Thursday is for Thurs

Again, taking a cue from the oft-pretentious, semi-narcissistic blog-offerings from many in the ECM (like "Phriday is Phor Photos", where the ECMmer shows his sensitive, arts-and-croissants side)...

...I give you a list of articles I've been reading recently which have piqued my interest, in no particular order whatsoever, and likely of no lasting value, either.

• This article about the need for space settlements to mitigate human nature and make war a thing of the past (yep; worked real well when the Old World colonized the New, now didn't it...? Just can't outrun that darned sin nature, no matter how far we run...)


• One about a new drug to delete bad memories. I dunno, I'm with Captain Kirk on this one; it's our experiences - good and bad - which make us what we are...


• And in the "Resistance Is Futile" department, it appears that Windows Vista is the mark of the Beast - or, at least, Medium-Sized Brother...


• GREEEEEAAAAAAAAT article by the Persecuted Church Weblog, "But Is It Biblical?"


• Brian MacLaren's online annotation of a CT article. Yes, he's gracious. But to quote the premise of the previous article, "but is he Biblical...?" Again - as with just about everything else in the ECM, self-rebutting...


• A rebuttal by LiftPort about the subject of making a space elevator - very similar to the "Beanstalk" of 2300AD


• Interesting concept of a steam-powerd car


• Babylon 5 The Lost Tales trailer has been posted


• More tantalizing stuff on Quantum Teleportation


• Some neat tricks to teach Windows XP


• Linux Journal discusses Open Source 2.0


• A possible solution to the black hole information loss paradox


• Seven Benefits to being a Bivocational Pastor

So, there you have it. Rock on.

Perfect Example of Pomo Epistemology

This offering from our friends at the ever, ever-increasingly appropriately named "Open Source Theology" blog (an ECM group-blog) is a stellar example of the state of Emergent-type epistemology. I believe the opening paragraph says it all:

In 10 principles for reading the Bible in a postmodern context, Andrew proposes that contributors to an emerging post-evangelical theology adopt Principle 2 - "Let’s pretend it’s not inerrant." He suggests that we "set aside claims to the predetermined inerrancy and sanctity of the Bible, at least insofar as such claims force upon us standards of truthfulness that conflict with criteria of thought that we are not prepared to abandon in other areas of discourse (scientific, historical, literary, social, etc.)." Adopting Principle 2 "allows us to read the Bible as the unbeliever reads it; it helps to defamiliarise the Bible for us, which will be an essential aspect of the deconstruction process…" In the Genesis 1 as True Myth post we’ve been trying to make literal sense of the Biblical creation narratives. What if instead we were to read Genesis 1-3 in light of Principle2?

As with everything else I've reat from OST, the post requires no rebuttal; it's self-rebutting.

...and some ECMmers wonder why us iggnit' nukkle-draggin konsirvuhtivs get the willies when reading their stuff...

"Absence of evidence..."

Just watching one of my absolute most favoritest channels, getting ready to go to "tentmaking" to make some $$$ to pay off the publica-- er, that is, the lawyers handling baby Masen's case...

...anyway, the show The Universe was on, a re-run, actually... and I heard a dude who was being interviewed about E.T. say, in response to the apparently insurmountable problem posed by the Fermi Paradox RE: the quest to find other intelligent life "out there". Basically, astronomers have long postulated that the statistical probability of intellilgent civilizations having arisen on worlds orbiting other suns is high enough to be a near-certainty, yet we haven't seen a single shred of evidence of E.T.'s existence - which is troubling to Fox Mulder and others like him.

Anyway, this is, as I'd said, a re-run; I'd seen this episode before. And I'd heard the last time, this one quote that really sparked some thought:

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
- Tom Spilker, JPL

I find that absolutely fascinating... because it really illustrates, I think, the maxim, "he who does not believe in God, it does not mean he will not believe anything - it means instead he will believe... anything."

The same dudes who make statements like the "absence of evidence" regarding E.T. usually nod in rapt agreement with Ricky Dawkins when he makes the converse statement regarding theism.

Lay aside the fact, for the moment, that the evidence for God's existence is truly overwhelming - so much so that it's almost nonsensical to even type that statement out, it's so self-evident. Why does the axiom, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" work for the search for Starman, but not in discussing the subject of God, I wonder...?

Cows 'n' Stuff

Have I mentioned yet today how much I like this guy...?

Funny, humorous, and yet... all-too-often painfully true.

Yikes.

No PC Should Be Without It

Things that make you go, "hmmmmmm..."

This podcast is not from the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil Calvary Chapel cabal who meanly dislike a certain Purposefully Driven Pastor and other such things... it's not even from Chucky Missler, Roger Oakland, or any of the other individuals many love to... not love so much. It's from (drum roll, please) the Chalcedon Foundation, a group of stark raving pinko-Commie Calvinists who very much believe in "engaging culture" (just not in the way that the ECM likes to think of "cultural engagement").

Being a Calvary Chapel dude, I don't have a lot of sympathy for Chalcedon's positions (primarily their ecclesiology, soteriology, or eschatology); but I like listening to this podcast. It's good to listen to those you don't agree with - keeps you sharp and helps prevent you from ossifying in an intellectual cul-de-sac. So I subscribe to the Chalcedon podcast (as well as some others I don't agree with on much - like Driscoll, some Bell, etc.).

So I found it reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally fascinating to hear Chalcedon's take on these things...

...I wonder how long it's going to be before the ones who got down on Ken Graves for his off-the-cuff, not-very-charitable, yet-not-really-that-far-off-base-it-turns-out verbal backslap upside Reverend "Syria's A Great Nation!" 40-Days Dude's head two Murrieta Conferences ago start lighting into Chalcedon...?

Let me make a prediction: They won't. Chalcedon's not as easy a target as Calvary Chapel because - let's be honest - they're not that interesting..

The Dog Ate My Homework

Okay, so I've been a bit slack on the blog for the last few weeks.

Or longer.

I wanted to let all my readers (both of you) know why.

Early this year, a thirteen-year-old girl on the other side of the state made a series of less-than-wise decisions... and nine months later, she gave birth to a healthy - a screamin' healthy - baby boy.

Back up a few months.

My lovely and gracious wife and I have had a heart for adoption since before we were married. We've gone through the process of adoption seven times for eleven children, but each time the doors had been closed, for a wide variety of reasons.

Early this year, my lovely and gracious wife was sharing at a ladies' retreat for a Calvary Chapel from the other side of the state. She has a great relationship with several of the ladies from that fellowship, and after her session, she was sitting with two ladies in particular; one of them shared that her grand-daughter, whom she had legal custody over and whom she had been raising since she was an infant, was pregnant. She (the girl) could not raise her child, and she (the grandmother) could not raise her great-grand-daughter. Long story short, my lovely and gracious wife was asked to pray about adopting the boy (by this time, I think, they already knew his gender).

I had just accepted a new position with a new company as a contract "adjunct faculty" educator, which created a substantial fiscal hiccup - plus now needing to obtain my own health insurance, withhold my own taxes, etc. So we were not in a financial position to adopt.

I say that, because about that time I read an ECMmer's blog whini---er, I mean, "complaining" about how "hypocritical" it was that us eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil evangelicals are so against infanticide, yet weren't so big on adoption (as if the lack of the latter justifies the horrific prevalence of the former). Which is a calumny, regardless; major, culturally insensitive, un-hip, we-don't-care-about-the-poor-and-yet-care-waaaaay-too-much-about-individual-salvation-in-spite-of-what-Pope-N.T.-Wright-Hath-Decreed-yea-verily evangelical organizations like Focus on the Family (an organization in very low esteem among many in the ECM) are strong champions of adoption - darn that confusing-the-issue-with-facts thing that us non-ECMmers meanly like to do, darn us to heck...

Turns out, it's a rather expensive proposition to adopt a child.

And no, in situations like ours, there are precious little resources which are available to help offset that.

Which is patently ridiculous; when going through the process of adoption, everybody's got to get their pound of flesh. And by "pound of flesh" I of course mean "several thousand unnecessary dollars".

The organization that we wound up doing our homestudy with, which is one of the most respected, gave us a huge break at only $2600.

For a homestudy.

For the uninitiated, that's when some lady who's got a social studies degree comes in to your house, asks you two or three dozen questions, looks around for a few seconds, goes back to her office, and writes up a mostly accurate report which is then sent to your lawyer.

All for the low-low price of $2600.

I am a pastor. A bivocational pastor. If you do the pastor thing right, you pro'lly don't have $2600 lying around just waiting to be spent. ;D

Then the lawyers need to get their chunk of pie. Turns out, that for a lawyer to stand around at court all day, chit-chat with other lawyers about various cases, golf courses, the weather, and the latest smack RE: Dancing With The Stars - anything but actually go into court and do something - is quite taxing on a man's system - but nothing that $200/hour can't help ameliorate (BTW, it turns out that that price is a huge break on our lawyer's normal charge, too).

But that's just the beginning.

I am wondering, more and more as each day passes, why on God's green earth this has to be so expensive?

Especially since all the liberals cry and wail at how big meanie conservatives want to bring us back to the seventeen hundreds and not let women kill their children, and then won't take care of the unwanted little products of conception that subsequently have the temerity to be born and wreck our previously idyllic lives. And what with how many "I'm-not-really-a-liberal" liberals, who love a Marxist - er, that is, an über-powerful, centralized, Messianic State, who spare no verbage whacking us iggnit' konsurvetivz for standing against abortion, waste no effort in trying to make adoption a more accessible option.

Doh.

Double doh.

Anyway.

Regardless of the extremely high cost, my lovely and gracious wife didn't have to pray long to hear the prompting of the Spirit and step out in faith to see what the Lord might want to do.

The story of what God then did still blows my mind. Long story short, through the amazing generosity of our church family (local and extended), we were able to get together the funds for the homestudy. I'll post my lovely and gracious wife's synopsis of what the Lord did at a later date.

So, fast forward to last week, August 23rd. Baby Masen Elijah was born, just after eight in the evening. Poor lad was born with a club foot - his foot bends inward and up at a greater than 90-degree angle, so for the first two months of his life he's going to get a new cast every week (I keep telling people that he's had a skiing accident - you should see the looks I get... tee hee hee...). But he's such a blessing, such a cute little guy... we just got him a little bitty Red Wings outfit... next week, I'm going to see if we can't find tiny little skates for him...

...but what all that means is that what little disposable time I've had... is now gone. Gloriously, wondrously gone.

In fact, my little alarm clock is resting quiescently next to me on our loveseat while I plunk out this here blogpost.



Soooooo, that's why I haven't posted anything for some time. Even though there's lots to post on:

• A pastor that I've respected for some time has been almost completely seduced by the Dark Side and embraced evolution and the "True Myth" hypothesis of the opening chapters of Genesis...



• My increasing suspicion that the Calvinist and Arminian views of salvation aren't quite as antithetical as the "Me, Smart Calvinist, you, stupid semi-pelagian" would like for us to believe...



• What the ECM actually gets right...



• Taking a cue from Steve McCoy's recent spate of blogposts RE: his own Southern Baptist Convention, detailing "Why I Hate Us" and "Why I Love Us" (sort of a "here's what I really don't like about the SBC" and a "here's what I really love about the SBC" kind of blogpost series), something along those lines about Calvary Chapel (even though Dan Fusco has sort of trumped me on that one, I have a somewhat/slightly different take on the issues at hand)...



• Some insights RE: the Seven Letters of Revelation, since that's what we're going through on Sundays at Calvary Chapel on the Lakeshore...

Now, by the way, for both my readers... on the subject of my boy, my beautiful baby boy... couple of prayer requests:

1. There's still some rather substantial legal hurdles that we have to clear before Masen becomes a Macon. Irritating, unnecessary drama-type hurdles.



2. Masen's contracted conjunctivitis over the weekend - probably getting it at church this last Sunday (his first at CC Lakeshore).



3. ...and of course, pray that his foot heals completely.

Thanks, y'all... now I need to stand Masen Watch tonight so that my lovely and gracious wife can get some sleep.

Your Own Personal Luther

This is great. Much as I wax narcoleptic at the repetitively redundant phrase, "Gospel-Driven Church," which is just as redundant as "Born-Again Christian" (is there any other kind...?), this post of new theses for the modern church is utterly, utterly priceless. I'm printing them out and putting them in our church bulletin over the next few Sundays (which is rather apropos, given that we're going through the Seven Letters to the Seven Churches)...

BTW... kudos to y'all who got the oblique reference to the seminal Depeche Mode single, in this blogpost's title, there.

Also, kudos to Mike Newnham, who I borrowed/stole this from - he posted on it first.

I say "kudos" because I haven't a clue what "HT" is supposed to mean. I've been trying to figure that out after seeing it on blog after blog after blog...

• Here There...?


• Hot Tuesday...?


• High Tower...?


• Hyper Thread...?


• Hren and Thtimpy...?


• Hoopie Thloopie...?

...hence, "kudos", which definition I know.

My personal favorites from the list:

10. If the entirety of your churchy desires consists of filling a seat to experience a good service, you are not a congregant in a church but a consumer at a concert.

11. What you win people with is what you win them to.
Win people with flash, spectacle, presentation, etc., and that’s what you win them to. Don’t be surprised if, like all consumers and what attracts them, they eventually get tired and move on to the next attraction. Don’t be surprised if, provided they remain, they continually request more, better, higher . . . (Mike: Boy, ain't that the truth...)

17. A church’s success should be neither entirely nor primarily measured by its attendance. Also, a church’s growth should not be entirely or primarily measured numerically. (Mike: The author qualifies this in the next thesis so that you "Church Fruitfulness Is Nickels And Noses" types who are begining to infec--er, enter the Calvary Movement don't get too bent out-of-shape...)

Good stuff. Read the post.

Supralapsarian Motivation

Okay... Bob Hyatt, ECM pastor and blogger, has - along with most of the rest of ECM-dom, has taken umbrage at a recent series of mock "motivational" posters poking fun at the ECM by the Team Pyro guys (who have fairly substantial problems of their own - namely, they're open, out-of-the-closet, stark raving pinko Commie Calvinists). Most of the ECM's response to Team Pyro's stuff has, quite frankly, proven their point.

One particular poster that Bob came up with in response, however, is positively priceless.



Don't that just say it all?

tee hee hee... makes me giggle...

I like this guy...

Chris Elrod, pastor and church planter of Compass Point church, has a series of blogposts, "Confessions of a Stupid Pastor."

• Part 1


• Part 2


• Part 3

I like this guy.