HARMLESS THOUGHTS

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. “Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved. “And to be steady on all the battle fields besides is merely flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.” ~ Martin Luther

 As always, I gotta be honest... And I'm gonna be real honest about this phrase right now. And here it is -- If I hear another person say, "I don't need to be their Holy Spirit" one more time... I'm one camel hair and two locusts away from going all John the Baptist on them.  Ok Matt. Take a step back. Re-group.  I get it, I get it. I'm not the Holy Spirit. You're not the Holy Spirit.  None of us is the Holy Spirit. And... the Holy Spirit needs no help!  He is doing great. He is not putting out any Help Wanted signs. He is not hiring. I know that. I get that.   But people keep using that phrase, and I don't think it means what they think it means.  Every single time I hear that phrase being used, it is in the context of coddling someone in their sin. So they say that to mean that they aren't going to point out that person's obvious and blatant sin. That, by itself, would be fine, but it is almost always partnered with someone attempting shelter...

Chapter 1: NEW  Whirr… Click. Whirr… Click. (muffled voice) … “... could you…”  (muffled) “... to the baker?” Whirr… Click.  Whirr… Click. Tommy blinked his eyes. Before him stood the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She had dark brown hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. Her eyes were blue-green and sparkled with the glare of the sun that shone between the leaves of the tree that overshadowed her features. She had the most pristine little lips that seemed to be saying something to him.  “Hello?” said the lips. “I said, ‘Could you please take this to the baker?’” Whirr… Click. Whirr… Click.

De-Construction of one's childhood faith is a thing. The numbers of people who are dismantling their faith and abandoning it are significant. If you Google statistics on deconstructing faith, you will not find that the numbers are zero. Our Christian youth are leaving Christianity. I'll leave it to you to research this, but some of the most recent research claims that 42% of adults have deconstructed the faith of their youth .  For those who are unfamiliar with the term, deconstruction is what it is called when an individual dismantles their beliefs (usually their Christian beliefs), leading to an abandonment of those beliefs. It does not always end with one walking away from their faith, but for the most part, when it is labeled as such, that is precisely what has happened.  There are always those in the public eye that have taken this route. They usually tend to get a decent amount of attention, especially when their "celebrity" status is rooted in their Christian l...

Before I get into my announcement, I can't help but share an announcement made by Bilbo Baggins on his a-hundred-and-eleventh birthday. (This is the version from the book, not the movie.)  If you are not a lover of excellent literature, feel free to skip it and go directly to my announcement.  My dear People, My dear Bagginses and Boffins, and my dear Tooks and Brandybucks, and Grubbs, and Chubbs, and Burrowses, and Hornblowers, and Bolgers, Bracegirdles, Goodbodies, Brockhouses and Proudfoots. Also my good Sackville-Bagginses that I welcome back at last to Bag End. Today is my one hundred and eleventh birthday: I am eleventy-one today! I hope you are all enjoying yourselves as much as I am. I shall not keep you long. I have called you all together for a Purpose. Indeed, for Three Purposes! First of all, to tell you that I am immensely fond of you all, and that eleventy-one years is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits. I don't know half of you h...

When I meet someone who believes in any variety of Darwinistic Evolution, I just think of this in my mind.  And then I go. "Yeah. Right."

The following is an excerpt from The Case for Classical Christian Education by Douglas Wilson, pages 21 and 22.  --------------------------------------------- The NEA knows what it wants and is willing to dedicate its resources to get it. Sad to say, on the other hand, most Christian parents do not know what they want and are not willing to sacrifice anything. Many within the system still have a biblical view of morality, and so they want to work against this sinful agenda and try to restore "traditional" morality to American schools.  On what moral basis shall the teacher who wholly suppresses all appeal to religion rest that authority which he must exercise in the classroom? He will find it necessary to say to the pupil, "Be diligent. Be obedient. Do not lie."  This must be done so the student may acquire his secular knowledge. But on who's authority? By what standard?* Education is fundamentally religious. Consequently, there is no question about whether a ...

Consider...  See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent , though he sought it with tears. ( Hebrews 12:15–17 ESV) Thought experiment:  I'd like to create a thought experiment by briefly describing, or rather, by creating a scenario. I could take several different routes in the creation of this thought experiment, because there have been many versions of this scenario which have played out in many different ways over... well... over the centuries. But I will choose to illustrate a scenario which may be a little bit more typical of our modern context.  Here we go: A man leaves his wife. The reasons aren't as important as one might think. Sure, there are r...

Here now the time has come to say good bye. It came to me the way the night arrives.  O let the dusk remain like a long sigh.  Alas but now in darkness my dream dies. No breath or life does dream have of its own,  but life it has within the dreamer's lungs.  So when a dream its final breath has blown, the dreamer feels like final song has sung. Good bye my dream I know you were not meant to live beyond the constraints of my mind. Imagination now forever sent... I leave you now on trail I've left behind. Eulogy now spoke the deed is done, I lift my eyes and pray new dream will come.

 

 He worked on this for almost a year.  I'll admit two things regarding this video.  The first is that it speaks to an audience that I am (mostly) unfamiliar with.  He uses terminology that I've not heard. Mewing... Looks-maxing... etc. He acknowledged this audience, for sure, but as I learned what the words meant and who this audience is, I realized that the terms might be different, but the audience is age-old and permeates most other audiences.  The second is that... and I've told him this... I don't think he goes far enough with his answer. Now, for the record, he goes as far as he wants to go with the video. He doesn't want to answer the question with an entirely new solution, he is primarily (as he has told me) sought to destroy the concept that looks are of primary importance.  It is a long video, documentary movie length... but I think it is interesting... and so I share.