Some notes after an exciting class

Maybe you already appreciate this, but what I really have been hearing when I see scriptures about God separating the Jews as a people unto Himself . . . other than the obvious jealous, holy God.  Other than the obvious, I think sometimes about the Hebrew language that we are reading the Old Testament in.  I wonder if part of God's molding the Jews as a people was his desire to mold the language that He would make Himself known in.  Was it Orwell's book "1984" in which we/i are/was taught that without language for some concepts, we lack the ability to think of those concepts?  How careful, therefore, was God as He crafted the language in which He would progressively reveal Himself over hundreds of years.  I keep thinking this as I remember that Hebrew, tell me if I'm wrong, combines the words faith and faithfulness.  To me this says that, to God, the best faith is not some huge feeling that I can have that totally believes that He is going to come through for me . . . no, no, no . . . the faith that He wants from me is faithfulness.  Good, because I can really major on big feelings.  But, all the big feelings that I can produce turn out to be mostly hot air and worth little or nothing at all.  My dad is like God.  He comes through, day after day, rain or shine.  He is faithfulness incarnate.

I come from a family of language lovers.  I wrote an unsuccessful governor's scholarship application long, long, long ago about how our language both leads us and follows us.  Those who want, for instance, more pornographic speech in the media make the argument that they are simply following the language of the people.  That's a circular argument, though.  The more rich, deep and wide vocabulary that is used by the media's characters of the day, the more society will follow those characters, seeking to be more literate and well spoken.  The more that our characters replace every other word with a cuss-word, the more we will lose our ability to think of anything besides what those cuss words describe, immorality.  If you follow the language, the language will follow you in a never-ending spiral.  Therefore, someone, at some point, needs to set a determined course.  What would B. F. Skinner call them?  I forget.

I believe that a lot of our future will be written in fiction.  Short stories and fairly short novels.  Who will be the Grace Livingston Hills of our generation?  Have you ever read what that woman wrote?  She calls us back to a civility and sobriety and godly character that I have never seen or known.  Reading her books is like taking a shower.  . . .  It's like The DaVinci Code threw down the gauntlet.  We have to write better fiction that glorifies His name.  Better fiction, I say, because the children of today only argue with facts.  They don't believe in facts.  They believe that for every set of facts, there are more facts that are just as reliable that say the opposite thing.  They've seen too many facts disputed.  Therefore, they don't trust facts.  They trust good fiction.  They don't know that they do it, and would deny it if convicted.  They don't want to trust anything, but they find that they have to trust something.  So, they trust good fiction for lack of anything else to trust.  At least some kids are like this.  This is what I see in my family, my nieces and nephews and brother and sister.  And I can say little or nothing.  I seem condemned to simply watch and pray.  Listen to me.  I have the power of Almighty God . . . well, I wouldn't say it was mine to command, but He says You have not because you ask not, or ask with wrong motives.  I have a relationship with God in prayer.  How could I ask for more?

Again and again tonight, the teacher kept marveling at the lack of leadership that Jacob exercised in situation after situation.  I suspect part of this was brought on by the presence of too many women in his household.  I don't think that God made any man up to the task of being a husband to 4 wives.  I think that a man's leadership in the home needs to be tended and nurtured by a good wife.  She is prompted by nature to help him be all that the Lord has made him to be when she sees how much she needs him for.  But, in a house with 4 women fighting for dominance, who would bother to think of Jacob's place in the pecking order? 

In the Baptist church, it seems that we honor men for what they become.  Then, once we have already seen something in them, then we make them deacons and pray for them and cultivate leadership in them.  I don't know if I saw what I thought I saw in the Church of Christ when I was going there for a while, but it seemed like they had more of a practice of grabbing their younger men, before the world had a chance to get its hooks in them.  After youth programs, when they are just at that point when our youth start wondering off, at that point, the church of Christ started putting them up in front of the whole congregation to lead in prayer and lead in singing and lead out in things.  Well, we are not the Church of Christ.  But, do you think that, after they graduate high school that we could maybe start teaching our post-youth leadership classes, very different sorts of leadership for men and women.  For men, clear-cut leadership classes how to become the best at whatever God has created them to be.  For women, submission/leadership, what Beth Moore describes as the godly discipline of influence, something so powerful that it must be used with care.  I don't know about the women.  The women's ministry understands a lot better what the girls need to be taught than I do.

Intolerance . . . is it really a bad thing?

This is a reply I wrote to Northern Tribe's post that I liked so much I decided to post it here. I'm not sure it makes sense, but I really enjoyed writing it. Sometimes I work out what I think as I write. So . . . be patient as you read.

I appreciate attempts to defend Christianity, as I am a wholehearted Christian. But your logic just doesn’t work for me.

Sometimes individual Christians are backwards, intolerant, unenlightened and generally ignorant about the faith they profess to hold. When that is the case, people everywhere need to not condemn Christianity but to adopt sort of a “suffer the little children” attitude (even though they are not truly little children, they perhaps haven’t had some of the same advantages some of us have). That’s a matter of individual Christians, though

When it comes to Christianity as a whole being an intolerant religion, well, then the question really comes down to whether Christ is tolerant. Two questions even. Is Christ tolerant, and what is tolerance? We’ve culturally made tolerance a synonym for kindness almost. Christ is kind certainly, and loving. But love and kindness are not tolerance.

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that ‘God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth.” But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

Christianity lives to proclaim the Word of God. That Word says that some men “walk in darkness” and some “walk in the light.” Light and dark are intolerant of each other. “And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore . . . on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” Yet, to continue the metaphor, if, in reaching out to the darkness, the light were to become dimmer and dimmer and dimmer, more and more gray in an attempt to appeal to darkness, then . . . it would lose its appeal. We are called to be salt and light. “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.”

Your argument seems to be that Christianity is an excellent religion and therefore cannot be an intolerant religion, that it is tolerant of every kind of sinner and Pharisee and therefore cannot be an intolerant religion.

My argument is this. Every religion that makes a bit of sense is intolerant, that’s why there are so many wars fought in the name of religion. Religions are BY THEIR VERY NATURE intolerant of other religions, otherwise they don’t make any sense. If your God is the VERY GOD OF VERY GODS, then admitting that any other religion could possibly be true and right and valid, any other religion who claims that THEIR GOD is THE VERY GOD OF VERY GODS, well tolerance of another religion is just another word for unbelief in your own religion. That’s partly why tolerance is our cardinal virtue these days, because we children of fighting parents value lack of conflict so much and belief in anything so little. As a result, we have a generation without God searching everywhere but the church for something spiritual.

Nosey workers compromise candidates passport data, . . so what?

I turned on my computer today to learn that the top story in the nation was that the candidates passport data had been compromised. I thought about what is on my passport. Hmmm. Not much that I don't tell people all the time. Okay, if it was my passport, I wouldn't care if anybody looked at it, just so long as they didn't print out the info and sell it to somebody who would steal my identity.

I thought that maybe there was actually more in this record that was looked at than I was aware of, but yahoo's article said . . . or maybe it was the AP's (I didn't look) said specifically,

It was not clear whether the employees saw anything other than the basic personal data such as name, citizenship, age, Social Security number and place of birth, which is required when someone fills out a passport application. The file also includes date and place of birth and address at time of application. Agency officials said the files generally would not list countries the person has traveled to.

THIS is NEWS??? Who cares that somebody snooped around and discovered things they could have probably found out easily by just going to the candidates home page.

Pilgrimage

PILGRIMAGE
I shout to You, Lord Steadfast!
Don't turn off your audio feed.
God, if I don't hear from You
I might as well die. What's the use?!?
Are you listening as I cry out for help
Do you have compassion today?
I cuddle up to your sanctuary
I grasp your light pole and won't let go.
Lord, don't settle me with the filthy?
with those who consult spirits
who dress nicely and speak sweetly
but whose inner springs are bitter
God, who am I to say repay them
My own history is filled with verbal violence
God, please teach us not to sin.
Please forgive them for their deeds.
Oh, God, heal our evil, broken land
God, for Your Son's sake, repay only those who cannot be broken
Dear God, let us all be taught as we see them punished
God, I plead for my nation
Give us a regard for Your word yet, Lord
Lord, we revere the supernatural
Teach us to praise Your name with joy and gladness
Teach us to worship You in Spirit and Truth
Lord, we are nothing
You are everything
We are a blip on the pages of history.
We have exalted our country
Forgive us for our pride
Our country is good
Use us as You will
Mold us and make us after your plan
Let us not be prideful as a country or as a people
Let us not confuse Christianity with Americanism
America was founded by pilgrims and strangers
pilgrims are ones on a pilgrimage
Lord, we have settled down and become fat and sassy
Lord, teach us to be pilgrims once again. Amen

Cussing

I was just looking through some scriptures on holiness for something that I was thinking about writing when, what do ya know, something jumped out at me. Well, as anyone who reads this blog much knows, I exaggerate a little. Okay, exaggerating is something of a way of life for me. Things are rarely just what they are. That would just be so Boring. They always have to be like something else.

But, anyway.

What jumped out at me were three killer verses on cussing. So, what's the big deal about that, you say? I know people who claim that there's no prohibition in the Bible against cussing. Well, I don't have a terrible foul mouth anymore. Age helps, that and looking like a Sunday School teacher all the time. Here are some thoughts, though.

"Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit." Matt. 12:33 It's not really a good witness, #1. And, #2, this verse seems to indicate that maybe it's evidence of a heart problem. I mean meaningless expletives wouldn't be a problem, but expletives that degrade the body, God's temple, seem destructive.

"The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks." Luke 6:45 No explanation required.

"If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you." John 15:19 Everytime I open my mouth, I'm giving the world a reason to hate me or love me. Jesus tells me to be ye therefore perfect or holy or mature, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect, or holy, or mature. However you interpret Matt. 5:48, I just don't know. When I combine it with John 15:19 and all these others, the maturity or holiness or whatever just doesn't seem consistent with a potty-mouth. Would the Pharisees have been quite as threatened if Jesus had been out preaching on the hillside using filthy, adolescent language?

possibility of homosexual change

The American Psychiatric Association's website says that "[T]here is no published scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of 'reparative therapy' as a treatment to change one's sexual orientation. The potential risks of 'reparative therapy' are great, including depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior." Currently, I'm in therapy. A lot of the course of my therapy has involved depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior. Therapy is hard. Depression and anxiety are like the grinding of the therapy gears. Occasional self destructive behavior is like the sparks that hard working gears throw off. What I'm trying to say is that most if not all very involved therapy involves, I would think, depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior. Why would this be a problem? Are gay men too big a wimps to undergo therapy because it's hard? If we really respect them as people, then shouldn't we encourage them to seek what will make them better socially fitted to their surroundings? No matter how we rage, their surroundings are never likely to change all that much. It seems a kindness to encourage change.

Paige Patterson

Why does everybody in blog-land hate Paige Patterson so much? I just read this long diatribe about him on Baptist Blogger. So, he's rich! I thought that riches were right up there next to godliness in the Baptist hierarchy. I mean, so many BMWs (correction, rich-looking cars) roar past me as I walk home from Baptist events. Is it just easy to take pot-shots at a symbol of excessive wealth, while we all have our own little ungodly excesses at home that the Lord is convicting us of and we're not doing anything about?

Albert Mohler

I gotta say, my first contact with this guy was when I heard him talking about how evil shows like House and Fight Club were. I love things that make me think, so I was seriously not too crazy about this right wing nut. Well, since then, for one thing, I've just about stopped watching House.

I would have sworn that the character of Gregory House didn't start out like he is now. Mr. Mohler is right about him now, though. On the pretext of being for evolution and science and against anything resembling sentiment or selflessness, he's just become juvenile. Fight Club made me believe that following evolution to its end (not that I'd ever want to do that) meant chaos and the collapse of civilization. House has just made me believe that following evolutionary theory to its end just means a bunch of adults playing childish Lord of the Flies games.

Anyway, I've already written about all that. What really kills me is Al Mohler. He turns out to be SO COOL! Seeing as how I just did this whole bit above on atheism, I'll drop a link here to an awesome article that Mohler does on The New Atheism (http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/mohler/1450685/). It's from last November or something, but it's totally awesome. His new blog is pretty excellent, as well. It's at http://www.albertmohler.com/ Oh, man, how does he consistently find such incredible topics? Blows the mind. It makes me feel like I should just be an Al Mohler echo. Not that he's the only one that makes me feel that way. They're all over the internet, once you know where to find them. People of faith who actually have minds and vocabularies, both in working order. Oh, God bless them.

Homemaking at SWBTS

C. B. Scott said: "The B.A. in Humanities with a concentration in homemaking being offered at SWBTS is a needful and timely offering."

I'm not a seminary graduate, and I suppose nobody cares what I think. But, right on, Pastor Scott!

"Saving Grace"

I just watched a couple of the filthiest scenes I've seen on TV on a show called "Saving Grace." I tuned in because of Holly Hunter, the series star. I've seen her do some awesome acting. I was excited to be able to catch her on TV, but this series . . . just didn't seem to know where it was going. Besides the fact that I got to see more of Holly Hunter than I really wanted to see in a couple of sex scenes, besides the fact that the series seemed to be trying to justify this with the name "Saving Grace" and some scenes that were totally peripheral to the plot with some grizzled angel named Earl, besides all that . . . it took too long to figure out what was going on and what the plot was going to be about. It seems crazy to accuse something that started off that fast and furious tonite with starting up too slow, but . . . perhaps the director was going for a sense of disorientation. That's certainly what he achieved.

Though it's too late to trash the name "Saving Grace," I think that "Earl" should only appear occasionally when he's going to be the focus of the show.

Close votes OK in important matters?

The big daddy weave (http://www.thebigdaddyweave.com/) referenced Don Byrd report "that the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference voted to remain affiliated with the Baptist Joint Committee. The vote was 234 (46%) to 279 (54%). I commented on big daddy's site, and I'll repeat it here: When a vote is that close, it seems like God has not made his will clear in the matter. I would think that winners and losers should agree to fast and pray with open hearts and Bibles for a month before taking another vote, so that they might better discern God's will in the matter. Then, whatever the decision is, when it is more clearly God at work, only then should action be taken one way or the other. If we have faith that God can make His will known, then maybe He will.

Fight Club?

Every time I watch Fight Club I get to the scene about God and have to reach out and talk to someone.

How do you save the too smart kids? Does God give up on them? Is God the god of kids who study things like Nietzsche in college and don't have a Baptist Student Union to keep them on the right track?

"Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?"
"No, no"
(Slaps him) "Listen to me! You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, He hates you. It's not the worst thing that can happen."
"It isn't?"
"We don't need Him."
"We don't! I agree!"
"Fuck damnation. Fuck redemption. We are God's unwanted children So be it."

My brother was introduced to this movie by his friend in college, who was so blown away by it that he bought it and showed it to all his friends. My brother didn't buy it but he showed it to all his friends. All this godless bull sounds so smart. How do you minister to kids who have bought into this lie? How do you reach kids who've heard it all, done it all and believe nothing? Are we ignoring "Fight Club", or do we have an answer?

Mindfulness for Kids?

I was taught a little bit about mindfulness at various psychological institutions. I found it useful, so long as it was separated from its eastern religious roots. People I worked with usually didn't try twice to bring up the association with yoga or whatever. I once had a boyfriend who was a karate-instructor. He tried to teach me the value of eastern ways. That was even before I had become a Southern Baptist or gotten saved or anything. I had already begun to read my Bible all the way through, though. I wanted to know what it said before I made up my mind as to what I did or did not think about it. I had always been taught it in bits and pieces. When I read it all the way through, there were a lot of things that I hadn't known were in there.

But, anyway, now they're trying, according to the New York Times, to bring Mindfulness into the grade schools. I don't know what I think about this. Here's the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/us/16mindful.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 I'm afraid that rabidly antiChristian teachers, of whom there are more than a few, are going to use this as a tool to bring Eastern religion into our schools, or simply to make our kids consider all religion of equal worth since what they're learning at school that has come from Eastern religions is definitely worth something. Mindfulness is worth learning, but Eastern religions aren't in the same boat as Christianity. How can we teach Christian children to accept Mindfulness without accepting Eastern religions as equal to Christianity? Oh, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, Mindfulness, as best I can remember, is just a technique for quieting the mind. I remember closing my eyes and concentrating on my breathing. There's probably more to it than that. I've been taught a lot of things, like paying very concentrated attention on my surroundings when I'm outside, smelling every smell, seeing the depth of each color instead of glossing over it all as I concentrate on my inner worries.

Megachurches protesting

I read that Dr. Richard Land is going to be all over the news media, talking about providing uninsured children access to quality healthcare and how that should be a government priority. It seems like our govt. is going broke, whereas my church seems to be quite well off. The govt. generously offers me disability and food stamps and Medicare, whereas the church is really stingy about giving its money to the local poor. My church prefers to send its money on foreign mission trips. It gives some moneys to the local poor, but not anywhere nearly as much as it spends on foreign mission trips. If Dr. Land is saying that there is a need here, I would challenge the Southern Baptist Association to have bake sales and whatever it needs to do to raise the money to meet that need, instead of loading more demands on an already overloaded govt.

The Problem With Blogging

The Problem with Blogging is that I get so wrapped up in the "what to say" of having something to post that I seem to lose all capacity for original thought. Believe it or not, I did, at one time, have that ability, ya know, to think originally. I wind up referencing someone else on my blog just because I agree with them, without having any new thoughts to add. Not wanting to say nothing, I wind up saying the trite and outright stupid just to have something to say. I hate others who waste words in that way. Blogs have made too many of us try to act like things we're not. I'm not a theologian. I'm not a political commentator. I'm not a psychologist. I am simply what I am, a very bright, but emotionally disabled person.

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday

The sanctity of human life moves our emotions deeply.

The opposite view of human life is behind some of the blackest moments in our history.

Does denying life make you subhuman? All human beings are created in the image of God.

What does sanctity mean? Human life is separated to God. We are not simply useful matter. That philosophy has dark consequences.

It is tragic when people suffer and when people are in pain. God give us boldness to wade into the abortion debate again, though we might rather not.

He says "Let there be . . . Let there be . . . Let there be . . . animals. But, He says let Us make people. This is a trinitarian statement. We are created in the image of God, in His likeness. Both genders, male and female, share in the image of God equally.

The attack on gender is an attack on the sanctity of human life.

Attacks on human beings are attacks on God.

We were given a position of dominion. It was given to us to rule.

Children are a blessing from God. Sacred because we are blessed by God in procreation.

Remember that every encounter is significant, because we are all going to either heaven or hell.

Herman Badillo's American Dream

Herman Badillo, the first Puerto Rico born U.S. congressman, is simply sounding to the hispanic community the same cry that Bill Cosby raised in the black community a few years ago. You have to rise up and take responsibility for climbing out of poverty.

This reminds me of a book I read on treating the chronically mentally ill. It advised social workers to listen to us and not always just assume that everything we said was just more evidence of whatever disturbance they'd diagnosed us with. From this article, Stalled in America in http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110009450, it sounds like hispanics and others are getting the same treatment by overworked social workers. Social workers like to pigeonhole people. That can be helpful for getting us help, but it's a model that doesn't allow for growth. I imagine that it is those same workers, with lots of education, but little idea for what actually works that are influencing educational policy that Mr. Badillo objects to. Social workers are not bad. To some extent, I think we need to listen to them more. But, "you shall know them by their fruits." Take advice from social workers in the trenches that you see honestly making changes and advocating for their clients, not from silly lobbyists.

Gettin' Whooped

Well, I'm a Republican; and we got whooped pretty soundly last election. I guess, though I voted a pretty straight Republican ticket, I wasn't really that concerned about winning. It just seems like we already said what we had to say. There is a quiet-spoken moral majority that will vote as a block when it, like a sleeping giant, is aroused. It is not fooled by pretenders with bright smiles and false words. We're not stupid. We've seen salesmen before. We are less concerned with how slick someone seems on camera than how genuine he seems, how true. Not a pretense at "Aw, shucks," folksy charm, a sense that there's something true about a person. We'll be true to such a man through a lot of mistakes.

We're begging for an honest to goodness LEADER, not just another politician. A Churchill would be nice, but we'll take whatever genuine leadership we can find. We are a country of fatherless children and husbandless wives and men who want a strong example set for them. That is as important as all the politics in the world. Bureaucrats run the country. We need a strong father figure to lead the country. Does that sound really wacked out? Am I just bein' nutty 'cause it's too early in the morning to be talkin' politics?

Elections

US Rep. in the 1st Cong. Dist - Stubby Stumbaugh
Governor - Asa Hutchinson
Lt. Governor - Jim Holt
Secretary of State - Jim Lagrone
Attorney General - Gunner Delay
State Treasurer - Chris Morris
State Rep. Dist. 86 - Kelley Linck
County Assessor - Janet Lacefield
JP Dist. 4 - John D. Ayers
JP Dist. 7 - Wade Robson
JP Dist. 8 - Diana Turner
JP Dist 9 - Lynn Lasky
JP Dist. 11 - Joshua Davis
Constable Dist. 3 - Dale Jones

Steve Arterburn

Looking for Mr. Arterburn's own blog yesterday, I found a lot about a remark that had been made about him by Al Mohler, Dean of one of the Baptist seminaries, and a very outspoken conservative commentator. He's worth a listen, though I only agree with him most/some of the time.

I'd like to say just a couple of words (if you know me, you know that'll be unlikely) in Mr. Arterburn's defense. When I first heard that Mr. Arterburn had been married twice, I was appalled that he would be on a show that gives out advice to people about their marriages.

Over time, though, . . . I think of Steve like I think of Bonnie Raitt (my favorite singer). They surround themselves with the very best, and then they know when to speak and when to be quiet, when to play and when to play it straight. The difference, of course, is that what we hear of Bonnie is only the selected bits that she chooses to put on albums. Steve has the courage to come out on the air, unedited, every day, for the sake of giving hope and help to many people. I'll give ya that Steve has some weaknesses, but he's not just putting a load on my back. He's bringin' some people into his studio to help him tell me how to carry the load that I already have. And, those of us who know Steve kind of take his advice on marriages with a grain of salt. Steve just has to talk for a few minutes because it takes Henry 5 minutes to figure out what he thinks. Of course, when he does, it is SO WORTH LISTENIN' TO. But, you can't just have dead air for that 5 minutes. And, they do generally try to point people back to the Scriptures and scriptural principles.

As Paul forgave Mark, maybe you could forgive Steve. He's an encourager to us. He's not always entirely wise (who is), but his kindness and generosity make up for it.

On our radio station, New Life Live follows right after Tony Evans. So, right after Tony hits me up side the head (Like, would you wake up already!), I need New Life to come put ointment and a bandage on the wound and point and encourage me that I am able to do what Tony told me to do.