Half-Done Work

With thanks to our Pastor, George Grant, for this great quote and meditation.



“If our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart. And equally, if our heart flatters us, God is greater than our heart. I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self-knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose. Have we any reason to suppose that total self-knowledge, if it were given us, would be for our good? Children and fools, we are told, should never look at half-done work; and we are not yet, I trust, even half-done. You and I wouldn’t, at all stages, think it wise to tell a pupil exactly what we thought of his quality. It is much more important that he would know what to do next. The unfinished picture would so like to jump off the easel and have a look at itself!” C.S.Lewis

The Keys to Freedon and Happiness

Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness. —Samuel Adams

Enemies of the Republic

“Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.” —Alexander Hamilton

Milestones

I wished I had been taught, earlier in my life, to recognize those momentous events of the mundane when they occur: the milestones that mark the progress of life. These momentous milestones occur around us everyday but we so often miss them because we don't have "eyes to see."

I have been afflicted with the the modern (and not so modern)condition of seeking the grandiose rather than recognizing the momentousness of the mundane. The momentous events of the day-to-day living that humanity engages in and endures that lays the foundation for those who come after us.

Well, I enjoyed one of those momentous mundane milestone moments yesterday at the celebration of one of my grandson's birthday. His name is Byson Lee. Much to the chagrin of his mom I lovingly call him "Buffalo bill."

Here is a picture of Byson enjoying a cake, in the shape of number one, at his first birthday party.

Hitting a Rhetorical Home Run

Pastor Doug Wilson is many things and has started many more things. One thing HE is, is a capable wordsmith and able defender of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You need not be familiar with the particulars regarding the controversies he responds to in order to enjoy his article below. But if you are interested you can google the following to learn more:

Christ Church, Moscow Idaho
New Saint Andrews College
The Association of Christian and Classical Schools
Canon Press
www.dougwils.com

Pastor Wilson is worth getting to know.

Perry

Johnny Appleseed
by Pastor Douglas Wilson

The following column ran last night in our local newspaper, responding to another set of recycled charges from Nick Gier, which he leveled against us in the paper last week.

"Oh, good," the Moscow community is thinking to itself. "Another round of attacks on Doug Wilson, followed shortly thereafter by his replies. We sure are glad that The Daily News identified the desperate public need for this kind of discussion and leapt to fill the void."

I am referring, of course, to Nick Gier's column of last Friday (August 3, 2007), in which he enumerated a number of Bad Things connected to me and my ilk, central among them being the fact that my Christian faith has been inadequately docile in the presence of enlightened thought, with that thought apparently represented best by the circles that Nick travels in.

If mistakes and blunders were little black kernels, Nick Gier would be a veritable Johnny Appleseed. Let me give just a few examples, and then move on to my main point. He says that I am the "head of an expanding college." I am neither president nor dean. He says that I am the owner of "more and more downtown real estate." I don�t own anything downtown. I own my house on the edge of town and a pick-up truck. I hope that�s okay. He says that in 2003, he was surprised to learn that I had become a Calvinist. I had made that discreditable move fifteen years earlier, so Dr. Gier hardly qualifies as Dr. Thumb on the Pulse here. He also identifies me, contradictorily, as a neo-Confederate and a nationalist. As it happens, I am neither. And what made him identify me as a nationalist? My opposition to the war in Iraq? My preaching and writing against the emerging American empire? My opposition to the reigning idolatries of both political parties? This reminds me of the old children�s joke�"What�s the difference between a hippopotamus and a mailbox" "I don�t know, what?" "I�m sure not going to send you to mail any letters!"

So this brings me to the main point of my response here, which is this. I was recently talking to someone who had been upset at the injustice of this latest round of attacks on us, and who had suggested that we perhaps complain to the appropriate people�we were talking about scurrilous flyers about us distributed downtown and at the mall. My response was no, I didn't want to do that. The reason I gave is that I want them to be the complainers. They appear to be making a permanent vocation of it, and we really don�t want to live that way.

And so this is the real relevance of our emphasis on the triune nature of God. Nick asserted that we were "questionable Trinitarians," but it is our robust conviction that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons. Because God is eternally triune, this means that He is not the ultimate Loner. He is not the cosmic Hermit, with nothing to do and no one to love before the universe was created. The apostle John tells us that God is love, and this is only possible because the Father is the Lover, the Son is the Beloved, and the Holy Spirit is the love of each for the other. God is love. God Himself is an eternal community, and we are created in His image. This means that we were created by Him to live in community, and so this is something that we are seeking to learn how to do from the gospel of Jesus. It is a lesson that our small, divided town of Moscow very much needs to learn.

In His life, death, and resurrection, Jesus has established a new template for being human, and it is our responsibility as Christians to grow up into that pattern. As we do this, we will make our own mistakes, commit our own blunders. And others will radically misunderstand us, and accuse us of all kinds of outlandish things. But we are convinced of two things, both dismissed in Nick�s title. He called us "fraudulent Calvinists, questionable Trinitarians." But we really do believe that God controls all things, and we also believe that the God who does this is love. And what is the only logical response to this? No complaints.