Christian parent forum: raising boys

Breaking news: boys and girls are different! Bible-believing Christians knew it all along, but the world has just recently muzzily woken up to the fact.. though they haven't done much with it.

This is "open-mike" for Biblically-oriented Christian parents of more than one boy.

1. If you have boys and girls, how is raising boys different?
2. How do your boys relate to one another? Partners, competitors, combatants?
3. What are the special challenges of raising boys?
4. How have you met those challenges?
5. Is squabbling rare, occasional, or constant? How do you deal with it?
6. What do you most regret?
7. What do you wish you'd figured out earlier?

Have at it.

Quick word on Prince Caspian

See it.

While I like the first book better than the second, I like the second movie better than the first.

I'm fomenting a fuller review that may replace this post, so no comments or questions yet.

It is a bit more violent, and there's talk. So (to pluck an age) 5-6 may be too young. My 8yob, who isn't a lover of talky movies, loved it.

Perfect? Nah. Quibbles? Yep.

Liked it a lot and see it again? Yep; tonight, if I can.

As surprised as anybody (— except, perhaps, my high school teachers)

You paid attention during 97% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
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The truth is, I was an inattentive and notional high-school student until my senior year, when the Lord saved me and everything changed. I've often wished I could go back and pay better attention... starting in about fourth grade!

Atheist ideas have consequences, too

I want to check this out further, but evidently my alma mater Biola University hosted a debate between Princeton's Dr. Pete Singer and Dinesh D'Souza on atheism.

I'm curious about it because my impression is that D'Souza, whatever his other strengths, is not a spokesman for evangelical Christianity. His essay strikes me as being pretty self-congratulatory, which isn't the first time his writing has made that impression on me.

That aside, he makes the absolutely correct connection between Singer's atheism and his monstrous ethics, his advocacy of infanticide, his devaluation of human life that doesn't meet his criteria for usefulness. Singer (reportedly) doesn't want a connection made between his atheism and those positions. But, of course, there is a connection — because ideas have consequences.

This is modern atheism. Its currency is deep denial.

Modern atheism wants to affirm the butt end of the rope heartily, while denying its inexorable and necessary connection to the noose at the other terminus.

Islam: ideas have consequences

This post could have many titles:

Iraq: was it worth it?
Iraq: our soldiers died for this?
Iraq: I told you so

Who is this girl?


She is — or was — seventeen-year-old Rand Abdel-Qater. Now she's a statistic, a sad statistic: another victim of the way the Islamic religion is being practiced across the Middle East.

Her father now boasts of "having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his daughter to death," with the help of his sons. He then threw her in a grave, her uncles spat on her body. And I don't really care to pass along any of the subhuman celebrations and rationalizations of these monsters.

Her crime? Immoral sex? You know they're hard on women who sleep around. No, it wasn't that. Rand died a virgin.

It was that she had feelings for a (non-Muslim) British soldier. That was enough to move her father to murder her brutally.

The police (he says) knew of it and questioned him. But he's free now, bragging that the "police congratulated him on what he had done."

And this is in Iraq. The country we liberated.

I agreed with what President Bush did, I think it makes sense on many levels, I think more free countries in the Middle East is a great thing for the world.

But my reservations are the same that I have registered once and again: the American experiment worked to the degree that it did because it was made within a Judeo-Christian framework. We fought for our liberty from oppression, and built a new society with respect to the truths of the Bible. To the degree we've held to that framework, to that degree it has been successful.

But neither of those things is true of Iraq. They did not (primarily) fight for their freedom, and it was not sought and achieved within a Biblical framework. People in general (and women in particular) are not accorded the same value within Islam that they are in Biblically-oriented societies.

The only hope I've had for Iraq has been that liberation would make Christian evangelism possible. I haven't heard of much success in that arena; but I have heard stories of American Christian soldiers having their liberties curtailed as they serve in Iraq.

There is much to pray for, regarding that sad, poor country.

We might start with Rand's mother, who left her husband in horror for his crime. Pray that she not become a "moderate" Muslim, nor an atheist. Pray that someone tells her of the truth of Jesus Christ.

And pray she lives long enough to hear it.

NOTE: rule 4 will be enforced.

Obama news question

Give me your first impression.

When you see this title —

Racism alarms Obama's backers

— what do you think the article is going to be about? Now click.

Surprised? I was. But I shouldn't have been.

All right, that's just wrong

I exist in Sacramento. Just checked the weather forecast, for this delightful second week of April [correction: May, thanks so much to Staci for the correction < /dripping sarcastovoice >]. Spring, right? Ahh, springtime in Sacramento. The Big Tomato. Should be lovely. Right? Trees, rivers, idiots gamboling everywhere....

One hundred degrees! 1-0-0! Fahrenheit!

How's that sound to you? Sounds nasty to me. Sounds like a Bad Sign.

My first thought is, "There should be a law." The reason that's my first thought is because, when the weather heats up, I always think of the stupidest thing I have ever heard a politician say.

That distinction goes, unsurprisingly, to Al Gore.

This goes back to the dark years of The Nameless One's reign of error in the White House. The Nameless One had a Republican congress. And sometime during that period, in the summer, among the many inane, insane, barking-mad ankle-biting idiotic things that poured out of Al Gore's mouth was something like this:

"It's hot out there — sweltering! People are suffering! And the Republican Congress is doing nothing!"

I blinked. Had I heard him right? Surely not. Oh, but I had.

Now, if you ever entertained any doubts about the viselike grip of liberal braindeadness on the American mainstream media, the fact that Gore survived that remark, unremarked, should have ended all doubt. Imagine a Republican suggesting that the Democrats were morally culpable for not outlawing hot weather.

His next public words would have been, "Would you like fries with that?"

So now every time the weather exceeds optimal temperature (77 degrees), in honor of that eminent sage Al Gore and in the spirit of modern America...

...I blame Congress.

Facebook

First, I dissed it.

Now I'm on it.

So, tell me again... what am I supposed to do with it? That feels adult and, you know, point-y?

You need a chuckle

Here it is:

See more — with a festive feel! — over at Pyromaniacs.

If Obama were Republican, or the AP even-handed...

...the story that begins this way:

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Barack Obama scolded Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday for saying that the United States would "totally obliterate" Iran if it attacks Israel, and likened her to President Bush. Clinton stood by her comment.

...would instead begin this way:

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Hoping to shift attention away from his two-decade association with a racist pastor, Barack Obama scolded Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday for saying that the United States would "totally obliterate" Iran if it attacks Israel, and likened her to President Bush. Clinton stood by her comment.

And, as a bonus, if Hillary! were conservative, it would end thus:

Clinton refused to respond to the criticism.

(Somewhat similar earlier observation)

Penal, substitutionary atonement... in Proverbs?

The Together for the Gospel conference had many lingering (good!) effects on me. One was a resolution to write even more on the titular topic.

An immediate fruit was the resolution to develop much more fully a part of one of my sermons to the good folks at Calvary Community Church in Tennessee. You can read the results over at Pyromaniacs:

Part One
Part Two

I mention it here for any visitors who come hither, but not necessarily thither.

Thabiti lays down some golden wisdom on Wright's offbase jeremiads

I had the great pleasure of meeting Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile at T4G, and being challenged by his address on the topic of "race."

Now he makes about the best and godliest sense I've read yet about Obama's retired pastor's latest rants. Check it out.

(h-t Justin Taylor)

Another millionaire lottery-winner dies broke and broken: WUWD?

A married couple in Florida wins a $13 million Lotto prize. Sounds happy.

Eighteen years later, everything's broken: their marriage, their family, their finances, his health. And then he dies awaiting trial for tax fraud.

This story is so common, yet none the sadder for it. One hears so often of the miserable lives lottery-type winners lead. One wonders:

1. Are the reports accurate, or “massaged”? (Not that the media would ever knowingly inaccurately report anyth-- oh, wait. They totally would do that.)
   
2. If the reports are accurate, what’s the deal?
3. Is the problem that the personality-type that will look to “quick wins” (rather than hard work and planning), and thus will obsessively play such games, is also the type that will unerringly mismanage the money?
4. Or is it simply that the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil (1 Timothy 6:10), and that the profit-factor for gaining the world and losing one’s soul (Mark 8:36) is unaffected by inflation?
5. Against #4, however, there are rich and godly people (1 Timothy 6:17-18) — though the Bible repeatedly warns that it is difficult (Luke 18:25).
   
6. Perhaps this then falls into the category of Proverbs 20:21 — "An inheritance gained hastily in the beginning will not be blessed in the end"?

You don't have to take the position that any kind of gambling is inherently and always wrong to see that — to say the least! — quick windfalls do not bring happiness. Plus, as one of the commenters on this thread well says:

...those who play consistantly are just simply very bad at math. And winning the lottery doesn’t magically grant them good math skills. Thus, they don’t realize that even the mega-wealthy have to live within their means.

Hard not to recall Jesus' words: "So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God" (Luke 12:21).

PS — WUWD = What Up Wid Dat? Not trying to be faux-cool; just didn't want the worlds longest post headline.

Hymn lyric search

Isn't there a hymn that includes the words "tossed and torn by many a doubt"? I can't find it in Google by any combination I've tried. Did I mangle something essential... or make it up entirely?

"Mormon Coffee"

Among the many blessings of my dear wife and my trip to Tennessee was meeting Aaron Shafovaloff (SHOF-a-WAL-lof).

Aaron is an embarrassingly bright young man passionately committed to reaching Mormons with the Gospel. He's had an impact on a number web sites, but I think the primary one on this subject is Mormon Coffee (subtitle: "It's forbidden, but it's good!"), which I commend to you.

The more I learn about Mormonism, the more astonished I am that (A) rational people get caught up in in, (B) rational people stay in it, and especially (C) any Christian wants to argue that it is, in any except a sociological sense, "Christian."

(Wait... are we talking about Roman Catholicism, or Mormonism? Oh, right: Mormonism!)

So here was my particular eye-opener from Aaron this time: that many Mormons not only believe that "God the Father," when a man, could very well have sinned (?!!), and not only are they OK with that possibility... but they actually find it encouraging!

Check out his site.

Just because it chuckles me

I'm fiddling with the time of the earlier post so this won't bump the more important Mormon Coffee post.

But still.

Good word on "Assurance," by J. C. Ryle

Though I read it in a Libronix edition, added to my Logos software, you can read it online.

Ryle is one of those writers whose style is always so engaging and conversational, while no less pleading and weighty, that one is sure he must have been a great preacher as well as an able pastor. I think of some who preach the Bible as if addressing laboratory specimens; Ryle speaks from his heart to our hearts.

Interesting marginal note from the CSB

I have no further comment... except to say that the imagination rather reels.

Talking art

If only it weren't in Korean.

(Warning: partial nudity)

(Disclaimer: that's 99.999% a joke)

UPDATE: my dear wife says I should tell everyone it's the Venus de Milo that provides the partial nudity. No doubt she is, as usual, right.

Are any good hymns still being written?

I'd have to say yes. Not many, perhaps; but yes.

The song linked above was sung on Wednesday at the T4G conference. I'm glad to be able to find the lyrics; it was immensely moving at the time to me, but something (on which I may write more, later) distracted me from full enjoyment.

If this is a copyright violation, someone please tell me; but here are the first two verses:

HOW DEEP THE FATHER’S LOVE FOR US,
How vast beyond all measure,
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure.
How great the pain of searing loss –
The Father turns His face away,
As wounds which mar the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory.

Behold the man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders;
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
Call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished;
His dying breath has brought me life –
I know that it is finished.

You can get an idea of the tune here. Thank God for those who can put the precious truths of the Gospel to music. Al Mohler made the point in his talk that some who are trying to destroy the truth of penal substitutionary atonement lament that, even if it is banished from the pulpits, when Christians assemble, they'll still sing about it.

Revelation, from a dispensational perspective

I was asked if I could point to any sermon series preaching through Revelation from a dispensational perspective. I don't know of one offhand and can't find one in the time I can spare. Can anyone link to a sermon series online?

Thanks.

"Yes, yes, that's right... I'm the guy who blogs with Phil Johnson and Frank Turk"

Just getting in practice.

I don't get modern poetry

Look at this:

You could almost think the word [nous; Greek, usually translated "mind"] synonymous with mind, given our so far narrow history, and the excessive esteem in which we have been led to hold what is, in this case, our rightly designated nervous systems. Little wonder then that some presume the mind itself both part and parcel of the person, the very seat of soul and, lately, crucible for a host of chemical incentives—combinations of which can pretty much answer for most of our habits and for our affections.

When even the handy lexicon cannot quite place the nous as anything beyond one rustic ancestor of reason, you might be satisfied to trouble the odd term no further—and so would fail to find your way to it, most fruitful faculty untried. Dormant in its roaring cave, the heart’s intellective aptitude grows dim, unless you find a way to wake it.

So, let’s try something, even now. Even as you tend these lines, attend for a moment to your breath as you draw it in: regard the breath’s cool descent, a stream from mouth to throat to the furnace of the heart. Observe that queer, cool confluence of breath and blood, and do your thinking there.

So, you make your way through that, and if you're like me, you say, "Huh? Okay, then... huh?" It just doesn't make much sense, and you wonder why it was written.

But break up the lines (apparently randomly), and voila! somehow it's a modern poem. Not only a poem but, according to Karsten Piper, an example of a poet "writing with the beating muscle and translucent beauty that’s often missing from church libraries and waiting room magazine piles."

Um... okay....

Look, I know that I'll get beaten senseless by those refined higher souls who are able (as I evidently am not) to appreciate all the beauty and translucent muscle of it and all... but before that happens, I'll just say that this is an example (though by no means the worst) of what I mean when I say I don't much like English-language poetry.

I like Hebrew poetry, I like Kipling.

And that's about it.

(BTW, the title's milder than my original thought. I don't want to be beaten that badly by the raised-pinky crowd.)

So, I was thinking...

Maybe this whole poetry-thing
Isn't as hard as it looks.
Since no one is after the
Extraordinarily tight
and disciplined
Structure
of Greek and Hebrew poetry
Or the rhythm and sounds of
(what I think is)
better English poetry

So maybe

All's you have to do
is
Write some random thoughts
in a stream
And hit "Enter"
Every few words
And break up the lines
with some
random
Capitalizations
and good people will read it
with furrowed brows
and mouths slightly open
and
when they get through
they'll say
"Hunh!"
and
"Whoa"
and
"Deep!"
And they'll think that you're all
muscular
and translucent
and you can have a
nice
little
gig!

UPDATE: Ah. See? It's bad of me to see this differently... or to say I do. Bad Dan! Bad! No cookie!

The race is McCain's to lose...

...but, sure as water's wet, he's the man who could do it.

Boy, "Legion" sounds d-u-m-b

From DarkHorizons:

...the thriller casts [Paul] Bettany as the archangel Michael, the only one standing between mankind and an apocalypse, after God loses faith in humanity.

Man's lone hope rests with a group of strangers who must deliver a baby they realize is Christ in his second coming.

I just, I... unngh! Where do you start?

How many times has that stupid theme been done? Dudes, dudes... step away from the bong. It's a Second Coming — it's not a reincarnation.

It isn't Jesus who needs to be born again.

Yikes.

My little friend

This little fellow came and kept me company in my office for awhile. It was odd, having a spider look at me. Until I photographed him, I thought the shiny iridescent spots were eyes — but they sheathed his fangs.


He was a jumping spider.


I let him go. (Happily, he never jumped at me.)

Search "jumping spider" among vids and web sites, and you seem some pretty amazing pictures. Check this slo-mo vid, and this amazing National Geographic vid.

Grrr, but doggone it, those pictures REALLY have me missing my old 35mm camera from the 80's. I bought a bunch of lenses, and could take the most amazing, precise, exact close-ups. Maybe I'll scan and post some, sometime. My digital camera just can't do it, among other things. A few months ago, I was tempted by a really expensive digital SLR (Canon?, not sure), that could take attachment lenses and take quick-exposure shots.

I'm being tempted again. Do have that bonus money....

Okay, this has GOT to be a joke

(Thanks, Carlo)

Steve Brown - 2

(See part one for the setup)

I have now finished the 37 lectures on grace I had downloaded from RTS, and... whew!

To begin with the Summary Statement: Brown says a number of valuable, useful and true things in a winsome, easy-listening manner — but he encrusts it in so much that is irresponsible and/or garbage that I could never recommend him without a list of warnings and qualifications so long it would look like what you get with a new prescription ("Here are the ways this medicine could kill or horribly disfigure you:....").

Let me list some of my thoughts and observations:

1. I want to trade my whiny, nasal voice for Brown's basement-deep, resonant voice.
2. He says a number of thought-provoking and helpful things. Though he doesn't develop it Biblically at any length, he says "God isn't mad at you anymore." Brown says God never disciplines Christians because He's mad at them. Brown says nothing is perfect, nothing is forever, and you aren't home yet. Brown says, When a dog plays checkers, you don't criticize his game; you're just pleased and surprised that he's playing at all. (The point being we wouldn't be so shocked at our failures if we didn't have such a high opinion of ourselves.) Brown says that when pain exceeds payback, real change becomes possible. Brown criticizes phony airs Christians feel they have to put on in front of other Christians, our failure to extend anything like grace and compassion towards one another.
3. He sounds like a fun, easy guy to be around, to hang with: warm, open, encouraging, and accepting. I want to like him, want to affirm his teaching, wish I could. I think of another well-known name who emphatically affirms grace — yet whenever I've listened to him, for decades, I haven't personally received a grain of grace from his presentation.
   
4. The man more stories and illustrations than Methuselah.
   
5. This is a big weakness. In theory, Brown constantly claims that everything he says is Reformed and Biblical and sound and true. In practice, he doesn't seem to feel the need to root much of it in Scripture. The entire course featured only a relatively few allusions-to/citations-of Scripture, and no extensive exegesis or exposition. He keeps saying that his students can look it up, or that he's got a ton of Biblical backup, or that he'd normally give Bible but since they're seminary students he won't (?!). Regardless, he seems to start from the position that he has established his position Biblically, and now he just wants to work out the implications.
6. To his credit, Brown constantly urged his two classes to feel free to challenge him Biblically. To their discredit (in my I-wasn't-there opinion), they never did. Perhaps they started out convinced.
   
7. All of the alarms I have begun to sound and will develop in a moment are borne out in this comment thread. In that thread, one Christian brother attempts to bring the Bible to bear on some of what Brown says and does. He doesn't do it in the nicest way, but he does it faithfully. By and large, the host of respondents do not even attempt to engage the Bible. They respond in Brownisms. This is a huge red light. Much as Brown denies that he wants to make disciples of himself, that is exactly what he is doing. He is making them depend on his thoughts, his ideas, his cute sayings, his insights, his experiences, his stories. That is a necessary and unavoidable consequence of giving endless podium-time to stories, illustrations, and cute sayings instead of exposition of the text of Scripture and then development of a system from that text. People come away knowing Brown, not Scripture, and therefore — I fear — not necessarily knowing God.
8. He says some things that are absolutely, barkingly, wildly irresponsible; and if his students take any of them seriously, they will ruin their ministries and other people. For instance:

   (A) Brown says that, when one is preparing a sermon, and he thinks of saying something but his conscience or judgment tells him he shouldn't — he should anyway! Because that's probably God talking to him. So, in the Brown universe, verses like Proverbs 10:19; 12:18; 15:28; 17:27; 21:23; and 29:20 are not as impotant as expressing oneself in a personal pursuit of "grace."
   (B) Brown also tells Christians they should disagree with their pastor once a month, period, just because it's healthy for their assertiveness.
   (C) Brown speaks of a Christian leader who fell morally, badly, and says in effect that he's glad he did, because it was good for him. Too bad about the guy's family and church, I guess.
   (D) Brown urges all of them to cuss, just to do it. I don't recall an exposition of Ephesians 4:29.
   (E) Brown keeps talking about dialogues he has with God, and quoting (usually without qualification) things God supposedly says to him, Steve Brown, that are not in Scripture. But it's okay, remember, because he says believes in the Reformed position on the inerrancy and sufficiency of the Bible, and he isn't a charismatic, and maybe he's hearing God wrong.
   

9. Brown says weird things about repentance. I listened twice, and still can't quite explain it. He denies the Biblical teaching that it means a change of mind which necessarily issues in adorning fruitful actions... though those elements come back into his teaching at other points. Just another weird aspect of his teaching. [UPDATE: I listened again. Brown says that he used to teach something like that forgiveness was apologizing for spilling the milk, repentance was cleaning it up. He now regards that as a terrible error and false teaching, for which he apologized everywhere he had preached it. Repentance is not change, he insists emphatically. It is understanding who God is and what He did and who I am (?!!). So it's a New Agey realization; it isn't a decisive change of mind that issues in a change of behavior, because we can't change (Matthew 3:8; Acts 26:20; Romans 12:1-2 and etc. to the contrary notwithstanding).]
   
10. Don't really love the plethora pop-psychology and faddish phrases, like giving this and that person (including God) "permission" to do or be something.
    
11. Brown says people should burn Dave Hunt's book that criticizes Richard Foster (because he's a hero of Brown's); and he told a whole audience to burn John MacArthur's The Gospel According to Jesus — when he hadn't even read it! So Hunt's bad, MacArthur's bad, yet....
    
12. Again and again Brown trots out his creds: I am a Christian, I am orthodox, I am Reformed, I am a five-pointer, I am conservative, I believe in literal 6-day creation, and on and on. But then he says...
    

    (A) that if this unsaved Jewish rabbi he personally likes doesn't go to Heaven, he (Brown) doesn't want to go, either (which means that the rabbi's presence is more important to him than Jesus' presence, though I'm sure Brown doesn't intend that meaning); and...
    (B) Brown says that there are no "super-Christians," except maybe (Mary-worshiping proponent of a Gospel-perverting sect) "Mother" Theresa, and (longtime doctrinal compromiser) Billy Graham — so, in other words, these two may well be above every other living Christian, including John Piper, John MacArthur, Al Mohler, and everyone else; and
    (C) Brown frequently speaks of how much insight he's gotten from this or that Roman Catholic or otherwise heretical writer, on various aspects of Christian living; and
    (D) Brown enthuses about what a great and real relationship with God unbelieving, apostate Jews have; and
    (E) Brown mentions how he wears a New Age bracelet for some physical ailment, quipping that he "tried Jesus" and it didn't work, so he is trying this ("and I thought I heard the angels laugh"); and...
    (F) frequently says in passing how well this and that apostate heretic "understands grace." And...
    (G) Brown says that (unrepentant antinomian murderess) Annie Lamott is a wonderful Christian person who he thinks is so great and loves to feature on his radio show.
    (H) Brown says that Harry Emerson Fosdick was a Christian, and probably would be "on our side" (or some equivalent) if he were alive today

13. From all that, my impression is that Brown can't think the Biblical Gospel is very important, in spite of what he says about the Biblical positions he formally holds.
14. And that would mean Brown's not very Reformed — since if being Reformed means anything historically, it must mean seeing the Gospel as a decisive, divisive, watershed issue.

I left the course disappointed. I was hoping to gain personal help and encouragement from Brown's emphasis on grace. While I did gain some helpful points here and there (see point #2, above), they were so buried under endless stories and bizarre beep-beeps-from-outer-space, and generally so devoid of Biblical exposition, that in the final analysis they didn't really help me much, and left me very concerned about Brown's disciples.

The course did leave me with some themes I plan to develop in some Pyro posts, however. I'll state one right here, for anyone influential who "happens" by:

You can insist that you believe in the inerrancy and sufficiency of Scripture, and that your positions are Biblical, until your blue head caves in — but if you don't ground specifically and continually ground every major point and application in the Word, you're just preaching yourself. People will walk away quoting you, not the Word. That means they're leaning on you, trusting you, depending on you and your insights. You've become their priest, their Pope, their magisterium.

You're making disciples of yourself, not of Christ.

You think about that. Amen.

Classic Bloom County

Cracks me up. (Click for larger picture.)

A question that may set off some yellow and red lights

Building off yesterday's little poser/chuckler....

Is it possible that our (or a previous) generation could legitimately see a pattern or truth in Scripture that earlier generations never put together, even though they were looking at exactly the same data as we?

Good exercise for exegetes

Actually makes a very important point for Bible readers — though, I'm sure, quite unintentionally.

Demon dog

Don't have time for either breadth or depth, just this.

Our church held an Easter Sunrise Service in a park near the church building. Everything went nicely, except....

When the pastor started preaching, this nearby dog started periodically screamyelpbarkhowling. It wasn't exactly a bark, a yelp, a howl; it was the most distracting it could be.

And it kept it up through the whole sermon. Soon as he stopped, it stopped.

Didn't do it through the singing, the reading, the very brief announcements. Just the sermon.

Demon dog.

What if worship was like an NBA game?

Gosh, the Disney people are thick...

...if this report is true.

But then, that's not exactly "breaking news," is it?

UPDATE from DarkHorizons:

According to an official Disney spokesperson, any rumor of the potential early demise of the 'Narnia' franchise is "entirely false".

(Thanks to Marksbury-Shaun for the heads-up)

Steve Brown - 1

PREFACE: this isn't either an "expose" or an analysis of Steve Brown. It's (a) my impressions based on just a few lectures in a 37-lecture series, and (b) my invitation to anyone who does know more about him to tell what he or she knows.

Do any of you know anything firsthand about Steve Brown?

I know he's a little Presbyterian (PCA) pastor who's an author, pastor, seminary prof, and radio host. I know I wish I had his voice. Years ago I heard Key Life a few times. I know I saw a bit or two of a cable-type TV show he did in which he had friendly arguments with the execrable Tony Campolo. And that's about it.

I've been listening to courses from Reformed Theological Seminary. They put whole courses online for free through iTunes. Well, one of them is a course of like thirty-seven lectures on grace (!) by Steve Brown. I've listened to about three of them.

So far, they're winsome, a bit thought-provoking, and really irritating. I've wanted to slap him several times; he says things I think are just flat-out irresponsible. Because he's PCA and teaching at RTS, and because he disagrees with Tony Campolo, I'm giving him a conditional and temporary benefit-of-a-doubt until I feel like I've gotten his point.

Which I don't yet. It's been heavy on stories and anecdotes, and next to nothing on Scripture. So far he's setting off my warning-light of hyperconceptualizing. In other words, he's sounding like a guy who's latched on to a true and Biblical concept (grace), detached it from the Bible, loaded it with his own ideas and concepts and implications, and made a career of it.

He keeps talking about people who do and do not understand or get "grace." He says "grace," but so far the concept that makes the best sense of his uses is "license." But he insists that isn't what he's talking about. He also keeps insisting that he isn't antinomian, but he sure sounds like he is.
And he keeps talking blithely about things God says to him, and God laughing, and a bunch of dribble — and he's not talking about the Bible. Which, as you know...yikes. Fingernails on the chalkboard.

In fact, so far, the course has been very heavy on stories and anecdotes and wit, and very light on Bible.

So, HSAT (Having Said All That) — do any of you have firsthand knowledge of Steve Brown? Have you heard the course through, read his books, listened regularly to Key Life? What do you think, if so?

By the bye, you'll notice that the post is titled "Steve Brown - 1." You'd be right in taking that to signal my intention to revisit after I've heard more or (if I stick it out) all of the lectures, and either deny, confirm, or further stir these impressions.

If The Obama were a conservative (—glad not to be on the Obamawagon)

...right now, the lamestream media would be fastening on this statement that The Obama just made to Fox's Major Garrett:

“None of these statements were ones I had heard myself personally in the pews,” Obama told FOX News. “Once I saw them I had to be very clear about the fact that these are not statements that I am comfortable with. I reject them completely they are not ones that reflect my values or my ideals.”

(He made further similar claims here.)

And here's what they'd do:

1. They would get a date of every despicable, racist, inane, insane, inciteful thing that The Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright Jr. had ever preached.
2. They would find out exactly where The Obama was on each and every one of those dates.
3. They would report the relationship of those dates; and
4. If he happened to be in church on any of those dates, they would demand that he explain his comments and stand.
5. And they'd never let rest the fact that The Obama somehow managed to remain silent about all this pain and discomfort he now professes to have had, until the story broke.
   

If they do this, I'll commend them...though I confess I'd wonder how many muddy Clinton fingerprints there would be on it.

Here are some more specifics and reflections on the issue of The Obama and his pastor:

From Ed Morrissey
From the Wall Street Journal
From NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez

Does Obama's association with this pastor, and his recent feeble attempts to distance himself (after twenty years' association) matter? Previously, The Obama had spoken in consistently admiring and affectionate terms of this man. He has been a member of that church for twenty years. He'd baptized the Obamas' kids, married the Obamas... do you think that a man gripped by such virulent, racist hatred never would have shared a bit of it with someone he views as in a position to do something about it?

Victor Davis Hanson points out that there isn't much distance between lunatic pastor Wright's positions and Mrs. Obama's breathtaking statement that she had no reason to be proud of America until her husband's presidential candidacy. And with his characteristic panache, Mark Steyn drives the point home still further.

And do you think verses such as these wouldn't apply to The Obama?

Proverbs 13:20 Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.
Proverbs 14:7 Leave the presence of a fool, for there you do not meet words of knowledge.
1 Corinthians 15:33 Do not be deceived: "Bad company ruins good morals."

Believe me, I'm not looking forward to trying to make a case for John McCain. I'll be candid as ever, but... I doubt it will be fun, and I doubt John and his mouth will make it easy for me.

But I'm gladder still I don't have to try to be a Christian Obamapologist.

UPDATE: continuing the digging, The Obama's church has issued a statement about (and the current pastor has made references to) this controversy. Is it a statement of humbled repentance? Not at all: just another blast of defiant self-pity, and a circling of the wagons. It also includes the sort of reasoning I parody in teaching ethics to my kids: "Officer, you must put this bank robbery into context. On the way to the bank, I drove the speed limit, paid the correct amount at the toll booth, and came to a full stop at every red light and stop sign. I kept all those laws. Why focus on this one little boo-boo?"

UPDATE II: the Ace of Spades gives the church's statement a pretty good going-over.