Various Reformation Day oddments

1. Check out my Pyro post on the occasion, and how we use it.
   
2. You can read Al Mohler's historical comments on Halloween here (h-t Justin Taylor). I'm a bit surprised he does not spotlight the opportunity Halloween affords for us to highlight the Reformation.
3. Does Rome still offer indulgences? You betcha (h-t Rhoblogy). Amazing. Some people never learn. One is reminded again and again that intellectual blindness is caused by spiritual blindness, which is why it can never be remedied by argument alone.
   
4. Speaking of Luther, here are a ton of links by James Swann on the great (and greatly-flawed) man who rediscovered the great Gospel of God's great grace in our great Savior.
5. Kim Shay (the Kanadienne) wanted an offensive post. She thought and she thought. Who could she ask who would be sure to write an offensive post? Then, unaccountably, I get this email... and the results are to be found here. (If it does good, Kim gets the credit; if anyone gets mad, the blame is mine. That's how it works.)
   

Thank you, Valerie!

Last weekend was an event I've been eagerly anticipating for at least ten months: the South Arizona Sovereign Grace Bible Conference. I gave a shameless plug for it over here at Pyro. I had the blessing of conducting a six-part conference on the book of Proverbs, a book that has been a special love of mine for decades.

I may write about my weekend time in due course. This isn't about that.

This is to thank my dear wife, Valerie.

My Valerie knew from the start how much this meant to me, and from the very first she very graciously saw to it that I had all the time I needed to read, ponder, study, and prepare. She shared my joy about the opportunity, prayed for me, and cheered me on as I went off to do it.

Thank you, Valerie! I love you!

Adults... on Facebook: I do not get it

I think of Facebook and MySpace as places very immature teenagers go to hook up and be ephemeral. Now I keep hearing that sober, responsible, exemplary adults have pages there. Phil does! Kim does! Obviously my image of these places is incomplete in some way.

Somebody explain this to me.

And does anybody know about that page WOTM shills for? I can never remember the name. Or is it as bad as that news page they also sell?

Enlighten me.

Hah! Phil Johnson and Justin Taylor aren't the only ones...

...who stumble onto cool things!

Check out Dallas Theological Seminary's interactive library of rare books. Range, content, interactivity — there's nothing about it that isn't cool!

(PS — it really is a mystery to me how Justin and Phil so consistently come up with ultra-cool things, and still have lives and ministries. Paid informants?)

Joel Osteen is such a... a...

Well, read this, from Larry

J. OSTEEN: Well, I think a lot of times it's going to divide the people that I'm trying to reach. Because not everybody, you know -- in a church like ours, with all of the diversity, you have got Democrats, Republicans, people that are for the war, people that can't stand the war. And I'm not there to solve all those issues. I'm here to give them hope and keep them pointed toward Christ.

KING: How do you feel about Mitt Romney and being a Mormon? Would that affect whether you vote for him or not?

J. OSTEEN: Well, you know what? I look at people, their character, their values, what they stand for. And I know only Mitt from watching him on your program and reading a couple of articles about him. And I don't think that that would affect me.

I've heard him say that he believes Jesus is his savior, just like I do. I've studied it deeply, and maybe people don't agree with me, but I like to look at a person's value and what they stand for.

{ forehead slap! }

Joel, Joel. That thing you do with your mouth — stop it!

Stop the presses

New post at the Greek blog.

Well — it's been a while! (May be a while until next time, too.)

A very small bit of good news

George Lucas is reportedly looking for other people to write his next Star Wars endeavor.

Whew! Good!!

Maybe now we'll be spared such deathless prose as —

Padmé: Anakin, all I want is your love.
Anakin Skywalker: Love won't save you, Padme! Only my new powers can do that!
Padmé: At what cost? You're a good person; don't do this!

And, try as you might, who could forget:

Padmé: Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo; so long ago when there was nothing but our love. No politics, no plotting, no war.

Another perspective on Giuliani vs. evangelical voters

It's been broadly reported and discussed that 27% of Republicans (not just evangelicals, or FotF charter members) would vote third-party rather than voting for near-Hillary!-clone Rudy Giuliani for President. The resultant debate has generally featured hammering on Dobson and any evangelical who might not vote for Rudy. The usual line is that such voters are giving the election to Hillary!, who is (we're told) their worst nightmare.

I just wonder why the question is framed that way. Why are evangelicals hammered for this statistic. "Why are you handing the election to Hillary? Do you want Hillary as President?"

Here's my question:

Why are values-voters being asked to sacrifice their convictions — the very factor that drew them to the GOP in the first place — for one seriously-flawed man? Why all the effort to coerce the convictions of 27% of the party, rather than changing the mind of that one man? Why, instead, isn't the question being put to Rudy?

Why isn't Giuliani being asked, "Since you can't win without at least Republican support, and since over one-quarter of the party so seriously opposes you that they would rather vote for a candidate with no chance of winning — which does not even count those who simply will not vote if you are the candidate — why are you going to hand the election over to Hillary Clinton? Why don't you withdraw, for the good of the country?"

NOTE: that is my question. Not whether voting third-party is a good idea or not. Let's see if we can focus the comments on that question, shall we, hmm?

UPDATE: Justin Taylor has a good discussion of the nightmare choice we might soon be facing.

Drumming and preaching

The work on recovering and improving my drumming skills continues. I must say, it's about the funnest "work" I've done in recent memory.

It is work, though. In that I practice until I'm sweaty and sore, and my arms ache for days.

Last Sunday I had another opportunity to lend my skills. It's nice that we have two services, if only from the perspective that I get two whacks at it. Our music leader isn't big on rehearsing, since he's very skilled, and everyone — except me! — is pretty familiar with most of the songs we do. So we rehearsed two, and didn't rehearse the other two; plus, William picks the "song of response" as he listens to the sermon. So that one's always a surprise.

I told William that if I messed up on the two unrehearsed ones, it'd be on him. He laughed. (He's been very gracious and encouraging, which I appreciate a lot.)

Of course, I'd rehearsed them myself. When I got the list, I took my boys down to the church and worked on the music, running the songs in my head. I didn't really love what I had, so I went down again Saturday and worked until I was more comfortable.

All that to say that the second service on Sunday left me feeling best I've ever felt about what I contributed to the songs. It was fun, ideas came to me which (I felt) enhanced the phrasing and content of the music... and I only dropped a stick once! (First time. No casualties.)

But this left me thinking very tangentially.

My wife and I have chuckled over a preaching phenomenon. It has often seemed that, when I feel worst about a sermon, that is the sermon God seems most to use. There are exceptions, of course. But I'll come off feeling I've bobbled something, not handled it well, not expressed or communicated as I should — and that's the one that most seems to move folks' hearts.

The converse is sometimes true as well. I'll feel as good as I ever feel about a sermon, and it may not register much effect.

So last Sunday had me wondering, on a much more trivial scale — does it work that way with drumming? I felt really good about second service: does that mean I drummed really badly?

I think about these things.

Solomon on quotas

It is not good to be partial to the wicked
or to deprive the righteous of justice (Proverbs 18:5)

One injustice is not balanced out by another. If Person A has been hurt by unjust treatment, I do not balance the scales by subjecting Person Z to injustice — even if Z shares some category (i.e. skin color) with the perpetrator of the injustice.

No, injustice is remedied by justice.

We really shouldn't need the Bible to tell us that. But there it is.

Wellsir, never thought I'd hear myself saying this, but...

...Michael Kinsley is partly right about something.

You construe me correctly. I never thought I'd be forced to say he was even partly right about anything. If you don't know Kinsley, he's a sniveling little far-left sock-puppet who seems to hate Jesus and anyone who might seem, however remotely, to have anything to do with Him or values derived therefrom. He used to be a co-host of CNN's screamfest "Crossfire." Listening to him was excruciating, and I tried to avoid it. Kinsley can't speak without a sneer, and proper sneering calls for a height which Kinsley never attained.

Kinsley's one of those kids in Junior High who sat at the back of the class and sniggered all through each lesson, seeing themselves as too smart to have to listen or learn anything. He never outgrew that stage.

Not that I have any strong thoughts or feelings about him or the nonsense he extrudes.

And then he had to go making some sense in his Time magazine essay God as Their Running Mate.

In it, Kinsley makes pretty short and effective work of religious candidates' attempts to distance themselves from their own religions. He says (and darn it, he's right) that you can't do that. If religion = the fundamental way you view the world (and it is), then you can't say your worldview doesn't influence your politics.

Because he can't help himself, Kinsley does make some idiotic, self-revealing statements along the way ("For me, any candidate who believes in the literal truth of the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon or the novels of Jane Austen is probably too credulous to be President"). But he also makes enough sense that he probably had to catch his breath after writing such statements as this:

If religion is central to their lives and moral systems, then it cannot be the candidates' "own private affair." To evaluate them, we need to know in some detail the doctrines of their faith and the extent to which they accept these doctrines. "Worry about whether I'm going to reform health care, not whether I'm going to hell" is not sufficient.

And this:

In the online magazine Slate a while back, editor Jacob Weisberg called Joseph Smith, Mormonism's founder, an "obvious con man" and wrote, "Romney has every right to believe in con men, but I want to know if he does, and if so, I don't want him running the country." Thus [another] argument that religion can't be a private affair for a presidential candidate: what a person deeply believes says something about his or her character, which voters may wish to take into account. Deeply religious people may find a candidate's ability to make that "leap of faith" admirable or even essential. Or they may find it offensive if it conflicts with their own faith. (Some devout Christians object to Mormonism's belief that the Bible is a mistranslation.) A skeptic may not want someone so credulous in the nation's top job.

So even Michael Kinsley has had his "broken clock" moment. A bit more contentful than Hugh Hewitt on the same subject.

I actually liked all the Spider Man movies...

(Be sure to watch until the very end. For some reason, it completely cracked me up.)

BREAKING NEWS: a wife praises her husband! In front of God and everyone!

I love it when spouse builds up spouse, in public. Lord knows I've seen far too much of the reverse.

See sister Libbie let us know what a great guy her husband is.

Way to put Proverbs 12:4a and 14:1a into practice, Libbie! God bless you all.

For more about how wise and godly Libbie is being, check these out:

Wise wives = blessed husbands = happy wives
Glimpse into the psyche of a half-decent guy (for the ladies)