Random thoughts: 11/20/08 (Romney, post progress, today's Pyro post, etc.)

To wit:

• Part Two of Defining Christians and Republicans is about half-done, and should go up tomorrow
• Am I the only one who wishes Mitt Romney would forever give up presidential ambitions? We really, really don't need the stage cluttered up by a cultist whose accomplishments all say "spineless liberal appeaser," but who wants everyone to believe in a Road to Iowa conversion.
• Re. the list of excuses in today's Pyro post: it isn't that I don't think that any of them are real, nor that I have no sympathy with any of them. It's that "whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin" (James 4:17). Period. It's that American Christians think of obedience as optional, when it isn't.
• Illustration: I knew and dearly loved an older woman who professed Christian faith later in life. But she said she had agoraphobia. The poor woman had experienced much misery in her life because of it; I can only begin to imagine. So, she she said she couldn't go to church, because of it. Yet I was forced to note: before conversion, she had many times attended meetings of the cult that she'd agreed with. She had heroically (and I mean that) battled her issues to be able to attend children's events, to go to the doctor, to shop. She hadn't just lain down and disappeared. Yet when it came to this unambiguous command of Scripture, she declined to find a way to obey. Let's say, for the sake of argument, we accept that her issues made regular-attendance-like-everyone-else unlikely or even impossible. Even then — she couldn't ever go? Never? She couldn't find a church and talk to the pastor, and try to find ways to be involved within the limit of her abilities? To listen to sermons, give money, be available by phone for prayers, letter-writing, and other things within her considerable capacity? She couldn't request visits by pastor and/or elders, to keep her accountable, encouraged, discipled? She couldn't host meetings in her home?
• See, what never fails to dishearten me — and what I try to battle just as mercilessly in myself, is this: we can show such creativity in excusing ourselves from simple obedience; but we can't muster half the creativity to find ways to obey.
• In fact, I'll just share this with you, since it's just you and me: the reason I'm so fierce on such issues is because I've had to be just that fierce with myself, in kicking myself in the rear to get myself to deal with issues in which I'm inclined to reach for an excuse rather than show submission to Christ's Lordship by obedience. And I do not say that to my credit.
• Anyone else notice that, so far, "change" looks a lot like "Clinton 3 Plus Other Washed-up Losers"? HSAT, I suppose we should be grateful that Wright, Ayers, and Farrakhan don't have Cabinet posts. Yet.