Leon Morris (3/15/1914 - 7/24/2006)

New Testament scholar Leon Morris died this past Monday in Melbourne, Australia. He was 92 years old. He was a prolific author, Scriptural exegete, and participant in the production of the New International Version and the English Standard Version translations of the Scriptures. May our Lord raise up many to fill the place he has left.

The Great Debate

Twenty years ago today, at the University of California at Irvine, the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen debated Dr. Gordon Stein on the existence of God. The debate was amazing, with Dr. Bahnsen winning the debate hands down. In honor of Dr. Bahnsen, let me encourage the reader to get ahold of the debate and listen to it.

Unfortunately, the debate is no longer free online. But if you want to get it, you can purchase it here or here.

Psalm 136 and CWM

Contemporary worship music (CWM) is often accused of being excessively repetitive. This is often carried out further in the actual worship setting by the Worship Leader who, being led by the “Spirit” (or, whatever mood he is in), repeats sections of the songs several times over. When criticized for this, I’ve heard CWM advocates point to Psalm 136 as a justification for their practices and songs. Psalm 136, you might remember, has the phrase “for his steadfast love endures forever” (ESV) repeating as every second line in the Psalm. But when one examines the psalm, a couple of things emerge.

For one, this isn’t a case of a worship leader repeating over and over again until he gets that “worshipful feeling”. This is a pre-composed and pre-written psalm, with no room for improvisation.

For another, if the CWM advocates would pay attention to the alternating lines, they will notice something else missing from their music. The alternating lines are a recitation of Covenant history. The Psalmist (and those singing the psalm) is recounting the works of God in Creation and in Redemption, specifically Israel’s redemption from Egypt and reception of the land God promised them. The psalm is covenantal and therefore corporate-focused. The concern is our salvation, not just my salvation. In the majority of CWM, the focus is on my individual experience of God, not my place in God’s act of saving a people. It is individualistic, and conspicuously Gnostic, focused on inward piety rather than a holistic salvation of a family of people both body and soul.

I have found that even when CWM attempts to address the work of Christ, it tends to be rather shallow in its assessment, not to mention not particularly poetic. I think it would be good for CWM songwriters to spend a little more time in looking at classical Christian poetry and hymnody (particularly pre-nineteenth century hymnody), and contrasting it with the modern aesthetic that shapes their songwriting. If they do that, and honestly begin to question their own practices, they might begin to produce works that will be beneficial to the church.

It might also be wise for CWM advocates to actually let the text of Scripture shape their thinking on these things, rather than running to the Scriptures to find a proof text to justify their practices.

Sarcasm, Part 1

“My family and I don’t really like sarcasm,” a friend said to me over lunch today. “I guess we think there is enough bad in the world as it is.” That is a paraphrase, but you get the point of his statement. It stood out in our conversation like a sore thumb, and I’m still musing on what he meant by it.

My friend is from a certain section of the Reformed tradition that is sometimes called “pietistic”. Such people often talk about themselves believing in “Experimental” (meaning “experiential”) Calvinism. Experimental Calvinism tends to focus on the more relational and experiential side of the Christian life.

I think there is much to draw from this tradition. I’m Reformed, and agree with a lot that is taught by these folks. In fact, I was basically drawn into Reformed theology by these sorts of people. Unfortunately, this tradition also has an element of sentimentalism about it that sometimes keeps it from dealing honestly with the harsher aspects of this world we live in. This sentimentalism proves a barrier to a mature Christianity, preferring to live in the nursery of sectarianism rather than being challenged to grow up and engage honestly with other Christians. I am, of course, speaking in generalities. The same people who are immature in one aspect of their faith may be very mature otherwise. And this is true of my friend. I think his pietism isn’t good, but he is in many ways far more mature than I am.

At the risk of turning this into one of those blogs where the author tells you more than you want to know about him, I will admit that I’ve thought about sarcasm a fair bit myself. I’ve wavered back and forth on the issue to some degree, though sarcasm has characterized my speech in part for years. I don’t have all the answers on the subject. But I will say that to eliminate all sarcasm is to take a position that Scripture simply stands against.

There are many passages we could look at, but let’s just take one – 1 Kings 18, Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal. Most people are familiar with the story. The prophets of Baal and all of Israel gather to Elijah on Mount Carmel at Elijah’s command. The purpose is to demonstrate which is the true God. The prophets of Baal build an altar and begin to call on Baal to send down fire upon the altar. The verse in the passage that most concerns us is verse 27. The King James Version translates the verse this way:

And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.

Now here we have a serious case of sarcasm, and that by a prophet of God. What is even more interesting is the phrase here translated “or he is pursuing”. (I don’t know Hebrew, so I have to draw off the scholars here.) The New King James translates it as “or he is busy”. But both translations obscure the real meaning. The clearer translation is in the English Standard Version, which translates the phrase as “or he is relieving himself”. In other words, Elijah is saying “maybe your God is using the bathroom” or “sitting on the toilet”, if you will.

One thing we learn in reading Scripture, and particularly narrative, is that we aren’t told everything that is said or done. God is selective in the things he reveals to us in His word, and the gaps are often apparent. At this point we have to remind ourselves that this isn’t just the human author making a choice of what to tell us, but it is also God Who inspired the writing. God could have left the whole “mocking” aspect of this event out. He could have left out the words that Elijah used, and just told us that Elijah mocked them. He even could have just left out the statement about Baal “relieving himself”.

But he doesn’t. Why? The modern American Christian, now feeling a bit queasy, has had his nice effeminate image of God set in a tailspin. I don’t know why God chose to tell us this part of the event. There might be some great theological reason behind it, but if there is, I don’t have a clue what it is. One way or the other, here is a prophet of God who, being justified in his defense of God by God’s responding to his prayer a couple of verses later, is laying out some pretty heavy sarcasm against God’s enemies.

I could have picked out other passages. One that immediately comes to mind is God laughing mockingly at the kings of the earth in Psalm 2. But when it comes down to it, to call all sarcasm sin is contrary to the clear example of Scripture.

“Well, sure, it’s okay to mock our enemies,” some might say, “but sarcastic people often even use it on their friends. You can’t find that in Scripture.”

Yes, you can find it in Scripture. But I’ll have to address that at another time.

Happy Birthday, John Calvin

Today is (or, considering the hour, was) John Calvin's 497th birthday. Which means that three years from now will be the 500th. Anybody want to take a trip to Geneva in three years?

Book Study Quote #6

Our sixth book study quote is a prayer to St. Raphael. St. Raphael was the guardian angel of Tobias in the Apocryphal book Tobit. To learn more about Raphael, go here.

Prayer to St. Raphael, Angel of Happy Meetings

O Raphael, lead us towards those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us! Raphael, Angel of Happy Meetings, lead us by the hand towards those we are looking for! May all our movements, all their movements, be guided by your Light and transfigured by your joy.

Angel guide of Tobias, lay the request we now address to you at the feet of Him on whose unveiled Face you are privileged to gaze. Lonely and tired, crushed by the separations and sorrows of earth, we feel the need of calling to you and of pleading for the protection of your wings, so that we may not be as strangers in the Province of Joy, all ignorant of the concerns of our country.

Remember the weak, you who are strong--you whose home lies beyond the region of thunder, in a land that is always peaceful, always serene, and bright with the resplendent glory of God. Amen.

Book Study Quote #5

For our next study quote we take a different direction, this time towards the subject of Purgatory. O’Connor specifically referred to Catherine of Genoa’s Treatise on Purgatory in her letters, so that is where our next quote is from. St. Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510) was a Roman Catholic mystic. For the complete text of the Treatise, as well as a brief biography of her, go here.

The souls who are in Purgatory cannot, as I understand, choose but be there, and this is by God's ordinance who therein has done justly. They cannot turn their thoughts back to themselves, nor can they say, "Such sins I have committed for which I deserve to be here ", nor, "I would that I had not committed them for then I would go now to Paradise", nor, "That one will leave sooner than I", nor, "I will leave sooner than he". They can have neither of themselves nor of others any memory, whether of good or evil, whence they would have greater pain than they suffer ordinarily. So happy are they to be within God's ordinance, and that He should do all which pleases Him, as it pleases Him that in their greatest pain they cannot think of themselves. They see only the working of the divine goodness, which leads man to itself mercifully, so that he no longer sees aught of the pain or good which may befall him. Nor would these souls be in pure charity if they could see that pain or good. They cannot see that they are in pain because of their sins; that sight they cannot hold in their minds because in it there would be an active imperfection, which cannot be where no actual sin can be.

Only once, as they pass from this life, do they see the cause of the Purgatory they endure; never again do they see it for in another sight of it there would be self. Being then in charity from which they cannot now depart by any actual fault, they can no longer will nor desire save with the pure will of pure charity. Being in that fire of Purgatory, they are within the divine ordinance, which is pure charity, and in nothing can they depart thence for they are deprived of the power to sin as of the power to merit.

I believe no happiness can be found worthy to be compared with that of a soul in Purgatory except that of the saints in Paradise; and day by day this happiness grows as God flows into these souls, more and more as the hindrance to His entrance is consumed. Sin's rust is the hindrance, and the fire burns the rust away so that more and more the soul opens itself up to the divine inflowing…

No tongue can tell nor explain, no mind understand, the grievousness of Purgatory. But I, though I see that there is in Purgatory as much pain as in Hell, yet see the soul which has the least stain of imperfection accepting Purgatory, as I have said, as though it were a mercy, and holding its pains of no account as compared with the least stain which hinders a soul in its love. I seem to see that the pain which souls in Purgatory endure because of whatever in them displeases God, that is what they have willfully done against His so great goodness, is greater than any other pain they feel in Purgatory. And this is because, being in grace, they see the truth and the grievousness of the hindrance which stays them from drawing near to God.

The Windows

Here is a poem by George Herbert entitled The Windows which I ran across a couple of months ago. I’m not putting it here for any particular reason other than that I like it.

LORD, how can man preach thy eternall word ?
He is a brittle crazie glasse :
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.

But when thou dost anneal in glasse thy storie,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy Preachers, then the light and glorie
More rev'rend grows, and more doth win ;
Which else shows watrish, bleak, and thin.

Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and aw : but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the eare, not conscience ring.

Occasional Riddle #4

The credit for the following “riddle” goes to my friend Jim Vogl:

If someone is a fan of the Cowboy Junkies, would that make him a Cowboy Junkies junky?

Worship of the State

This coming Tuesday is Independence Day here in the United States. This, in turn, means that churchgoers this Sunday will be greeted with a myriad of patriotic symbols that don’t normally show up on Sunday morning. Many are used to the American flag being always in front of them during their worship services. But this Sunday, that flag will be saluted, or even carried down the center aisle in a procession, even in churches that don’t normally have processions. Patriotic songs will be sung where hymns usually go. Extra prayers will be said for politicians as well as for our troops deployed throughout the world. Most sermons will carry an American theme. In some churches, those sermons will be of the “let’s get God back in America again” variety, complete with the standard talk about legalized abortion and absence of prayer in schools. In some churches, the sermon will be a vague sentiment about what a great country we live in.

And in all of this, very few people will stop and ask why they are doing all those things. It is the Sunday before "The Fourth", after all, and this is what you do.

But why? Why is this assumed to be standard practice? I think the reason, as I mentioned in a previous post, is the victory of statism over society. We live in a country where the state wants to own everything, and we gladly oblige. They own our children. They tell us where and when to send our children to school, what they are to be taught, what they are to do while they are there, and what import this has upon their lives. They own our property. If they want a piece of it to build a superhighway, they tell us they are going to buy it or else take it. “Our” land, apparently, is only on loan from the government. They own our other possessions as well. They tax the money we make, then what we spend it on, and what we leave to our children when we die, if they have left us anything to leave to our children.

And we respond to all this by, every once in a while, giving them the one hour on Sunday morning that God has called His own. Now it is clear that the government wants that hour every Sunday. Whenever a church becomes incorporated in the United States, it gives over the rights to what it says and does on Sunday morning to the state, though thankfully the state has yet to assert its “right”. But the church is not an adjunct of the state. The church, as presented in Scripture, is a whole separate institution. It is instituted by God, with its own laws and its own leaders. The leaders of the state have no authority in the church.

When the Church of Jesus Christ comes together on Sunday morning, it is for one reason alone – to worship the Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. It isn’t to lift up the State as the great saviour of mankind (which it is not).

I recognize that the chances that what I’m writing here will be read by someone in a church somewhere who makes decisions on what goes on on Sunday mornings is very slim. Nonetheless, to those of you who do read this, I encourage you to think through the question and consider it carefully. Pray for your congregation and its leaders. Pray that the pressures of the state will decrease against the church. Don’t be afraid to talk with your church leaders about the matter. And seek to live your own life, insofar as you legitimately can, free from the tyranny of the state.

For a further consideration of the subject of flags and the church, this article written from a Canadian Reformed perspective is well worth reading.

Talking out loud about slips of the tongue

Verbal slips. Everybody has them. We add a letter here, or subtract a letter there. Sometimes we use a word in a sentence in a way that makes no sense, showing that we really don’t know what the word means (“Inconceivable!” – for those who have ears to hear…). Sometimes we trip all over a sentence like an outstretched leg. Sometimes we get riled up and invert a phrase – like my preacher friend who, while talking to me in preacher-mode, told me of something being like “ducks off a water’s back”.

We also have verbal slips that are unique to our region and culture. Here in the South we have a practice I like to call “syllable conservation”. We try to remove all the extra syllables in a word, because speaking is hard work. If you’re really good, you can say a whole sentence with only one or two syllables.

We slip, and our friends all have a good laugh at our expense. At least, we hope they’re our friends.

Maybe I’m easily amused, but nothing gets me rolling on the floor like a good verbal slip. If done right, they can provide hours or even days of entertainment.

I thought I’d post the occasional verbal slip whenever I run across a new one. For now, here are a couple of ones from colloquial speech that I’ve found being used in regular discourse more commonly as of late. I would classify these as more strange than funny, but you can be the judge.

Talking out loud. The phrase was originally “thinking out loud”. I can’t swear to it, but I’m pretty sure I first heard the phrase “talking out loud” being used by a stand-up comedian who was imitating someone, shall we say, less-than-intelligent. Somehow this got picked up such that it is more common to hear someone say, “Oh, I’m just talking out loud”. Which is a bit bizarre to say anyway. All talking is out loud, isn’t it?

Slip of the tongue. The phrase I always heard growing up was “slip of the lip”. You know, “slip” and “lip” rhyme and all that. Then the heavy metal group Whitesnake came out with an album in the late 80’s entitled “Slip of the Tongue”, and it was all downhill from there. This was intended to be a clever play on the phrase “slip of the lip” with additional connotations. Those heavy metal guys are so funny. I hardly hear the former phrase anymore, finding rather that it has been substituted with “slip of the tongue”. It’s rather disturbing that a heavy metal group can have such influence on the English language.

Is anybody else hearing these, or am I just hanging out with the wrong people? Tell me in the comments section. Also, have you heard any other verbal slips? If you have I’d like to hear them, so feel free to put them in the comments section as well.

Can Evangelicals Still Recognize Sin?

In his nationally syndicated column today, Cal Thomas reported on some of the appalling things that took place at the Episcopal Church U.S.A’s General Convention last week. He reported on how the new bishop, Katherine Schori, does not believe that homosexuality is a sin. He goes on to criticize the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, as well as decisions made at the recent General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. His criticisms revolved basically around the attempts of mainline liberal denominations to be “relevant” to the culture.

I should go ahead and confess up front that this is the sort of thing that gets to me. So what you are about to read is the cranky side of me – though I hope that won’t cause you to stop reading.

Now I don’t know anything about Cal Thomas personally. I don’t know that I’ve ever read anything by him before, though I’ve heard his 60-second radio spot on a few occasions. He might spend as much time criticizing Evangelicals as he does mainliners, for all I know. And he himself might be a member in good standing at a solid church from an Evangelical or classical Reformation tradition. But Thomas represents to me a segment of Evangelical personalities who spend all their time shooting at “those liberals over there” rather than dealing with the problems in their own Evangelical churches.

What in the world makes us think that mainliners would listen to us is beyond me. I know there are true believers in the mainline churches, though my experience (for what it’s worth) suggests to me that they are few and far between. While there are, as I understand it, congregations in the mainline churches that are solid, the liberals generally run the show. People in the ECUSA began to wake up when a homosexual bishop was elected three years ago, but they were well over a hundred years too late. The mainline churches began abandoning Scripture before the turn of the twentieth century. People like Schori don’t care about Scripture, and they don’t give a flip about the true and living God, no matter what kind of illusion to the contrary they attempt to maintain. As far as the ignorance of the laity goes, there is a sense in which you can hardly blame them. Without orthodox leadership to guide them in understanding and applying Scripture, they were left to some degree helpless. Now, I say “to some degree” because I don’t think they can be completely absolved of responsibility. They had Bibles and didn’t read or study them. Their churches had libraries that were established and filled with books back when their ministers actually believed the truth, and they didn’t read those books in an attempt to know Scripture better. In some cases, they didn’t raise a fuss when a new minister came to town preaching what they knew to be heresy. For all these things they are to be blamed.

But I also don’t know why mainliners should listen to us. While Evangelicals are at least far more orthodox on paper than the mainliners, we are just as guilty as the mainliners in doing anything it takes to be “relevant” to the culture without much question about the rightness of it. Once again, this is just my experience speaking. But having been in several churches the past few years, and interacted with numerous Christians outside the church as well, this is what I have encountered:

1. A vast ignorance of the Scriptures, not a whole lot of recognition of this as a problem, nor much attempt to correct it.

2. An ignorance of systematic theology. People might memorize Bible verses, but they don’t have a clue how those verses fit into the scheme of Scripture or their lives. What verses they do memorize have moral import, which is good, but they are divorced from the dogmatic or doctrinal portions of Scripture.

3. An ignorance of church history. Statism has been very successful. People know George Washington, Martin Luther King, or John F. Kennedy, but they can’t tell you who started their denomination or church, nor do they see that it matters.

4. An ignorance of the historic liturgical and devotional practices of the church. Churches devise their own worship services based on blind adherence to tradition or blind adherence to whatever is current and hip. Likewise, if the laity spend any time in private worship, they fail to take advantage of the historic devotional practices of the church in guiding them in this.

5. And with all the focus on “practical issues” in sermons (which means lack of doctrinal content), people still manage to live at a level morally that often differs little from the pagans around them.

One example of these things shows up in Thomas’s article itself. He takes after Schori for her stance on homosexuality, but he totally ignores the clear teaching in Scripture that a woman shouldn’t have the office of a bishop to begin with (I Timothy 2-3). This could be because Evangelicals themselves are growing more and more egalitarian, and he wants to focus on a problem that everybody agrees about. But God’s Word couldn’t be clearer on a subject than it is on this one, and no amount of attempting to ignore it or explain it away is going to work.

When it comes down to it, whether it be the problems in the mainline or among the Evangelicals, we all have our own problems to deal with. I am suggesting, though, that until we Evangelicals begin to work out our own problems, all the shouting that we do at mainliners will continue to be ignored. And rightly so.

Church the way you want it

Book Study Quote #4

Adolf Hitler was inspired in part by the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer. Both are associated with the philosophical school known as Nihilism. O’Connor, in a letter to A. dated 28 August 55, stated that “if you live today you breathe in nihilism,” that is, she saw it as the overwhelming philosophical outlook of her time. With this in mind, we will continue with a quote from Nietzsche. Take particular note of the evolutionary theme. See if you can parallel this with any dialogue or character(s) from O’Connor’s story. The quote is from Thus Spake Zarathustra, translated by Thomas Common, revised by H. James Birx, published 1993 by Prometheus Books, pp. 35-37.

When Nietzsche speaks of the “superearthly”, he is referring to anything spiritual or heavenly. He does not believe in anything superearthly – there is no God, no soul, no heaven. When he speaks of these things ceasing to exist, he is referring to the death of the idea of them in the consciousness of mankind.

I teach you the overman. Humankind is something that is to be surpassed. What have you done to surpass humankind?

All beings until now have created something beyond themselves: and you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass humankind?

What is the ape to our species? A laughing stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall our species be to the overman: a laughing stock, a thing of shame.

You have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes.

Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?

Lo, I teach you the overman!

The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The overman shall be the meaning of the earth!

I conjure you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who speak to you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not.

Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!

Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and with that also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!

Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing: - the soul wished the body meager, ghastly, and famished. Then it thought to escape from the body and the earth.

Oh, that soul was itself meager, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was the delight of that soul!

But you, also my brothers tell me: What does your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency?

Surely, a polluted stream is humankind. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

Lo, I teach you the overman: he is that sea; in him can your great contempt be submerged.

Book Study Quote #3

Our third quote is taken from the same edition of Mein Kampf as below. This time the quote is taken from pp. xix-xxi of the Introduction, which was written by Abraham Foxman.

Hitler’s contribution to the history of ideas can be found in his clear and forceful articulation of numerous theories already in circulation during the early twentieth century rather than in any original thoughts of his own. Many of the ideological themes of Mein Kampf were embraced to varying degrees by groups in Germany, Europe, and even the United States before Hitler wove them together to form the foundations of National Socialism…

The glue that Hitler used to hold these disparate themes together was an extreme form of race-oriented social Darwinism, but even this idea was not limited to the German fringes. The modern “science” of race had evolved with the Enlightenment, when the Aristotelian distinctions between the “cultured” and the “barbaric” races were revived, this time using terms like “civilized” and “primitive.” By positing that certain races were inherently “primitive,” white men of the Enlightenment were able to justify both their continued toleration of black slavery and their imperialist designs on places such as Africa. Differences between races were scientifically “proven” with techniques such as anthropometry (the collection and study of precise measurements of the human body); the races were then ranked on some arbitrary scale, with modern European man always holding the highest spot.

Racial theories became increasingly radical as they incorporated aspects of Darwinism, which swept the Western world in the mid- to late 1800s. Applied to race, the ideas of evolution and “survival of the fittest” turned the history of humanity, as well as the contemporary world, into a story of racial conflict. When coupled with nationalism, racial (social) Darwinism led to the development of national archetypes; thus educated people at the end of the nineteenth century could seriously claim that the distinctive cultural characteristics of the English, French, Americans, and Germans were biological. Eugenics movements with the goal of improving national or racial “stock” through selective breeding (which later became inextricably linked with the Nazi regime in popular perception) arose in England, Scandinavia, and the United States.

Book Study Quote #2

Our second quote is taken from the Translator’s Note of Mein Kampf, written by Adolf Hitler, translated by Ralph Manheim, Mariner Books 1999, pg. X. Once again, I do not endorse Hitler’s beliefs. This is simply to be considered in relation to O’Connor’s story. The application of this quote may be less than clear, but I'll explain it later. Speaking of Hitler’s writing style, Manheim says the following:

His style is without color and movement. Images are rare, and when they do appear, they tend to be purely verbal and impossible to visualize, like the ‘cornerstone for the end of German domination in the monarchy’, or forcing ‘the less strong and less healthy back into the womb of the eternal unknown.’ The mixed metaphor is almost a specialty of modern German journalism, but Hitler, with his eyes closed to the visual world, was an expert in his own right.

The Jocularity of Dr. Eugene

Once a month I pay a visit to my chiropractor, Dr. Eugene. It is always an enjoyable visit, not in the least because the good doctor is so darn funny. [Insert joke about the doctor who keeps you in stitches here.] He was raised Russian Orthodox and has spent part of his adult life among Presbyterians. I am a Presbyterian attending an Anglican church. So between the two of us, we have a lot to joke about.

The following dialogue is cobbled together from our conversation during today’s visit. I always take a book of theology in with me to read while waiting. And he always begins the conversation with something like, “One of these days you’re going to come in here with a trashy romance novel,” or “One of these days you’re going to come in here with a John Grisham novel.” Today was no different.

Dr. Eugene: One of these days you’re going to come in here with a book by Jack [John Shelby] Spong. You know, you really should start your own church. That way, you can pick your own confession, your own vestments, your own architecture, your own doctrine…. You know, I think I’ll do that. I’ll send letters out to all my supporters…

Me: You ought to send prayer cloths out with the letters.

Dr. Eugene: I was thinking more like drinking glasses. I could sign each one individually.

Me: Just don’t send out shot glasses. Your Southern supporters wouldn’t take to that too well.

Dr. Eugene: Really? Shot glasses were what I had in mind. I could say, “One shot of spirit juice in each glass.”

Me: Enough Holy Spirit to make it through the day, huh? What you should do is market it for about a month. Once you’ve field-tested it and proved it marketable, I bet Benny Hinn would pay a boatload of money for the rights to it.

Dr. Eugene: Probably so. I could make you a Vicar. You would be Deputy Vicar of East Greensboro, or something like that. Or a Bishop. You’d get to wear a big pointy hat. You could get into movies for free. All you’d have to do is flash your bishop’s badge, and they’d let you in.

Me: I’ll be waiting for my call. Greensboro wouldn’t know what to do with a bunch of guys running around wearing vestments.

Dr. Eugene: You’d have to wear the vestments all the time, too.

Me: Even in July?

Dr. Eugene: The hat would be air-conditioned.

Book Study Quote #1

I have been in a book study group where we have been discussing the story The Displaced Person, written by Flannery O’Connor. Flannery O’Connor was a devout Roman Catholic writer who lived from 1925 to 1964. She mainly made her home in Georgia, and her Southerness is distinct in her writings. If you haven’t read her writings, I would highly recommend them as being well worth your time.

I thought I would put some quotes relevant to our book study here on the blog. If you aren’t in our book study, this will probably be like walking into the middle of a conversation. On the other hand, I’m putting these here because I think they have an interest that extends beyond our study. The quotes will vary – some will be from O’Connor, while others will be from sundry other sources. I don’t necessarily agree with everything I’ll be quoting, so don’t take these as examples of what I believe.

The first is from O’Connor herself, taken from one of many letters written to a person who in her Collected Works is simply called “A.” It was dated 9 August 55. The "St. Thomas" referred to is St. Thomas Aquinas; the "Summa" is his work Summa Theologica.

I don’t have the kind of mind that can carry such beyond the actual reading, i. e., total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me. So I couldn’t make any judgment on the Summa, except to say this: I read it for about twenty minutes every night before I go to bed. If my mother were to come in during this process and say, “Turn off that light. It’s late,” I with lifted finger and broad bland beatific expression, would reply, “On the contrary, I answer that the light, being external and limitless, cannot be turned off. Shut your eyes,” or some such thing. In any case, I feel I can personally guarantee that St. Thomas loved God because for the life of me I cannot help loving St. Thomas. His brothers didn’t want him to waste himself being a Dominican and so locked him up in a tower and introduced a prostitute into his apartment; her he ran out with a red-hot poker. It would be fashionable today to be in sympathy with the woman, but I am in sympathy with St. Thomas.

Anne Bradstreet

Today is celebrated as Fathers' Day here in the US. I don't really have a poem that is appropriate to the day. But I ran across the following a few months back and liked it, and since I can't find any other excuse to put it on here, Fathers' Day will have to do. You might think of it in the context of a wife rejoicing with her husband in the blessings God has given him, which would include not only his children, but her as well. It was written by Anne Bradstreet, and is entitled To my Dear and Loving Husband. It might seem a little strange to some for a guy to put this on his blog, but that's okay. I like it anyway.

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor aught but love from thee, give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love lets so persever
That, when we live no more, we may live ever.

We Play Everything

One of our local radio stations has as its tag line, "We Play Everything". So I called up the DJ and asked if he wanted to play backgammon. He cursed at me and hung up the phone.