"Once more into the breach, dear friends..."

So I haven't posted in like a month. Sorry folks, for those of you that care. That being said, I just got back from my class at Harvard. Today was a good day in many ways. Got some work done, helped out a friend with her theology paper, went to class and talked to the teaching fellow after section. He is doing his doctorate in American Religious History there, and it turns out that he is a Gordon-Conwell dude like myself, and that there is actually a fair number of us at the Div school. At least amongst the people who are doing history... This relieved a recurring fear of mine: systematic and ideological exclusion of evangelical/orthodox/conservative Christians from the Ivies, or at the very least from Harvard Div. That being said, huge numbers of people apply there yearly, and what I want to work on may be nowhere near what anyone there is intertested in, so I am not setting my hopes on going to Harvard. But...what a concept huh? Delusions of grandeur sure are fun...That being said, Boston University was referred to as 'confessional' and 'a school where they pray in class' and of coure Boston College would be a better place to study virtue ethics, (c'mon, Peter Kreeft calls it home, it doesn't get much better than that!) So yeah...Harvard isn't the end-all be-all. It's just a pretty face... with millions of dollars...and a list of connections that would make Ma Bell blush. Speaking of our dear Catholic brother, Mr. Kreeft, I would recommed a nice little book of his called "Back to Virtue" Not only does it give a run down of classical Christian virtue ethics (did you know the 7 deadly sins have their opposites, the 7 cardinal virtues? Or that doing the right thing can feel great and not be fattening?) When you read the book you can detect a pastoral geniality and playfulness that makes it most enjoyable, almost as if sat down every day to work on it with smirk on his face. That being said, I have not been virtuous lately. My old laptop finally went belly up, and I have been without a computer for about a month now. Of course, this was a very convenient excuse to procrastinate...so now we have the Semester half over, and not nearly enough reading and writing done. There is also the 'deer in the headlights' factor. Last year was the first year in my life that I have even gotten straight A's, and now that this year has gotten off to such a lurching start, I wonder if I can keep this up. I moved up to the coast, which, while beautiful, places me a significant distance from my school, and my friends. I have been working way too much, and everything has just been slipping...slipping quite badly actually. Now the good part. To be quite honest, to those of you that know me, you know I am highly skeptical of 'vision language' as way too 'pop Christianity' for my taste. Casting vision, being a visionary, regaining a vision, yadda yadda yadda. However, just as God has been giving the divine impatient-snort-and-raised-eyebrow to my other cynicisms and pretentions for the past year, so He has with this one. As I sat there one evening wallowing in self-doubt, my untouched books surrounding me like a pack of intellectual hyenas, I realized I had let my fear and insecurities blur out what I want to do. I hate to use psychologized language, but it sometimes is helpful and explanatory (or perhaps I just lack to the vocabulary as of yet to say it any other way!) To put it simply, I had to 'recover my vision' (gaahhh! yeeech! get it off! i feel dirty!) I had to keep the main thing the main thing. What the hell am I about? Where do I want to go? What am I good at? Where can I express that? From what pulpit can I preach the Gospel while I quip about the quality of beer in Seatle? I am tempted to say this was an awakening on a merely natural level, but, bless it's little snow-covered-dung-heap of a heart, I don't think it would be very Reformed of me to say that. There was no 'visionary' experience proper, just a steady Sense of A Question from the One, that for a moment blotted out the cacophony in my mind: "What are you about? What do you think I AM about?" The latter we will all spend eternity figuring out. Nonetheless, for me, the former is like the latter. The God we will spend eternity 'figuring out' (it seems almost a vulgarity to put it that way now that I think of it, as if He would ever stand for being put into a beaker for such an objective treatment!) I want to get a head start on right now... Further Up, Further In. I would like a PhD at a fantastic institution thank you very much Lord. "Once more into the breach, dear friends..." To the Holy Roller-ization of the hallowed halls of Harvard, the Pentecostalizing of Princeton, and a Charismatic Cambridge. Amen. In all seriousness, do pray for me and the other folks out here, this place can be very draining spiritually and physiologically. There is no rest, and there won't be for two more years yet. I had to steel myself with that realization. I will be working 25 hours a week at Starbucks, expected to get straight A's, minister in my church, and be happy about it for another two years. Funny...Working 12 hour days in a library for 5 years on a doctorate almost seems too bon vivant for me...Cheers everyone, I love you all.

Analysis/exposition in part of some points made in John Piper's points in his book "Let the Nations be Glad"

On the point of Worship being ultimately important-
Yes, missionary activity is not an end in itself. Missionary work is embarked up for the sake of bringing people to God that they may worship Him. Ultimately, the universe and all the people who are in it will give God glory and honor willingly or unwillingly. Our job as a the Church is get as many people as we can to do it willingly and happily. To take this statement to its full logical conclusion, God is the center of the universe not man. Missionary activity happens to be good for us: i.e. its better to amongst the belieiving saved than not, but it seems that in Piper's ananlysis that missionary activity and the saving of souls (which if you are Calvinist is strictly God's purview also) is a means to an end, an instrumentality used by God to garner Himself more praise. This all seems remarkably megalomaniacal until you encounter John Piper's other point: :

"Missions is the overflow of God's delight in being God."
One of the traditional western dictums about the nature of God, arising partly out of the Greek philsophical tradition
(Platonic Forms, Aristotle's unmoved mover, etc.) , as well as the Old and New Testaments, is that God is by definition a being who is so effulgent and manifoldly wonderful, that He is ultimately worthy of all serious praise and attention in the Universe. Even His own. His perfection is so complete, that when He considers His own perfection, He cannot help but take delight and wish others to share in His appreciation for His own perfection and beauty. How gracious of Him to make us strictly for the sake of comprehending and being eternally giddy over Him. Boring it will not be. Praise be to God. We as humans cannot bear this sort ofthing in each other, and rightfully call people who take part in this behavior megalomaniacs, fascists, and dictators. And perhaps this is as it should be, because only God is worthy of such adoration and attention, and our rightful place is at His feet giving credit where credit due, not being morbidly introspective at the outskirts of the Heavenly City, plumbing the depths of our own glory (or lack thereof).

Random Rantings of a Lawless Libertarian...Or just me playing the Devils Advocate

I think its important to realize that there are manifold nuances to the situations we find ourselves in as Christians in the world, and obeying the speed limit is one of them. A wrote Biblicism dictates that we must obey the speed limits as an extension of the 'laws of the land' that we are enjoined by Paul to obey for the sake of peace in the Body of Christ, peace with surrounding non-Christians, and for the sake of witness to our fellowmen and government. However, that is only if something is actually against the law, and I think most speed laws are ridiculous. The idea of a speed limit is predicated on assumptions that are in a way quite offensive (by assuming your stupidity as the citizen), and that inculcate stupidity/irresposibility in drivers by removing the responsibility from drivers themselves, and placing it in the hands of the government. We live in a system where people are insulated from the consequences of their actions. We do this by placing the care and management of more and more facets of our lives in the care of the governement and/or corporations. Speeding is a great example. The government regulates speed. Why? Because in the end, IT will end up paying for the bills of people who break their cars, destroy the road, and hurt themselves and others. To mitigate this liability to themselves they set speed limits to theoretically reduce the number of accidents and thereby reduce the amount of time, money, and trouble they must spend on the people who have relegated their welfare to the state rather than take care of themselves, and be responsible for their actions. I say, let people who are stupid enough to speed dangerously (either by driving beyond their skill level, speeding in bad weather, exceeding the engineering capabilities of their vehicles, whatever...) suffer the consequences of their actions financially and personally rather than let them wallow in child-like viciousness (i use that term in the traditional manner, i.e. someone who is full of vice and not virtue) and irresponsibility that the insulating layers of police speed-management and welfare-state/insurance company-coddling that is engendered by our current system. Some prime examples, there was a point in the not-too-distant past wherein (a) Car insurance was optional NOT mandatory, that state of affairs was built on the idea that you kept enough resources in reserve to take care of yourself and your financial responsibilities to others in the event of an accident, and when you didn't you suffered certain consequences. Most people chose insurance, but the point was that it WASN'T required, they made a responsible decision, they didn't have their thinking done for them. The ones that didn't were either willingly or unwillingly held responsible for the damages they incured to others and their property. (b) Up until several years ago, Montana had no daytime speed limites (oh what halcyon days THOSE were!) as well as no open container laws. People got along just fine. They were only penalized for ACTUALLY incurring harm another, not just POSSIBLY (i.e. a speeding ticket) In a system where we are taken care of paternalistically by the state, then yes, of course there should be speed limits and police enforcment of them. However, if one is willing to be an adult, and responsible to others in the even that one does harm or damage to them, then NO, there shouldn't be speed limits and Christians shouldn't be legalistic sticklers about such things. The law is for those who are lawbreakers, those who would intentionally do harm by their irresponsibility. That being said, its fun to play the devils advocate sometimes.
Cheers

Just some thoughts on the Sabbath,

The Sabbath. I refer centrally in my ideas about the Sabbath to Jesus' rebuke of the Pharisees when He says that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for rest, and for the meditiation upon God and His Word. That being said, I am not at all a stickler for when one takes a Sabbath, just that one takes it, and does what one ought to with it. Rest, Christian fellowship, and worship/communion/contemplation of the Lord. We Christians play pretty fast and loose with the day it falls on anyway, as it seems we changed it from Saturday to Sunday right in the begining. Biologically speaking, we need rest and recuperation for our physical bodies. Spiritually, we need to be with God, and give ourselves to Him in a wholehearted manner regularly, and more than a daily prayer and devotion time can suffice for. Emotionally and psychologically in Our Time, where there is no liturgy to life, nothing in our days that is set, realiable or restful, no places filled with peaceful silence and solitude, the Sabbath seems all the more 'made for man.' Moreover, in a society so self-absorbed, isolated (have you seen how many people live their lives between a set of earphones?), and ultimately lonely as ours, it might be very good for us, and them, to set aside a day which is largely possessed largey of being loved (most of time by people who find us remarkably unloveable save for the Grace of God) and loving other people (most of whom we find unloveable because of their vast superiority to us).

I suppose in terms of my personal theological concerns I see the Sabbath, hopefully taken on Sunday with other believers for the sake of fellowship, as an aspect of our prophetic-witness-to-the-culture. Mary is right to make note of the nature of our society, and its endless busy-ness and movement. We are more materially productive in one day on average in our society, than a person in the Middle Ages was in a week or a month. We produce fantastic amounts of...well...everthing, but still we never take time to enjoy the fruits of our labor. We run ourselves ragged in pursuits of things, even lofty and noble things for some of us, but never take time to contemplate He Who Is the ultimate Source and Goal of all things Noble (and Humble). Funny how we call our amusements 'distractions' without knowing what we are saying, no? In our time of endless busy-ness, noise, and entertainment-all things that insulate, deafen, and anesthetize us to reality, we need to be daring and take the time to be quiet, unentertained, un-distracted.
To face the more ultimate quesitons about life, and what is really important. For the believer this is a serious, but at bottom, very joyful business. As Christians who reguarly take time to contemplate God, ultimate goodness/beauty, and the like, it seems strange to think of this, but most people in the world don't do those things! They have no opportunity, nor any realization that they should because its good for them. If people took more Sabbaths, and did 'sabbatical things,' I think our culture would be healthier, and more people would turn to God, because for a moment they would take their eyes off their workbenches, off their keyboards, away from their tools and books,and for just one day a week look heavenward and see more than the harried rat race around them. For the Christian, as I said above, this is serious but joyful business, to quietly face ones own evil, and then to face the majestic and fearsome grace of God. For them it is a call to repentance and praise. For the unbeliever, left in the roaring silence of a still solitude that is not a peaceful silence but one dreadfully filled with the all icy wind-blown emptiness of an eternity without God, it is a wake-up call. How good for both parties to have to face such things regularly