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On November 26, 2013 By In Culture, Family and Children

When Are You Ever Going To Grow Up?

by Marc Hays

“When I became a man, I put away childish things…”

Norman-Rockwell-Taller_thumb2For decades, American culture has been pushing the threshold between childhood and adulthood further and further from birth. This is being done in the name of science, which supposedly is just analyzing the data and then reporting the facts. A myriad of professions, from psychiatrists to psychologists to neurologists to anthropologists, are making the claim that the period of “adolescence” continues to lengthen. As many of these professions are built on evolutionary assumptions, the data is often treated as though this is simply the way things are. Perhaps it is simply the next stage of human evolution; the next stage of progress being a state in which the human being no longer wants to progress.

In September of this year, the BBC reported, “New guidance for psychologists will acknowledge that adolescence now effectively runs up until the age of 25 for the purposes of treating young people.” This shift in the direction for the psychiatric care of young people is being pushed by neurologists that are claiming that the prefrontal cortex of the brain is still developing until around age 25. Therefore, information is being processed differently than in the brains of adults, which leads to all of the stereotypical woes of the teenage years.

This distinction between “children” and “adults” is a real one, and not just some arbitrary legal age. This distinction goes far beyond the ability to reproduce their species; far beyond their overall physical shape and/or muscle tone; far beyond the final state of their prefrontal cortex. Those characteristics are certainly an objective reality, but the Apostle Paul doesn’t say, “When I became a man, I got stronger, taller, and had to shave my whiskers.”  He said that he “put away childish things”, or in the ESV, “I gave up childish ways.” He’s implying that a child behaves like a child, and an adult behaves like an adult. The problem in our culture is not that people are staying small and beardless. It is that they grow up physically but refuse to take the responsibility that is supposed to accompany that growth.

The term “adolescence” comes from the Latin word “adolescere” which means “to grow up.” In most cultures that recognize this stage of human development, it begins with the onset of puberty and the physical changes that reshape little people into bigger people. When adolescence ends is somewhat arbitrary, and this “commencement” is often attended by culturally relative rites and rituals. America’s famous age has long stood at 18-years-old. This makes sense as this age is attended by high school graduation and the legal right to enter into a contract, signifying the end of the legal guardianship of parents. Seems simple enough, right? Child…17. Adult…18.

If so, then why are leading psychiatric associations publishing that adolescence should be extended to age 25? Why? Perhaps it’s because they know that a sustained “identity crisis,” which supposedly comes with adolescence, is good for their industry. After all, they’re all about fixing crises, right? Why extend the age of adolescence? Maybe it’s because longer childhood provides more of something else besides sin on which to blame America’s interminable immaturity.

As Christians, when we finish critiquing the psychiatric community’s self-fulfilling prophecies, are we prepared to do anything about it? What about our kids? Are we raising them to grow up? Do we have a plan to help them put away childish things and move from godly children to godly adults? Paul’s list includes speaking like a child, thinking like a child, and reasoning like a child. We must teach them and, more importantly, show them what it means to speak, think, and reason as an adult.

A wise man once instructed me that our goal as parents should not be to raise godly children, but to raise godly adults. (I won’t tell you his name, but his initials are RCJR.) This epigram casts our eyes toward the horizon, lest we become too easily satisfied in present successes or too easily discouraged by the failures. The litmus test for adulthood cannot be a magical age when the prefrontal cortex stops growing, and we should not be surprised when, a few years from now, new scientific data attempts to explain why adolescence is being extended to 40-years-old. The standard for judging godliness, in both children and adults, has been, and always will be, the Word of God—fully revealed in the Son of Man, Jesus Christ.<>online gameпопулярность а проверить

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On November 22, 2013 By In Culture

C. S. Lewis & Winnie the Pooh

transcribed by Marc Hays

The following quote is taken from the lecture, “Shelf Life: Reading, Thinking and Resisting the Tyranny of the Urgent,” by Dr. George Grant, who granted permission for such a lengthy quote:

This afternoon, my talk is going to be, essentially, an exposition of a passage. I’ll read the passage first, and then, we’ll launch into the exposition therein.

pooh_99_“Well, I’ve got an idea,” said Rabbit, “and here it is. Look, we take Tigger for a long explore. Somewhere he’s never been. And then, we lose him there. And the next morning, we find him again. And mark my words, he’ll be a different Tigger altogether.”

“Why?” said Pooh.

“Because, he’ll be a humble Tigger; because he’ll be a sad Tigger; a melancholy Tigger; a small and sorry Tigger; and an ‘oh, Rabbit, I’m so glad to see you’ Tigger. That’s why.”

It’s a wonderful scene, isn’t it? Pooh and Rabbit talking about Tigger, who is always so… …pompous. Always so full of ideas.

You know, Pooh doesn’t have a brain, as he constantly reminds himself and everyone else. And Rabbit, well, he’s a bright one, but he’s small and he knows he’s small and he can’t dominate the world. Tigger, he’s even more pompous than Rabbit, because he knows so much. He’s so clever. He’s like an academic. So, Rabbit and Pooh come together to imagine a way to make Tigger more bearable. And they hatch this scheme that will somehow bring Tigger to a place of repentance.

J.R.R. Tolkien once said, “The essence of education is repentance. It is recognizing that we don’t know what we ought to know. We don’t do what we aspire to do. We make up a thousand excuses as to why it is that we’re not all that we were called to be.”

…And we could become overwhelmed with all that we’ve got to know and all that we’ve got to do, or we could be like that wonderful community just around the corner where Pooh lives where we provoke one another on toward repentance.

We all kind of need a Pooh and a Rabbit in our lives to take us on a long explore. Where we can then get lost, and then found again. So that we wake up the next day a much more humble Tigger; a much more receptive Tigger; a much more ‘oh, I’m so glad to see you Rabbit,’ Tigger.

That’s what reading does for us. We look at all of the tasks that we’ve got and we realize immediately that we are going to need to rearrange our lives. Because we have been robbed culturally; because we have been robbed spiritually; because we have been deficient ourselves, and we have contributed to own intellectual and spiritual indolence; we know that the great call of God on us is not just to stack the books up and to have all sorts of good intentions. It really is to repent. And there is nothing greater in all the world to provoke us to repent than to read books. Books that stretch us; books that change us; books that open to us new horizons; books that  change the way we look at the world; books that change the way we talk;  books that change the way we set the table; books that change the way we have relationships.

Emily Dickinson, the great American folk poet said,

“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot That bears a Human soul.”

Mark Twain, reinforcing that notion, said, “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”

I’m convinced that to a large degree, what many of you are wrestling with as you think through your already crowded day-timers; as you think through all of your past, bashed, best intentions, is that God is beckoning you to join with me in repenting.

In this session, what I’d like to do is to suggest a practical way for us to undertake this humble task of repenting: changing our lives, realizing that we need to be hungry to learn. That we need to find teachers to speak into our lives, who may not live in our neighborhoods, but who can be brought to our school, into our communities, into our homes by way of that marvel called a book.

Long before the bane of television invaded our every waking moment, C. S. Lewis commented that while most people in modern industrial cultures are at least marginally able to read, they just don’t. In his wise and wonderful book, An Experiment in Criticism, he wrote,

“The majority, though they are sometimes frequent readers, do not set much store by reading. They turn to it as a last resource. They abandon it with alacrity as soon as any alternative pastime turns up. It is kept for railway journeys, illnesses, odd moments of enforced solitude, or for the process called ‘reading oneself to sleep.’ They sometimes combine it with desultory conversation; often, while listening to the radio. But literary people are always looking for leisure and silence in which to read and do so with their whole attention. When they are denied such attentive and undisturbed reading for a few days they feel impoverished.”

He goes further, admitting that there is a profound puzzlement on the part of the mass of the citizenry over the taste and habits of the literate. He says, “It is pretty clear that the majority, if they spoke without passion, and were fully articulate, would not accuse us of liking the wrong books, but about making such a fuss about any books at all.

We treat, as a main ingredient in our well-being, something which to them is marginal. Hence to say, simply, that they like one thing and we another is to leave out nearly the whole of the facts. He goes on to argue that all of this is not to imply any hint of moral turpitude on the part of modern Bohemianism; rather, it is to recognize the simple reality of the gaping chasm that exists between those who read and those who don’t; between the popular “many” and the peculiar “few.” It is to recognize that education requires the latter while maintaining steadfast incompatibility with the former.

He concludes the whole affair by saying, “true readers may never carry their knowledge with “hubris.” You know what ‘hubris'” is. It’s like pride, on sterroids. The truly well-read will never carry their education with hubris, because every time you turn a page, you discover something that you did not know. Thus, he says, it brings you back to that theme of education as repentance.

The preceding quote is taken from the lecture, “Shelf Life: Reading, Thinking and Resisting the Tyranny of the Urgent,” by Dr. George Grant. You can buy an mp3 download of the lecture here.

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On November 21, 2013 By In Culture

Homosexuality: What Conservative Christians Aren’t Saying, Are Asking, and Should Be Doing

By Peter Jones

Homosexuality has been a hot topic in the church for some time. The intensity of the debate has picked up as the homosexual movement has continued to push its agenda. What is most disconcerting is that the church continues to compromise.   This blog post is divided into three sections. First, things Christians are accused of saying about homosexuality, but usually aren’t. Second, important questions that must be answered in the sodomy debate. Third, how should the Church approach sodomy.

Are We Saying That? 

Conservative Christians are often accused of saying certain things when they are not. We have not been unclear on these points.  Wackos get all the press. But most conservative Christian leaders have faithfully and graciously spoken to the issue of sodomy. New books are being constantly written about how Christians should graciously interact with homosexuals. When someone accuses Christians of the things listed below it is usually a slander.

We are not saying that sodomy is the unforgivable sin. The Bible does not teach that sodomy is an unforgivable sin. All sins can be forgiven if someone repents and turns from them to Christ.  I Corinthians 6:9-11 lists homosexuals among those who have been washed. There may be Christians out there who think sodomy cannot be covered by the blood of Christ. But they are not in the center of the evangelical faith and they are wrong.

We are not encouraging people to hate homosexuals. The Bible does not teach that we hate homosexuals any more than it teaches that we hate murderers or adulterers or pedophiles. We tell them to repent and turn from their sins. Again, there are some Christians out there who hate sodomites, but these are on the fringe. I do not know of any evangelical leader who would encourage hatred of homosexuals. Of course, often the accusation of homophobia is against those who are calling homosexuals to repent. If the world sees calling homosexuals to repent as hatred, then we should all declare ourselves guilty.

We are not encouraging people to be afraid of or make fun of homosexuals.  Here some work needs to be done in the Christian circles. There is still this idea that homosexuals are “disgusting.”  Some of this comes from their practices.  Some of this comes from a junior high mentality that likes to poke fun at certain groups of people. As Christians, this is generally not acceptable. There are places to mock a homosexual agenda, but this should not be normal, especially as we talk with homosexuals one on one. They are bound for Hell. Their practices are disgusting. But so are the practices of the adulterer or the man addicted to porn or the proud self-righteous church goer. All sin disgusts God. We should stop being disgusted by them and start calling them to trust in Christ.  This is a more prevalent problem than the previous two, but it is still not what most leaders in the church call their flock to do.

Question Mark 1Three Key Questions

Here are three key questions that conservative Christians are asking when we talk about homosexuality.  My answers to the questions are in each paragraph, as well as a more comprehensive answer in the final section.

First, is a homosexual lifestyle, including lust and desire for homosexual relationships, consistent with faith in Christ? Can someone be a practicing homosexual and still trust in Christ? Is homosexuality a sin? Can we call homosexuals to repentance or are they just fine the way they are?  If someone will not stand up straight, look you in the eye, and say that homosexuality is a sin then he has seriously compromised in some area of his life. Anytime you get in a conversation with a Christian about sodomy ask them if they think it is a sin. If they waver or say something like, “Yes, but so is lying and we all do that,” you can be assured they have compromised.

The second question, if homosexuality is a sin, how should we approach those who practice it? How should we adomonish homosexuals in private and how should we combat the public assault by homosexuals on the Christian faith? Can we call them to repentance and expect them to change? Here is where our view of sanctification becomes the most important issue. Do we believe that Christ came just to forgive? Or do we believe that he came to help us conquer our sins? Do we believe that Christians are actually being made more holy in this life by the power of the Spirit and the Word? Or do we believe that we are all just sinners waiting to get to Heaven?

Third, how should we treat Christian leaders who have compromised on this particular issue? They are false prophets leading people to Hell.  As Mark Driscoll says, “Shoot the wolves.”  They are wolves. They need to be actively opposed by Christian leaders.  To sit by and oppose them in our minds is compromise.

What Should the Church Do About It? 

If sodomy is a sin then what follows?  What must a church do when she is confronted by a culture that wants us to embrace or at least allow for a sinful lifestyle?  Let’s begin by stating exactly what sin does. Here is a partial list.

Sin which is not repented of and turned from:

  1. Is displeasing to God. (I Thess. 4:1-12)
  2. Separates us from God. (Isaiah 59:1-3)
  3. Enslaves us. (John 8:34)
  4. Is unnatural. (Romans 1:26-27)
  5. Destroys relationships. (James 4:1-6)
  6. Destroys families. (David’s Adultery, II Samuel 11-19, Titus 1:10-11)
  7. Destroys cultures and cities. (II Kings 17:7-23,Rev. 16:19)
  8. Brings death and unfruitfulness.  (Romans 6:23)
  9. Blinds us to the truth. (Matthew 23:16, 17, 19 24, 26)
  10. Brings down the wrath of God. (Col. 3:6)
  11. Sends us to Hell.  (I Corinthians 6:9-10, Eph. 5:5-6, Gal. 5:19-21)

No Christian who loves Christ, has understood forgiveness, and loves his neighbor would want someone to remain in that state. So what must the Church do?

  1. She must faithfully and courageously preach the whole Bible. She must preach most clearly on those doctrines which the world finds most offensive.  Here is one of the key areas where the church has failed.
  2. She must faithfully preach Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. This means two things: First, as Savior, he has defeated sin and his blood covers all the sins of all those who trust in him. Second, as our Lord, he commands us to put off sinful desires and actions.
  3. She must faithfully preach that Christ has given his Spirit so that we might overcome our sins.  Those in Christ are freed from their sins.  Sodomy is not excluded.  This does not just mean forgiveness, but it also means victory over sin in our lives.
  4. She must faithfully show love to Christ, His Church, and to homosexuals by calling them to repent and turn from their sins.  This is to be done graciously, but without compromise.
  5. She must faithfully excommunicate Christians who refuse to turn from egregious sins. This includes sodomites, adulterers, thieves, liars, pedophiles, pornography addicts, Pharisees, abusive husbands, etc.  This must be done carefully and usually after many hours of pastoral care encouraging the member to put off the old man. But it must done.  The failure of God’s shepherds to faithfully protect God’s flock  has led to increasing compromise in many denominations and local churches.
  6. She must faithfully work to drive wolves out of the Church. Any teacher who proclaims that sodomy is an acceptable lifestyle for a Christian is a wolf who is allowing Satan to tear the lambs into pieces.  They must be fought against.
  7. She must expect the world to hate her and persecute her. To combat this hatred she must fight with faith in Christ, steadfastness in prayer, clinging to God’s Word, holy living, the communion of saints, faithful worship, and Biblical love for neighbor.

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On November 14, 2013 By In Culture

A Thanksgiving Poem For You

2009

by Joffre Swait

A few years ago I was asked to give a talk/homily/grace thing at ThanksFest, a local ecumenical Thanksgiving feast put on by some great guys. This is a Thanksgiving feast that includes a Man Stone Throw. It’s a great party.

I decided to recite a poem (originally posted here, at my blog), which I wrote especially for the occasion, and delivered as a toast. This is that poem. Truth be told, it’s really three poems. Made one. Have fun with it, and I hope you enjoy it. If you make it a part of your festivities, I will be deeply honored.

 

Thanksgiving Poem

Thanks For Ever

But as for me, I am like a green olive-tree in the house of God: I trust in the lovingkindness of God for ever and ever. I will give thee thanks for ever, because thou hast done it; And I will hope in thy name, for it is good, in the presence of thy saints. Psalm 52:8, 9

Taking Time

Why do we mark out special times,
and why do we mark them with food, and with rhymes?
The Lordship of Christ’s in all history,
He enacts it through means, both obvious and mystery.
This poem’s about good Jesus, our King,
And how he has made us able to sing
Thanksgiving to him throughout the whole year
For taking away our dooms and our fears.

But this poem can get pretty complicated,
So first I’ll explain how it’s all related.

Adam was put in a garden sweet,
Where the fruit of the ground was sufficient meat.
All of the earth was his domain,
Even time was beneath his reign.
For God had made him not to die,
With eternal life beneath the sky.

But when we sinned we began to fear,
As seasons turn, well, death draws near.
Where once time meant more life with God,
Now time stalked, and ripped, and clawed.
The pagan man felt the trap of age,
That time and death were a bitter cage.
So Norseman, Greek, and the Chinese,
Said time was a circle, with no surcease.
The seasons and time would go ever round,
And beneath it all of man’s cities would drown.

Then Jesus came to make world anew,
The circle was broken, time was made true.
While earth and the seasons may cycle and spin,
Time marches toward a goal in the end.
Creation anew, which came and which comes,
Brought new sense of time to his Chosen Ones.
He’s called us to climb up to his holy hill,
Sing thanks that he’s saved us, and is saving us still!

We now mark the year as Christians may,
By festival, feast, and high holy day.
A humble spirit and grateful heart
For the spiritual food he does impart.
This poem next will tell who hears,
Thanksgiving ends, or begins the year
With gratitude for his provender
As it opens and ends the Christian calendar.

The Holiday

Thanksgiving comes in autumn time,
which is the time of fading.
The glory of the trees is gone
and winter soon comes raiding.

And death has stalked us all for long;
death will still come creeping.
In winter man has need for bread,
and hunger finds him weeping.

In spring man watches skies for rain
and knows his life is set
On whether earth will grant reward
for labor and for sweat.

In summer all begins to grow,
the beasts and the diseases.
If death can close its awful jaw,
it never will release us.

And so the world will spin its course;
Adam counts the seasons.
The sons of Adam never make
escape, by force or reason.

But Jesus made the world new
when Jesus broke the ages.
Time had trapped us in a ring;
we now ascend, in stages.

We once were caught by time and death,
the seasons were our prison.
Now we climb the Holy Mount,
and sing that he is risen.

These songs are what will mark our time
as we climb to be near.
Thanksgiving Day can summon us
to sing a festal year.

Thanksgiving comes in autumn time,
which is the time of reaping.
The glory of the fruit lives on
for the food that we are keeping
To feast and drink when Advent brings
Heavenly Bread to table.
Winter comes, but we are warmed
by Creation in a stable.

All the beasts and all the nations!
They all may enter the store.
The winter brings Epiphany,
and nations stream up to the door.

Within that door the seed is kept,
At Easter it will flourish.
We who were buried all rise up,
By mana we are nourished.

The fruit of summer rises up
in the time we call Ordinary.
Where once was jungle, now we find
a farm, a garden, a dairy.

From there our summer leads to fall,
we’ve been fed from day to day.
A year has cycled fully ’round,
We sang ascending the heavenly way.

On Advent Sunday another year
will be marked out in song.
Where every Sunday’s a holy day
and festal weeks are long.

This new creation and new time
is only for the grateful.
We thank our God, who did provide
down to every plateful.

So this is where our verse can change,
and cheer our celebration.
America may thank our God,
the Church is his true nation.

Our fathers found, in hostile land,
an unexpected mercy.
And so do we, and just like they,
we feast upon a turkey!

So let us thank the one true God
for good gifts and for plenty.
Begin a new year, and raise a cheer
in thanks to One for many.

Thanksgiving For The Turkey

We thank our God, for the turkey who died,
For farmers from Georgia, and peanut oil.
It’s pretty good baked, but it’s better deep-fried
In a pot full of fat that’s come to a boil.

These orange potatoes, which some have called sweet,
Were never named thus by we honest fellows.
To live up to their name, to be proper and meet,
We’ve added brown sugar, and also marshmallows.

We thank God for beer, this Highlands strong ale,
With which we toast health, and strength come from Him.
Yes, sugar and yeast make beer hearty and hale,
As the wine of the Spirit gives vigor and vim.

So here is a health to the people of God
Who love him in every season and day.
For He loved us first which seems a bit odd,
But now we’re his children, so hip-hip…hooray!

We children will toast our God, who is Father.
Mighty hen, we’re his chicks, in his bosom we lay.
Creator of all things, our Guide and our Rudder,
Sustains us each day, so hip-hip…hooray!

Again, let us cheer our God, who is Son.
Came down from Heaven, so that He may
Conquer our death, a fight that he won.
He’s first-fruits of life, so hip-hip…hooray!

Once more we’ll cheer our God, who is Spirit.
He’s given to us, and with us He’ll stay.
A comfort, a joy, whenever we’re wearied,
He’ll never forsake us, so hip-hip…hooray!

So now raise your glasses, and encourage your neighbor,
With Thanksgiving cheer the God who gives favor!

To Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, let’s drink thanks!<>правильная раскрутка  а

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On November 14, 2013 By In Culture, Family and Children

Thankful to Be Cooking on Thanksgiving

by Joffre Swait

Thanksgiving, like many holidays, can be as stressful for some as it can be joyful for others. On Thanksgiving, the cook(s) classically labors, frets, worries, hangs hopes on the success of the souffle, and forgets to not make that stuffing recipe that father-in-law complains about every year.

We tell ourselves to be at peace, to pray, to be full of joy during the holidays. We tell ourselves to be grateful. But when we seem to be the ones doing all the work and all the giving, thankfulness can be hard. Nonetheless, it is necessary. Here we are in God’s wonderful world, in olive groves we did not plant, surrounded by curse and blessing of epic proportions. We must be thankful, even if we were the ones who bore the brunt of the sun and watched as the newcomers got the same wage.

What’s more, once the grand feast is plated up, your work isn’t done. And these newcomers have already finished all the cranberry sauce.

Since it is often difficult for the makers to avoid falling into this tearful way on Thanksgiving, I thought it appropriate to offer some reasons to be grateful for being the cook.

If you cook with any regularity, you already know these things. But the change from quotidian to festal eating highlights them to all parties. Suddenly every dish is made special and fraught with meaning and the weight of history, every decision to serve this instead of that worthy of praise and condemnation.

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time of gratitude for God’s gifts. You, dear cook, in all your service, are elevated to a role of highest honor. You manifest God’s kind provisions to his beloved in tangible and visceral ways. You conceive, you create, you lay your talents and provender before your welcome guests. And whether they are grateful or not, you are sanctified. Your people may seem ever ungrateful, but you don’t provide for them to receive thanks. You do it because you love them.

At Thanksgiving the cook presides over a liturgy that not only connects us to our Father in Heaven, but to our brothers in times past. This, by the way, is the only acceptable reason for making a sweet potato casserole covered in brown sugar and marshmallows: because your grandmother made it that way and your great-uncles loved it. We live in a society that, on the one hand, abounds in varieties and origins of food that would have boggled the minds of previous generations, and on the other, moves toward a sloth in the preparation of food so great that we don’t even remember our own mother’s recipes. At Thanksgiving we remember at least some of the old ways. And you are the one presiding over this great feast of mourning over the dead and joy for the living.

You are also coquus semper reformando, the always reforming cook. You honor tradition, but you are able to take the lead in establishing new family traditions.

The cranberry sauce we use on Thanksgiving is my dad’s. It has been in our family for only twenty years. But who knows how much farther into time it will travel, being cut off in some streams of our family after perhaps only a generation, while proceeding down other streams for many ages of men? On Thanksgiving every dish holds its weight in glory.

Not only has time become your playground, but so has all the earth. Three hundred short years ago, would you have had much black pepper in your house? Marshmallows in a variety of size and color? Oranges from over there? Pineapple from who knows where? And yet all these, thanks be to our God, are before you now, waiting for you to fulfill their destinies, which their fathers labored in darkness over for so long. To past generations of northern Christians, getting hold of an orange in winter was enough of a feat that the orange would be featured in the Christmas stocking; we still cling, without thinking, to such traditions. Will you, who live in Wisconsin, fail to be grateful for the bags and bushels of oranges available to you? You will not. You will give glory to men, and oranges, and cranberries, and God who made them, by putting orange zest and orange bits in your cranberry sauce.

Take therefore your place of honor with gratitude. Sweat over the stove, weary your arms with the stirring of sauces. Be thankful for the honor bestowed upon you by holy God, who has chosen you to preside over a symphony of trials past and glories to come, of lands lost and lands conquered, of ships at the last barren of ale and ships on the nonce laden with fruit, of mighty men dead and children given new life, of long hard winters and help unlooked for.

You, good lady, kind sir, may hold your wooden spoon up as a scepter.

FirstThanksgivingPic Edited

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On November 13, 2013 By In Culture

Against The “Tea-Totallers”: Tea Drinking To The Glory Of God

Guest Post by Mark Nenadov

Introduction

“We had a kettle; we let it leak:

Our not repairing made it worse.

We haven’t had any tea for a week…

The bottom is out of the Universe.”

― Rudyard Kipling, The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling

This fall I discovered Gunpowder Green Tea, and thus got back into loose leaf tea. The name comes from the fact that the leaves are rolled up into little pellets that curiously resemble gunpowder.  I am now hooked.

Besides having a substantially manly name, the tea also delivers a delicious, distinctively smokey and full-bodied flavour that has captivated my tastes in a way that no other Green Tea ever has.

Back in the day, a co-worker brought me back some loose leaf Wu Yi Oolong tea from China and I really enjoyed that.  I would drink that again in a heartbeat. When I finished the container off, I bought a few other varieties of loose leaf tea, and then went to using tea-bags only for a long time.

My exile away from loose leaf tea is over, probably for good. Loose leaf tea is a bit more work. That said, there is quite the ritual to it, dare I say, perhaps even a bit of liturgy? Loose leaf tea is quite cost effective too, if you chose your sources wisely.

Tea Drinking Is Very Calvinistic

Is tea drinking a Calvinistic thing to do? Well, I need say little more than this: Charles Spurgeon loved it, and Charles Finney hated it. Case closed.

Charles G. Finney, who rejected his Calvinistic heritage for his peculiar brand of Arminian revivalism, clearly despised tea. He argued against it, claiming it had no nutrition value, being a mere stimulant. He also felt the thirst for tea was wasting money that would be better spent in “saving souls from hell”.

Spurgeon, on the other hand, seemed to have been dunked in a heaping pot of tea. And I do feel you would need a rather hefty one to immerse the man!

The Baptist preacher’s sermon illustrations and pastoral visits were often steeped in tea culture. So it was, also, that when he needed an word picture to talk about the quality of some people’s voices in his address to young pastors, he naturally said they were “like long-used tea-kettles”.

And there is a gem of an anecdote in Fullerton’s biography of Spurgeon:

“In another student talk he said that John Newton put Calvinism in his sermons as he put sugar into his tea, his whole ministry was flavoured with it; then he added, ‘Don’t be afraid of putting in an extra lump now and then.'”

Anti-Tea Sentiment

One Presbyterian pastor has recently gone on the record saying that there was a reason tea was thrown over board during the Boston Tea Party. That’s a shameful sentiment.

I, on the other hand, while agreeing in principle that tea should not be taxed, am in stark disagreement with him—it’s a shame that 342 chests of perfectly good tea had to be destroyed. Could not some less delightful commodity been destroyed, such as mineral water?

As our references to Charles Finney have demonstrated, anti-tea sentiments are not new. Emily Brand has a quite interesting post on this matter.  In it she shares how many in the 18th century had a very negative view of tea. She quotes a Mr. Hanway as saying that “Men seem to have lost their stature, and comliness; and women their beauty. Your very chambermaids have lost their bloom, I suppose by sipping tea.”. She also shares this gem from social reformed William Cobbett:

“Tea drinking fills the public house, makes the frequenting of it habitual, corrupts boys as soon as they are able to move from home, and does little less for the girls, to whom the gossip of the tea table is no bad preparatory school for the brothel… the girl that has been brought up merely to boil the tea kettle, and assist in the gossip inseparable from the practice, is a mere consumer of food, a pest to her employer, and a curse to her husband, if any man be so unfortunate as to fix his affections upon her.”

Astounding vitriol!

I have also noticed in my readings that Eliza Haywood, a popular English writer, once warned servants that tea was an “intoxicating spirit”. I will concede that tea is intoxicating in at least one sense, “intoxicatingly” good when enjoyed under the Lordship of Christ.

One is tempted, when faced such bare-faced opposition to tea drinking, quote from Dostoyevski (Notes from Underground) with a touch of swagger: “That is what I want. I want peace; yes, I’d sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea.”

Tea Drinking Is Manly

Contrary to what some might say, such as William Cobbett who claimed tea was “an engenderer of effeminacy”, tea drinking can be very manly.

First, many teas have a bold and smokey flavour. And some have a smokey flavour and a great name, such as Gunpowder Green Tea.

Second, there is something inherently manly about the primal and yet nuanced and delicate ritual of steeping loose leaf tea, as opposed to, say, repeatedly dunking a bag. There is potency and virility in the ritual.

Third, many manly men have enjoyed tea. Charles Spurgeon, Thomas Jefferson (who ordered Green Tea), Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, John Wesley, C.S. Lewis, and George Washington all were tea drinkers. It would not be too much of a stretch to say that these were all men of the sturdy sort. Hopefully not too many of them put sugar or milk in their tea, though, or I may have to revise this list.

Fourth, tea can be taken straight—which some would say is quite manly. And I wouldn’t disagree with them. If I may quote Lemony Snicket: “Tea should be as bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a two edged sword”. Woe to the man that tries to dull his sword by putting milk or sugar on it.

That said, how manly tea drinking can be also depends largely on how one drinks it. Though I don’t have time to get into it here, there certainly is a manly way to drink tea.

I agree with Orwell when he said in the Evening Standard that “tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country”. I would only add that “this country” could be very well interpreted as the “great nation of manhood”.

Conclusion

It is my hope that you will enjoy a tea tonight. By yourself. By a fire. With a book. While reflecting on the goodness of God. And may you have neither pangs of guilt, nor may you for a second feel less manly than before you steeped.

There would be scarcely a more fitting way to conclude this piece than to quote the good old sturdy Calvinistic hymn writer William Cowper, who according to Samuel Taylor Coleridge was “the best modern poet”. Cowper wrote the following lines, and with them I close:

“Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And, while the bubbling and loud hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful ev’ning in.”

For more publications and updates on Mr. Nenadov, see Goodreads, Blog, Twitter, Linkedin, Website<>уникальность а онлайнкак правильно подбирать ключевые слова

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On November 13, 2013 By In Culture

Sabbatarian Scottish Ruggers

by Joffre Swait

Many of you have heard of Eric Liddell, the famous Scottish sprinter of Chariots of Fire. He famously refused to run on Sundays. Not many know that he also played wing for the Scottish national rugby side. I wrote on why it makes sense that Eric Liddell was a consummate rugby player here.

Today there’s another name, one that few Americans know, that should be of great interest to Christians who love Sabbath feasting.

euanEuan Murray is a prop forward for the Scotland rugby team. He plays professionally for Worcester in the Premiership. Unlike Liddell, who was a pretty boy and played on the wing, Murray is one of the big ugly bruisers who play in the front row. What do they have in common? Besides rugby, that they won’t play on Sunday.

Rugby is traditionally played on Saturdays, although Friday nights and Sundays are becoming more common. Murray will not be representing Scotland against South Africa this coming Sunday.

And this is far from the first time. He missed a World Cup game against Argentina in 2011. He missed two matches in the all-important 6 Nations tournament this past spring.

But he is still on the team. When he’s available, he starts. God appears to be blessing his ugly mug.

A side note that I find hilarious. Backs, like Eric Liddell was, get to do all the fancy stuff and keep their hands clean. Forwards have to get their hands dirty. Here is a ten-second video of a faithful sabbatarian cheating outrageously (you’re not allowed to block in rugby).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPORDiDZQMY<>siteпродвижение ов красноярск

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On November 12, 2013 By In Culture

What People Are Saying About Kuyperian Commentary?

Kuyperian Commentary is helping to refine my worldview and perspective on the far reaching impacts of true Reformed theology. It is stimulating fascinating conversation among my wife (with whom I have two kids) and drawing me closer to fellow minded believers. -Joshua Torrey

I found this blog a couple of months ago now, and have been edified by a number of the articles posted.  As a new father, those pertaining to parenting and raising covenant children in the fear of the Lord have been especially enjoyable.  I was raised in a home and community which emphasized the covenant, psalm-singing.  However, many of my peers do not share convictions on these matters to the same extent, and this website is an excellent resource in discussions with them. Thank-you for your faithful work, and may God bless your efforts. -Raoul Kingma

The KC articles reinforce what I know to be sound doctrine. I like the clever ways these folk write. It has been a great conversation starter in my community. People are asking me about what I share and I am happy to help Christians find more freedom! Great food for thought. -Denise McClain

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On November 5, 2013 By In Culture, Politics

The New Kingdom Almanac: Guy Fawkes Fires Light Our History

Kindgom Almanac Logo

by Joffre Swait

Here at Kuyperian Commentary we go from strength to strength, marking one holiday after another, processing through the year beset on all sides by significance, meaning, and the weight of history.

Today is another holiday. It is Guy Fawkes Day.

Remember, remember the fifth of November, the Gunpowder treason and plot!

This is the day the English celebrate the foiling of a plot to blow up parliament in 1605.

I have never celebrated Guy Fawkes Day, but I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of it; my mother had been educated at a British school and had painted vivid images of bonfires and burnings in effigy. Seemed like a pretty cool holiday. I mean, fire.

This is not a call for you to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day rightly. It is not a call for you to celebrate it at all. But today would be a good occasion for Kuyperians, we who wear the Orange, to recall our own shared heritage and history, and perhaps to look forward. As we see it, there’s no need to engage in the Girardian scapegoating of burning a Guy in effigy.

Lewes_Bonfire,_Guy_Fawkes_effigy

As the Ecclesia Semper Reformanda, who just observed Reformation Day on All Hallows Eve, we like to remember their doctrines and old books, but are sometimes guilty of being weak on our own history that solidified them as a people – a forgetfulness that has helped to fragment us.

As much as Guy Fawkes has become a political icon, especially as a symbol for anarchism (would you care to purchase an Anonymous/wikileaks Guy Fawkes Libertarian/revolution Hacker Anarchy T‑shirt?), the Gunpowder Plot was not simply a political plot. It was a plot by Roman Catholics to install a Catholic monarch.

Now, most American Christians who are aware of the holiday or the Plot know that Fawkes was Catholic. But he wasn’t just Catholic.

Guy Fawkes was part of a struggle between Protestants and Catholics that engulfed most of Europe and traveled with the Europeans to the Americas. Guy Fawkes was a soldier. He became a soldier not by joining an English army. Fawkes went to Holland, where the Dutch were fighting for independence from the Spanish Empire. That war is not often called the Dutch War of Independence, but the Eighty Years’ War. This was an epic struggle. It was a war between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Not simply a war that happened to be between “Catholic” and “Reformed” belligerents, but a war that was about their Roman-ness and Protestant-ness. Guy Fawkes made his way over to the Low Countries specifically because he wanted to fight Protestants. Then he brought the fight home. This was common on both sides (Sir Philip Sydney was a kick-ass knight of Protestantism who could write a mean poem – he died of a wound taken on a Dutch battlefield).

The Roman Catholic Church, his Most Catholic Majesty of the Spanish Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, and many popish powers and principalities were wishing and willing to exterminate Protestants. To us, this ought not be just bare historical fact. If we are Reformed, we ought to embrace that history as our own. Thirty years before Fawkes the Huguenot Protestants were driven underground and out of France. After the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, they were scattered to the four winds of the world. Wherever they settled, if the Catholic powers found them, they were exterminated. Unless they settled in English territory.

The orange in the flag of today’s Catholic Ireland is there because of English involvement in the Eighty Years’ War. If you don’t know how, I’ll let you play the wikipedia game to figure it out. Scotland gets involved too. All of Western Europe and North America was involved.1288584602

What is all this to say? That we Protestants are enemies of the Catholics? No. Those days are gone. All this is to say that Protestant and Reformed history goes beyond Reformation Day. We’re not just about 95 Theses. We’re about everything that came before, and everything that came after. Perhaps you identify with the Covenanters, or the Oxford Martyrs, Sir Francis Drake and the Spanish Armada, or William of Orange. There are many streams.

We tend to identify ourselves by our theological stream. But do you know who else was alive, or what deeds were being done, when your favorite theologians were writing? When we think of the Reformation, we should not only think of the dissemination of theologies, but of the mustering of armies, the flight of refugees, the building of ships, and the plottings of assassinations. It is more salutary to get our identity from our history, than our theology. It is from our history that we gain perspective, growth, and forgiveness. I would even dare to say that history plays a greater role than theology in helping us trust God. What is better in trusting God than knowing how he has cared for his people through every age?

I don’t celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, really. I’m not English. But I kind of dig it. I’ve decided that it’s part of my history, not only by blood, but by Christian identity. And yes, unlike many Reformed, I identify more with the English than with the Scots or the Dutch. Here’s what I ask of you: know where you come from, what your stream is. Find out its history, not just its theology.

Your children should not see your theology as something you picked off an a la carte menu, even though for a lot of Americans, including me, it definitely feels that way. Assume the entire mantle of your theology, and let it cover you in its history.

This is not a call for you to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day rightly. It’s not a call for you to celebrate it at all. But today would be a good occasion for Kuyperians, we who wear the Orange, to recall our heritage and history, and to look forward to making more.

The Fifth of November (c. 1870)

Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England’s overthrow.
But, by God’s providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James’s sake!
If you won’t give me one,
I’ll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn’orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!

Almanac K

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On November 1, 2013 By In Culture, Politics

Outlaw Porn Billboards

 

 

by Joffre Swait

herlong

My wife and I were married at a beautiful bed and breakfast in the small and historic town of Micanopy, Florida, just a few miles south of Gainesville, where we met. Micanopy is a charming little town, the sort where you stop in to go antiquing on Saturdays, or where you might brunch before a little visit to Payne’s Prairie.

Alas that no one in Florida knows that Micanopy. Because what Micanopy really is is Cafe Risque. Like a pornographic South of the Border, I-75 for miles in either direction as one approaches Micanopy is dotted with billboards letting truckers and general citizens know that a world of greasy and tawdry delights awaits them at exit 374.

The edifice pictured here is not Cafe Risque. This is where we were married…the Herlong Mansion. Are you being serious right now? “Herlong”? Yes.

_____________________________________

Of the several grocery chains in our area, Bi-Lo is the shadiest, and you can see it in the check-out aisles. Few grocery stores in the area exercise what I think would be the common courtesy of covering up the Cosmo magazines at the check-out, but Bi-Lo is the worst about shoving them right in your face.

The thought that my nine-year-old daughter might be consistently exposed to the sort of misogyny embodied in desperate headlines like “25 Orgasm Tricks That Couples Love” displeases me. I would love to see more grocery store chains adopt policies of covering up those magazines. Ideally, of course, they wouldn’t sell that type of sad pornography for women, but I realize that’s asking the moon.

It would only take enacting a policy. Whatever private company decided to be consistent about such a policy would likely become my new favorite grocery store.

And certainly no one would argue with a private business’ right to choose such a policy.

_____________________________________

I detest federal centralization. I’m all about local representation and a small federal government. I mean, come on, I’m Presbyterian. Even my church polity is about decentralization. The South was right on constitutional grounds…it was a War of Northern Aggression. Lincoln was The Great Centralizer, our Constitution is broken, and now the country’s poorer for it.

Have I established my rabid and crazed anti-federal and anti-centralization radical bona fides? I hope so, because I’m about to get all anti-libertarian on you.

I want city and county governments to make pornographic billboards illegal. GASP! Surely you don’t mean that! Those billboards are on private property!

How wonderful to live in a society with a (at least somewhat) representational government. And that government does not solely exist to keep people off each other and allow them go about their private business. A libertarian thinks that building codes are ridiculous; I think that federal building codes are ridiculous. It’s quite wise of a city or county to make sure no one comes in and starts building and selling really crappy houses to their people. At which point some libertarians say caveat emptor and I ask them to go read Rand by themselves in their selfish little corners.

I am not a libertarian because of Cafe Risque. Or, more appropriately for me now that we’ve moved, because of Bedtyme Stories near Blacksburg, SC.

Cafe Risque is actually outside the city limits of Micanopy, which is why it can do what it does. Still, I would love to see the county take care of the problem (yes, I know it won’t because of moneymoneymoney).

The goal of our Constitution was to have minimal federal government.Nothing wrong with a more robust and virile government at town, county, and state levels. In fact, I think that would help in dealing with the federal government. Does this mean that I long for a piling on upon a piling on of laws? No. But I would like Christians to consider being less resentful of the only governments God has put over them that are immediately representational: local government. Of course, most never vote in local elections because they’re busy talking about the evils of Democrats and the Fed.

We have to many laws and too many codes at every level of government. That doesn’t mean we reject all government. The solution is not some principle that rejects the whole package. The solution is the hard work of doing it right. The State exists and is (“Alas”, we think to ourselves) ordained by God. If we have anything to say about the State, it is that it must not be the Leviathan it wishes to be, but that it has a place on the earth. We musn’t abstract government into some sub-category of a sacred meta-concept like Private Property or The Right to Trade.

_____________________________________

Am I suggesting that we legislate morality?

Of course. Is there something else a law is?

 

Originally posted at Joffre the Giant.<>стоимость а москва

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