Seeing Sin Rightly

Two things came together yesterday to cause this post. The first was a paragraph quoted by Alan Jacobs on his common-book website, More than 95 Theses, and re-tweeted by my friend. Here’s the quote:

“The Lenten season is devoted especially to what the theologians call contrition, and so every day in Lent a prayer is said in which we ask God to give us ‘contrite hearts.’ Contrite, as you know, is a word translated from Latin, meaning crushed or pulverized. Now modern people complain that there is too much of that note in our Prayer Book. They do not wish their hearts to be pulverized, and they do not feel that they can sincerely say that they are ‘miserable offenders.’ I once knew a regular churchgoer who never repeated the words, ‘the burden of them (i.e. his sins) is intolerable’, because he did not feel that they were intolerable. But he was not understanding the words. I think the Prayer Book is very seldom talking primarily about our feelings; that is (I think) the first mistake we’re apt to make about these words ‘we are miserable offenders.’ I do not think whether we are feeling miserable or not matters. I think it is using the word miserable in the old sense — meaning an object of pity. That a person can be a proper object of pity when he is not feeling miserable, you can easily understand if you imagine yourself looking down from a height on two crowded express trains that are traveling towards one another along the same line at 60 miles an hour. You can see that in forty seconds there will be a head-on collision. I think it would be very natural to say about the passengers of these trains, that they were objects of pity. This would not mean that they felt miserable themselves; but they would certainly be proper objects of pity. I think that is the sense in which to take the word ‘miserable.’ The Prayer Book does not mean that we should feel miserable but that if we could see things from a sufficient height above we should all realize that we are in fact proper objects of pity.”

While this quote is really directed at the reception of the Prayer Book, what is says about modern people is worth noting. How much of the reality that modern people “do not wish their hearts to be pulverized,” and “do not feel that they can sincerely say that they are ‘miserable offenders’” is because we, modern people, do not feel the horror, yes, horror of sin.

If a man lusts in his heart, what are the consequences? If a man yells at his children or struggles with pride or wastes time when he should be working or is not grateful to the Lord for all the good gifts he has received, how does he feel the weight, the significance of his sin?

If a woman gossips to her friends or doesn’t return the five dollars the clerk mistakenly gave her at the checkout counter or doesn’t honor her husband or isn’t thankful that the Lord has sustained her family for another day, how does she feel the force of her sin?

The reality, I think, for Christians in this modern era, is that we don’t, no, we can’t, comprehend the hideousness, the disgust, awfulness of our sin, until we understand that sin is hideous, disgusting, and awful. How often have you heard someone cluck about so-and-so, “He won’t really wake-up until he hits bottom”? The point is that modern people seemingly have to be confronted with dire consequences of sin before they realize the seriousness of the sin. A woman has to divorce her husband before he realizes that his addiction to pornography is hideous. A man has to go to jail before he realizes that cheating on taxes is a breaking of Jesus’ command.

The second thing was reading from the first chapter of Leviticus. Note the use of the personal pronouns in these verses.

The LORD called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When any one of you brings an offering to the LORD, you shall bring your offering of livestock from the herd or from the flock. 

“If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish. He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the LORD. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. Then he shall kill the bull before the LORD, and Aaron’s sons the priests shall bring the blood and throw the blood against the sides of the altar that is at the entrance of the tent of meeting. Then he shall flay the burnt offering and cut it into pieces, and the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire” (Leviticus 1:1–7).

What shocked me was that the person who leads the male animal from the herd to the tent of meeting is the sinner. The person who lays his hands on the head of that animal is the sinner. The person who takes the knife in his hand and with a nervous jerk tries to slice the animal’s throat, feeling its warms blood spill out over his hands and the animal jump and kick and try to get free, all the while getting weaker as its life-blood drains away into the priests pot.

He shall kill the bull before the Lord.

I had previously thought the priest did all the killing. How do I know it is the sinner and not the priest? Because of the pronouns. “He shall kill the bull before the Lord, and Aaron’s sons the priest shall bring the blood….” In the first paragraph God says, “When any one of you brings an offering to the Lord…. If his offering is a burnt offering….He shall bring it to the entrance…, that he may be accepted….He shall lay his hand on the head….Then he shall kill the bull before the Lord.”

Aaron’s sons aren’t doing the killing, they are catching the blood and flinging it against the alter, but the sinner is doing the slaughter. Keep reading in this chapter and see how in each case the sinner kills the animal, except for turtledoves and pigeons, where the priest twists off its head. (I talked with the BCS OT professor and he tentatively agreed with me. Granted, Hebrew pronouns can be difficult, but it seems that the sinner leads the animal, kills it, and from then on the priests do all the rest of the ritual work.)

When was the last time you slit an animal’s throat?

So, putting these things together, it seems that the sacrificial system had a built-in way to help people feel the hideousness, the disgust, the awfulness, the weight of sin, in a way we moderns can’t comprehend. Some animal really had to die when they committed sin.

The truth, for a New Testament Christian, is that someone had to die when we sin as well. This One’s death was hideous, disgusting, and awful. The weight of his death brought darkness upon the earth for hours and tore the veil between the people and the Holy of Holies. The weight of his death broke open graves and caused the dead to walk alive. The force of his death changed the reality of the universe from that point forward. His death is the determining factor for the fate of humanity.

Jesus is the spotless lamb upon whom believing Christians placed their hands and drew the knife across his throat.

Praise God.

Hate sin.

Galatians Commentary by Schreiner

I have written before about Tom Schreiner being one of my heroes. It is good to have heroes. It is also good when they are mild-mannered scholars.

I have not written about the fact that every good preaching pastor should have serious, rigorous, pastoral, commentaries on their shelf that they see as their “go-to” commentary.

It is really cool when my hero writes such a commentary. In fact, he has written three on deep, rich, and difficult Bible books (at this level, they are all difficult). Schreiner’s commentary on Romans was the first commentary I ever bought—a story I love to tell about God’s providence in my life.

Recently, a good friend gave me the Galatians commentary as a gift. It holds the pride of place among my Galatians commentaries.

Guy Waters over at Reformation21 just reviewed Schreiner’s work. Here is his conclusion:

As one who annually teaches at the seminary level a course in the exegesis of the Greek text of Galatians, I have publicly lamented before my students the absence of a readable, recent, post-NPP, exegetically-rigorous, Reformationally-theological commentary on the Greek text of Galatians. Many of the theologically solid commentaries are older or do not engage the Greek text. Many of the exegetically rigorous commentaries, even the recent ones, give me theological pause. Finally, I can tell my students that if they ever preach or teach Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, then Schreiner’s Galatians needs to have a place on their study shelf. This work has the double benefit not only of yielding much exegetical fruit from the Epistle to the Galatians, but also of modeling what an exegetical commentary in the service of the church can and should be. And in this, our commentary-writing age, I hope that others take note.

Please get this commentary as your “go-to” commentary on Galatians. If you buy it from this link you will also be supporting BCS.

Soli Deo Gloria

For those creative, and not-so creative types:

But as the mists of my dullness gradually cleared, the truth broke with a light that pierces to this day: she was praying for inspiration, for the choreography and for the execution of it. She was entreating the favor of God upon this endeavor and imploring His ability to procure it. She had the spiritual vision to see that this was not just a workshop recital for families and friends at a little performing arts school—it was a chance to honor the God of the universe. To love God with the heart, soul, mind and strength. To create something beautiful out of love for Him and to lift it up as an offering of praise.

That moment changed everything for me, in the way that small, seemingly trifling moments often do. All my loves—writing, music, dancing, homemaking, gardening—have since been charged with the influence of it. And not only by the ‘glory’ side of the equation; by the appeal, as well, if not more so.  I have in that memory of my beloved and respected teacher, face down before the God she adored, an image of the creative process that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Creativity is a giving, an offering to others and a glory to the Creator-God. But it is also a receiving. And the courage to create and not valuate our offering by the market standards of the world is, I believe, a gift in itself, and one to be sought most earnestly by the likes of such frail co-creators as we humans prove ourselves to be.

Read the whole thing.

HT: Rabbit Room

Steak and Potatoes Redux

Back at the end of January, I attempted to barbecue steak and potatoes. You can read about the attendant failures here. The disappointments of that cold January night had been haunting me; I needed a rematch. So, this last weekend, I prepared for a do over.

I shopped for steaks at Von Hansons on 96, I purchased all the proper ingredients, and we were bold enough to invite friends.

Again, the potatoes were grilled to perfection. This time, however, they were tossed with the proper dressing with proper ingredients. Magnificent.

Finally, the steaks were watched like a hawk. I am not a steak lover, but Wendy liked them and the company seemed OK.

Overall, we will call it a success.

Wendy's Pic of the Day

rose, originally uploaded by wenabell.

Stars Wars Toys Photographed: Awesome

As linked from Daring Fireball, look here. Please go look. They are fantastic.

What Do We Choose to Imagine?

What do we choose to imagine, when we choose? The answer is always revelatory, which is one of the reasons Chesterton was right to say that “the simple need for some kind of ideal world in which fictitious persons play an unhampered part is infinitely deeper and older than the rules of good art, and much more important.” The Harry Potter books remind us of this, and they can be, if we read them rightly, both a delight in themselves and a school for our own imaginings. They have many flaws, but I have not dwelt on them here because I forgive J. K. Rowling for every one. Her seven books are, and thank God for it, always on the side of life.

— Alan Jacobs, “The Youngest Brother’s Tale,” in Wayfaring, p. 80

Read Well

Alan Jacobs:

The other day a homeschooling parent, whose child is in the ninth grade, wrote to me to ask what books I thought are essential for a young person to have read before coming to college. My reply:

For what it's worth, I don't think what a young person reads is nearly as important as how he or she reads. Young people who learn to read with patience and care and long-term concentration, with pencil in hand to make notes (including questions and disagreements), will be better prepared for college than students who read all the "right" books but read them carelessly or passively.

Older Than the Rules of Good Art

Then came riding into the fray a young man — twenty-five at the time — named Gilbert Keith Chesterton, who, though a young journalist and an intellectual himself, repudiated the hand-wringing of his colleagues and planted his flag quite firmly in the camp of the penny dreadfuls: “There is no class of vulgar publications about which there is, to my mind, more utterly ridiculous exaggeration and misconception than the current boys’ literature of the lowest stratum.” Chesterton is perfectly happy to acknowledge that these books are not in the commendatory sense “literature,” because “the simple need for some kind of ideal world in which fictitious persons play an unhampered part is infinitely deeper and older than the rules of good art, and much more important. Every one of us in childhood has constructed such an invisible dramatis personae, but it never occurred to our nurses to correct the composition by careful comparison with Balzac.”

— Alan Jacobs, “The Youngest Brother’s Tale,” in Wayfaring, p. 71

The Miraculous Return of Crowned Princes

“It is also worth noting that the rise of literary scholarship is roughly contemporaneous with the move of the realistic novel to the center of literary experience, and it is not the place of the realistic novel to emphasize invention. The highly inventive writer does not represent everyday reality but rather imagines a new reality, or, to borrow Sidney’s phrase, grows into another nature. Of course, the defender of inventive stories would say that in the deepest and truest sense Spenser or Sidney or Ariosto can hold the mirror up to nature — human nature — as well as Tolstoy or George Eliot. But they do not do so by following the canons of realistic fiction, and so come to be seen, by certain serious-minded critics anyway, as less than fully serious. There’s something undignified and perhaps even irresponsible in cheerfully ignoring probabilities and the furniture of daily life in order to make up stories about winged horses, improbable escapes from the fiercest of prisons, or the miraculous return of crowned princes kidnapped as infants and long thought dead.”

— Alan Jacobs, “The Brightest Heaven of Invention,” in Wayfaring, pp. 57–58

All Well-Bred Persons Were Expected To

“One reason [the term invention disappeared from the vocabulary of literary criticism] involves the development of literary criticism as an academic discipline, something that happened in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Before that, reading and reflecting on literature was something that all well-bred persons were expected to do; it was no more to be taught at university than the habit of drinking port after dinner. Those who sought to bring literary study into the university curriculum needed some justification for their field, needed to show that the study of literature is something far more rigorous and objective than the expression of good taste through the encounter with les belles lettres. It therefore became necessary for literary study to develop quasi-scientific methods of inquiry and to eschew evaluation. The question of whether a poem is good or bad, being a matter of mere taste and not subject to methodological codifying, could safely be left to the poets and book reviewers; scholars had more vital tasks to attend to.”

— Alan Jacobs, “The Brightest Heaven of Invention,” in Wayfaring, p. 57

Happy 10th Birthday!

birthday girl - 10 years today, originally uploaded by wenabell.

I love you, baby girl!

A History of Creative Kids' Cakes

Best Reason to Own an iPad

From the TUAW post...

The new application contains details on every major league game played from 1952 to 2010. That's more than 115,000 games!

The application uses a combination of a Cover Flow and grid-style interface that makes it easy to browse by team names and by team geographic location. When you are viewing the information on an individual team, you can view each game within a season, plus performance statistics such as batting average and earned run averages for each season as a whole.

These two views only scratch the surface of the statistics that are available within Pennant. Each season can be further broken down into individual games, a view that lets you see the details and player roster for each game. 

The Arduous Work of a Lifetime

Likewise, Wycliffe, for all his faith in the power of boys who drive plows to know their Bibles, makes it clear that Scripture exhibits its clarity only to those who undergo the lengthy intellectual discipline of submitting to its authority: “The faithful whom he calls in meekness and humility of heart, whether they be clergy or laity, male or female, bending the neck of their inner man to the logic and style of Scripture will find in it the power to labour and the wisdom hidden from the proud.” God indeed reveals to the “little children” what is hidden from the “wise and understanding,” but transforming oneself into a little child is the arduous work of a lifetime. Christ’s yoke is easy and his burden light, but we don’t like bending our necks to receive it — and no translation, however it accommodates itself to our language and understanding, can change that.

— Alan Jacobs, “Robert Alter’s Fidelity,” in Wayfaring, pp. 14–15

Clouds

clouds, originally uploaded by wenabell.

Can I say again how much I love my wife? Not just because I think she takes great pictures, but because she is great. I am so thankful for her.

Update: Actually, I just learned that my oldest daughter took this picture. This fact, of course, doesn't change anything of what I wrote above. I do think my wife is both a wonderful photographer and great. I also think my daughter is a wonderful photographer and great.

Buffalo Barbecue Wings

I love buffalo hot wings. I have even developed a taste for Bleu Cheese dressing to go with them; it balances the spicy hot goodness with cool creaminess. Yes.

But, it is a pain to have to go purchase them at restaurants when I have my own perfectly good Weber barbecue. Aren't wings made to be barbecued? Well, yes, I say.

So the quest began earlier this summer for the best buffalo sauce recipe. Google was the starting point. Wow. There are a plethora of recipes out there. How to choose?

Well, start cooking and let the best recipe win. Actually, after trying three different recipes, I concocted my own combination from the others. So, an Abell recipe now exists for buffalo barbecue wings. Below is the process I follow to make them.

First, prepare about 3 pounds of chicken wings, usually 20-25 pieces. If you buy the wings as one piece and not separated for your convenience, cut the wing tips off and split the remainder into the upper wing and lower wing. I am sure there are technical terms for each part of the wing but I don't know what they are. One part looks like a mini-drum stick. It is kind of fun getting them apart, you have to crack the joint using your hands and then cut them. Very barbaric.

Second, toss the raw wings in a large zip-lock bag with Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Kosher Salt, Fresh Ground Black Pepper, and Cayenne Pepper. I just eye-ball the amounts, but probably 2 tablespoons of oil and a teaspoon each of the rest. Maybe two teaspoons of the salt. Whatever. Put the well mixed and shaken wings in the fridge.

Third, using a Weber grill, prepare it for a two-zone fire at medium heat. Don't use lighter fluid. Go buy a Weber chimney and light the coals the right way. Your taste buds will thank you. After the charcoal is ash covered, dump the chimney full of coals and push them so that they cover two-thirds of the bottom grate. Put the top grill back on and let the grill sit open for another 10–15 minutes. Scrape the grate clean.

Fourth, place your bare hand about a Coke can height above the fire. If you can hold your hand there for a slow count of six or seven, the fire is ready. Less than six and the fire is still too hot. When the fire is at the right temp, spread the wings out over the coals, being careful not to drip the oil on the coals, which will cause flare ups. If flare ups occur move the affected wings over to the cool side and close the lid. Cook the wings over direct medium heat with the lid closed as much as possible. I never time myself, going a bit by feel here, but cook the wings for a total of about 18–20 minutes. If your fire is too hot it will take less time, so watch that you don’t char your wings. Turn them once about mid-way. When you take them off, they should be a golden brown and meat won’t stick to the bone. Again, keep the lid closed as much as possible.

Fifth, during the 18–20 minutes that the wings are cooking, make the buffalo sauce. Take a stick of real unsalted butter (1/2 cup) and put it in a sauce pan on medium high to melt. Measure out a full cup of Frank’s Louisiana Hot Sauce and whisk it with the melted butter. Buy it at Target rather than Byerly’s for half the price. Then add the following ingredients, whisking them all together...

• 2 teaspoons cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar (a bit more to taste)
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (more for more heat)
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/8 teaspoon course ground black pepper

Sixth, pull the wings off the grill and put them in a serving bowl. Pour the buffalo sauce over the wings, tossing them to coat.

Seventh, serve them with the best bleu cheese dressing you can find. Enjoy.

One Kingdom or Two?

The last post is a quote from a book I am reading regarding two kingdoms theology, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, by David VanDrunen. The subtitle is “A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture.” That is all well and good, but I am now, shall we say, caught between Charybdis and Scylla. One of my closest friends is staunchly in the two kingdoms camp, and another close friend is just as staunchly in the one kingdom camp.

Yikes. To make matters worse, both of these guys are brilliant. Off the charts brilliant. They are well read, studious, deep thinkers. Needless to say, they are far beyond me; while I am splashing around in the kiddy pool, they are doing triple back flip pikes, or whatever, in the mega deep end. Which makes the whole thing very difficult. They are equally devoted to orthodox Reformed Christianity, they equally love theology, reading, study, teaching, etc. They have both devoted their lives to teaching ministries. Frankly, I would seek out the advice of either or both of these men in a New York minute. Whatever that is. Letterman once said it was the time it took a tourist to get mugged after leaving his hotel, but I digress. See?

So, how do I decide? I am standing in a box canyon, to use another metaphor, walled in on either side by friends who are far more capable theologians and thinkers than I am.

It seems almost silly, then, that the solution is for me to try and read the Scriptures for myself, weigh the evidence, exegete the passages, reason through the arguments, and land on one side or the other.

Maybe I could just do a poll? Should I go with one kingdom or two?

Live As Those Who Belong To It

“Though we still live in this world, with all of its limitations, temptations, and hardships, our true identity even now is as citizens of a heavenly kingdom where Christ sits exalted. We have free access to that world-to-come through prayer and worship, and we should live as those who belong to it. Thus the Christian life should not follow the pattern that the first Adam was supposed to follow. Christians are not to pursue righteous obedience in the world and then, as a consequence, enter the world-to-come. Instead, Christians have been made citizens of the world-to-come by a free gift of grace and now, as a consequence, are to live righteous and obedient lives in this world. Christians do not pick up and continue the task of Adam. Thanks to the finished work of Christ, Christians should view their cultural activities in a radically different way from the way the the first Adam viewed his. We pursue cultural activities in response to the fact that the new creation has already been achieved, not in order to contribute to its achievement.”

—David VanDrunen, Living in God's Two Kingdoms, p. 56

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.

Engineering or Humanities?

I have a lot of thoughts about this post and, if I were a good blogger, would write them down. But, I am not a good blogger, so I will only quote a paragraph or two and say that, with regard to engineering and humanities, Wilson is spot on.

Here is the problem in a nutshell. When it comes to higher education, what do we do with our best and brightest? Overwhelmingly, Christian parents of high-achieving kids seek out some kind of technocratic program of study. They seek out the sciences and engineering. This is in part because Americans in general are pragmatic space shuttle builders, but there is an additional attraction here for Christians. What might it be?

We have to begin by comparing contemporary engineering to the contemporary humanities. Christians love the truth, and when you undertake a course of study in engineering, most of what you learn is true. The bridges have to stand, and the airplanes have to fly. The software needs to run. In most liberal arts programs, most of what you learn is false, with some of it being false and stupid. So there’s that.

In the old days, when the study of the liberal arts was Christian, there was a fixed standard that enabled you to navigate them. There is no problem with reading and studying error so long as you have a means of identifying it. You are an intelligent Christian participant in what Adler called the great conversation. The fact that the conversation extended over centuries does not mean that it turns out we are all saying the same thing. You need to know what Plato said in order to take issue. But when you are immersed in this world and all the standards of measurement look like a slide rule in a Salvador Dali painting, the only possible result is a nihilistic relativism.

 Read the whole thing.

Like, Two Months Ago

Snarky JackFM radio spot overheard while driving to a meeting today...

“You can now download the Radio.com app for your Android phone. Wow. Because you could download the Radio.com app on an iPhone or iPad, like, two months ago.”

Yes.

Lost Opportunity

This is simply a re-post from Alan Jacobs, but it ties nicely with the reality of our opportunities growing thin as time marches on...

“Such wistful desire to evade responsibility exposes the childishness of the adults now preaching the good news of emerging adulthood. They have decided that taking responsibility for other people — spouses, children, employees and subordinates, neighbors, friends, eventually even parents — and relying on them in turn is the heaviest burden that can befall a person. But what if this is instead the means to happiness? Advocates of emerging adulthood share in common with children a proclivity to see the future as nearly infinite and themselves as, for all practical purposes, immortal. In their view of themselves and their world, it is never too late and there is never any rush. But a few-year increase in the average life expectancy has bought us much less time than they think, and it has done nothing to mitigate our potential to make irreversible errors and experience gnawing regret. The indefinite extension of childhood doesn’t even approximate the immortality required to free us from these miseries. In the meantime, putting off all responsibilities and commitments as long as possible to avoid hard realities may only result in missing the opportunity to make these decisions at all.”

—The New Atlantis » Slacking as Self-Discovery

Read more than 95 theses

Crawling Around the Cathedral Floor

“I am convinced that poets are toddlers in a cathedral, slobbering on wooden blocks and piling them up in the light of the stained glass. We can hardly make anything beautiful that wasn’t beautiful in the first place. We aren’t writers, but gleeful rearrangers of words whose meanings we can’t begin to know. When we manage to make something pretty, it’s only so because we are ourselves a flourish on a greater canvas. That means there’s no end to the discovery. We may crawl around the cathedral floor for ages before we grow up enough to reach the doorknob and walk outside into a garden of delights. Beyond that, the city, then the rolling hills, then the sea. And when the world of every cell has been limned and painted and sung, we lie back on the grass, satisfied that our work is done. Then, of course, the sun sets and we see above us the dark dome of glittering stars.”

—Andrew Peterson, read his whole post here.

Lonely Tree—Which Do You Like Best?

Lonely Tree—Sepia, originally uploaded by wenabell.

Lonely Tree—Black and White, originally uploaded by wenabell.

Barbecued Ribeye Steak with Red Potatoes

What started out almost perfectly, I will sadly tell you at the outset, ended in near disaster. I could lie, show you the pictures displayed below, and tell you that my first barbecued steak ever was absolutely perfect. I could tell you that the potatoes came off without a hitch and that the wine was a perfect pair for a choice cut of well-marbled ribeye steak. But only the last part would be true.

Things started off well. Four, thick, apparently well-marbled ribeye steaks were taken out of the freezer to thaw. Recipes were chosen and ingredients were purchased. As can be seen in the picture, everything looked very promising.

I have now been grilling in below freezing weather since sometime in mid-November. I almost don’t remember what it is like cook in the summer, when the breeze is warm and I can’t touch the side of a fired grill with my bare hand.

Pinot Noir is my favorite grape. I have been working my way through this grape for about 10 years. Considering we only have a bottle of wine 2–3 times per year this does not say much. Pinot Noir pairs wonderfully with red meat. We opened the bottle early and let it breath while we put the finishing touches on the meal.

The picture to the left is of some of the best potatoes I have ever eaten. Forgive me, but they were prepared, seasoned, and grilled to perfection. I couldn’t stop eating them once I had them in the house.

Unfortunately, tossing them in an ill-prepared dressing ruined them. We realized at the last minute that we did not have one key ingredient in stock. Sadly, my culinary talents are not yet such that I can improvise with any form of success; indeed, my improvisation proved my downfall.

After tossing the perfect potatoes in a deceptively false dressing, they were still edible, but not to be desired. Close, in my mind, now counts for more than horse shoes and hand grenades. These potatoes were ohh so close.

I grew up eating steak that was tough, dry, and overcooked, which is the reason that I have never barbecued steak before. Twenty years of grilling and steak has never touched my grilling grate. In fact, I have never desired steak, so bad was my childhood recollection. Good steak has crossed my palate before, in restaurants and such, but I never ventured on my own.

Recently, some friends received half a cow, which they did every year, and wanted to clean out their freezer. They offered us some ribeye steak. I have no idea how old it was, or whether steak frozen for well over a year should still be eaten. I didn’t think of that at all when I started.

We used a rub recipe from a guy named Mike who lives in Woodbury. He used this rub to win the grilling championship in Chicago in 2005. It was fantastic, and possibly the only thing good about the steaks.

The real problem with the steaks was that I overcompensated for the outside temperature and grilled the steaks too long. History repeats itself. I prepared for myself the same steak I grew up with: tough, dry, and overcooked.

The good news is that the potential greatness for this dinner was through the roof. I can learn from my mistakes. I know now that I can grill fantastic potatoes, and I will use the proper ingredients to make a wonderful dressing to toss them in. I will purchase fresh ribeye steak, mere hours before I place it on the grill, carefully rubbed with Mike’s special concoction. And I will yank those babies off the grill well before I think I should.

I can’t wait to try again.

Breakfast

breakfast, originally uploaded by wenabell.

Only in Minnesota

Quote from my oldest as she left the house tonight...

“Oh my. It’s 24 out. What do we need coats for?”

steaming soup on a cold day

steaming soup on a cold day, originally uploaded by wenabell.

A Reason Not to Blog

“The task of adding new lines and sentences and paragraphs to one’s collection can become an ever tempting substitute for reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting what’s already there. And wisdom that is not frequently revisited is wisdom wasted.”

—Alan Jacobs, Wayfaring, p. 11

The Human Being as Wayfarer

I am reading a collection of essays titled, Wayfaring: Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant, by an author, blogger, essayist that I increasingly enjoy reading, Alan Jacobs. In the introduction he explains his title and paints an accurate picture of the Christian life...

An old phrase holds that to be a Christian is to be homo viator: the human being as wayfarer, as pilgrim. Wayfarers know in a general sense where we are headed: to the City of God, what John Bunyan, that great chronicler of pilgrimage, called the Celestial City—but we aren’t altogether certain of the way. We can get lost for a time, or lose our focus and nap for too long on a soft patch of grass at the side of the road, or dally a few days at Vanity Fair. We can even become discouraged—but we don’t ultimately and finally, give up. And we don’t think we have arrived. To presume that we have made it to our destination and to despair of arriving are both, as Jürgen Moltmann has wisely said, ways of “canceling the wayfaring character of hope.”

The last sentence deserves contemplation. A wayfarer has a character of hope. The wayfarer who believes he has arrived and the wayfarer who despairs of arriving both destroy that character of hope. They both, in some sense, have lost hope.

Hope comes from knowing that there is a way—and that we didn't make it. This is why the road’s unexpected turnings need not alarm us; this is why it’s possible even to enjoy the unpredictable, whether it comes from without or within.

This makes me think of Romans 8:24–25, “For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

May the Lord grant us both hope and patience.

Do the Hard Thing First

One of the banes of my personality is procrastination. When I a was an engineer, I used the phrase “Do the hard thing first,” repeatedly in an attempt to keep myself on task. Being productive is an ongoing battle for me. In fact, one of the many new books I am reading is Getting Things Done by David Allen.

Alan Jacobs, who I quote here often, posts a lot of interesting quotes on his blog, more than 95 theses. One of his posts today speaks into my problem of procrastination.

“Every time we postpone some necessary event—whether we put off doing the dishes till morning or defer an operation or some difficult labor or study—we do so with the implication that present time is more important than future time (for if we wished the future to be as free and comfortable as we wish the present to be, we would perform the necessary actions as soon as they prove themselves necessary). There is nothing wrong with this, as long as we know what we are doing, and as long as the present indeed holds some opportunity more important than the task we delay. But very often our decision to delay is less a free choice than a semiconscious mechanism—a conspiracy between our reasoning awareness and our native dislike of pain. The result of this conspiracy is a disconcerting contradiction of will; for when we delay something, we simultaneously admit its necessity and refuse to do it. Seen more extensively, habitual delays can clutter our lives, leave us in the annoying position of always having to do yesterday’s chores. Disrespect for the future is a subtly poisonous disrespect for the self, and forces us, paradoxically, to live in the past.”

—Robert Grudin, quoted by Mandy Brown

I think this fits well with my simple idea of doing the hard things first.

Ultimate vs. Proximate

I am re-posting this from my friend’s blog The Works of God. I find Sproul’s distinction between ultimate and proximate very helpful.

R.C. Sproul on Romans 8:28:

God, in his providence, has the power and the will to work all things together for good for his people. This does not mean that everything that happens to us is, in itself, good.  Really bad things do happen to us. They are only proximately bad; they are never ultimately bad. That is, they are bad only in the short (proximate) term, never in the long term. Because of the triumph of God’s goodness in all things, he is able to bring good for us out of the bad. He turns our tragedies into supreme blessings.

R.C. Sproul, in Be Still, My Soul: Embracing God’s Purpose and Provision in Suffering, edited by Nancy Guthrie, p. 47.

(HT: The Works of God)

And then there were 10

Since I am not on Twitter or Facebook, I will write a purposeless “what am I up to now statement” in this outdated mode of social media, a.k.a. blog.

I am down to 10 emails in my inbox. My inbox hasn’t been this low since June 2010.

Safer on the Streets

Charles Colson writes today in his BreakPoint article,

Since 1973, [Walter Hoy] notes, over 14.5 million black babies have been killed by abortion. Every, single day, 1,200 black babies are put to death in abortion facilities, making abortion the leading cause of death among African Americans! Nearly half of all black babies concieved die in abortion chambers today. Hoy says this means that a black child is safer on the streets of the worst neighborhoods in American than in his mother's womb.

Picture of the Day—Snowflake

snowflake, originally uploaded by wenabell.

My wife is ah-may-zing. Click on this photo to see more at her flickr site. She had to stay outside and freeze to get these shots.

Happy About This

From Daring Fireball:

Ars Technica reports:

Apple’s own Phil Schiller assured the press that Verizon would not be loading up the device with crapware, too. “We want the experience to be the same for every iPhone user. So there are no special Verizon Apps preinstalled,” Schiller told Ars. “AT&T offers customers some apps via the App Store. I’ll let Verizon comment if they are working on anything for that.”

I.e., the Verizon iPhone is just another iPhone 4. No logos on the hardware. No preloaded apps from the carrier.

Football Example of Opportunity Costs

A paragraph from a recent Run of Play post—A Wrinkle in Time—that wonderfully portrays the reality of opportunity costs. And, no, he is not talking about American Football.

When we are young, the stars of the football world tower over us, not least because, well, at that age any adult evokes a certain amount of awe. (To an eight-year-old, every adult is wise.) Throughout most of our childhood, we think ourselves invincible, and the world ageless; only as our teenage years end do we start to see that choices are coming down the road, closing off certain paths. Yet even then these decisions seem far away, mere abstractions that teachers and parents have conjured up to entice us to do a little extra work. Rarely do the millions playing rec soccer in high school possess the self-awareness to realize that already the dreams of scoring in the World Cup final (and, in many Americans’ cases, finally vaulting soccer to its rightful place at top of the sports heap) ended when we didn’t go for the travel team in elementary school. Even the most devoted young fans, when following the U-17 and U-20 World Cups, or their favorite clubs’ youth teams, see those players just as contemporaries, classmates if we’d gone to a different school. It’s only when we finally see a true up-and-coming star younger than us, whether Gareth Bale or Andy Najar or Josh McEachran or Juan Agudelo, that the real, physical evidence confronts us: those dreams are well and truly over.

Update: A friend noticed that today’s post on Run of Play was a bit inappropriate, so I removed the link to the main Web site to help you avoid running into something you didn’t want or intend to see. The link to the quoted post should be fine.

Pride and Guilt

Tony Sumpter wrote an excellent post over at Credenda.org about pride and guilt that ties in with much of what has been both in and behind the posts on this blog. It would be good to read his entire post; but if you want the summary version read on.

Tony explains the relationship between pride and guilt...

One of the ways pride poisons his victims is through false guilt. One of the unintended consequences of thinking too highly of yourself is the reality of not meeting your own expectations. What does a proud person do when he or she knows that they are not as smart, not as gifted, not as diligent, not as beautiful as they have positioned themselves to be? What do you do when you look in the mirror and you realize that your projection of yourself doesn’t match reality? Well, like the idiot sons of Adam that we are, we frequently take what we think is the path of least resistance and we feel bad for ourselves. We feel guilty. But instead of feeling guilty for setting up legalistic super-standards for ourselves, we feel guilty for not meeting our legalistic super-standards. And we do all of this with Bible verses and pious thoughts and prayers. O, I know I should be sharing the gospel with every person I come in contact with, but I’m just so cowardly and selfish. Or I know my house should look like a model home on HGTV, but I’m just not as organized as I should be. Or I know I really should be using my theological gifts to write books and speak at conferences, but I just don’t use my time as wisely as I should. I know my children should recite Bible verse on command and never have a resistant look in their eyes, but I just don’t spend enough time with them or discipline them consistently enough.

The good news that repels this relationship between pride and guilt is the gospel.

But the good news of Jesus is freedom from guilt and sin. And this means in part that we are freed to be human. We are freed to be us. We are freed to be finite creatures. We are freed by the gospel to get tired. We are freed by the gospel to say ‘no’ to some things and ‘yes’ to others. We are freed by the gospel to be filled with the love of Christ to the very brim of our souls and spilling over, and then we can be fruitful in the tiny plot of planet earth that we’ve been given. We are freed to plant a garden, open a business, and have a family. We are freed to work hard and harvest the field that God has called us to. And since we’re sinners, we’ll screw that up sometimes too, and we’ll fall down on our faces. But the good news is that we can get up, ask for forgiveness and get back to work. But a big, sovereign God frees us to be little, humble people with bright eyes and laughing hearts.

I pray that the Lord will give me the grace to be fruitful and content in the tiny plot of land he has given me.

Quality Father-Son Time

My son and I have been competing on an iPod Touch app called Infinity Blade. I taunted him last night because I reached level 45 and obtained the Infinity Blade—the highest rated sword—before he did and while he watched. I then promptly lost to the god-king who is rated at level 150 while he watched.

I received the following email this afternoon...

I KILLED THE GOD KING! I KILLED THE GOD KING! LEVEL 150! WITH THE WEAKEST SWORD! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

What Camp Are You In?

There are activities that seem to fall into a few different camps. The camps are Love to Do, Hate to Do, Good At, and Bad At. Any activity can have the following permutations...

1. Love to Do and Good At
2. Love to Do and Bad At
3. Hate to Do and Good At
4. Hate to Do and Bad At

Camps one and four tend to take care of themselves. Sometimes people are stuck in camp three and need to figure out a way not to be there.

But what about camp two? How much effort should we put into those activities that fall into camp two? If we love to sing, but can’t sing, should we do it? If we love to run or write or fish or swim or study or whatever, but really stink at it, should we continue to put energy into it for the sake of our joy, or should we bag it and find things that only fall into camp one?

How Now Shall I Live?

In many of my recent, apparently varied posts (i.e. Harry Potter, opportunity costs, and even grilling) there has existed—in my mind, at least—a common theme. This common theme really is a serious question, with associated thoughts rattling around in my head that have become posts.

Carl Truman, when blogging on the early church fathers, wrote…

In many ways, the fundamental questions they asked were akin to those we face today. For example, “What does it look like here and now to be a committed disciple of Christ?” is one of those hardy perennials that Christians have asked throughout the years. In the ancient church, it looked rather ascetic and monastic. We might today deem such an answer as wrongheaded; but we cannot avoid the legitimate demands the question places on us; we too have to answer it in our day and age and perhaps, 1,500 years from now, our answers will look rather odd.

This is a similar question to the one Francis Schaeffer asked in the title of his famous book How Should We Then Live?

My asking this question—What does it look like here and now to be a committed disciple of Christ?—stems from several personal realities…

1. Not becoming a pastor after moving to Minnesota and spending 6 years in theological training,
2. Accepting the (happy) reality that I am a college administrator for the foreseeable future,
3. Turning 40,
4. Having some discretion over free-time now that I am no longer taking classes.

How now shall I live?

In addition to these realities, there is a significant amount of pressure—real or perceived—at my church and in my circles to “not waste your life,” and to do everything with “undistracting excellence.”

For a sinful person like me, this pressure can be very real. A logical result of this pressure for me, and probably many others, is that there is no such thing as leisure (without feeling guilty), because accomplishing something meaningful for Christ to bring him glory is all important, and one certainly cannot waste any time in life on a hobby (i.e. carving ducks or collecting seashells).

Intellectually, I understand that this is not what is being taught, and that I am being overblown and somewhat crass, but the pressure can be very real. I understand that leisure is important, and it is OK to not be “on” 24 hours a day. None of the reality behind Christian Hedonism or Don’t Waste Your Life is wrong. It is gloriously right.

However, the intellectual understanding and the culture of the circles I run in are two different things, which is why hearing and living this message can be so deceptively dangerous. I also understand that for the most part, people outside my bubble don’t struggle with this pressure; they need to be pushed to not waste their life and do everything with God-glorifying excellence. All of this is why, now that I have accepted the reality that I am neither a pastor nor a scholar, I must ask “How now shall I live?” (It is very encouraging to me that Trueman thinks this is a perennial question.)

Attempting to answer this question is why, fundamentally, I just read Luther’s Freedom of a Christian, and why I have asked questions about whether it is OK to read Harry Potter, and why I have just started another new book titled Living In God’s Two Kingdoms, by David VanDrunen. I have high hopes for this book. Here is a paragraph from the introduction…

In presenting this two-kingdoms vision, I hope to provide encouragement to ordinary Christians—to ordinary Christians who work, study, vote, raise families, help the poor, run businesses, make music, watch movies, ride bikes, and engage in all sorts of other cultural activities, and who wish to live thoughtful and God-pleasing lives in doing so. I hope that this book will be an encouragement for many readers to take up their many cultural activities with renewed vigor, being convinced that such activities are good and pleasing to God. For many readers I also hope that this book will be liberating, freeing you from well-meaning but non-biblical pressure from other Christians to “transform” your workplace or to find uniquely “Christian” ways of doing ordinary tasks. For all readers I hope that this book will serve to focus your hearts on things that are far more important than a promotion at work or the most recent Supreme Court decision: the sufficiency of the work of Christ, the missionary task of the church, and the hope of the new heaven and new earth.

Consequently, somewhere in all this is another explanation for why I love to barbecue.

New Years Eve Delectables

Apple-brined Barbecue Turkey

Did I mention that I am baking also...Silky-Smooth Cheesecake.

There is Hope My Kids Will Stick Around

“At the Q gathering in 2010, urbanologist Richard Florida observed that young adults meeting one another no longer ask, ‘What do you do?’ They ask, ‘Where do you live?’ More and more people will change careers in order to stay in a place—connected to family, friends, and local culture—than will change place to stay in a career. The 20th-century American dream was to move out and move up; the 21st-century dream seems to be to put down deeper roots. This quest for local, embodied, physical presence may well be driven by the omnipresence of the virtual and a dawning awareness of the thinness of disembodied life.”

— Ten Most Significant Cultural Trends of the Last Decade : Andy Crouch

(HT: More Than 95 Theses)

Picture of the Day

lily, originally uploaded by wenabell.

Lily

Run, You Fool, Run

Wendy dragged me out of bed in summer and fall 2009 to start running. She had started four months earlier and part of what got me out of bed was guilt that she was running and I was not. Somehow, by God’s grace, I began to run more and more. Now, we run together. It is our joy to be together and neither of us like to run alone. It is good for our marriage, our bodies, and our souls.

2010 was the first calendar year of our running together. While I have a friend who ran over 1,700 miles in 2010, I am pleased to say that I ran 596.5 miles. If I had realized how close I was to 600, I would have pushed for 3.5 more. Oh, well. There is a parable about my life in those numbers.

Our goal for 2011 is at least 750 miles.

If you use Nike+ and I know you, let me know.

Books Completed in 2010

Not much, I know, but it is better than 2008 and 2009 combined.


Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor, by D. A. Carson
The Return of the King, by J. R. R. Tolkien
Fidelity, by Douglas Wilson
The Chestnut King, by Nathan D. Wilson
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carrol
The First and Second Letters to the Thessalonians (NICNT), by Gordan D. Fee
On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness: The Wingfeather Saga Book One, by Andrew Peterson
Planet Narnia, by Michael Ward
North! Or Be Eaten: The Wingfeather Saga Book Two, by Andrew Peterson
The Odyssey of Homer, by Homer, Translated by Richard Lattimore
Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), by Philip K. Dick
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J. K. Rowling
The Tales of Beedle the Bard, by J. K. Rowling
Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carrol
The Consequences of Ideas, by R. C. Sproul
Leepike Ridge, by N. D. Wilson
The Freedom of a Christian, by Martin Luther

I Read Them Stories Because...

A former classmate, Nick Nowalk, wrote this post, which has much to do with all that I have been writing and thinking lately. The post is titled, “Why I Read Fantastical Stories Full of Make-Believe To My Kids.” Here is an excerpt...

Most of all, I read them stories because I desperately desire—insofar as it depends on me—to shape their consciousness and baptize their imagination with categories, experiences, and longings that will one day respond to the Gospel with the cry: “Yes! Of course this is what it was always about. What else could possibly account for the way things are in this world?” I want to ruin them early for cheap, disconnected sex and trivial ambitions (when they are ultimate) like going to Harvard, making millions, or becoming the president. I want to expand their souls and make them impossible to satisfy or stuff with creation alone. And I aim to to do all this damage because I want Jesus Christ crucified and risen to have the compelling ring of truth when they begin to think and choose for themselves as they leave home to find their own place in the Story. Every moment I spend reading aloud to them is subordinated to the hope that Jesus would be recognized as the ultimate source and inspiration of every late night chill, tear, laugh or inconsolable yearning as my fiction stories ring true once more in their bedroom. Because I want them to understand that all of the gallant virtues they have come to admire and love through these stories are summed up in the daily act of taking up their cross to follow this Jesus into a kingdom that will triumph over all evil and sadness, and which will reign forever and ever and ever in the happy ending to end all happy endings.

Nick was light years ahead of me in class. He is an excellent writer and thinker. I thank God for giving men like Nick the mind and ability that he has.

Washed and Waiting

A former classmate of mine, Wesley Hill, has written a book titled, Washed and Waiting.

Another former classmate of mine, Nick Nowalk, reviewed Wesley’s book on its Amazon page.

Washed and Waiting takes its title and cue from two biblical passages. I Corinthians 6:9-11 refers to the “washed” spiritual status of Christians, while Romans 8:23-25 reminds us that we are “waiting” and groaning for the future consummation of our redemption. This is the famous “already/not yet” schema (as dry academics like to put it) that pervades the New Testament, and Wesley rightly sees that it is essential to narrating one's own life well as a Christian. If only one side or the other of the contrast is taken up and accepted, either insanity or moral compromise will result. Within these two distinctly Christian images, Wesley has slowly learned to recognize the presence of Christ in his life through--not in spite of--his faltering yet faithful struggles with homosexuality.

Justin Taylor also wrote about the book here.

Correct me, O Lord

As I have written before, I am moody and prone to extremes. I have noticed over the years that my extremes can play havoc with the way that I see and understand the God of the Bible. I am not fully sure why one day the proverbial sun can be shining and birds singing and I can glory in the judgment of God upon his enemies, and the very next day, the storm clouds roll in and I question how God can deal so harshly with his people. Yes, they sinned, but the judgment is so, well, final.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that characters in the Bible were real, flesh and blood people who asked many of the same questions as I do. I often think that because they had a special revelatory relationship with God that they must never question him. Therefore, it is a comfort to me when I read Jeremiah questioning God…

Then I said, “Ah, Lord God, surely you have utterly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ‘It shall be well with you,’ whereas the sword has reached their very life” (Jeremiah 4:10).

At the same time, Jeremiah’s perspective rights itself. He is significantly more faithful than I am. Several chapters later Jeremiah again writes,

I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps. Correct me, O Lord, but in justice; not in your anger, lest you bring me to nothing (Jeremiah 10:23–24).

My prayer, then, echoes Jeremiah. Lord, in my extremes, keep me seeing you correctly. I am prone to wander, prone to leave the one I love. Please, Father, be gentle and correct me, not in your anger, but in your mercy. I trust in your own words, that you practice steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord (Jeremiah 9:23–24).

huge boots

huge boots, originally uploaded by wenabell.

Wendy's most popular (by views) photo from her flickr site.

The Preferred Reality

I have spent the last four hours alone while Wendy and the kids were out. It is interesting that I can miss them so much when I love being alone as much as I do. Yet, it is clear that simply having them around, knowing they are in the next room, and having them bust in and ask questions or give me a hug is really the preferred reality.

The Recipe is to Spend Your Life Cooking

“Handed-down wisdom and worked-up information remain the double piers of a cook’s life. The recipe book always contains two things: news of how something is made, and assurance that there’s a way to make it, with the implicit belief that if I know how it is done I can show you how to do it. The premise of the recipe book is that these two things are naturally balanced; the secret of the recipe book is that they’re not. The space between learning the facts about how something is done and learning how to do it always turns out to be large, at times immense. What kids make depends on what moms know: skills, implicit knowledge, inherited craft, buried assumptions, finger know-how that no recipe can sum up. The recipe is a blueprint but also a red herring, a way to do something and a false summing up of a living process that can be handed on only by experience, a knack posing as a knowledge. We say “What’s the recipe?” when we mean “How do you do it?” And though we want the answer to be “Like this!” the honest answer is “Be me!” “What’s the recipe?” you ask the weary pro chef, and he gives you a weary-pro-chef look, since the recipe is the totality of the activity, the real work. The recipe is to spend your life cooking.”

—What : The New Yorker

(RP: More Than 95 Theses)

Christmas Ham

Books Under the Tree

Very blessed.

Christ our Bridegroom

The Gospel story, wherein Jesus was incarnated, lived a sinless life, died a sin-filled death, was resurrected, and now sits at the right hand of God, is glorious. The incarnation is fantastic and worthy of celebration.

Yet this Christmas, it was not some new facet of Christ’s birth that grabbed my heart. I love the Christmas story, but it has not captured my thinking as it has in years past. Instead the thing that has rattled around in my brain has more to do with what Jesus became for us after his birth than at his birth.

I am enamored with Christ being our bridegroom as depicted by Martin Luther.

While this is not exactly a Christmas thought, it is an amazing reality that could have only happened because of Christmas. I can’t describe what Luther says better than he can, so I give it to you in his own words.

The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh [Eph. 5:31–32]. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage—indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage—it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own. Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul’s; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride’s and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?

Here we have a most pleasing vision not only of communion but of a blessed struggle and victory and salvation and redemption. Christ is God and man in one person. He has neither sinned nor died, and is not condemned, and he cannot sin, die, or be condemned; his righteousness, life, and salvation are unconquerable, eternal, omnipotent. By the wedding ring of faith he shares in the sins, death, and pains of hell which are his bride’s. As a matter of fact, he makes them his own and acts as if they were his own and as if he himself had sinned; he suffered, died, and descended into hell that he might overcome them all. Now since it was such a one who did all this, and death and hell could not swallow him up, these were necessarily swallowed up by him in a mighty duel; for his righteousness is greater than the sins of all men, his life stronger than death, his salvation more invincible than hell. Thus the believing soul by means of the pledge of its faith is free in Christ, its bridegroom, free from all sins, secure against death and hell, and is endowed with the eternal righteousness, life, and salvation of Christ its bridegroom. So he takes to himself a glorious bride “without spot or wrinkle, cleansing her by the washing of water with the word” [Cf. Eph. 5:26–27] of life, that is, by faith in the Word of life, righteousness, and salvation. In this way he marries her in faith, steadfast love, and in mercies, righteousness, and justice, as Hos. 2 [:19–20] says.

—Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian,” Career of the Reformer 1, Luther’s Works, Volume 31, p. 351–352.

Merry Christmas. The Christ is born, who has become our bridegroom. To him be the glory and honor and power forever.

The Value of all the Foregone Alternatives Summed Together

2010 has been a big year. Wendy and I celebrated 20 years of marriage, I turned 40, and I entered fully into my second career. (The first career was in civil engineering, the second is in higher education.) As can be read in previous posts, I have been working through this major life transition for the last year or two and am quite surprised at where the Lord has placed me. Through this career shift, I have pondered many of the other things that I want to do or desire to accomplish in this life. Matt and I call this our pipe-dream list.

For example, today I saw an announcement of a new masters degree at another college that I would love to pursue. Yet, as I look around at my wife and kids and think through my various responsibilities—like loving my wife as Christ loved the church and gave up his life for her, and providing food and education for these children—it is clear I won’t be packing my bags for Moscow (Idaho) anytime soon. Life-long learning is a good thing. I can’t wait to keep learning unfettered once we get to the next great life.

Alan Jacobs, who I increasingly admire and enjoy reading, quoted Robert Nozick in his essay, “Opportunity Costs,” from his book Wayfaring: Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant.

As Robert Nozick once wrote, “Although [young people] would agree, if they thought about it, that they will realize only some of the (feasible) possibilities before them, none of these various possibilities is yet excluded in their minds. The young live in each of the futures open to them….Economists speak of the opportunity cost of something as the value of the best alternative forgone for it. For adults, strangely, the opportunity cost of our lives appears to us to be the value of all the foregone alternatives summed together, not merely the best other one. When all the possibilities were yet still before us, it felt as if we would do them all” (Alan Jacobs, Wayfaring, p. 67).

The key sentence, and the one which has caused the most reflection is, “For adults, strangely, the opportunity cost of our lives appears to us to be the value of all the foregone alternatives summed together, not merely the best other one.” Several points regarding the opportunity cost of my life have surfaced out of the pool of thinking over that sentence.

First, the opportunity cost is only getting higher with each passing day. Recently, Pastor Sam blogged…

At this stage of my life, I must admit I am never going to be on the high school debate team, play on the college basketball team, pay off that mortgage in my forties, run that marathon in my fifties, and so on. For example, the evaporating number of days remaining in my life implies that I will have less and less time to read many of the great books.

Second, now that I have crossed the 40-yard line, I need to be ruthless about what things I spend my time doing. If with the passing of every day, the opportunity cost of my life keeps increasing, then the importance of using my remaining time wisely increases. If I ever want to accomplish any of the items on my pipe-dream list, I need to be ruthless in cutting out the things that are not on the list.

Third, I need to make the most of my career. There is no longer time to reboot—like we have done in the last six years—unless the next opportunity stands on the shoulders of this one. The time is past to start over (again). I do realize that the Lord will lead as he is pleased, but you know what I mean.

Fourth, Pastor Sam is right, I cannot grieve over the things that have passed; instead, I must be thankful that a sovereign God who ordains my steps loves me. If I am in Christ, God is 100% for me, and he has designed my life to display the glory of his son in me. I should be thankful, not regretful.

Fifth, as my inevitable death draws nearer, the importance of doing everything—whether it is eating or drinking—to the glory of God increases exponentially. I will face the Judge of the Universe in the relatively near future. I do not want to have wasted my life.

All of this, then, causes me to sincerely wonder what it means to not waste my life. This is not as simple as it seems. If you are familiar with the circles I run in, then please don’t write off this question. It is worth thinking about. More to follow.

Repugnant and Unnatural

From AyJay's "more than 95 theses"...

“There are many people – happy people, it usually appears – whose thoughts at Christmas always turn to books. The notion of a Christmas tree with no books under it is repugnant and unnatural to them.”

- (via wwnorton)

(Source: evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com)

Questions from Harry

Now that our family’s friendship with Harry Potter is public knowledge, I can begin to move into what I really want to write about. In previous posts, I wrote the story of how we came to enjoy the Potter books, but my real point in doing this was so I can work through questions that have been rattling around in my head.

Having read the Potter series, faced my own prejudices, and met some similar prejudices in others, I have the following questions…

1)  Why do so many Christians have such a negative view of Harry Potter, and is this view justified?

2)  Why does the magic in Harry Potter pose a problem for Christians, or does it? Should it?

3)  Is it OK for Christians to read Harry Potter?

4)  More broadly, is it OK for Christians to read non-Christian fiction? In other words, is it OK for Christians to read anything but Christian theology and other related Christian-living books? If yes, then why do those of us who do often get sideways glances from other Christians?

5)  What exactly is literature, and could Harry Potter be considered literature?

6)  What is escapist fiction and can it be read, too?

7)  What other questions should I be asking and thinking through?