Holidays and Loneliness

I've read a number of people lamenting how many stores and restaurants are going to be open on Thanksgiving Day.  And while I understand the concern, it raises questions in my mind.  Every church and community has people who are single, widows, widowers, or who for some other reason have no family to spend the holidays with.  Are the people who are complaining about stores and restaurants being open reaching out to those people and opening their homes to them?  Or are they hovelling up with their families and refusing to make room for people who don't share their last name?

I realize their are plenty of people who want to be with their families, but are put in a position such that they have to work if they want to keep their jobs.  And that's a horrible thing.  But there are plenty of people who want to work.  The holidays are hard enough for them as it is.  By working, it helps them forget how alone they are.  There are people for whom the only conversation they will have on Thanksgiving will be with the waitress or the cashier.  If you want to know more about such people, you can check out the previous years' holiday suicide statistics.

So yes, it would be nice if the stores and restaurants were all closed on Thanksgiving Day.  But it would also be nice if there was no one alone that day.  Do you befriend people like that?  Do you open your home to them?  If not, then I'm not sure you have any right to tell them how or how not to spend the day.

Charles Hodge on the Limbus Patrum

Interesting thoughts from Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology (Volume III) on the Limbus Patrum, from some study I was doing on the subject recently. He tries hard to distance himself from it. But the things which he does allow for were surprising to me:

"The dead in the Old Testament are always spoken of as going to their fathers, as descending into 'Sheol,' i.e., into the invisible state, which the Greeks called Hades. Sheol is represeated as the general receptacle or abode of departed spirits, who were there in a state of consciousness; some in a state of misery, others in a state of happiness. In all these points the pagan idea of Hades corresponds to the Scriptural idea of Sheol. All souls went into Hades, some dwelling in Tartarus, others in Elysium. That the Hebrews regarded the souls of the dead as retaining their consciousness and activity is obvious from the practice of necromancy, and is confirmed by the fact of the appearance of Samuel to Saul, as recorded in 1 Samuel xxviii. The representation given in Isaiah xiv. of the descent of the King of Babylon, when all the dead rose to meet and to reproach him, takes for granted and authenticates the popular belief in the continued conscious existence of departed spirits." (pg. 717)

"Men may doubt and differ as to what Christ did during the three days of his sojourn in the invisible world. They may differ as to who the spirits in prison were to whom he preached, or, rather, made proclamation (ἐκήρυξεν); whether they were the antediluvians; or, the souls of the people of God detained in Sheol; or, the mass of the dead of all antecedent generations and of all nations, which is the favorite hypothesis of modern interpreters. They may differ also as to what the proclamation was which Christ made to those imprisoned spirits; whether it was the gospel; or his own triumph; or deliverance from Sheol; or the coming judgment. However these subordinate questions may be decided, all that remains certain is that Christ, after his death upon the cross, entered the invisible world, and there, in some way, made proclamation of what He had done on earth. All this is very far from teaching the doctrine of a 'Limbus Patrum,' as taught by the Jews, the Fathers, or the Romanists." (pg. 737)

Biblical Songs of Judgment

We see in the Old Testament a number of songs calling for and rejoicing in God's vindication of His people against their enemies - the Song of Moses, the Song of Deborah and Barak, the Psalms.  In these songs, God's people cursed the wicked and called for their judgment.  Many would say, dismissively, "but that's the Old Testament."  And yet when we get to the Book of the Revelation, we find in ch. 18 a song rejoicing in the judgment of Babylon the Great.  We see, in other words, a pattern of what type of worship music God recommends for us, songs of judgment as much as songs of rejoicing in the goodness of God (and the two overlap).  We say we are Biblical Christians.  Why don't we follow Scripture in this?

The Lord's Prayer in the Wilderness

I admire the young man who quoted the Lord's Prayer during his speech as valedictorian at his high school graduation.  We need more people, young and old, with that kind of boldness.  But we see acts like this every few weeks, celebrate them, and then pick up and carry on with our lives, without asking any deeper questions.  How rare is an act like this?  (Very rare.)  Why is it so rare?  We're celebrating it because it's an odd thing in the public schools.  Why is it odd?  It's odd because a pagan worldview runs the school system.  Here's one kid who made it through with his faith intact.  How many more don't?  We then send our kids to state-run colleges, where a pagan worldview governs everything, and even more kids who grow up in church lose their faith.  Why do we keep letting pagans do the educating?  Why do we keep sending kids to government schools?  For proms, sports teams, the "school experience", whatever that entails?  But isn't the purpose of school to educate a person?  And isn't it so often the case that what dictates our decisions in this, as in other areas of life, is our fear of looking weird to others?  "The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe" (Prov. 29:25).  We define our faith by our feelings and experience, rather than by the truth of Scripture - "you ask me how I know he lives - he lives within my heart".  It is no wonder then that what is most important to us otherwise is experience and feelings, not the content of what is taught in the classroom.  If we want to make a change in our communities and in our world, more foundational issues have to be dealt with.  Otherwise, we will keep doing little more than throwing a bucket of water on a raging wildfire, which is what acts like this largely amount to, admirable though they be.

On the Importance of History

It seems that in our mad rush toward progress and prosperity, we have become afflicted with a malignant contemporaneity.  We don't really have time or patience to ponder the lessons of our legacy.  We are too busy with the present to bother much with the past.  As a result of this morbid preoccupation with ourselves, and its resulting historical ambivalence, if not ignorance, we have virtually locked ourselves into a recalcitrant present.

Thus, the English author and lecturer John H. Y. Briggs has poignantly argued that a historical awareness is essential for the health and well-being of any society; it enables us to know who we are, why we are here, and what we should do.  He says "Just as a loss of memory in an individual is a psychiatric defect calling for medical treatment, so too any community which has no social memory is suffering from an illness."

Lord Acton, the great historian from the previous generation, made the same point, saying: "History must be our deliverer not only from the undue influence of other times, but from the undue influence of our own, from the tyranny of the environment and the pressures of the air we breathe."  The venerable aphorism remains as true today as ever: "He who forgets his own history is condemned to repeat it."

The fact is, history is not just the concern of historians and social scientists.  It is not the lonely domain of political prognosticators and ivory tower academics.  It is the very stuff of life. -- George Grant

The Goodness of God Revealed in Food

Bread is the mystery of our existence. That is why Christ teaches us to pray for our daily ration. One cannot imagine a more practical request. Without nourishment in the mystery of our existence, we die.

My reference is visible bread, smellable bread, chewable bread, bread that will become waste. All true mystery is a down-to-earth business. Only as we begin to appreciate our given metaphors for what they are in themselves do we begin to appreciate their corresponding realities. Sometimes we emphasize a theology of spiritual bread to the extent that we de-emphasize a theology of physical bread. We counter the nature of the Incarnation when we do. The worst of the blunder is that we exalt a lopsided Christ. Sad to say, we who believe in the Incarnation can be as tempted by abstractions as anyone else. Unless we return again and again in faith to the tangible edges of everyday mystery, we disrespect the substance of things not seen. -- Gregory Post & Charles Turner, "The Feast: Reflections on the Bread of Life", pp. 3-4

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A doctrine of bodily nourishment is rampant in Holy Scripture. The fact that the Lord feeds his people is demonstrated throughout both Testaments. The theme is easy to overlook because it seems so mundane. Having designed our bodies to require fuel, the Creator provides that necessity. His benevolence here is consistent with the pattern of grace in which the demands of his law are met by the provisions of his gospel. -- Post & Turner, "The Feast", pg. 4

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Nothing says "home" more appealingly than the earthy frankincense of bread fresh from the oven. A peasant comes home from the field and the promise reaches out through the open door. A stockbroker returns in the evening to his high-rise condo and finds it transformed by the same miracle of basic domesticity. The second example is less likely than the first but, thanks be to God, still possible. Mennonites tell us that the surest way to sell a house is to have bread baking in the kitchen when prospective buyers arrive. The aroma of bread triggers a mood of shelter and sanctuary. Perhaps that is why it welcomes so warmly those who are away from home, be they dinner guests from across town or wayfarers from a distant land. -- Post & Turner, "The Feast", pg. 5

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The goodness of God is not abstract when we sit down to eat.  It doesn't have to be Trout Margery at Galatoire's in New Orleans.  It can be a hamburger and fries at the local McDonald's.  It is visible and tangible.  It is tasty.

The Creator routinely meets us on a sensual level.  Food is provided for our pleasure as well as for our nourishment.  Pleasure, along with every gift that comes down from the Father of Lights, is holy - until indulged in outside his holy law, and then it becomes an end in itself and not an avenue for his glory.  There are warnings against gluttony, of course, just as there are warnings against that kindred selfishness called adultery.  But we trip into the ancient heresy of Gnosticism when we think of physical pleasure as having no spiritual substance.  It is precisely because of imbedded spirituality that rules and signals are necessary.  The Christian who thinks of all physical pleasure as "worldly" blunders as profoundly as the hedonist. -- Post & Turner, "The Feast", pp. 32-33

The Need for Les Misérables

Two "shames" with regard to Les Misérables:

1.) It is a shame that the average Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christian won't see it. They'll go see whatever the latest film pushed as a Christian film is, because it is advertised as a Christian film, pushed on Evangelical radio stations and in churches, and having all the trappings of a Christian film. But Les Misérables has a far richer and clearer presentation of the Gospel than the majority of "Christian" films, without the bad acting, heavy-handed moralizing, and shoddy story telling.

2.) It is a shame that the average man won't see it, because it is a musical. It is rare that we see on screen, or anywhere in media, such an example of what it is to be a good man, a godly man. Jean Valjean shows what it is to repent, to forgive, to live one's life as a defender of the weak, to live sacrificially, and to finish life well. These are things men rarely see at all, but which desperately need to be more visible in our time.