Trueman on Thatcher and the Teenage Years

Recently, two connected thoughts have entered my conscience. First, that at 42, an end approaches. Second, that I still live much of my life in my teenage years. Carl Trueman, quoted here before, touches both of those thoughts.

Yet she is dead. The woman who defined the teenage years of many of us—and we all live a lot of our lives in our teenage years—has gone. As I thought of Hill today, I also thought of the film, The Iron Lady, an elegy to the erosion of power and of life itself that aging brings with it. The powerful woman laid low by old age. Her story beckons us all. When Thatcher ruled the waves, I was a teenage boy; and like all teenage boys, I thought I would live forever. Now, approaching the age Mrs T was when she became Tory leader, I am not so sure of my immortality any more. This is the land of lost content. 

Read his whole post.

This Explains A Lot (About Me)

more than 95 theses:

James Wellman’s fascinating Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures in the Pacific Northwest compares and contrasts evangelical and liberal Protestant (or mainline) churches along the Washington and Oregon coasts. Wellman’s study was driven in part by his interest in religion in the Pacific Northwest, a region that boasts the lowest per-capita church affiliation in the nation, with 63 percent of the population not affiliating with any religious institution. Furthermore, this is a region that is predominately urban, very educated, maintains a median income level above the national average, and has in recent years voted overwhelmingly Democratic. Overall, Wellman describes the region as “best delineated by a pragmatic approach that generally distrusts government, lionizes the entrepreneur, nurtures a libertarian and individualistic set of values, and seeks the preservation of the region’s resources and beauty.” All of these factors, Wellman believes, should guarantee the success of liberal Protestant churches. But they have not.

Read the whole post.

Read the booksandculture.com article.

News Flash: CO2 is a pollutant

Okay, so I am going to copy Doug Wilson's post in its entirety, mainly because I laughed out loud.

The EPA, under the adroit leadership of Saruman, has now declared CO2 to be a pollutant. As the Staples Singers taught us so many years ago -- "put your hand on your mouth when you cough, that'll help the solution." And after these Hilaritards have regulated all us CO2 emitters into the ground, they will then turn their attentive ministrations to the real environmental challenge of the century, which is that of battling the plague of salt water.

I just want everybody to stare straight at this for about 120 seconds without blinking. The Greens have successfully won their battle to categorize as a pollutant that element which makes plants grow lush and green. Heh. This would be really funny if it weren't so hilarious.

You can read the whole thing here, but then again, you just did.

No, Mr. President

(HT: Desiring God)

Lots of connections with lots of other funny business...

"I am not saying that Obama had any connection with this particular eBay treatment of his old Senate seat. But he had lots of connections with lots of other funny business -- and Chicago politics is like a clapboard hamlet up in the Appalacians where people have been marrying their sisters and cousins for over a century, and the last thing you want is to have something happen that makes the authorities send some people up there to give everybody a DNA test."

Read the whole thing.

Read this, please...

My kids, who don't get to watch TV much, have still gleaned enough about the national election to be worried. It is not right if kids are worried about the state of our nation, although it is good for them to be aware. My response to them is to remember that God is still on his throne and Jesus is still Lord over all.

Whether you like Douglas Wilson or not, his post from this morning is well worth reading. Please read it, and don't forget that as Christians, we don't trust in horses or chariots or republicans or democrats. We trust in the Lord.

Here are some highlights from his post:

1. God is still Father, Christ is still at His right hand, and the Holy Spirit is still abroad in the world, recreating that world according to the image of Christ. When the nations conspire against Him, He laughs at them.

4. Honor women. Honor your mother, your wife, and your daughters. We live in a culture that despises women, and which has engineered a vast machinery of propaganda designed to get them to surrender to it. If you don't know how to honor, on a day-to-day basis, the women in your life, then learn. Make it a priority.

7. Learn something about economics. Please.

10. Fight in the culture wars as those who gladly serve the triune God of heaven. We are not dogs fighting over a piece of meat, and we must never allow the surly or shrill attitudes of the self-righteous to creep into anything we do. We must be puritan cavaliers, and merry warriors. Fight like a regenerate D'Artanian, and not like a thug with a Bible he stole from the motel, or like a prim and censorious Miss Grundy, she of the pursed lips. We are Christians, not wowsers.

Read the whole thing.

Do You Worry About Nuclear Holocaust?

Apparently, there are still people who worry about nuclear holocaust and the extinction of mankind, including some prominent American politicians. Read Chuck Colson's article on Breakpoint.

I remember growing up during the height of the cold war, and not being too concerned about the Russians bombing the US with nukes. I figured if there was so much devastation that the human race is nearly wiped out, a lot more is going on than some crazy politicians pushing big red buttons. Read Revelation 9:15-19.

I mean, really, dying in a nuclear holocaust is not so bad if you trust in the sovereign Lord of the Universe. The problem is surviving one.

God is Not Mocked

My oldest daughter came and sat on my bed last night, while I was sitting at my desk grading her latest essay. She saw some blog post on my screen about politics and asked me who I was going to vote for. I answered that I wasn’t happy about McCain, but I certainly wasn’t going to vote for Obama. This began a decent conversation with my 13-year old child who is learning how to think for herself. This is something that I desperately want to encourage in her, because I didn’t start thinking for myself, I mean really thinking, until much later in life. I want there to be a weight to her, not a lightness of being.

It seemed obvious to me that in her perception, Obama is the cooler choice. He is young, seemingly hip, and doesn’t look like McCain. However, she is not so light in her thinking that she doesn’t realize that real issues are at stake. While I was trying to read her, she asked me another question. (Kids want to understand. They are watching. They want to know what you believe and why you believe it. This was a good conversation.) “Why won’t you vote for Obama, Daddy?”

I could feel pressure around my eyes as I answered in a whisper, “Fifty million babies.” My eyes continued to well with tears as the thought of 50,000,000 dead babies filled my imagination. Never before have I felt the emotion over abortion that I did last night.

I have studied the biblical basis for a pro-life view. I have seen videos from Abort73.com that turned my stomach. I have thought about the inconceivable numbers of deaths since Roe v. Wade. But never before did I feel what I felt last night. I cried. My daughter watched me cry and I was happy about that.

But now, long after the conversation, I am trying to understand why I felt that emotion. Is it because Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion presidential candidate ever? Is it because he is the most extreme pro-abortion senator ever? No, I don’t think so.

Instead, I think my tears were a mingling of sorrow over a nation’s sin. I finally felt the weight of a nation’s sin. I have four wonderfully beautiful healthy wanted children. I have never been close to abortion. It has always been in the abstract. But a series of circumstances have brought some things to mind that are causing me to recognize that there is a lot more going on.

First was a recognition, again, of the utter depravity behind Israel’s sacrificing their children. Ezekiel describes how God’s people had turned from him and sacrificed their children to idols. Move your mouse over these texts: Ezekiel 16:20-22, Ezekiel 23:35-39. Judgment fell on the nation because of this kind of abomination. Sacrificing their own children was not the cause of judgment, but a clear indication of how far their hearts were from God prior to judgment. The people had broken the first commandment; they had other gods before God. And they were so devoted to those other gods that they sacrificed their children.

Second, it dawned on me that modern-day abortion is really no different than ancient near-east child sacrifice. The idols are different, but the idea is the same. Instead of Baals and Asheroth poles, we have convenience and poverty. We have iPods and angry parents. We have the desire to be responsible to nothing, and hindered by nothing.

If we are honest with ourselves, how can we not expect imminent judgment from the God of the Universe? This cannot, I dare say, will not go on forever. God is not mocked.

I am afraid. 2 Chronicles 19:7, Proverbs 14:26-27.

I mean, come on.

Okay, I am totally naive, know next to nothing about the financial crisis, and don't know who I am going to vote for, only who I am NOT going to vote for. It would seem then, that I shouldn't post anything here about what I don't know, right? It would seem. But, Doug Wilson makes so much sense, and I laugh out loud. How else can we survive these days if we can't laugh out loud?

When you are doing something crazy, and it causes problems, then stop it. If you are doing something big crazy, and it causes bigger problems, this should not be taken as an argument for doing something even bigger crazy. What is the way out of this mysterious crisis? Well stop doing what causes it. Or, to use the biblical word for it, we need a dose of repentance.

The bubble has burst, as every financial bubble in the history of the world has always done, and yet, somehow, all the cheerleaders of the bubblefication have not lost their credibility. They are still on the teevee, cheerleading for the latest rescue of the previous rescue of the first rescue. And someone like Ron Paul, who has been shown to be in the right about all this foolishness, talks sense for a few minutes. But everyone knows that that is not realistic. I mean, come on.

It reminds me of poor Jeremiah in Egypt. Everything he said about what idolatry would do to Israel came true, in agonizing detail. Every prediction, every denunciation, every tear -- every last one of them was shown to be, you know, true. And yet, once they were down in Egypt, up pop some wise johnnies who clearly saw that all this had happened because they hadn't worshipped the Queen of Heaven enough. Huh.

(HT: Douglas Wilson)

That'll do something to your little leftist narrative.

Some days, the seriousness of life makes me want to cry. At those times, and others, of course, a little laugh-out-loud satire is pleasant.

But in the meantime, we must not overlook the fact that she [Sarah Palin] presents an absolutely devastating challenge to the feminist narrative for women, and there are no mights involved. Here is a woman who (for the sake of principle) has refused to sacrifice those things which feminists insist (in principle) must be sacrificed so that women can reach their "full potential." As a result of refusing the central dogma of their feminism, she might well become the first woman president. That'll do something to your little leftist narrative. Feminism has never been about advancing the cause of women. This reveals, as few other things could, that it has been about advancing the cause of commie women.

Granting that Sarah Palin does not look like June Cleaver, she looks a lot less like Hillary or Gloria Steinem. And, despite the differences, I can imagine Sarah and June having a very pleasant lunch together. If she tried to take Hillary or Gloria out shopping (for motorcyles, say) and a spot of lunch afterwards, all I can envision is stoney silences and a lot of glaring . . . and not from Sarah, who would be chatting happily. Sarah Palin ruffles the hair of some conservatives, but they can always comb it again. Doug Phillips will be all right in a couple days. In contrast, when it comes to the vampirism of the feminist left, let's just call her Buffy. They won't be all right in a couple of days.

For the whole Douglas Wilson blog post, which is quite lengthy, click here.