while Greece … i don’t really know.

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@ JohnD:
Oh yes, highly recommended.

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Patrice wrote:

They [Protestants]feel uncomfortable with mystery even though the universe is filled to the brim. It’s so messy and upsetting!
Because of this, they can’t make good art to save their lives. All those open-ended questions!

What a great insight, Patrice! Before becoming a member of my [former] NeoCal church I had wonderful art work from countries around the world. An older woman church member *too offense* to a beautiful Italian cross/art work that I had hanging in my home. When I asked the pastor how to deal with her since he had known her for years, he said that he would *be offended by it too* and that I shouldn’t have it. So against my better judgment, I got rid of it. It was a birthday gift that I had for years too.

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lydia wrote:

That is so close to where i am it takes my breath away to read it! IOW, to me, who we become, what we do….matters. But with a generous learning curve. :o)

Agreed, and that’s why my hope is that Olam Ha-Ba (the world or worlds to come) can be different for different folks.

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lydia wrote:

That is so close to where i am it takes my breath away to read it! IOW, to me, who we become, what we do….matters. But with a generous learning curve. :o)

That generous learning curve does well for me too 🙂

I also want, to the bottom of my being, that meaning be given to suffering. It contains none now, being only a life drain and downright anti-life in its more severe forms.

We try to wiggle out of its essential meaninglessness, pontificating about God using suffering to make us better persons, that it teaches lessons we can pass on to others, sharing with Christ’s sufferings, never more than one can handle blahblahblah. Nope, I can’t see anything there except destruction.

But if there can be some use for it on the new earth, that would be something.

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@ Karlton:

She’d been attending for 92 yrs. When the pastor sent a letter telling her not to return…she said she was going to go to church as usual and she did. But when the pastor called the police who refused to get involved, he turned dismissed the congregation and turned off the lights in the sanctuary and left Ms. Biggs sitting alone in the church.

All because she dared to disagree with his style of preaching. btw, he also expelled her grandson who had been attending for 30 yrs. or so.

http://pimppreacher.com/post/129095989775/rev-tim-mattox-called-police-to-have-mother

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From Pulpit and Pen 9/14 post re: DW

“And yet, before we break out the catapult and trebuchets to storm Christ Church in Moscow, I would ask the accusers of Douglas Wilson, “What would you do?” ”

FWIW: Way back when Steve’s pedophilia was first exposed, I would have

— in accordance with Scripture, in the light, with the full knowledge of the entire church body, put Steve out of the church (i.e. He was living as an unbeliever. Treat him as an unbeliever.) until he showed true “fruits of repentance” as measured by Scripture and as attested to by the voluntary witness of God’s people , i.e. the non-programmed, true Holy Spirit-motivated “Amen” of the people.

— referred Steve to a different, reputable, willing local pastor when he asked for further spiritual intervention. Cut off further contact with him .Pastoring an abuser and the abuser’s victims is too severe a conflict of interest for any person or church body.

— Immediately been available to the abused and family in whatever capacity needed. Defend, protect, minister to the abused sheep. Recognize the intense damage inflicted on the soul of the abused when the shepherd enables and empowers the “monster.” The abused are at risk for rejecting God forever.

— Treated the child the way I would have wanted my own child treated

— Called in recognized, gifted believing ministers to the abused, as well as civil authorities/professionals, who would inform and equip church members and change church systems to ensure children’s safety.

— Informed myself about pedophilia and the effects of pedophilia contact on children, including listening to personal accounts of the resultant suffering of individuals and families harmed by pedophiles.

— Seriously checked out my own family members, making completely sure they knew I would always believe and help them.

— Gained an understanding of the kind of decisions a pedophile’s target-child struggles with. (In a documentary I recently watched — Deliver Us From Evil — a 5 year old remained silent about being abused by a priest because she didn’t want her dad to go to jail for killing the priest for hurting her. !!!!!) A child will suffer greatly, silently, and long to keep family members safe from a pedophile’s threats.

Playing “godly roles” could also very well prevent children from talking about what’s really going on with them.

That’s just for starters.

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@ Patrice:
There is no concept of “originsl sin” in any variety of Judaism, at leadt, not that I’m aware of, aside from some highly dubious passages from the Middlee Ages consigning the man from Naxareth to a gruesome eternity… but given the way xtians relentlessly persecuted Jews at that time, it’s understandable. And not something vety many Jewish people today would agree with, either.

Keep in mind that in the OT books, there’s Sheol, but it is nothing llikeetetnal conscious torment. It foes not equate to “hell”; different views of it are just underneath the surface of many passages, and I’m not sure there’s any single, unified view of it, other than that it’s where those who have died end up. By the time of Christ, apocalyptic literature was A Big Thing (see the Book of Enoch, for example, which is not accepted as canon by the vast majority of xtisns and Jews). The highly developed ideas of Heaven and Hell and Satan that we’ve been stuck with (by history) developed over time. I have a number of books by a fellow named Jeffrey Burton Russell, on the development of the ideas of Satan and hell in xtian thought, but they are nothing if not dense, copiously footnoted, etc. I can only read bits and pieces before i end up feeling a bit stupefied, but he is a good historian. (Comes highly recommended by Wenatchee thd Hatchet, who used to comment here quite frequently. That’s how i found out about them, and Burton Russell’s work as a whole.) At any rate, he traces a lot of this stuff in detail, but the historical development of ideas about heaven are not in his purview.

Myself, i think there is simply being in the presence of God, and i do not like referring to that as “heaven” – not least because it cannot be located on any msp or star chart. (Our cosmology is so different now; it could never be a place that is somehow situated above the “dome” of the visible sky…)

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@ Patrice:
There is a whole lot of Jewish folklore about The World to Come. Novelist Dara Horn drew on it for her novel of that exact title. I very much liked the book, though dome parts are a bit repetitive. A lot of her sources are in Yiddish only, and have never bern translated into English, though i was able to find sources for a lot of them after i read the book, a few years back. Darned if i can recall them, though.

Another Jewish term for the afterlife is Gan Eden – the garden of Ecen, ska paradise (which literally comes from a term for a walled garden). There’s an album by the New England Conservatory Klezmer Orchestra titled ” A Jumpin’ Night in the Garden of Eden,” even.

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@ Karlton:

I join with numo in welcome back!

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Numo, I’ve been thinking about the “no true scotsman fallacy”. It is thrown around a lot, particularly by outsiders (properly) criticizing the US Christian Complex

Inside the church, it’s hugely embarrassing that we have 34,000 denominations. That divisive attitude underlies most conversations with each other. So yeah, “No true Scotsman” is important here. We have a huge problem with generosity, with graciousness.

But just because persons call themselves Christian, doesn’t mean they hold to the definition. ISTM fine to deny untrue assertions, and that it’s actually important to do so. There is a basic standard, after all, that we follow the person/life of Christ in action/word.

IMO, those who grab power over others cannot, by definition, be called Christian. Jesus not only didn’t use his authority over his friends and family, but gave up even his own personal human authority, at the end. Being clear about this might erase a lot of problems.

So I agree with your comment on other thread, that Wilson is not a Christian.

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@ Patrice:
Chinese hells – yes, plural, though i gather the correct term is “earth pridons” – exceed anything we Westerners have come up with…. but i don’t know where to point you on that one. Not much in English. Also, not “eternal” for most, but sickeningly awful (and specific to a perdon’s principal wrongs), the end redult being that it might as well be eternal for most who get sent there.

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@ Patrice:
Academic writing is usually done badly, and thst id my problem with it. Much of whst I’ve come across is well-nigh unreadable. That doesn’t mean thst the ideas/information presented are without any real value and all yhst – but it seems like a lot of the people who write sufh books don’t know much of anything about writing. Seriously – there are good ways of presenting ideas and info., and not do good, and downright awful as well. I don’t hwve much patience for the second, and nect to zero for the 3d.

Being smwrt doesn’t necessarily equal being unreadable, you know?

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@ Muff Potter:
Thanks Numo and Muff …sometimes I see something just too good to let slide by…so, out of curiosity, what’s the consensus on Kim Davis the county clerk? I say either do the job you signed up for or vacate the position so someone else can fill it.

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Meanwhile, in Canterbury…

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/16/archbishop-of-canterbury-urges-breakup-of-divided-anglican-communion

There is also a high-profile sexual abuse case re. a former Church of England bishop whose name escapes me, but Google would likely turn it up.

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William G. wrote:

There were at one time married bishops legimiately recognized as ancient hierarchs and as saints by the Church but they seem to have disappeared by the fourth century and eventually the institution was banned, and strict celibacy imposed upon the episcopate…

Remember Christian Nepotism?
All the Pastor Juniors inheriting their churches and pulpits from Daddy?
Well, if they have to be celibate, they wouldn’t have any legitimate heirs, so under the inheritance laws of the time their bastards could not inherit. So this throws a log in the path of Ecclesiastical Dynasties. In a time where political power was routinely inherited as any other personal property, why not Spiritual Power? (And heads off the inheritance blood feud such as Islam had with Sunni vs Shia over who is heir to Mohammed.)

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@ Ardiak:
Excellent, thoughtful reply to the question.

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@ Karlton:

Agreed. Davis’s ‘religious freedom’ does not include deciding which laws of the land she’ll uphold or not uphold. Nor does it mean that she can force those who don’t share her religious beliefs to abide by hers.

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Karlton wrote:

I’m not even sure how many on this board would consider her a Christian as she is a member of a Oneness Pentecostal church (non-trinitarian, works based (in part) salvation).

She has also been divorced 3 times.

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Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:

Or Game of Thrones without the shag scenes.

I wouldn’t be too sure of that, HUG.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

Obviously, I have no idea what connections might exist between the Planck scale and God. But it’s fun to speculate.

I have no idea of God’s temperature either. The goings on in the “reformed” world documented in TWW are sure to raise it though.

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Joe2 wrote:

So would you agree that ALL elected politicians should vacate their office for not upholding the law?

I believe that If, for whatever reason, a politician can not or will not perform the duties of the office he/she holds, he/she should step aside.

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OldJohnJ wrote:

I have no idea of God’s temperature either. The goings on in the “reformed” world documented in TWW are sure to raise it though.

Quote of the week!

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I am wondering whether those people who believe (if not openly pronounce) that abuse is also a sin, have ever thought through the nature of fallenness, wrongs, brokenness, and sin.

Barring those who are simply power-hungry cre*ps, they seem handicapped by over-generalization. They haven’t delineated between deliberately-done wrong, the damage that occurs from deliberately-done wrongs, the damage that happens from acts of nature, the failures that occur because of unjust circumstance, and the limitations we have because we aren’t perfect. Etc.

Their reasoning seems to be: It’s all brokenness. God wants none of it. All of it is from The Fall. It Is All Sin. We humans are responsible for all sin, so every one of us gets loaded down, no matter who/how: the abused for being broken, the poor for failing to overcome unjust circumstance, the tornadoed people for thinking wrong about gayness, those who fail careers for not trying hard enough.

In this context, those who have done deliberate wrongs have the easiest route because they can simply say sorry. They are in control of their sin and their confession. Here it is, it is finished. The rest can’t confess and be finished, because their “sins” are not under their control and thus they “continue in sin””: enjoying victimhood, bitter for not accepting tornado judgment, lazy for not overcoming poverty, hags for not submitting to authority doctrines. Etc.

If these people had better teaching about sin and brokenness, do you think they might see the abused more clearly?

In any of your opinions, do you think there might be something to this?

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Another answer to the question posed at Pulpit and Pen:

What would I do? I would agree with TWW’ers. STOP. STOP. STOP ….. and help the children. Immediately.

What profits preaching about God and church when a listening child (alone and unprotected) is being used as prey for a monster in the congregation? Which kingdom is really being served?

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Ardiak wrote:

What makes caring about Baby S so difficult for all the tweeters and bloggers who talk about DW instead? The baby’s life is happening right now and the danger of terrible lifelong damage from preventable abuse is still very real.

We have talked about the child. At the moment Sitler is under the watch of the court system of Idaho. They are the ones who set up the parents and Katie as chaperones – not DW. I believe the family has been declared ineligible to chaperone at this point. Not sure about Sitler being asked to live somewhere else, but I hope he has.

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Could someone please tell me if you have heard of something called Club 31? My 12 year old daughter has just been invited to a “small group” with that name. They use Proverbs 31:10-31 as the basis of their organization. Is this part of the partriarchal or quiverful movements? Any information would be appreciated.
Thank you.

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@ Bridget

I need to clarify. I was referring to the people who responded to TWW post about Baby S., not about the comments on this site. Seemed like immediately people were about defending DW, instead of even mentioning the baby.

Apologies if that wasn’t clear. All the stuff coming to light about DW is great. The more light, the better.

I was also looking for some of that “care” supposedly offered to people “under the care of” DW (and other authoritarian pastors).

Imo, a caring pastor would extend beyond the provisions of the civil authorities. As far as I know, nothing kept him from implementing church strategies for Baby S.’s welfare. From what I understand, he can pretty much do anything he wants to do.

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Ardiak wrote:

s far as I know, nothing kept him from implementing church strategies for Baby S.’s welfare. From what I understand, he can pretty much do anything he wants to do.

I completely agree with this. DW has shown little concern for Baby S.

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Patrice wrote:

If these people had better teaching about sin and brokenness, do you think they might see the abused more clearly?

I agree with Lyds. It all boils down to choices. We are only ‘broken’ if we allow ourselves to be, and let it spill over into bad choices. The ‘sin’ is something we do (or don’t do) in real space-time and not the result of Adam transferring his ‘missing the mark’ to us.
And yeah, so long as ‘sin’ is an all-encompassing-ethereal-abstract-idea with little or no connection to the real world of real human beings with real feelings, they will never see themselves in the ones they abuse with any real clarity.

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@ lydia:
Oh, yes, I certainly agree with that. Abusers just plain nastily sin, perpetuate deep wrongs, act wretchedly. Doesn’t matter whether they were hurt as kids (and recent stats show that only ~1/3 of them were, which means only a tiny percentage of abused kids become abusers.)

And even after genuine repentance, justice is vital. I’m also a firm believer in applied limits (can’t be pastor again, can’t be around kids again, etc) and am even more firm about the need for making restitution.

Obviously, I’m communicating poorly here 😉

I’m trying to understand why those who do sin-leveling also see the abused as just-as-bad-as.

Non-believers (generally) are disturbed by sin-leveling. And they are horrified when they hear people accuse the abused of being just-as-bad-as. How has this bunch of Christians stripped away the “law written on every man’s heart” to come up with such rot? What thought processes brought them to their conclusions? Can this be corrected, and how, if so? (I mean for the pew-peons, not the power-mongers.)

I wonder whether they do not understand suffering. Or perhaps they over-generalize sin. Do they have no place for suffering, and so it gets schlepped under the sin umbrella? Maybe it’s a pie-in-the-sky belief that Christ or the HS magically erases the damage caused by abuse, thus suffering can’t possibly continue.

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The link. http://dougwils.com/s8-expository/the-covenant-home-4sketch-of-a-godly-wife.html
Btw there are some technical issues with the post resulting in some humerous typoz, like “the ord of God”. I’ve copied it for future poking of fun.

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Those interested in the McMahon/Jones saga, “Stuff Christian Culture Likes” set up protests at the “Why Christian” women’s conference. Some good responses, too:

https://www.facebook.com/events/837980142966022/

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Muff Potter wrote:

It all boils down to choices. We are only ‘broken’ if we allow ourselves to be, and let it spill over into bad choices. The ‘sin’ is something we do (or don’t do) in real space-time and not the result of Adam transferring his ‘missing the mark’ to us.

I somewhat agree. Yup, no one needs to remain victim and we must never ever pass our pain along. Survivors can live meaningful lives.

Yet some remain frail, esp those who were trashed by abusers when young and over long periods of time. A great deal can be healed and one can organize a methodical life with work-arounds, but complex trauma does cause brain damage, sometimes extensive.

They are finding it on brain scans and I am glad, because it explains why my brain has gone weird and has been unresponsive to various mental exercises (like for memory, executive functioning, etc).

But immensely sweet to me is that even though my brain is often unstable, my heart remains sturdy. Exceptions appear briefly during flashbacks, but before/after and throughout the rest of my life, I live a healed heart with God.

I cannot tell you how amazingly wonderful that is, Muff. A gift I never dared hope for.

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Patrice wrote:

I live a healed heart with God.

This makes my heart so happy for you Patrice.

And did I ever tell you you have a namesake round here that I love very much? ‘My’ Patrice is an older French lady who must be about 70, is small, thin & totally hard core… she does the wildlife rescue on our local pond (Petersfield Heath Pond. If an animal needs rescuing she’s your woman, if a swan is injured she gets out there like a little ninja & gets that bird to those who can help it:)

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Bridget wrote:

@ Dave A A:
How can you read that stuff, Dave AA? I get nauseated after the first paragraph.

I’m just a gluten (see Mablog technical problems, above) for punishment.
Wilson/Bayly/mahmommy parody to follow: the godly woman must not get nauseated. To do so may violate point 10-b “a woman should take care to smell good”. Who is your pastor? what’s his phone number? Are your countertops clean? Are you winsome? /end parody

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Muff Potter wrote:

Please understand that I never meant to imply that ‘broken’ does not apply in the cases of those who have been horrifically abused.

I was almost certain you didn’t mean that, but I pontificated anyway, just in case and also because it needs to be said often. 🙂

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Patrice wrote:

wonder whether they do not understand suffering. Or perhaps they over-generalize sin. Do they have no place for suffering, and so it gets schlepped under the sin umbrella? Maybe it’s a pie-in-the-sky belief that Christ or the HS magically erases the damage caused by abuse, thus suffering can’t possibly continue.

They don’t want to understand suffering. They want to define it for you. One thing that blew my mind being around these types closely was how little real compassion and empathy they had for people yet they make their living telling others who Jesus is and what He is about. It was incongruous. A cognitive dissonance I had a hard time wrapping my head around. Almost as if I would not allow myself to believe it. Because they did not sound like who they really were on stage! They have it all figured out and trot out forgiveness as something it is not. They tend to live a double life in far too many cases.

And never forget, they are scared to death of suffering. They see it as weak even though some use it to keep followers in their control.

We cannot seem to wrap our heads around just how calloused they are. And perhaps that is because we fall for the public image. We really do want to believe the best of them and think that if only they knew…really knew how hurt people are over their actions/teaching in response to such evil done to others.

It just is so simple: They don’t really care. They say the basic words about sin and suffering in this world and that is that. But they have a brand to build and an image to project.

To them, Confession is repentance for the one who inflicted horrible suffering. And in their world, that is what counts. And they end up celebrating the evil because words are cheap.

They have an agenda. That is why I am so focused on victims becoming strong and independent. Victims deserve our focus not the celebs and wannabe celebs.

They are who they are and they keep showing us that but for some reason we continue to think there is some hope and they suck us dry.

Why do we want them to care? Why is that important to us? They no more represent Jesus Christ than the man on the moon.

My view is we need to totally rethink what Christianity really is. So many think our personal lifestyle choices, that do not hurt others, is a much more horrible sin than a “Christian pedophile” who hurts children for life. Where does such stupidity come from? It comes from Cheap grace. And even sillier, they want us to believe that not coming to church is a horrible sin, too. Everything is turned on its head.

In the meantime we have forgotten “Do unto others” yet we are clubbed over the head for not believing the confession of a long con Christian pedophile is actual repentance. It is not even common sense! “Do unto others” matters!

Sorry, but I am not concerned for the long con “Christian” pedophile. I am concerned for his victims. It is they who need us to speak for them, protect them, help them become stronger and independent. We need to say that was evil and that person gave up their right to join us in the family of humanity.

They made a choice and have to live with it. It should not be the same for them. And I am very tired of being told I have to pretend like confession is the real thing. I am not willing to chance any kids life on that.

There are some heinous evils in this world that carry a temporal stigma. And deserve to for the sake of the most innocent around us. If those who are pastors choose to teach differently, then they are not someone I would trust either.

What passes for Christianity has become a great place for the perpetual Charlatans, pedophiles, etc, to hang their hats and be totally welcome.

And I thought it was about becoming a “new human” in Christ.

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Dave A A wrote:

Doug Wilson has just posted an article about he godly wife in a covenant home. It draws partly on Proverbbs 31. The bottom line is, “A godly woman should know her hair is a daily
sermon on how her husband is doing. ”
Oh, look! Ethel didn’t do her hair today! Fred must be having a bad day. I’ll need to call and encourage him….

Is Wilson not familiar with the concept Jesus taught about sin coming from a person’s heart (which is the root of the problem), and all this obsession with stuff outside the person (e.g., how she styles her hair or doesn’t style it) is ultimately inconsequential?

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In other news, do any Wartburgers have a use for cooking apples? Our tree has done particularly well this year (it’s been a good year here for apples generally) and, given our limited ability to store them for more than a couple of months, we’ve got more than we can use ourselves.

We’re not 100% sure what variety they are – we inherited the tree when we moved in to the house 15 years ago – but I think it’s Lord Derby.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

Velour wrote:

Nick from the UK (and others): Is it un-Biblical for a Christian man in Scotland to wear a kilt?

No.

IHTIH

Thanks, Nick!

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Lydia, your post about abuse, victims, and the lack of empathy by church leaders…is so well written. Thank you. I hope you will post it as well over at Spiritual Sounding Board.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

In other news, do any Wartburgers have a use for cooking apples? Our tree has done particularly well this year (it’s been a good year here for apples generally) and, given our limited ability to store them for more than a couple of months, we’ve got more than we can use ourselves.

I have a wonderful recipe for apple muffins, also apple crisp and apple pie. My recipes are from the 1969 edition of ” Betty Crocker’s Cookbook”. I will post them, if you want.
“Fried” apples are also good – peel and slice; put in skillet with a little water; simmer until soft; add either brown or white sugar and cinnamon to taste – a breakfast Classic in southern Kentucky, but good any time!
You can also freeze or can apples for later use!

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Bridget wrote:

you just lose all the fiber with cider.

Yes, but you can make hard cider out of it.
I want a cider press. But first I need an apple tree that produces mass amounts of apples.

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@ Mara:

@ Nick Bulbeck:

That reminds me of apple cider vinegar to add to the list.

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@ Serving Kids In Japan:
@ Estelle:
What an outstanding game of rugby.

There is an element of poetic justice about the result. Eddie Jones, the Australian coach of Japan, assisted the South African coach at the 2007 World Cup which we won. It seems that Jones’s tactical nous played a significant role in South Africa becoming world champions. The curmudgeonly South African administrators had refused to award a blazer to Jones and did not recognise him as an official member of the coaching team. Fast forward 8 years and Jones masterminded a plan that was brilliantly executed by the Japanese to produce the biggest shock in South African rugby history.

Estelle is not overstating it when she says we South Africans are in a state of shock.

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@ Nick Bulbeck:
I remember Carling’s comment. I am not sure how many of those running rugby in SA are old farts but whatever they are they need to think seriously about persuading Eddie Jones to coach the Springboks when his likely stint with the Stormers is over (or better still before it is due to end).

A measure of the players’ appreciation for Jones’s contribution to the 2007 tournament success is that Bryan Habana presented his own blazer to Jones when the administrators refused to award him one.

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I posted muffin recipes.
Doggone dee and deb ..,… I’ll never make muffins again withou thinking, “prairie muffin”.

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Muff Potter wrote:

In that regard I agree with the rabbinic teaching that the worst of the worst simply have no inheritance in Olam Ha-Ba and are erased from existence on judgement day.

IIRC Scot McKnight had a post several months ago about some serious and conservative people who are re-thinking the doctrine of Eternal Conscious Torment by going back to the texts to see what they actually say about this. Some very good points were raised, and I suspect that the trail leads back to Augustine who was heavily influenced by Greek thought. There are some good questions being asked, IMO.

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Ardiak wrote:

Imo, a caring pastor would extend beyond the provisions of the civil authorities. As far as I know, nothing kept him from implementing church strategies for Baby S.’s welfare. From what I understand, he can pretty much do anything he wants to do.

IMO you are absolutely correct. Sorry I misunderstood your comment about the responses to TWW post. I agree totally with what you said and also with the steps you would have taken in Wilson’s position.

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numo wrote:

There was no consensus on *many* issues and ideas in 1st c. Palestine, nor in early or later rabbinic Judaism (which, like xtianity, incorporated different strands of neo-Platonist though into its core). The thing is, there is a great desl more room for give and tske in the writings of msny of the Jewish sages than there is in much of the church fathers’ writing. I’ll reserve judgment when reading both.

I think you misread what I wrote, but I agree with this.

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One other thought: i studied art history in undergrad (and beyond), and we were all required to take a broad view of *cultural* history (very much including developments in religion), because art invariably reflects the beliefs and overall cultural milieu of those who make it. And in Westetn art (from ancient times to the present), Greek and Roman art and architecture set the standard. The curricula i used placed a lot of emphasis on later Grerk art and the Hellenization of the entire eastetn Med. Basin. The Grerks had plenty of colonies in whst is now Turkey and other pointsbeadt and south of Athens; Alexander the Great *almost* succeeded in conquering parts of what is now NW India and Pakistan. He certainly succeeded in taking over the entire empire of the Persians, which covered vadt stretches of thd Near East and Central Asia. There was a progressive Hellenization of said conquered territory – i mean, this is well before Christ. The Med. was alive with trade, highly cosmopolitan, though truly, Jerusalem andnits environs were poky backwaters by that standard. But where there is trade, and where lands are conquered by succesdive groupd of people, ideas and beliefs flow… affecting everything from what is worshipped to the dishes people eat to agricultural techniques to you name it.

If Alexander the Great hadn’t conquered so much territory, the story of much of the world would likely be different. But he did – and Greek culture and learning came with him (along with colonization and all of that). His influence on the Near East was so great that he is actually mentioned in the Quran (though by another name, am blanking on it), and thete are still cities named after him (like Alexandria, in Egypt), songs sung about him (under the names Iskander), and boys named after him.

Gosh,didn’t intend for this to get so,long! Main point: you cannot separate the culture of the NT period from Hellenism. It is a given.

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@ numo:
prior to Alexander…

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/angk/hd_angk.htm

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Gram and numo,
I enjoy reading your comments. i learn so much from you!

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@ Gram3:
Err, Thomas Aquinas is very important in the development of Western xtianity, too. He was, like a lot of medieval xtian writers, an Aristotelian. (Aristotle was Alexander the Great’s tutor, fwiw.)

You want to know 2ho was a big fan of Plato himself? C.S. Lewis. He even lifted parts of the Narnia books directly from Plato – especially true of the final Narnia book. Also, there is much more to Augustine than i think many give him credit for. He was more than willing to say that some of the things he wrote when he was relatively young were not anything close to what he believed (and why) later in his life. I have not tried his City of God, but it is supposed to be very important, not just for what later became the RCC, but medieval society.

I guess all this meandering and trivia is my way of trying to say something lkke this: don’t throw the baby out with the bsthwater.

Discussions on Rob Bell and hell and such predate your coming here by a couple of years, maybe? Like i said, funny how ideas that are 1st greeted with anything but pleasure end up percolating through and show up in places you’d never have imagined possible. All that Bell essentially did was say “Maybe we got this (hell, eternal conscious torment) wrong.” He didn’t allude to anything in Love Wins that was truly unorthodox (at least, i don’t think so), but that book certainly had a lot of evangelicals up in arms.

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Lisa wrote:

Gram and numo,
I enjoy reading your comments. i learn so much from you!

Thank you for the kind words. Numo and I have some good discussions usually (from my POV) because we come from very different places. And that is one thing that makes TWW special.

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@ Gram3:
“Theological science” is a misnomer if eber there was one!

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These photos from the finalists of the 2015 Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition are amazing. Enjoy!
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34256496

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@ Estelle:
Thanks! My favorites are Sunderland Noctilucent Cloud Display and Totality Ends.

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@ Corbin:
Glad you enjoyed them. Those are both stunning pictures. I love the one with the person silhouetted against the northern lights.

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@ Estelle:

The ossia cadenza runs to five and a half pages, of which thus far I’ve learnt only the fourth page. Yefim Bronfman’s version thereof can be found on face tube at youtube.com/watch/?v=aFkAwFDZGHk, between 11’20” and 11’52”. Thus far, he’s around 10% faster than me, but I think I still just about squeeze through Rachmaninoff’s decidedly uncharitable allegro molto entry standard. My next target is page 5 (up to 12’21”).

The music for those two pages, whilst not exactly chopsticks, is not as hard as it sounds. The start of the cadenza is a lot harder; it just doesn’t lie under the fingers very well. Though in some ways, Rachmaninoff is less exacting that Moat-zart (or Bayto-vun) because – as I’m sure you’re well aware! – the latter two demand a great deal of accuracy and attention to detail to play them well, because the slightest false accent sticks out like a car in a toilet.

Happy Mozarting! And the best of luck…

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@ Gram3:
Well, that makes two of us, as far as question leading to trouble! 😉

There is a great deal of vilification of Hellenism as well as Augustine in a certain segment of the xtian blogosphere, and i have trouble with the ideas they present, but not because i think it is wrong to ask questions. More like, there isn’t thorough background research, and that, unfortunately, ends up with not only gross oversimplification of history (social/cultursl plus church) and of Augustine’s thought and writing. Z (In saying this, i should be clear that i disagree with some of his key ideas, including thst of original sin, and i struggle to find the man likeable, but i can’t just ignore everything he wrote, if only because he wrote so much.)

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@ Estelle:
You might like this fellow’s work – auroras, Arctic wildlife, and more:

https://www.facebook.com/arcticlightphoto

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@ mirele:
I hear you. Am reading a book about the invention of movable type, and it is so hard to imagine a world in which books were so scarce, let alone the complete absence of printed books. (Or e-ink “books,” for that matter.) I didn’t know anything about what went into carving the blanks for letters that were hand-cast, though i am somewhat familiar with simple presses.

At any rate, it seems like the world was turned upside down by Gutenberg and the burgeoning printing industry. Universal public education, public libraries, newspapers, and so much more, all dependent on that invention and the book trade. And all accomplished without electricity at that.

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@ numo:
And thanks to Gutenberg’s successors, modern calligraphers can have their work travel the glove. Are you familiar with Timothy Botts? This is a link to just one of his books: http://www.amazon.com/Doorposts-Timothy-R-Botts/dp/0842305955 – Texts from the Bible done in exquisite calligraphy that brings them to life.

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numo wrote:

You might like this fellow’s work – auroras, Arctic wildlife, and more:

https://www.facebook.com/arcticlightphoto

How he managed colors is ammaaaazing!

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@ Patrice:
It’s more like what one of the judges on the BBC page said:

“‘As a geeky physicist what I really like about this is the colours,’ says Kukula, ‘and how they are separated by height’.

‘It is to do with the physics of emitting atoms, high in the atmosphere. Green comes from oxygen, and the reds and blues come from a mix of oxygen and nitrogen. It is physics in action.’ ”

I once saw a green aurora (rather faint) with red higher up, in Maine, so…

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@ Estelle:
Mine, too. 🙂

Thanks for the links!

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@ Muff Potter:
I also agree that good is, well, good, no matter where it comes from.

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Dee & Deb,

FYI. The link for Julie Mc Mahon GoFundMe LINK .. hasn’t been working for a week. Any word on how she is doing?

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Doug Wilson is shocked. Shocked, I tell you, and dismayed at this baseless attack by someone who ought to have known better, who ought to be on the side of right. OTOH, since the blog addresses setting up something called the Benedictine Option, which sounds suspiciously Roman Catholic, perhaps the (“false”) attack is understandable. Consider the source, and all that.

http://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/this-morning.html

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Bridget wrote:

@ refugee:
The author who wrote that sums it up pretty well for me with this:
“The state is investigating whether or not the baby boy born to the pedophile and the woman that Wilson married has been molested by his father … and Doug Wilson thinks this is a matter to be laughed at, while raising a glass of Scotch to spite the critics? That is insane.”
And let’s not forget that his wife bought him his beloved Scotch for the celebration.

Amen. I do hope everyone realized my tone was heavy with irony, or do I mean sarcasm?

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Looks like Al Mohler’s SBTS is having a conference on transgender issues with CBMW. Of course, no transgender persons were invited to speak, but some are in the audience or reporting on it.

If you’re a Tweeter, you can follow along with the hashtag #acbc15.

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@ Muff Potter:
A friend of mine (Canadian) is headed on a one-way trip to Switzerland in a few days. I have no doubt what the Mohler crowd would say to her, but she’d throw back at them that she has stage 4 lung cancer with an inoperable tumor pressing and causing pain. Actually, knowing this person, she’d probably cuss the Mohler crowd out in florid Hungarian. She’s Jewish, her parents survived the Holocaust, they escaped Hungary after the failed revolution, she spent ages 8-15 in a transit camp in Austria before being resettled in Canada. She’s been writing thoughtful and funny updates but very soon those updates will stop.

Nope, she’d cuss Mohler out.

And all I can think is that she is handling this far better than I would under the circumstances.

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@ Sopwith:
I’m taking a long shot here, but might it not be at least partly related to the same factor that drives spiritual abuse in other denominations – that is, a lust for power?

@ mirele:
I haven’t logged into Twitter in ages, but I did see this pop up in my RSS reader, courtesy of a blog post by one of the participants:
http://imagodeisummit.weebly.com/

Also, Warren Throckmorton posted earlier today that Southern Baptist leaders released a statement opposing reparative therapy; from my reading of the statement, I can’t make out if they narrowly oppose Freud-away-the-gay, or if they recognize the futility of other pray-away-the-gay schemes as well.

With that said, I will note my amusement at the harping on “sexual confusion” that comes from this camp. Given the nonsensical statements about LGBT people that flow from their mouths and keyboards, the confusion appears to be largely with them.

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@ mirele:
Your quotation reminds me of a sermon I heard by Dick Lucas in London where he quoted the third verse of the hymn All things bright and beautiful:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

He leant over the pulpit and said “Utter bilge”!!

I cringe at how often Christianity has been used (or perhaps better abused) to make legitimate the interests of the ruling elite and rich. This identification of the church with the exploiters rather than the exploited has in its time done immense damage to the witness of the church in the UK. I think this is less true today, but from reading American evangelical blogdom still appears to be alive and kicking in the States to a greater or lesser extent.

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Ken wrote:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Good quote there Ken. It doesn’t make me cringe nor do I react to it as utter bilge. If there’s any bilge in it, for me it would only be the writer’s allusion to a rigidly deterministic god, a concept which I categorically reject. I think that the lyrics of the hymn point more to ~ Ecclesiastes 9:11 ~

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

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@ Muff Potter:
Muff – the context of this hymn was the Victorian era, where this kind of thinking was used to justify the rich exploiting the poor, and claiming that poverty, like riches, was something God has foreordained. Now it is true you reap what you sow, and A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a vagabond, and want like an armed man, but wealth in the capitalist system can be gained without doing a job of work, in the form of dividends.

A more modern variant of this is the thnking that financial riches and power are a sign of God’s blessing, and that a large component of the gospel is material prosperity.

Incidentally, I also like the AV, if only it lifts the bible away from being an ‘ordinary’ book. It’s prose is unbeatable and it would be a shame if it were to disappear from church life completely, even though its successors are easier to understand, which is obviously of prime importance.

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@ Muff Potter:

And it is quoted or referenced so often in literature from the subsequent era, it is sad to think some generations will have no reference point.

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Ken wrote:

wealth in the capitalist system can be gained without doing a job of work, in the form of dividends.

A gardener who cultivates the ground and plants a switch of a fruit tree and works and cultivates it year after year is entitled to enjoy the fruit of his/her labor well after the year when he/she stops the intensive cultivation. The beauty of chastened capitalism is that everyone enjoys the fruit of their labor *and* everyone can continue to enjoy the fruit of their investment which many times comes due to deferred consumption and personal thrift and not merely from stealing the fruit of others’ labor. Those who provide labor also benefit from the investment of the capitalist. The capitalist is enjoined to pay his laborers promptly and fairly and to fulfill his promises to suppliers and customers.

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@ mirele:
Well, you know Finney is despised among the YRR while Edwards is lauded. This is a thought-provoking quote. I wish I were up to dense books right now, because it sounds like a good read.

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@ God’s Word anyone?:
This is part of what is under TWW “Basics” menu, FAQS:

What Are We ?

We are two Christian women who have seriously pursued our faith. We have discovered some disturbing trends within Christendom which compelled us to start TWW. Our goal is to shine a light into the darkness, exposing hypocrisy, heresy, and arrogance while also examining trends that affect the faith in the public square. Truth and transparency are of utmost importance to us.

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God’s Word anyone? wrote:

I’m just curious how this blog leads people to Christ? Or builds believers up in the faith? Or encourages them to pursue all God promises them in His Word?

Maybe it would help if you looked at from the perspective of someone who has been abused by a church or church leaders. Maybe that person is considering abandoning the faith because he or she thinks that what happened is condoned by the others in the church and maybe Christ himself! Maybe that person believes that they are the only one who had that experience. They find TWW, and here they read the stories and hear the encouragement of people just like them. We struggle, we quarrel, we irritate one another, make one another laugh, or cry. The abused person finds out that the person you call God’s anointed–the one that abused them–is not God’s anointed one at all. Only Jesus of Nazareth is the Anointed One of God.

Too many times people are driven away from Christ by people and institutions which claim his name. Many of us here are determined to make sure that Jesus Christ is not eclipsed by anyone and part of that includes naming and claiming the ones who are not behaving like Kingdom citizens and who are harming the flock. The job that is done here is the job which *should* be done by the men who call themselves pastors, but instead, they are too busy promoting each others’ careers to care much about the wounded sheep.

As for the absolute authority of the text of scripture, I’m right there defending the text against those who twist it to their advantage. I’m the village inerrantist, though perhaps I have a quirky way of seeing inerrancy. God told us in his infallible text that the elder who stumbles should be rebuked before all when there are sufficient witnesses. I think that means what it plainly says.

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God’s Word anyone? wrote:

And yet God dealt with Korah and his family for rejecting God’s anointed. Absalom tried to take David’s thrown. A man who was an adulterer, a murderer, a man with blood on his hands. And yet Absalom paid the price. Notice I said God’s anointed. It is hard sometimes to know who God has chosen based on their backgrounds or outward appearance.

You are reading it through a lens of determinism. God was angry they begged for a king in the first place. He was their king. As far as “touch not God’s anointed” you are not reading it in context of Israel. And the word “touch” denotes physical harm. Not disagreeing publicly.

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@ GuyBehindtheCurtain (on the Al Mohler Volume thread:

The value of graphite is that its relatively light nuclei rebound slightly when struck by fast fission neutrons so that the neutrons lose some energy and continue at a more moderate (there’s that word again) speed. To cut a long story short, the slower neutrons are more likely to cause fission than the faster ones.

The risks are, as you said, that if the reactor vessel is in some way compromised or the very hot graphite is otherwise exposed to air, it will catch fire. Although it doesn’t generate any more heat than is already being generated by nuclear processes, a reactor fire has the knock-on effect of lofting radioactive dust and smoke into the air such that it’s very difficult to contain. This was the cause of the radioactive plume from Chernobyl (though not the cause of the twin explosions that destroyed the reactor vessel and the containment building).

IHTIH.

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@ guy behind the curtain,

I’m puzzled too. It has always been my understanding that the Russian tragedy was due to a cooling system that went South, not so much materials used.

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In Dee’s article of Nov. 30, 2011, “Arminians Versus Calvinists”, she makes some significant statements early on, such as: “… I set out to decide, once and for all, whether or not I was an Arminian or a Calvinist,” and “I was left just as confused as I was before I started this journey,” and “… these supposedly conflicting theologies,” and “… there are well-educated, godly theologians who are on different sides… ”

Such conflict and confusion of ideas should raise a red flag. God is not the author of confusion. I’m sure it all makes perfect sense to God. Said another way, where there is knowledge, there is no paradox. Ignorance is a necessary component of confusion. Where the waters are muddy, either one, or both sides of the issue must be in error, on at least one point and maybe more. Many people are sick and tired of all this confusion, and it may even be a contributing factor for some that have dropped out of attending church.

For all you truth-loving, puzzled, befuddled and frustrated readers out there who aren’t willing to take a side on this issue because you feel a need to acknowledge the truth that seems evident on both sides, I would invite you to explore and investigate the theology at voiceofelijah.org

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God’s Word anyone? wrote:

I don’t see anywhere in scripture where attacking other believers is encouraged.

Jesus berating the Pharisees?

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Boompa wrote:

Where the waters are muddy, either one, or both sides of the issue must be in error, on at least one point and maybe more.

That is certainly one possible aspect of some muddy waters. And I agree with much of what you have said. However, I also see things from a somewhat different angle. There is also mystery.

The older ways of doing church have maintained an aspect of mystery which the black-and-white and all-or-nothing reasoning approach of some folks seems to be trying to eliminate. Let me say it this way. Is it true that where there is a question there is also an answer? If the answer is ‘yes’ then the next question would be has God revealed that answer, and that would have to include has God revealed all the answers to everything now? The scripture says otherwise. We see through a glass darkly. We understand and prophesy in part. We will eventually know as we are known but not until we see Him as He is. (I am omitting the quotation marks and the chapter and verse references since I assume all here recognize the references and the terminology.)

I am thinking that the never ending quest for answers-complete answers right now actually-can become a distraction from a more comprehensive worship of a God who only tells us on a need to know basis and who requires that we walk by faith and not sight. The only option to that is the sort of things that include ‘bible codes’ and ‘special revelation’ and a numerology of sorts as in determining the dates of some supposed understanding of something in the future (the shemitah perhaps) and never ending new ways of translating this or that word or one more claimed insight into what we are led to believe may have been the culture of the day; on and on it goes. Some people choose some path like that; some of us do not.

I did not say that the search for ‘truth’ is not a good thing. I am saying that the search for ‘truth’ must contain an acknowledgment that we have been called to follow Truth (as in the I am statement of Jesus) as our primary calling. When Jesus says follow me, and when we answer Him-well, ok, but give me a map just in case we get separated, the answer we get is that if we get separated from Him we are done for. We are not offered a map for the path through the wilderness. We are offered a companion/guide for the journey. There are many paths that can lead to wandering off, and the never ending search for having to know all the answers now and know them with no margin of error can become one of those paths.

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Daisy wrote:

He doesn’t seem to grasp a lot of things, one of which is that a molester should not be permitted to pro-create with his wife, because any kids he has will be future victims to him.

Wilson is very clueless. His theology is very false and confused.

IMO, Wilson knows very well what he did. He’s been scrambling day after day for weeks: excuse upon excuse, offense to defense to offense. The more he writes, the deeper he digs. He is now nonsensical.

If Wilson faced the simple fact that he did wrongs, he would become vulnerable but apparently he doesn’t find that bearable.

He writes as if he is the epitome of male courage, truth, and wit, but he reveals a soft half-educated verbose coward with a penchant for repetitive small cruelties. His combox is crowded with sycophants.

He’s like Max, but even that little boy knew he was just playing around:

http://www.operawest.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/WTWTA_Libretti-and-original-drawings-by-Maurice-Sendak.-All-rights-reserved-1.jpg

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In other news:

Day off today, and it’s another day of ideal running weather in Scotland; so I drove to Glen Turret and ran up Ben Chonzie, or Ben-Y-Hone as it’s more commonly known. Obviously, I ran back down it as well; as they say on Everest: Getting to the top is optional – coming down isn’t. To my considerable chuffment, I made it to the summit in under an hour.

#youdontlivewithdiabetes
#ITliveswithYOU

Incidentally, “chuffment” isn’t actually a word even on this side of the pond. But it should be.

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@ Nick Bulbeck:
Sounds great, Nick. Chuffworthy, indeed.

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Bill M wrote:

rganization corruption is nothing new but institutional christianity appears to have special inherent flaws that allow such corruption to flourish. Reading the stories I could see over and over a pattern of using christian “tools” to suppress dissent, tools not available to secular organizations.

Very true. The same people who would never put up with it in a secular job, do put up with it in a para church or c environment. SGM was full of educated professionals that were not all that young, either, like Mars Hill members were.

BTW:what is GFA?

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Lydia wrote:

BTW:what is GFA?

Gospel for Asia. Warren Throckmorton on Patheos has written a few hard-hitting pieces about it. They are worth reading. From what I can see it is favoured by the Acts 29 crowd, including my Acts 29 church.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

I fear that googling “chuffment” did but demonstrate that, while others are of like mind regarding its merits as a should_be_word, it isn’t one yet.

Given the content of many of the posts and comments here on TWW upchuckment might be a better candidate for a new word. Doesn’t get zero hits on google but doesn’t seem to be in any online dictionary.

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Another horror story that just showed up trending on Facebook…

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/13/us/new-york-church-assault-case/index.html

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JohnD wrote:

From what I can see it is favoured by the Acts 29 crowd, including my Acts 29 church.

That is curious as it is reported Yohannan was making a hard turn to something similar to Easter Orthodox, my memory is fuzzy, so I figured this one was that would be out of the realm of Calvinist circles. GFA is certainly on the dead end of the authoritarian scale.

If your assertion is widespread it sounds like Act29 can be used as a sound reverse indicator, anything they favor I should do the opposite. Any other parachurch organizations they are big on?

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In other news

Cricket: When Pakistan won the toss in the first test and scored 523-8 dec. (they were 499-4 at one point), I feared successive England collapses leading to a huge innings defeat. However, it’s now lunch on the fourth day and England are 400-3. Clearly, this is a batting track..! I’m not sure even England have the talent to throw away 17 wickets cheaply enough to lose from here.

It will be interesting to see how Alastair Cook proceeds from here. He’s on 200, and must fancy his chances of a career-best score (currently 294); he would have little to lose by batting on as long as he can, given that there’s relatively little chance of a result now.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

I’m not sure even England have the talent to throw away 17 wickets cheaply enough to lose from here.

They are not that talented.

In amongst the horrible bowling figures those of Anderson and Stokes are impressive. I don’t think Cook has any real alternative to batting on deep into day five. What else is there to play for other than records?

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

Incidentally, as I write this, Cook’s just moved on to 245, meaning that he is joint top-scorer in the match – that’s not a common stat!

Definitely not a common stat. He looked very tired when he was finally out (off a no ball). He wasn’t far off AB’s best against Pakistan and also within reach of Ted Dexter’s.

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Good point there from God.

The loss of wickets near the close there does rather scupper the possibility of England batting out the final day to ensure that neither side began its second innings.

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http://themattwalshblog.com/

The blog I’m referring to.

Views on women/complimentarianism in line with the usual suspects. But somehow sounds even worse.

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@ okrapod:

I do so envy you people who know how to get the cut and paste thing to do better than that . Sigh

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@ Mandy:
I have some Facebook acquaintances (not people I would call friends) who share his tripe on occasion. His writings about sexuality and [trans]gender people were, in my experience, exceptionally mean-spirited and filled with contempt. The articles left me feeling physical discomfort (that’s … particularly abnormal from an online article), and I found nothing of merit therein, so I no longer read anything written by him.

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In other news:

This is the first time I’ve ever seen a 5-day test match explode into a draw.

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That was close, wasn’t is. Now, ‘Allez les Bleus!’

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Josh wrote:

@ Mandy:
I have some Facebook acquaintances (not people I would call friends) who share his tripe on occasion. His writings about sexuality and [trans]gender people were, in my experience, exceptionally mean-spirited and filled with contempt. The articles left me feeling physical discomfort (that’s … particularly abnormal from an online article), and I found nothing of merit therein, so I no longer read anything written by him.

Well I’m glad, I certainly hoped I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
His influence is extremely disconcerting.
His apologists are quite devoted and there seems to be no talking to them.

But he’s another complimintarian Calvinista hero to many of them.

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Mandy wrote:

But he’s another complimintarian Calvinista hero to many of them.

True that, though I don’t know how any of them could argue that he’s “winsome”…

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@ JohnD:
@ Estelle:

Hmm… well, New Zealand seem to be hitting some kind of form, don’t they?

#kamate

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@ Nick Bulbeck:
Condolences, Nick, that was a fight to the finish.

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@ JohnD:

Quite agree – it’s a completely different match. It will make an intriguing encounter at the very least.

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@ Nick Bulbeck:
Nick, I’ve been enjoying the sporting commentary even though this is all I know about cricket: my husband lived in Trinidad for a while as a child and has fond memories of listening to a record album by Paul Keens Douglas, a local humorist and writer. His favorite selection was called Tanti at de oval, which I’m linking to for your enjoyment.
http://youtu.be/NKSbFtkw_-I

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@ Ken:

Hadrian shmadrian. I live north of the Antonine Wall.

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About the issue that was raised about abusive techniques for teaching left handed people to write with the right hand.

I am a predominantly left handed person who writes with the right hand. I am the mother of a left handed adult child who writes with the left hand. There are a lot of interesting facts about lefties-easy to google and get an overview. Some of those facts show an increased incidence of a number of problems just based on handedness and having nothing to do with which hand is used for writing. And some good things also.

In my case nobody abused me. They just told me in the first grade that I ought to learn to write with my right hand and so I did. Years later when I took my left handed son to a golf pro for lessons he said that lefties should learn to play right handed and that fortunately doing that was usually no problem for lefties. Quite so, because one of the things about lefties is that by and large we can use our right hand better than right handed people can use their left hand.

It may well be that some people have been abused over this issue, but it would not be accurate to imply that such abuse was ubiquitous for all of us right hand writing lefties.

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@ Jamie Carter:

I can understand that in places where people use their left hand instead of toilet paper, but Oklahoma? Wow. Poor kid.

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I swear the “left hand’s wrong” mantra was still taught at least in parts of rural America 40 years ago. Can personally attest to it.

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@ Nick Bulbeck:
Ah, what is colloquially known as The Bulbeck Line …

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Deebs, have you or anyone published something about tithing? It seems to me that the new “churches” and “revitalized” churches are partly corrupted as they become money-making ventures — the pew-sitters are convinced or coerced into tithing.

I had thought our new church relatively safe, because even though there is a membership contract, there’s no requirement to sign one (some social pressure, but there are people who’ve been in that church for years without signing one), and there hasn’t been an open emphasis on tithing.

But my spouse came back from a men’s retreat, talking about signing a membership covenant (he knows I won’t sign one), and wanting to being tithing again.

So maybe the church is changing, or maybe it wasn’t safe all along, and I’ve simply been coasting along on the surface while the sharks are swimming down below.

I told him I don’t see the tithe as a biblical requirement (no more than signing a membership paper) in the New Testament, but I haven’t really had time to research it. I was wondering if someone else might have already covered that ground.

We tithed enough to our old church over the couple decades we were there, to have been able to send our younger ones to college, all expenses paid. Maybe even private college. I don’t want to give any more to the new church, than I feel comfortable with. And I don’t feel comfortable with a whole lot at present.

At least the preaching pastor isn’t living a life of luxury. His economic standard appears to be about the same as the majority of the churchgoers. And the church rents a space for worship, doesn’t have to keep up a campus of expensive real estate.

At least, not yet… But I know they are being influenced by the likes of 9Marks and Acts29, John Piper and others in that crowd, so maybe it is only a matter of time before I have to leave.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

No; the Bulbeck Line is formally known as the Highland Boundary Fault.

Hence the expression ‘It’s not my fault but yours’.

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refugee wrote:

Deebs, have you or anyone published something about tithing? It seems to me that the new “churches” and “revitalized” churches are partly corrupted as they become money-making ventures — the pew-sitters are convinced or coerced into tithing.

Away from Enceladus for the moment… this from Proverbs 22:

One who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth and one who gives gifts to the rich – both come to poverty.

I have never once heard a convincing argument for tithing in the Church. The only attempts I’ve come across involve out-of-context quotes of verses that mention tithing but are explicitly about something quite different. (The most risible yet is the argument that Abraham tithed, therefore tithing came before the Law, therefore tithing is a law.)

I think you’re right, only more so – if that makes sense! New churches as money-making ventures are inherently corrupt. Perhaps the single most shocking testimony I ever heard come out of Mars Hill was that of the day Driskle came personally to one of the satellite campuses to tell them that since their giving had dropped recently they would not be given the Lord’s Supper. Although that’s the worst offence I’ve come across anywhere regarding tithing, it’s little more than a logical extension of the simple idea that Christians are beholden to tithe.

Jesus’s brief conversation with Peter, in Matthew 17, about the temple tax is instructive. His conclusion: the King’s children are exempt. There is no basis for levying a tax on church membership, whereby most people have no real function other than to pay the salaries of the few and, at the same time, to serve unpaid as staff in the organisations and projects of those same few. At the same time, Jesus didn’t want to cause gratuitous offence, but to me, that simply means that if I can’t in principle co-exist peacefully among a group of believers without them being offended by my level of giving: well, that’s not the right group of believers to be among.

I’m trying to stop this comment from being too diffuse and rambling, but I do want to make one other point, which is the potentially factional and divisive combination of membership covenant + tithe demand. Invariably, the demand is: you owe your tithes to us and not to any other group within the local church. You can’t give your tithe to the group from the other denomination nearby to support their work with the poor, or simply to help them as people because they’ve given up good careers to live and work in a deprived part of town, etc etc. You’re a member here, and here only, and thus cut off from the rest of the Body of Christ locally. To me, that’s a fundamental departure from any biblical model of local church, however nice, kind and well-intentioned the group may be.

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Let us not forget the argument for sacrificial giving which notes that the widow gave her mite to a corrupt temple system and Jesus praised her for it. Therefore one owes tithes and offerings to the local church no matter what kind of corruption/scandal may be going on at the church.

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ION: Rugby

A narrow and hard-fought win (the two being subtly different) for the All Blacks over South Africa today.

New Zealand hammered France by a cricket-score in their quarter-final, but a) South Africa are a much stronger team than France at the moment, and b) the weather was very wet, which makes a big difference to the way the game has to be played: the ball is greasy and the surface more slippery. The result was a tough but absorbing contest.

So: it’s New Zealand vs Australia in next week’s final.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

A narrow and hard-fought win (the two being subtly different) for the All Blacks over South Africa today.

A narrow, hard-fought and well deserved win for the All Blacks. It may not have been exhilarating rugby but what a contest.

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Bye Bye Hipsters. H-E-L-L-O Yuccies Young Urban Creatives. 😉

http://mashable.com/2015/06/09/post-hipster-yuccie/#97F7yHVp4Oqr

“Millennial? Hipster? Yuppie? All of these, or none? We don’t have a term that quite encapsulates this corner of the despicable millenn-intelligensia. And like any other privileged member of a so-called “creative class,” being called a hipster offends me for its inaccuracy. I demand to be snarked in precise terms.

Let’s consider something new: Yuccies. Young Urban Creatives. In a nutshell, a slice of Generation Y, borne of suburban comfort, indoctrinated with the transcendent power of education, and infected by the conviction that not only do we deserve to pursue our dreams; we should profit from them.” 26 year old David Infante

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Talk of the misuse of the tithe!

This month six individuals from City Harvest Church in Singapore were finally charged with absconding with 50 MILLION DOLLARS in church funds. The Strait Times has done a bang up job following the scandalous thievery. They were there to record the walk of shame to the court house and Kong Hee’s art of the apology. Those members who recognize they and the name of Jesus were betrayed and ballyhooed have created their own survivor’s groups like in the States. It appears to me the leaders were influenced by the nefarious playbook of like minded emergent organizations who operate under the guise of religion, the ones that savvy Christian watch groups report on. Thank God for for the whistle blowers who turned them in and the will of their government to charge them. Guilty of all charges.

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numo wrote:

If that had been the case, I’m sure large numbers of worshippers would havd avoided it sltogether.

Perhaps they did. Maybe that partially accounts for the popularity that John the Baptist and Jesus had with the crowds.

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@ okrapod:
Lutherans are fine on offerings, but tithes are never mentioned.

So no, I never heard it, not as a young person, anyway.

I kinda doubt that people who went to the temple to hear Jesus teach there were what you’d call “disaffected by a corrupt system”; ditto for the people from all over the Middle East, North Africa and further afield on the day of Pentecost.

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The Gospel Coalition published an article by Nancy Guthrie telling women “7 Ways Women Can Grow in Studying and Teaching Scripture without Seminary.” It’s laughable. I left a response, which I also emailed to Ms. Guthrie, since I am pretty sure I am Persona Non Grata at TGC.

This article is a joke. It’s like telling someone to read police procedurals and watch “Law and Order” to get the experience of going to law school and becoming a lawyer. I have not been to seminary, but I do hold a juris doctor and passed the bar. I suspect that seminary is very much a formation process like law school. I fully believe I am competent enough to go to seminary, except I don’t have a calling from God and I am missing the most important thing from The Gospel Coalition’s perspective: I don’t have XY chromosomes. But I am fully confident that I could do the academic work at seminary, based on my experience at law school. A bunch of suggestions to women about how to have a seminary-like experience because you won’t let women get the education because we’re just women says volumes, TGC.

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@ mirele:
Mirele – having read your post I couldn’t resist paying TGC visit, reading the review and 20 quotations from it. At present there don’t seem to be any comments on the review.

I think your comment naming C J Mahaney in connection with child abuse may be legally dodgy. I wondered about commenting on this myself and seeing if it would make it into print, as the critique of the developments in the ‘secular’ world are seriously undermined by the failure of churches to deal with abuse in their own midst. This point needs making, especially to the Big Name circuit.

I don’t think you can hold Mohler responsible for the sins of his ancestors. I’ve done a lot of reading about the bible and slavery recently, and the criticism ‘the bible approves of it’ is inaccurate, even if some people in the past have claimed it does. A section of UK evangelicalism played a part in abolishing slavery and other social ills later in the Victorian era. It seems to me slavery is a tangent to the main thesis of the book (going by the quotations of it).

Your critique of Mohler on gay rights suffers from the fact you haven’t read the book and are assuming you know what stance Mohler will take on it and why. He is actually very critical of heterosexuals and what they have done to marriage in this regard.

I think you shot yourself in the foot in the last sentence – If someone would like to purchase this book for me with their hard-earned money so that I can rip it to pieces. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have published your comment, but this sentence makes it look as though you would be against Mohler come what may, simply because he wrote the book, i.e. prejudice rather than an attempt to get to grips with his book in both its strengths and weaknesses.

I was intrigued by the reviewer wanting Peter Jones’ claim of paganism being behind changes in secular culture. I reckon Jones is on to somthing here, but this is not strictly relevant to a review of what the book does say rather than what it doesn’t.

I hope you won’t take this as personal criticism, because that’s not my intention at all. But I do think a targetted criticism imo the silence on abuse in the church whilst at the same time wanting to sound off about trends outside the church would be more successful.

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@ numo:
Dodgy

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numo wrote:

“Legally dodgy”?

I strongly disagree on the “legally dodgy” part. Let’s spell it out clearly. CJ was the senior pastor of CLC, over everyone. His brother in lae, Geant Layman, was an assistant pastor. Layman knew and testified to protecting Nate Morales. Layman testified that he knew three boys had been sexually assaulted between 1983 and 1991. Layman also testfied, again, at a criminal trial and under oath, that he had a legal obligation to report the abuse and did not.

We also know from reports out of CLC that Layman would not have sat on this information but would have reported it up the chain to the senior pastor, that very same CJ Mahaney. This is an inference but given the way CLC was up in everyone’s business, not an unreasonable inference to make.

Moreover, CJ Mahaney, like so many of his friends in the Gospel Glitterati, is a public figure. To prove I am speaking libel, Mahaney would have to show not only that I was wrong, but that I wrote with actual malice. That would be an extremely difficult thing to do, given that we know how CLC operated and this is nor something Layman would have kept back from his boss, but also, I’m making a reasonable assumption based on the behaviors of those ar CLC. This is not actual malice, in short.

As to why Mahaney didn’t testify at Morales’ trial, he had moved out of state and Grant Layman was still available and within reach of a state subpoena.

The tl;dr on this is given what we know about CLC, it’s reasonable to assume Mahaney knew, and given that reasonableness and Mahaney’s status as a public figure, me stating bluntly that Mahaney knew of the child abuse (even if factually wrong, which I seriously doubt) does not rise to the level of actual malice.

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@ okrapod:
Largely, yes. However, it seems that Mohler’s thinking concerning whether so-called reparative therapy is helpful in “treating” non-straight orientations has shifted over the years. Recently, Mohler came out (sorry, I had to) and said that he no longer supports such therapy:

http://news.sbts.edu/2015/10/05/southern-seminary-leaders-underscore-rejection-of-superficial-reparative-therapy-in-response-to-lgbt-protesters-at-acbc-conference/

Warren Throckmorton was pleased, as one might expect:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2015/10/06/southern-baptist-seminary-leaders-reject-reparative-therapy/

Others, predictably, were not as pleased:

http://janetmefferd.com/2015/10/reparative-therapy-southern-baptists-and-moving-the-goalposts/

(I can’t deny feeling a certain sense of schadenfreude as they pout in the corner over the growing rejection of the bunk “therapy” they try to inflict on people who don’t fit their rigid mold.)

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@ mirele:
I’m struck by your close call with this type of situation. I also see in Mohler’s recent discourse that he still focuses on “change,” this time by prayer and determined effort. It’s unclear to me whether he means “change from sexually active to celibate” or “change from non-straight to straight,” but either way, taken in context with his friend Denny Burk’s teaching that it’s a sin to merely feel an attraction to a person of the same gender as yourself, this set of teachings as a whole is destructive to all who find themselves on the outside of the approved boundary of straight cis-gender men and women (I specify men and women instead of saying people here intentionally, knowing that those in between fall afoul of the complementarian rules in other ways).

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ION:

In the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships currently taking place nearby in Glasgow, congratulations are in order to the lassies fae the US for retaining their title, and also to the GB lassies for winning our first ever global team medal, taking bronze yesterday.

The pressure’s on for the home boys today…

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Ken wrote:

As regards the legally dodgy part, I was assuming that American law would be similar to British law, and that the wording that mirele used could be used either by C J or by a fan with too much money to initiate court proceedings for defamation of character.

In American libel law, it’s up to the plaintiff to show the defendant committed libel and the defendant has certain defenses, such as, well, obviously, truth, and what I mentioned earlier about being a public figure. This is not the case in Britain, where the defendant has to show it is not libel. This has led to some fairly grotesque situations, where American professor Deborah Lipstadt had to prove she did not libel Holocaust denier David Irving in her book “Denying the Holocaust.” That led to an expensive trial where Ms. Lipstadt did most convincingly prove that Irving is indeed a Holocaust denier. But it cost her and her publisher a lot of money to defend. This tends to chill speech and leads to situations where documentaries such as “Going Clear” (on Scientology) have to undergo a special vetting prior to showing in Britain so as to avoid potential libel issues. That said, the British parliament did get rid of a particularly odious aspect of their law, and that was libel tourism, where one copy of the allegedly libelous item would be imported into Britain and then a lawsuit filed. Now the court has to decide if Britain is truly the place for the case to be heard.

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@ Josh (pulchritudinously or otherwise) wrote:

…[The] teaching that it’s a sin to merely feel an attraction to a person of the same gender as yourself … is destructive to all who find themselves on the outside of the approved boundary of straight cis-gender men and women

I’ve been struck in recent years by the wording of Romans 1 (emphases added):

They EXCHANGED the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women EXCHANGED natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also ABANDONED natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

A few years ago I had a conversation with a young man – in his late teens – about his experiences of same-sex attraction. He’d gone through the whole, fairly lengthy, process of realising that not only was he not attracted to women, but he was attracted to men. This conversation was confidential, so I can’t give any more details about him, but songwriter Vicky Beeching has come out publicly as gay, and told her story in the process. She has described how she deliberately dated boys when a teenager in an attempt to kick-start (my words) a heterosexual orientation, to no effect.

These stories are not uncommon. And I find myself asking:
 What, specifically, have these young people done to inflame themselves with lust?
 What exactly have they ABANDONED?
 When, and how, did they EXCHANGE one set of feelings for another?
 About what and whom is this passage speaking?

Certainly, around the world, there are political regimes who have abandoned themselves to the pursuit of power and the indulgence of cruelty. In their prisons (and sometimes in the prisons of nominally democratic countries), those in power have de facto or de jury carte blanche to indulge their every depraved fantasy towards their victims. In those settings, both men and women are raped by male guards; these shameful acts have little to do with sexual intimacy or even desire, and everything to do with power, cruelty and domination. It’s highly unlikely that the infamous “men of Sodom” were all gay…

I know that Romans 1 isn’t the only place in which the Bible mentions sexual behaviour. Nevertheless, the Christian community has lacked a realistic and open conversation with the gay community in general. And it’s rare for an individual to find an honest listening ear in their local church group that can help them out of the miry clay of sexuality in adolescence.

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okrapod wrote:

Good grief. Somebody needs to build a wall north to south in the middle of the north atlantic and place huge signs facing in both directions which say proceed at your own risk.

The signs both need a footnote to the effect of: And would any opportunistic litigants please sod off back home.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

please sod off back home.

This is an example of what I mean. I have never heard the term ‘sod off’ and have no idea what it means, but we do have a lot of terms that combine some verb with ‘off’. So, good example of communication difficulties.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

Oh, come on, I’m sure you can guess the gist of it..!

Sure. I googled it. And one recurring definition was f*&^% # off. So I thought Nick? Really? Surely not.

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@ okrapod:

Well, both of those phrases mean really very much go away. But they’re not equally crude or aggressive (and their root meanings are different too). “Sod off” is basically a minced oath: something that sounds ruder than it really is, and that would not generally be “bleeped out” even on relatively respectable television.

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@ Nick Bulbeck:
Amen!

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@ Josh:
Oh good! Then it is not a Brit insult.

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Lydia wrote:

What about “git”? What does “old git” mean?

Clue: it ain’t polite. 🙂

The company here once had a thing called a statement of direction, and on powerpoint presentations (remember those?) this would often be abbreviated to SOD. The Germans could never understand why, whenever this was presented in a meeting, all the English native speaker translators burst out laughing.

Another non-native speaker wrote a general e-mail on leaving on how she had benefitted from the help and cooperation from everyone during her employment etc etc, including the unfortunate phrase I am especially glad for all the passion I was able to share with the colleagues. In fact having ‘passion’ became something of a buzzword a while back, but has now fortunately been quietly dropped.

Disclaimer: You will of course appreciate that I am too saintly to understand this ribald kind of humour, and had to look it all up in dictionary …

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See! What did I tell you? Not only do they use different words over there they also have different rules and customs for when ‘words’ can be used and with whom and why. There is no use trying to talk with those people; they jest ain’t rite. They have made obfuscation an art form while we have prided ourselves in saying something right out to somebody’s face as the situation may require of course. Those are totally different orientations as to how communication is done.

That said, I will make exceptions to denouncing them because they do from time to time have some good ideas well expressed, like Nick’s last paragraph in his comment on 10/28 at 6:58 PM. That was awesomely well said.

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@ Nick Bulbeck:

I myself very much enjoy David Cameron’s Flashman moments. Osborne however turns it into an art form. In the Lords, Baron Strathclyde is more talented than most in regard.

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ION: Cricket.

Pakistan won the toss and batted in the final test, so England will have been more than happy to bowl them out on day one. We also managed to survive what might have been two awkward overs before stumps to finish on 4-0; the 4 is neither here nor there, but the 0 is psychologically useful.

Pakistan have shown themselves amply competent at the crease, so it looks as though this is a wicket that will deliver a result. By the same token, the England top order have shown themselves amply capable of getting skittled, so although we shaded the first day, you’d have to say that the match is finely poised the noo.

Call me a pessimist, but we still need 30 runs tomorrow to avoid the follow-on…

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ION:

87-1 at lunch on day 2. We’ve avoided the follow-on, at least. Cook’s 2 runs short of his half-century.

IHTIH.

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Nick Bulbeck wrote:

Whilst it has been declared “unparliamentary language” in the House of Commons*, it is not considered obscene.

You all can do that?

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@ Lydia:

Not all of us, no; only the Speaker of the House.

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Gram3 wrote:

does not mean

…to mean that…

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@ Gram3:
I bet I can’t say this briefly!

Marriage is a divine institution from the beginning. Divorce a human construct, regulated in the law of Moses. The NT goes back to the original intention, and essentially outlaws divorce for believers (‘let not man put asunder’).

Slavery is a human institution, also regulated in the law of Moses. Far from the biblical God condoning it, it was made a capital offence to enlave a fellow Hebrew – a sentiment echoed in the NT 1 Tim 1 : 10 where kidnappers = enslavers. Nevertheless in the OT slaves could be made of captured enemies or children could be sold into indentured service. It wasn’t outright banned, that was probably an unrealistic ideal in the circumstances of ANE culture. The mosaic law did offer some protections though.

The NT also regulates slavery or servanthood when it comes to Christian believers. It lays down the duties and obligations where believers find themselved in this position. The masters must treat their slaves considerately, and the slaves should give good service as they are now serving beloved fellow believers. They are made one in Christ, there is neither slave nor free, yet the relationship in the sense of role is not obliterated by this. There is no mutual submission in their roles.

My argument on this has been the master is in authority, the servant has to obey, both having a Master in heaven who will judge them if either of them is disobedient to these instructions.

Marriage parallels this: the husband is the head, and the wife has to submit (not obey!), both of them also having a Head who is in heaven who will judge them. There are duties placed on the husband that are not placed on the wife.

Finally there are fathers and children. Another example of submitting to one another, but not everyone to everyone mutually.

Perhaps it would be nice if the NT banned slavery altogether. To gain freedom is the legitimate goal and is encouraged. On the other hand, the Son of Man came to serve rather than be served, which adds a dignity to serving others that you don’t get by grasping for power and influence.

Now in the gathering of the church for worship and ministry, there is a kind of mutual submission, a deferring to one another, for example prophets giving way to each other. And the distribution of gifts in a church of Jew and Gentiles, male and female, slave and free is sovereignly given irrespective of their origin or status in life. Nevertheless, in the home and at work, these distinctions remain valid. There may be neither Jew nor Gentile when it comes to justification by faith in Christ, but the Jew does have a different status in the overall economy of God in that they are the natural branches.

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@ Ken:

Slicing and dicing scripture into male and female does a great disservice to the good news of freedom.

Wondering if you may have overlooked my post about attitudes and behaviors common to all believers regardless of age, gender, or ethnicity in the Al Mohler thread here:

http://thewartburgwatch.com/2015/10/09/al-mohler-adds-another-volume-to-his-impressive-stack-of-books-guest-post-by-todd-wilhelm/#comments

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On the downside, Scumbagchester United have just scored. Never mind.

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Ken wrote:

Your critique of Mohler on gay rights suffers from the fact you haven’t read the book and are assuming you know what stance Mohler will take on it and why. He is actually very critical of heterosexuals and what they have done to marriage in this regard.

Mohler is very anti-adult-hetero single.

Mohler, like many conservative Christians, has turned marriage, the traditional family, and natalism into Idols, and disparages anyone who does not marry and who cannot or choose not to have a kid.
The Bible does not scold or shame the single, childfree, divorced, or childless, however.

See this page (mentions Mohler’s bigotry against hetero adult singles):
Is Singleness a Sin?.
http://www.crosswalk.com/11621125/

Also do a Google search for this title:
Single and Evangelical? Good Luck Finding Work as a Pastor
(hosted on New York Times)

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@ Ken:
Post Script.

Ken said, Perhaps it would be nice if the NT banned slavery altogether. To gain freedom is the legitimate goal and is encouraged.

Gender Complementarianism is Female Slavery. I broke free of it years ago. Even you’re saying here that seeking freedom is “legitimate.”

I was not a truly free being with full agency under gender comp.

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Ken wrote:

There are duties placed on the husband that are not placed on the wife.

What are those duties?

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Daisy wrote:

Gender Complementarianism is Female Slavery. I broke free of it years ago. Even you’re saying here that seeking freedom is “legitimate.”
I was not a truly free being with full agency under gender comp.

Years ago as part of DV training for volunteers, we showed a documentary that featured women who had killed their husbands after years of abuse. When asked how prison was affecting her, she replied (paraphrased) that at least she could go to the bathroom without asking permission. No joke! Extreme? Maybe…maybe not. No one knows what goes on behind closed doors.

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@ numo:

I have thought the same. No marriage ceremony or marriage mentioned there at all.

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@ Ken:
You did not respond to the points I made in my comment to you, so I will restate them. Your basic argument is that female subordination may be inferred from the admonition to wives to submit themselves to their husbands. By that same reasoning, the legitimacy of slavery may be inferred from the admonition to slaves to obey their masters. But no one who can think nowadays would make such a ridiculous argument about slavery. Why do you make that argument to sustain your position on female subordination? Female subordination is not found in Genesis 1 or 2 before the Fall. Female subordination is a sinful result of the Fall, not a divinely instituted order. As I’ve asked you so many times, where in Genesis does God ordain female subordination? The argument is entirely circular, yet you will not outline how you remove the circularity from your reasoning.

Second, what does it mean that a wife has to submit but that does not mean the same thing as obey? I do not understand the distinction between obligatory submission and obedience.