One of the things that modern people have difficulty with is that Christ the Christmas Messiah is King. That is, that he claims to be the absolute monarchical ruler over all things. Literally everything, and everyone. People really struggle with this idea for two reasons. The first is, at least for good Americans, we have been taught that having a king is bad. I will leave aside here 20th century forays into dictatorship, in the present growth of the American bureaucratic state with centralized control. One could argue that although we don’t like the idea of a king – socially and economically we are slowly accepting the idea that the “perfect system” must be administrated by a wise, centralized, and authoritative central place. The fact that people seem more open to socialistic bureaucratic centrality reminds me that we all know deep down that the best system of government really is monarchy. That is if a worthy monarch could ever be found.

This is the fundamental difference between the message of Christianity and the message of centralized governments. And it is also the reason why Christians have traditionally shied away from central governments. We recognize biblically that monarchy is the best system of government. But we stipulate that it is also the worst form of government. Its place as the perfect government is contingent on the perfect monarch. That is, a monarch that is maximally good and maximally wise. A monarch that will always do the right thing and to always knows everything. Yet Christians have always believed that humans are not capable of producing such a monarchy – either in a single person or in a bureaucratic and technological amalgamation. What F. A. Hayek called the “fatal conceit” was the idea that this is possible. But I must admit that the more technology we develop the more in principle one would think we could get closer to such a possibility. However, technology alone cannot accomplish a true and perfect monarchy. Technology must always be instructed. Technology cannot in and of itself supply the goodness necessary.

And this is the difference between the message of all human governments in the cosmic governance of the poor baby of Bethlehem. It is the realization that only God could ever be King. That human beings will have to govern themselves, and virtually all governments in some way is a grace of God – whether it be monarchical, socialistic, representative, democratic, horrifyingly militarily corrupt, or otherwise. Some of these obviously are more graceful than others – and they are not morally equivalent. But we should not forget because of our political coping mechanisms what the great system really is – the rulership of the one King.

The second reason people struggle with monarchy is called the “scandal of the particular” – how can one King rule over all people? People naturally assume that one person could never represent all people. How could a man of a single gender of one race born into a particular Manger from a particular room at a particular time teaching a specific message wearing a particular kind of clothing be the one King and Savior of all? Any particular human being is by definition not a million other things that other people are. And hidden within the conscious of modern people is often the assumption that my representative must be like me. But the Christian message is that the Savior need not be exactly like us, because he has already created us to be like him. That is the doctrine of the image of God, the gravity of humanity, and redemption of Christ.

The problem of rulership diversity for Jesus is far deeper than we ever dare thought. The Christmas song “Angels from the realms of glory” starts not with shepherds, sages, or saints – but with Angels. Apparently this is how diverse a constituency Jesus is capable of being the right ruler of. He doesn’t just rule all the different kinds of humans in the world, or even all of creation. He is the appointed King of every cosmic intelligence, every everlasting angelic being. He is, in the words of Colossians 1 – “the firstborn over all creation.” And his resurrection from the dead is even stated to be the means by which in literally everything he would have supremacy – even in death, which he makes rebirth into everlasting life.

Just when we might think Christianity claims for Jesus too wide a constituency by claiming he rules over all people. We might be reminded by Scripture and Christmas song that he claims a far wider constituency for himself. That he is king over all people, all Angels and Demons, all celestial creation, and everything in this world down to the sparrow and the Lily.

But the legitimacy of his claim to that realm rests in the legitimacy of his claim of character. If Christ is Lord and God then he can be King – the best governance there could ever be. He is the one both maximally good and maximally wise, the one who knows the right thing and does the right thing. He has no fatal conceit and none of the predictable and proven liabilities of the lesser rulers of men.

Quote from a preaching class I did:

“I may have milked 300 cows, but I made my OWN butter.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Attributing material to the person you gleaned it from is important. It is worthwhile if for no other reason than it fights pride. When you quote the same person 50 times, you have to admit your real range- or lack thereof. It’s always a sign of pride when you’re tempted to quote a footnote like a completely new source- as though you read it all. It is equally a sign when you read a quote from some classic on a website and read it like you know the novel itself. Not only are you being a little self-aggrandizing, but the most educated and capable among your people will sniff it out and lose respect for all of you preaching- not knowing what is being said out of divine conviction and what for self-promotion.

Attributing too much is better than not enough. You have to ask yourself, what if someone found out where I really got this? What would they think I was doing- managing their image of me or passing along helpful information in a form that is useful?

You can only elect not to attribute when you have so made someone else’s milk your own butter, that the two are that recognizably different.

Oh, and by the way, I got the above quote for Jim Luther in a preaching class we taught.

 

 

Lexi and I love the Bill Burr standup routing where he mocks Oprah for saying being a mother is the “Hardest Job in the World”. But here is cereal for the mom that needs to maintain the martyr complex to make it through the day.

Although I don’t like making fun of most moms, I do like killing sacred cows when they are cows and holding our sentiments and loyalties to poor proportions. Mom’s have it easy and have it hard. So do sanitation workers, social workers and grocery store shelf stockers. If being a mom is your second job, then it’s probably hard. But it’s a little hard to get too exercised feeling sorry for mom’s with three or less kids in the richest country in history.

Although I think being a mom is a grueling job (few breaks in early years) and often a thankless one (husband, society and kids), it is not any harder than anything else in most cases.

I fear we are getting to that point in time that we are going to have to admit that the reason many moms are going crazy is two reasons.

1. They haven’t really accepted the role in the depths of their psychology, and so their anxious and can’t let it just be what it is

2. Silly parenting models

I’m not sure we dads can help our wives all that much with #1. If you have ideas, post them to the comments.

But concerning #2, we men need to be part of the solution, but we need to do it discretely. If you think your wife may be suffering from stress caused by silly parenting ideas, I don’t recommend the frontal approach or the passive aggressive approach. the Frontal approach would be telling her that her parenting ideas are silly- even if they are. If her ideas are really kooky it’s probably partly your fault anyway. Parenting philosophies are not well created in the presence of kids. And if you let your comfort with parenting dictate the number of children you actually have, then instead of having enough kids to heal you of your parenting silliness you will choose to have fewer kids so that you can maintain the nutty system you’ve got. I think that’s why a lot of parents think two kids is a lot and don’t know that they’d do with three. Three kids are easy to parent if they know they are kids and you don’t create an environment that makes every day an emotionally distressing marathon for everyone.

I also would not recommend overcompensating for a lenient mom by being the overbearing, I’m going to take control and make all you little minion tough dad. This makes for a combative and resentment filled relationship between parents who are supposed to be both allies and lovers, as well as a distressing environment for kids.

Alexi told me frankly that she needed to discover her parenting weaknesses from books and other parents. I think that’s usually true for me too. So if you have parenting conflict, I suggest agreeing on a couple that had kids you think are growing well. Try to agree and then spend some time with their family and ask them about parenting. At some point ask them what books they’ve read, and then see if your spouse wants to read it with you. You’d be surprised what you can learn from someone that isn’t your spouse and what your spouse is willing to learn from a third party.

If you don’t like being a parent, your parenting model could be the culprit. Don’t suffer through it. Fix it. It’s not as hard as you think. And ounce of humility can buy you a pound of relief.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some interesting Quotations from Dorthy Sayers Essay on work called “Why Work”

 

unless we do change our whole way of thought about work, I do not think we shall ever escape from the appalling squirrel cage of economic confusion in which we have been madly turning for the last three centuries or so, the cage in which we landed ourselves by acquiescing in a social system based upon envy and avarice.

A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, in such a society is a house built upon sand.

 

War is a judgment that overtakes societies when they have been living; upon ideas that conflict to violently with the laws governing the universe. People who would not revise their ideas voluntarily find themselves compelled to do so by the sheer pressure of the events which these are very ideas have served to bring about.

 

 

Something concerning evangelism worth passing on:

“Some interesting research by Sam Rainer of Rainer Research suggests that only five percent of the unchurched in America are likely to be highly resistant to the Gospel, antagonistic toward Christians, or belligerent in their conversations with and about Christians. At five percent, Sam says these “hardcore unchurched” account for about 8 million people, but he estimates the other 152 million who are unchurched are far more open to hearing the Gospel.”    

I have found this to be true in Madison. It’s easy to think that because there is so much secular education in this town, and the presence of highly vocal people with extreme political views, that this is actually the majority of the population. As in most cases the majority is really silent. Loud people are often in the minority – but we can get intellectually bullied into thinking that they are the majority. 

Remember, we have not been given the ministry of being annoying, but we have been given the ministry of reconciliation that comes through the message of the Gospel (2 Cor 5:18). Don’t let an untrue assumption silence you in naturally talking to people about more than the weather, or inviting them to something, or including them in Christian community. You need not ever be ashamed of the Gospel, but it is also true that far fewer people will TRY to make you feel ashamed of it that we might think.

Go for it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week I preached on the gospel and justice. I argued that justice is everyone receiving equal rights under law. It really isn’t that simple. In this era we aren’t, as in the Old Testament, judging and applying laws from God. We are judging in applying laws that we ourselves have made in a Democratic representative form of government. In this context, justice has to include making the right kinds of laws as well as applying those of laws fairly.

I do think that there is little or no biblical warrant for graduated redistribution models in the Bible and I think that every command related to property in the old testament assumed the dignity and legitimacy of private property. That is, what is gained lawfully should not be taken from someone lawfully- either privately or through government by a means not equal to all. I noted that the Torah DOES make provision for everyone paying 10% to the tithe, and that it was paid more by land owners since it was a share of the harvest. However, it was not a graduated system where people were not only paying different amounts but they weren’t even paying the same percentages.

However, although Justice is a narrower and therefore more substantive category, Mercy is also commanded in the Bible, and I think we need to pay attention to commands concerning mercy while coming to a full view of how we should be public people in a free society, while we live by godly principles.

You might not like new Gingrich, but I found these sentences him something he wrote recently that I found enlightening:

“Many people are familiar with the story of the Massachusetts’s 54th, the heroic regiment at the center of the movie Glory, but in fact at least one in five soldiers wearing Union blue by the end of the conflict was African American. That number was far in excess of the proportion of the population they represented.”

I had no idea African-Americans made up that high a proportion of the Union army at any point in the Civil War conflict.

in years past I have tended to agree with James Emery White that keeping Christian children out of the holiday of Halloween didn’t make a whole lot of sense. It only served to make us look weird, since nobody could see a clear connection between Halloween and obvious immoralitiesor the occult. Almost nobody remembers anything related to an ancient Druid paganism. And so it seemed odd to concern ourselves so much with it. Indeed it is a tragedy we don’t spend the time and effort celebrating Reformation Day and the great truths of the Solas that created a free West and a more thriving church of Christ, or even the harvest festival of the Old Testament – celebrating the abundance of God’s provision for all people to the natural workings of plant and animal life.

But below White makes a pretty good case for how Halloween is changing. It is getting sluttier, more gory, more expensive, more like Christmas and more pagan. I think that is worth thinking about, and perhaps acting about.

Nic

 

Church & Culture Blog | Church and Culture

Posted: Thursday, October 27, 2011

I grew up in a day when Halloween was little more than pumpkins, fall festivals, hayrides, and dressing up as a pirate or a farmer to go trick-or-treating. That is what it held for my now post-Halloween-age children as well. As a result, I’ve had a built-in resistance to those Christians who bash October 31 as a pagan festival that followers of Christ have no business supporting, much less engaging. I know its history, but few celebrations in our day are free of pagan roots, and the idea that donning a costume and receiving a mini-Snicker bar was an invitation to the occult was ludicrous to my thinking.   I still hold to the child-like fun the night can hold, but I no longer view the day itself as innocuous.   For example, in an article in The New York Times titled, “Good Girls Go Bad, For a Day,” Stephanie Rosenbloom writes of the changing nature of women’s Halloween costumes in the last several years.   Little Red Riding Hood, in her thigh-highs and miniskirt does not seem en route to her grandmother’s house. Goldilocks, in a snug bodice and platform heels, gives the impression she has been sleeping in everyone’s bed. And then there is the witch wearing little more than a Laker Girl uniform, a fairy who appears to shop at Victoria’s Secret and a cowgirl with a skirt the size of a – well, you get the point.

As Rosenbloom notes, the images “are more strip club than storybook.” It’s a wonder, she adds, that “gyms do not have ‘get in shape for Halloween’ specials.”   Of course, experts are often trotted out to speak of this as the “empowering” of women as they embrace their sexuality, and look for deep and positive meanings in the evolution of Cinderella from virgin to vixen. But take a walk through your neighborhood mall’s costume store, as I recently did – mine featured a prominent “no one under 18 allowed without a parent” sign out front – and you can cut through the sociological analysis.    It is, as comedian Carols Mencia jokes, “Dress-Like-A-Whore” day.”

And need I even delve into the gore side of things?

This growing debasement is coupled with another trend: the Christmas-ization of Halloween. There are now Halloween trees decorated with ghosts and pumpkins, orange lights on houses, and even Halloween displays on lawns.    In an article in USA Today on how Halloween is getting “Christmassy,” Maria Puente writes that “Halloween…is second only to the December holiday in spending.” 7 in 10 expect to celebrate Halloween in some way, up from 6 in 10 in 2010. According to the National Retail Federation, in 2011 Americans are planning to spend an average of $72 each on Halloween. Total outlays by consumers are expected to reach $6.86 billion.    This may be the most insidious dynamic of all. Christmas has already been on a long slide into a secular celebration of emotion divorced from content. But at least the trappings of Christmas pointed us to the promise of meaning.    Now, through the co-opting of Christmas by Halloween, even that may be lost.   So we string our lights and decorate our trees, and dress as Little Bo “Peep Show” and Miss Foul Play.    Welcome to the anti-Christmas, and a reminder that we probably missed out on what was really demonic about Halloween all along.   James Emery White

You have to be careful, especially with advertisers, especially with advertisers that use images, and especially with advertisers that use video, and especially advertisers that use evocative, iconic, quick cut video styles.

it is true that you are marvelous. It is even true that the gods waits to delight in you. In almost every way almost everything said in this commercial is kind of true. The words are orthodoxy, but the meaning is blasphemy. That is the heart of the difficulty of thinking in our modern world.

You are marvelous. But it is not because you are independent, or because you can make ordinary life unordinary. Nor are you marvelous because you are young, stylish, good looking, or have nice hair or can act excited or can listen to loud music. nor are you marvelous he cause you can disconnect from all of the connections of society and human life and assert your mystical independence from all personal and corporate responsibilities. You are not marvelous because you are young and single, or because you can make out with or make love to someone equally as attractive. In short you are not marvelous because of your marvelous jeans (or genes).

You are marvelous precisely because of what makes you the same as everyone else. The marvelous thing about you is the ordinary thing about you-and this is why people get so confused about the Marvel. And to live out the marvelous in this has more to do with living out the ordinary than it does with concocting an extraordinary moment by which you escape “death in life”.

The gods do want to delight in you. The lowercase gods, the Angels and the one they serve, do wish to delight in you. But they don’t wish to delight in you being single, attractive, selfish, and irresponsible. They’re not concerned with your fashion. They are not concerned with how hip you are. They wish to take delight in you as you take delight in the one true God, and his ways and purposes. And his delighting in you delighting in him comes from him first delighting to create, reveal, and save.are delight comes from delighting in the one that did not cheat death even in life – but the one who found life for us in his death, and called us to seek life in the ordinary world through a kind of death.

So much orthodoxy, yet so much blasphemy. But they are nice jeans.

What does this ad tempt you to believe that is blasphemy (against God’s truth), but is build on orthodoxy (something true)?