In Which I Wander Aimlessly and Really Say Very Little

My boy and I were talking. It was a nice night.

I got to talking about an older couple I saw pull into a video store, and how when they were born they might not even have had a television. Now they can waste their lives watching any movie they want at any time. (The thing that blew him away was that there was a time when to see a movie you HAD to catch it in the theater. If you missed its two week run, you might NEVER see it. He could hardly imagine what that was like.) So, we got to talking about the ancient of days, or maybe just the senior of days, I guess.

He is working at a major department store as a cashier, and he has been getting a chuckle out of learning that I'm almost the last person on earth who writes checks. Fewer than 2% of his customers write checks.

He says, "Do you know what a check means to me? It means an 'R.'"

He scores a G when he beats the time limit for the transaction, and an R when he fails. It is impossible to "make" the time limit when the customer chooses to write a check.

I laughed out loud to find out the main thing I mean to the average youth of today is guaranteed ... failure.

Not that I'm anachronistic or anything.

And I wear a fedora no less.

And take it off upon entering a building.

There's no hope for me.

The other chuckle came when he pointed out that native languages are dying at the rate of 2 per week, and the rate is accelerating. Now to me, that means that the end is near as we close back in upon the state of man that led to Babel. And I'm already leary of how the Internet is drawing us all so much closer together. Even as I sit here typing, I can't help but think, "No good will come of this."

If only I believed in the basic goodness of man, but I don't. I believe that if you let 6 billion people all communicate freely, they will just come up with some new way to exploit each other and a significant minority of them will find a way to justify their remorseless greed. I'm reading a little about the Irish troubles lately, and the degree of cruelty inflicted by man on man and woman is just crushing.

The expectation is that the last three languages left standing will be English, Mandarin and Spanish.

I chuckled when it occured to me that our very last language should be Manglish (the last -ish is the Spanish.)

This is not nearly Milliworthy, but I had to tell someone about the checks and the Manglish.

A Challenge to the Usual Evangelistic Message

What does this passage mean to the usual evangelistic message?

Ezekiel 18:20-22
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live.

Specifically, in light of this common evangelistic threat?

If you’ve sinned, even once, because of whom you’ve sinned against you deserve hell.

Is Laughter a Blessing?

None of you knows me. Not really.

You've not seen me laugh my way through a 2 hour bible study - whether I'm teaching, the pastor's teaching, or no one's teaching. You don't know my reputation as a class clown. I didn't either until a couple nights ago, when the group had a good laugh at me and my bible study stand up routine. So it will seem normal to you that I'm against most laughter, while it might seem odd if you knew me.

The only humor I can ever remember blogging is my Green Pants story, and I'm not sure that caused anyone any side-pain. I tried humor in email years ago, and it never, ever worked predictably. My humor is dry enough without taking away all non-verbal clues. So, to the best of my ability, I'm just not funny out here at all. (Tari knows of once when I flat-out mocked a troll, but I don't know of any other time I risked hurting someone's feelings for a joke.)

I'm hyper-sensitive on the subject anyway. I doubt it will surprise anyone that I was the least popular kid in my class from 2nd to 12th grade. I pretty much deserved it. I was a thin-skinned, self-righteous prick, and I doubt I would have liked myself, but everyone else was quite sure. So, laughter was always what other people had at my expense.

So, when Lingamish posted, Whoa to You Who Laugh, he had my attention. I linked over from Better Bibles Blog, and was pretty much taken in. He is spoofing things I hold dear. Never a lot of fun. I didn't figure out he was poking fun until the last few lines of the post, which is of course how a good spoof should be. Fortunately, he told us to read the obits instead of the comics, and even I could tell he was parodying people like me. Upon finally "getting it" and seeing him confirm his humorous intent in his comments, it left me with that familar old "outside looking in" feeling that the years and my friends have taught me to hate.

Lingamish is a great guy, and his post is excellent and in great taste. I have no complaints for him, the way he's written, the method he employed, or even the indignity of having been "gotten" by his clever work. I didn't enjoy thinking I'd found someone who half agreed with me, only to discover I was pranked, but the victim isn't really supposed to enjoy the prank. They just laugh to show they're good sports. I guess I'm not one.

You can read my comment at his site, and tell me whether you think there's any truth in what I said.

Here's my opinion. I don't think it's funny unless everyone can laugh from the heart. There are mountains of wordplays and insights and victories in which everyone can rejoice and laugh. But those don't get the glory here in America. In America, someone has to be pranked. And all those allegedly funny movies are based upon someone being the fool. If there's a fool, it isn't funny. If there's a fool, you are laughing because you're glad it's happening to him and not you. Of course, it's pretty easy to hold that line when I've spent a lifetime as the fool.

In my family, I'm held in pretty low esteem because I don't think "Something About Mary" was funny. There are parts of the show where I laugh, but it's laughing against my heart not with it. All the laughter of that movie is of the type described by Heinlein in this not-famous-enough quote, "I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting."

So, if you feel like a challenge today, take a little read of Lingamish's post and see whether you think it should be taken more seriously than he meant it. (And it's OK if you think it's just funny. :-)

Quick Book Review: Why the Jews Rejected Jesus

I don't know exactly what I expected when I bought this book, but I bought it twice. I saw it, and thought it looked fascinating so I picked it up. When I got home, I found that I had already reached that same conclusion some time in the past, because I had another copy already waiting on me.

Any book I buy twice, I figure I'd better read.

It was a Jewish perspective on why the Jews universally reject Jesus, and I found it fascinating.

The author would kick my butt in a debate, and he would make me feel pretty good about myself while he was doing it. He is well read in Christianity and Judaism both. Most Jews frankly don't know any more about their faith than most Christians do about theirs. Not so with David Klinghoffer. He knows his subject deeply enough to impress me to no end. That doesn't prove much, but I learned a LOT reading his perspective on Judaism throughout all history.

Talmud, Midrash, Minim, and a few more terms really mean something to me now, and I appreciate that fact immensely. I now know why Rabbi's have a couple of completely unrelated names, too. Their names are 4 words long so often that the turn them into acronyms, and just say the acronym instead. Who knew. :-)

The first half of the book reads like a synagogue must have sounded a couple months after running Paul out of town when the nicest guy gets up to speak. Paul doesn't get a real chance to answer for himself in this book, and Klinghoffer compiles every single argument against him and presents it with kindness and certainty. I really have a completely different feel for what Paul's arguments with the Jews must have sounded like.

And his arguments are compelling.

I make no bones about it. If he could also convince me that Jesus did not rise from the dead I would convert.

He really pulls together the whole atheistic melange of arguments against Christ being God and combines them with a common sensical, context driven commentary on the old testament prophecies the new testament puts forward to prove Jesus is the Messiah. He paints a vivid picture of Jesus as a normal rabbi with super-normal insights, but who failed in His final deluded attempt to prove He was a Messiah. He shoots down every commonly used prophecy, including all those quoted in the new testament (since he considers it twisted history).

When he gets to Paul, he irenically eviscerates his cunning plan to gut Judaism while verbally protesting his good intentions.

The second half of the book is medeival history, and pretty interesting.

The last bit of the book is where he uncorks his secret. He believes that God is actually using Christianity to pave the way for the Jewish Messiah to return, and credits Judaism's rejection of Christ with the success of Christianity. He is, of course, correct about that last bit. So, Klinghoffer wants to see an ever warming union between Christianity and Judaism as we move closer to seeing the truth of what Messiah ought to be.

I recommend this book to people who want to really feel the passion and see the reason of the Jewish rejection of Christ. It was an easy read except for the objectively, even kindly, rendered insults to our Lord. Be warned, though, this book could convert you.

Are You As Smart As A Harvard Student?

Maybe you wouldn't have to be too impressed if you were.

The average college freshman fails this test of civic literacy. Unfortunately, so does the average college senior. The most telling fact of this whole experiment is how little better students did with 3 years of learning under their belts. Harvard seniors did best, scoring an average of D+ on the test.

There are 60 questions, and I found them quite challenging. I scored an 85%, missing 9 questions in all (detail supplied because it's not a test of math.) You can miss 25 questions and still be doing better than most college seniors.

Enjoy (if this is your kind of thing.)
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org./resources/quiz.aspx

HT: The Kruse Kronicle
To see all the results and guess at your own interpretations of what they mean, visit here:
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org./report/tables.html

Biblical Monarchy - Protestants Unite

Suzanne hits ANOTHER one out of the park regarding the foolishness of the modern Christian interpretation of male headship.

Council for Biblical Hierarchy

Enjoy.

What's "Alive"

I pass an abortion clinic on the way home every day. They have a bunch of carefully worded no trespassing signs around, including ones that make it very clear standing in their parking lot is a no-no unless you're a patient. And every couple months there is a bevy of activists hanging around with unpleasant handbill and signs.

It's kind of hard to miss.

I don't think a lot about it. I stand convinced that abortion is a violation of God's gift to man, but abortion's been around for a long, long time and I don't see Paul or Christ spending a lot of time on it. Your mileage may vary, and I stand with brothers and sisters who stand against abortion, just not for very long. The church is in much worse shape than reproductive sins in my mind.

But as I drove by there was a young unisex person leaving the building and locking up. Surrounding (let's say) her were 4 or 5 children of various ages, and it was hard not to notice the incongruity. These children were skipping and laughing out of a place they might not have survived had they been there barely a handful of years earlier.

It was shocking.

The question that came to mind for a young lady considering "the procedure" was, "What if it's alive?" I mean my arm is living, but it's not alive. If you cut my arm off, you hurt me but you don't hurt it. It cannot hurt. Only I can hurt, because I am alive. My arm won't fight to stay alive after it's been disconnected from me.

What if the viable tissue mass ejected in the procedure is alive? Like those babies laughing and skipping are alive?

Could you sign the papers then?

What Is Love?

I finished watching Federer dodge bullets and come out a straight set winner, and left for a walk last night. It had been raining all day, and the air could not have been much heavier.

As always, I walked down to the tennis courts first. It's where I always go when I'm thinky, and I was that and a little bit last night. It was kind of silly to walk down there, since my knee is still suffering some tendonitis and I had on bad shoes, no knee brace and no rackets, but that's never stopped me before.

Yep, there was a threesome of cunning codgers there, all of whom I know pretty well.

So in bad shoes, with a bad knee, a borrowed aluminum racket, and strokes that I KNEW were going to give me trouble, I got out on the court.

How do people say "no" to anything, anyway?

I was right. My strokes were appalling. I just finished a tennis camp where every one of them was reworked completely, and I'm still trying to settle them in. With match pressure on me, and no warmup, I was hitting awfully.

We won 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.

I can't help it. Love makes a man do silly things.

The Spiritual Girdle

Weekend Fisher poses an issue around Psychology or Spiritual Direction. Along the way, she takes some pretty tough shots at therapy.

I've got my own thoughts on counseling, and I have definitely benefited from extended periods of professional counseling. I recommend it, and don't know that WF doesn't.

Still, her criticisms of the therapeutic relationship bring back to mind the biggest opportunity the church has to change the world. If I wanted to develop deep relationships within my church, I would have to do so outside of anything the church fosters. The members of my church live too far apart - geographically, emotionally, daily, and life-objectives wise. About 4 hours a week, we learn things together. The other 164 hours, we are as far apart from each other as I am from my neighbors.

(Larry Crabb wrote a book, "Connecting," which was just brilliant on the subject of how the church can build healing relationships within its own walls. I strongly recommend this book to any church. I'd link my review, but none of my searches says I ever wrote such a thing. Ah well.)

I continue to grow more convinced that the church is the tiny bonds that grow up between saints, and not the organization the saints attend at all. It's our relationships more than our organization. That organization could be doing so much good and facilitating precious bonding. Instead, it facilitates learning. You can get learning from a book. Why waste precious time on something so simple?

It takes time to get really raw with someone, to expose the stuff that scares you the worst and to see whether it's as ugly as you fear. That won't happen when you meet three times a week in a learning environment. It just can't. We need to be eating together more. We need to be playing together and shopping together and doing home repair together. This habit of stuffing the ample body of Christ into a girdle of spirituality is killing us.

Living in the State of Denial

Mt 16:24
Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

It's sometimes easier to take up your cross than to deny yourself. That cross is pressed upon you. You find yourself cast out from your brothers and sisters for no good reason; you find yourself buried and hopeless in a marriage; you find an enemy taking shots at you at work. All of these things are forced upon you, and so is the dignity to bear them.

Self denial is never forced upon us.

And it is nigh unto unreasonable to deny myself. The creation is good. Why deny my part in it? Why live without any of the many blessings God made for us joy? And yet, the Lord says to deny myself. Why?

I am exploring this in my life right now, so I may as well blog on it just a little. I am considering a denial, and not sure whether it is a valuable exercise. So, what you have here in this little post is not an answer, but a guess. I do this all the time. I hypothesize something, and try to live it out and see whether it works. I also pray for wisdom and search the scriptures, but in the end it's a guess.

Here's my guess on denial.

Denial is how you release the dross so you can hold the gold.

Let me take television as an example. Watching television burns fewer calories than sleeping, and it puts the brain into a state of lethargy that is almost unparalleled in human existence. It is a remarkable device with incredible power.

Many people decide to deny themselves the television. They figure anything that much fun and that unproductive cannot be good, so they give it up for lent. Some actually stick to it, while most eventually go back. But denial for its own sake never works for me. I deny myself the television for blogging. (In case you've ever wondered where I find the time to be so verbose, I never turn on the television, and voila - instant time.)

If I deny myself the television because it allows me to do something much more valuable, opening my heart and thoughts to my brothers and sisters, then there's a reason. There's a profit.

Jesus stood by the Samaritan well, and said that he had other food than His disciples, to do the will of His Father. He did not say, "I deny myself food. I beat my body to release My Spirit. I am above physical needs because I AM a spiritual man." Instead, Jesus explained His self-denial by referencing that which He gained.

It's an opening thought. Maybe I will have more some day.

Lord bless.

Time

There's so very little of it.

Tonight I'm in a bit of a funk. Yesterday I lost my first tennis tourney. It was a very good loss, to the #4 player in all of Central Ohio, so I'm quite proud of it. Still, I poured a lot of emotion in, so today I've got that hung over feeling. My knee feels like it may never heal (it will), I feel like I may never be happy again (I am already) and writing feels like I'm climbing an infinite number of stairs on my fingers.

All that said, it's really a pretty good week and a pretty good night. It's so good there's hardly any other news to report. I was excited because the dentist gave my boy a clean bill of health. If you know any of the details about him, you know that's more than normally exciting.

Anyway, since I typed so much over at Karen's place tonight, I may be done for the week here. I will probably get back to the Lord's Supper posts at some point. I dearly love that whole subject. Tonight, though, I would have to visit the examining ourselves before we partake - and I should probably not write on that in this mood.

Come to think of it, I probably shouldn't have written so much about predestination over at Karen's in this mood. I think I'll worry about that all night. It will help to focus. ;-)

(Is anyone else COMPLETELY INDESCRIBABLY SICK of having to type the stupid word verification twice EVERY time you post?????? If you don't finish within about 30 seconds, it tells you you typed the letters wrong. They're lying! Why don't they just come out and say, "You typed for too long. Now you have to word verify twice. Sometimes, I even submit short comments without typing the letters, because I know it's going to say I'm wrong about what I typed. Grrr.)

(And I had a thought earlier. At my present age (~half way to death) it seems like weeks fly by in an afternoon. Time just keeps speeding up. I was thinking about how my body used to heal completely overnight, but now it takes 3 days. I bet the slowing down of the internal healing process is directly related to how long a week seems to take. I used to play tennis for 4 hours every day, then the next day I was fresh. Now I play 4 hours every day, but I finally heal from day 1's tennis on day 4. So, 7 days now feels like 28. Therefore, whenever 28 days go by, I think of it as just 7.)

(When I get emotionally hung over, I lose the ability to express myself without losing any of the desire to do so. When I finally succumb to alzheimer's nobody is going to know the difference.)

(Yep. Have to retype the stupid letters again. And I typed that fast!)

The Life in the Wine

Again, I am drawn to leapfrog the obvious. I have to return to the blood of the new covenant. Before that subject can really be seen through, we must talk about blood itself.

Le 17:11
For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.

There is only one reason we bleed.

God gave us blood.

All of life runs in our veins. And the lamb and the bull offered to God as atonement for our evil hearts let their blood instead of ours. But their blood could do nothing for us. It was merely a focus for our faith before Christ revealed the truth. His Blood changed everything.

The Life that was poured out of the Son of God made all His children clean.

Whoops. It's still too early to bring out the new covenant. Instead, focus on the blood itself.

"The cup we drink..."

We take into our bodies the very life of the Lord Jesus. All the pagan rituals of blood drinking pale and fail before this truth of Christ's Life poured out for us, on us, and even into us. The Life is in the Blood, and in the Lord's Supper we join in the communion of His Life.

It is one Blood that runs in all our veins.

It's been years now since I took communion with wine, but I'll always wish for it. The burn of the alcohol drives home the nature of what I'm doing. I'm drinking the Life of a Living Lord. That should burn a little bit.


1) We declare His death until He comes
2) We embrace the breaking of His body for us.
3) We declare our willingness to join Him in suffering.
4) We declare our oneness with every one who's ever known Him.
5) We declare His pleasure with us.
6) We declare the union of our lives with His.

The Two Loaves

Whilst I am yet on the subject of the bread within the Lord's Supper, let me mention the two loaves.

Lev 23:16 & 17
Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD. Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the LORD.

50 days = Pentecost. The Feast of Pentecost was a Jewish feast long before the Spirit ushered in the church on that day and revealed its meaning forever. And yet, so much of its meaning is lost when we talk about the L0rd's Supper.

There were two loaves because of the domestic and the wild olive branches. The Jews are the first loaf, and we gentiles are the second. So, when we tear the loaf, we really should remember that we are tearing both loaves at once. We are one with those who came before us in Isreal. And what's more, this is a picture of how the Lord's Supper transcends ALL time. We show ourselves one with Abraham, and with Polycarp, and with Luther and so on. The loaves, and the body of Christ, and the church are all one across every moment - because God is I AM across every moment. It could be no other way.

Note also a couple things about the loaves. They are made of fine flour, and they are baked with leaven! How many times have you heard that the Lord's Supper must be taken with unleavened bread? And of course, the Passover meal was indeed taken with unleavened bread. Pentecost came 50 days after the celebration of the firstfruits (it's been too long since I studied all this, and the night grows late, but the details can slide here) so I'll agree that unleavened bread is the star of the Lord's Supper, but give the Pentecost loaves due thought.

They are made of fine flour. This could mean wheat thoroughly crushed by life's hardships, but that would be out of character with the feast. I believe instead that this points to the sweetest and most delicate of breads. This is the church as the Lord celebrates her. These loaves are not to be eaten by man, but are instead waved unto the Lord Himself. These are given to Him (and not burnt, because burning bread is NOT a pleasant aroma to the Lord as is the burning fat of the offering.) Our Lord sees us as a fine flour, and a delicate bread. To us, the bread is unleavened and harsh. To Him it is sweet and fine.

But another word is in order regarding the leaven. In the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the leaven speaks of sin. Every seed of sin must be removed from our houses and our bodies lest it grow and ruin the whole batch. On grain of yeast is enough to make us unable to accept God in to sup with us.

But this is not the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the leavening is not that of sin, but that of Life. The little leaven that leavens the whole batch here is that of the Life of Jesus Christ born in us - and in the Jews of olden days, and in the earliest church, and in the later church, and in those yet to come. The leaven that softens those twin loaves is ONE leaven; it is the Life of the holy God born in us - that which is born of Spirit is spirit.

So, as you take the bread, remind yourself of the sweet savor you are to God. Remind yourself that He partakes of the offering even as you do, and joins Himself to you even as you do to Him. He partakes in the wave offering of our communion together forever, one with each other and with Him.

1) We declare His death until He comes
2) We embrace the breaking of His body for us.
3) We declare our willingness to join Him in suffering.
4) We declare our oneness with every one who's ever known Him.
5) We declare His pleasure with us.

Filling Up the Sufferings of the Christ

There are still more mysteries hidden in this breaking of the body of Christ. The greatest is likely to be that it is not only His body that is torn.

When we tear the bread, we show the sufferings of Christ for His own. But the bread is also a symbol of us, His body, the church.

1 Cor 10:17
For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.

And so, when we tear the bread, we equally symbolize our sufferings at the hands of His enemies and ours. There was a cup of suffering for the Lord Jesus, and there is a cup of suffering for us. The Lord refrained from allowing anyone to share in His cup, but there is a very real sense in which Christ's sufferings were not enough - there are sufferings yet to be paid, and we are privileged to join our Lord in those deep waters.

Col 1:24
Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church:

Php 3:10
That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;

So in our time of communion with the Lord and with the saints, we worship and declare the sufferings of the Lord, but we also declare our intent to join Him at the cross. We commune with His sufferings for us, but we also commune with Him as fellow sufferers.

1) We declare His death until He comes
2) We embrace the breaking of His body for us.
3) We declare our willingness to join Him in suffering.

His Body Torn for Us

In the Lord's Supper, there are a number of hidden mysteries.

One of them is hidden in the bread. Please allow me to leapfrog the obvious. We are, all of us, the grains of wheat that become the bread. This is why they call this meal, "communion." In it the bread shadows the church - a single, nourishing whole made from many.

1 Cor 10:16
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?

And the bread explicitly shadows the body of Christ.

1 Cor 11:24
And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.

The bread that we share together should be whole at the start of the Supper, and it should be broken as it is passed around. We must tear His body to be healed in our own. The tearing of the bread is a moment of deep reflection, because there is no healing, no salvation, no hope for us if His body is not broken and torn for us 2000 years ago. It is no use being like Peter and forbidding the Lord to die. We must embrace His sacrifice and can offer only the sacrifice of thanksgiving to Him.

1) We declare His death until He comes
2) We embrace the breaking of His body for us.

Are All Witches Evil?

... or just the evil ones?

A question asked on a tennis blog I frequent.

but is every witch evil? maybe some of them are just wise women, carrying the wisdom of a long forgotten past?

If anyone else comments, I'll add my 2 cents.

Proclaiming A Death

WooHoo! Last Sunday I was asked to talk for 2 minutes about the Lord's Supper. (I had a full hour to prepare, so I felt really, really lucky. :-) As I was thinking about what to say, I was just buried by all the little 2 minute notes I could put out there. Before I was done, I guessed there must be a dozen.

Needless to say, I will have to see whether I was right!

Since it was the one and only chance I will probably get, I decided to go for the safest bet. Here's what I said on Sunday.

---
There are so many things to talk about with the Lord's Supper. There's the two loaves waved by the priest in the old testament, the crushing of the wheat to make the bread, the wine/blood flowing through all our veins. I really struggled to decide what to talk about, but I'm going to talk about the last verse of the passage the pastor always reads before we share the supper.

1 Cor 11:26
For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he come.

Taking the Lord's Supper is the most intimate act of worship you will ever do. In taking it, you share the body of the Lord, and you mingle His blood with yours as a body of believers. In that moment, you become one with each other and with Him.

And as you take the bread and the wine, you are declaring something to all the world. Together, you are telling the world that Jesus died - and that is a huge declaration. From the moment The Word said, "Let there be light" until the moment He rolls this old creation up and begins again, there will never be a greater event than the death of the Lamb of God. There is not a greater praise than to declare it.

This is His body broken for us. This is His blood poured out for us.

For love of His Father, and for love of us, Jesus went like a lamb to the slaughter. The King of a Universe He had created laid down His body to be broken. He took on flesh so that He could suffer His blood to be poured out, and by His obedient death He cleansed all things, including us.

By taking this bread and drinking this wine, you declare to the world the supremacy of that sacrifice. Remember that as you remember Him.

About: The Holy War - 1972

I have gotten one review of this piece so far, and it is much appreciated. Dan was able to tell me some of the things about it that were opaque to him as a reader. I will be editing the story to clarify those things, and reposting it.

Outside of that effort, though, I wanted to trot out a couple of my thoughts behind the piece.

Before I get to the interesting thoughts, I guess I need to explain that the city of Codepoke is the whole inner life of a single person. There are a lot of thoughts and feelings and forces going on inside any person at all times. To live inside my head really is like having a little city trading in goods all day long, so for me to characterize all the thoughts, feelings and forces working in my head as people in a city is really easy. I'm not sure that that was really clear in the initial post. It was not to Dan, but maybe it was to others.

First, is the matter of the Lairds. The Lairds make all the decisions in Codepoke and have the final say on everything. (If you didn't catch it, "Laird" is a Scottish pronunciation of "Lord," and he is the father-figure leader of a Scottish clan. In proper use, the Laird is always singular, but I took liberty and made them plural, because there's always a debate about everything in my heart.) Most people would place the "will" of man in the position of decision-maker. I don't see things that way, and I'm pretty sure the scripture doesn't either.

KB made another penetrating comment a while back, and I threatened to write a post about it. I don't know when I will actually do so, though I have started the research. The core of my post will be simple. When I did a text search for "will" in the bible, I stumbled upon several verses that said it was God's will that decided who would be saved, zero verses that said man's will was decided whether or not he got saved, and a couple verses that explicitly said man's will was not involved.

And yet, a decision is made to be saved.

In The Holy War, the way I resolve this conundrum is to separate the Lairds from the will. The Lairds make the decisions, and the "willpower" enforces them. I think we all basically feel that way about ourselves, and I think we are right. When we need to make a decision, we take in a number of facts (how many depends upon our basic personality) and measure our feelings about those facts. Should I go on a diet? Well, I see whether the facts support the need for a diet and whether I feel good or bad about what the facts seem to say. Some facts make me feel good, so I give them more weight. Eventually, "I" make a decision. Yes, it's more important for me to look good and feel healthy than to eat uncontrolledly, so I start a diet.

After the decision is when the will comes into play. The will keeps me on the diet so I don't have to constantly be re-deciding every hour whether to keep dieting. My feelings fluctuate constantly, and if it were not for willpower, I'd change my mind about the diet every time I gained or lost water. But, the will did not actually make the decision. "I" made the decision. And if you want proof of that little assertion, just remember the way you felt the last time you sinned when you didn't want to. Your will can fail "you." A quick reading of Romans 7 even says the will is closely related to the flesh.

So, in Codepoke all decisions are made by "the Lairds."

The Lairds are "me." They are the heart of man, even the spirit of man. Something in me makes choices that don't necessarily align with my reason, feelings or will, and I think it's that human spirit in me transcending the soul. Again, the scripture seems to support such a notion, given that the Word of God can divide soul from spirit.

A careful observer might have noted that the Lairds never really speak. They make decisions and they give orders, but they don't discuss things - not with the townspeople, not amongst themselves, and not even with Christ. They know what they know, they watch and learn what they don't know, and they do what they do. It's really key to me that the spirit in man is always active, always leading, and almost always silent.

So, that's the Lairds, and that's how decisions are made by humans.

Second, I would not blame you for being pretty underwhelmed by a flaming watermelon that keeps floating in the breeze. I could not help it, though. That's a pretty good picture of what happened inside of me.

What, actually, is the melon?

Most simply put, it's the Word of God. It's a seed from which grows the river that Christ promises will flow out of those who believe in Him. It's the seed of a vine tree called the Tree of Life. It's Christ Himself in spoken form. It's light that needs to be planted in the heart of a man to really begin to shine. That's why it's only smoldering at the start of the story, but blazes after embedding itself in the soil of the heart of the man.

And the Word of God works on every part of the man. It works first on the intellect, since the mind is usually the first to reject anything new. When the mind cannot reject the power of the truth, then the feelings start to weigh in on it. And when the verse speaks something truly terrifying, the feelings react with terror. And finally, the willpower wants to play. The will is trying to enforce the law of inertia. The last thing the will heard was that we were doing fine without the truth of God getting all offensive, so it tried to "stay the course" by getting rid of the offensive word of God. The watermelon was going to cause big changes, so the watermelon had to go.

That's always my first reaction to the truth of God spoken into my soul with power.

And of course, the wind blowing the melon around was the Holy Spirit.

Third, the hill and the tower are the heart of man and the holy place within him. Everything flows from that hill, and it's that tower where everything spiritual happens. A long, long time ago some guys decided to build a tower to reach the heavens. God confounded them with many toungues, but that tower was a picture of how we try to ascend into God's realm. We try to build our towers as high as we can, and to spiritually ascend above God.

When we actually find God, and find the way into The Holy of Holies, it's not at the top of the tower. The doorway into the Throne Room of God is at floor level. We don't have to build a tower; instead we find a door (Jesus is The Door) built by God and we simply enter in.

Hence, the unbeliever can declare himself spiritual. He's telling the truth, because he has a tower within him just like we do. His tower lacks any direct connection to God, but it's spiritual nonetheless. That tower within him is getting taller and taller, and may even be vastly taller and grander than my tower. But if there's no door into the Holy Place on the ground floor of that tower, it's just so much human waste (double entrendre intended.)

---

I'm more than a little tempted to tell some more stories of Codepoke. I could tell about the nights that I spent shivering and praying that God would save me from hell, the years I almost drove myself to suicide trying to be the perfect Christian, the vast confusion of falling in love and trying to keep some kind of balance between God and woman and confusing myself beyond measure, entering into a church that was almost purely mental, entering into one that was all about contemplative/centering prayer, divorce; there are a dozen stories I would like to tell from the perspective of that tower and the door into heaven. This first story just put the door in the tower. The story of what that door does, how the flaming watermelons change everything, and the relationship of the Lairds to their Lord intrigues me.

Does this seem like a valuable medium to you?

Praise, Worship and Crow

Milly just posted a bit about whether Praise and Worship style music was good stuff or not. She chose as her example song, "Trading My Sorrows."

Now it so happens that song grates on my idealistic side. It has to be about as practically dodgy as any song I know, and I made my case "for" P&W but "against" Trading my Sorrows.

Wouldn't you know Trading My Sorrows would be the keystone of today's worship service?

And wouldn't you know I would love every minute of it?

It was our second string worship leader and they had done a couple songs with acoustic guitar and light drums. Then I brought up the slide for TmS. I chuckled and got ready for singing. Somehow I missed them switching over to a hardbody electric guitar and amping up the drums. :-)

They launched into the song, and the crowd kind of came along. After the first chorus, the pastor came up and read Isaiah 53 with passion, and had us start again. The crowd really responded well to his encouragement, and we had a great worship session.

I now have to declare that TmS is a very "worshipable" song, and it got to me good today. :-)

Minesweeper - The Perfect End

Yes, it had to happen. I got a tough one. 203 seconds into it, there were 9 boxes not yet revealed, and 4 mines somewhere within them. It had been a slow, hard slog. 242 seconds and one guess with the odds, there were 4 boxes left in the exact center of the board. It's almost never that the last boxes are in the center. The whole struggle emanates from that foundational place, and it is always resolved.

Not tonight.

There were 4 boxes in the exact center of the board, and 2 mines hidden within them. The 10 boxes around them were in a perfect pattern, the likes of which I'd never seen. At each of the 4 corners was a flag, and between each flag was a pair of 2's. If you start in the northwest corner, and work clockwise, the pattern was:
flag
2
2
flag
2
2
flag
2
2
flag (again)

The exact mirroring of clues was both unheard of, and crippling. It was mathematically impossible to determine the position of the final mines. That, of course, is not too rare, but to be flummoxed by order instead of chaos? That's some serious hen's teeth there!

The final position of the mines was assuredly at opposite corners. If the NW corner were mined, then the SE corner would also be mined. Or, if the NE corner were mined, then it would be the SW corner that held the other mine.

The trap was perfect.

There were no clues left. All that remained was gut instinct.

And I guessed ...


... wrong.

My life simply cannot be lived by luck. In the words of that most famous of songs, "If it weren't for baaaaad luck I'd have no luck at allllllll."

;-D