Picked up at Church this Morning

It's easy to love God. It's hard to love God most.

Thoughts on the Federal Vision flap

I'm still working through some of my ideas relating to the Federal Vision, but the first thing that keeps poppoing into my mind is that the primary difference between Presbyterians and Baptists is not who we baptize, but why we baptize who we baptize.

Church Things

After worship service yesterday,  I asked the Pastor his opinion of the recent PCA General Assembly vote on the Federal Vision Report.  I was very happy to hear his response.  He said that at best, the vote was premature.  He said that he has read the Federal Vision gang, and knows a few of them personally.  He said that the study committee (and other FV critics) are seeing things in the FV writings that he doesn't see.  He went even further to say that he suspects the FV critics are seeing things that aren't there.

It makes the 25-30 minute drive worth it.

Life Preserver

"Drowning Man" from Charlie Peacock's album The Secret of Time played on my iPod today. If you are a Christian and can hear this song and not feel convicted for not sharing the Gospel as often as you should, I would suggest that you might need to do a little soul-searching.

Everytime I hear this lyric, I know that I make lame excuses for not sharing the Truth with everyone I meet.

You don't ask a drowning man
If he wants to be saved
When you know he's sinking down
Down beneath the crashing waves

Betrayal wears two faces
Both easy to explain
One is what you say and do
To bring another human pain
When you refuse to act
Though you know the good to do
When you refuse to speak what's right
You've worn the face of number two

©1990 EMI Blackwood Music Inc./Andi Beat Goes On Music/Sparrow Song (a div. of The Sparrow Corp.)

The Sun'll Come Out Today

Once again, I find myself unable to get to sleep. I have Court in the morning, but I just haven't gotten the least bit sleepy. I've been surfing the web. I Googled my best friend, Rod Martin and spent a lot of time sifting through 21 pages of results. If you Google my name, you get almost 80 pages, but very few of the links are about me. Most of them are about the former President of the Fort Worth Cats minor league baseball team or some guy who is in a Beatles tribute band.

I also found some info about a church I may visit soon. It's closer to us now than our previous church was before we moved, so it's worth the consideration if the church is good. I like the folks at the church we currently attend, but I feel like a fish out of water because we're not really Lutherans.

Eden & The Ten Commandments

Yesterday evening during Sunday School (our Church meets in the evenings) it dawned on me that I could find a violation of eight of the Ten Commandments in the story of the Fall in the Garden of Eden. The only two I can't connect are the Second Commandment, prohibiting the making and worshipping of graven images, and the Fouth Commandment, requiring the observance of the Sabbath. I suspect that I'm missing something and that all Ten are broken.

Intellectually Inferior Christians

David Sklansky has issued a challenge to Christians. He is willing to wager $50,000 for anyone who can pass a polygraph exam on two tenets of Christianity: 1) that Christ rose from the dead, & 2) that those who do not profess faith is Christ will not enter Heaven. The second part of the wager is that he and the challenger will both take the math portion of either the SAT or the GRE in half the normally allotted time, and whoever scores lower will pay the other $50,000.

His premise is that people who agree with those two basic beliefs of Christianity are less intelligent than those who do not. Of course, all it would really prove if Sklansky won the bet is that Sklansky is better at a math test than the individual challenger. In case you didn't know, Sklansky has written several books about the mathematics of Poker and describes himself as a child math and logics prodigy.

A few quotes from Sklansky in the thread:

Their beliefs make them relatively stupid (or uninterested in learning). Or only relatively stupid people can come to such beliefs. One or the other.

The condescension of otherwise intelligent people toward those of us of faith is annoying and amusing at the same time.

And I really can't even conceive of someone who can legitimately pass that polygraph doing great on the exam. The only way it is conceivable I could lose without getting cheated is if I am rustier than I realize or if I happen to make the occasional careless error that is impossible to fully guard against.

So, if someone gets past the polygraph and then does, in fact, best Sklansky on the test, he'll blame it on the challenger cheating or his own rustiness.

It's a "no win" bet for any challenger because of the parameters of the wager. not to mention that many of us who could probably give him a run for his money on the test are too smart to wager $50,000 on such a proposition.

For the record, I believe the two things he includes in his polygraph portion, and at one time, I think I could have been in the game on the math test. I took both the SAT and the GRE in my school career. I missed one question each on them. On the LSAT, I missed one question in the Logical Reasoning section and aced the Logic Games section.

Even if Sklansky could get a perfect on the test and a challenger, let's say me, only missed one, Sklansky would have won his $50,000, but how can he honestly say the challenger did not do "great on the exam"?

Luther

Jody and I watched Luther last night. Beautiful movie. I checked up on some of the history today, and there are a few overly dramatized inaccuracies, but for the most part, the story is correct.

Two very interesting points to me were Luther's stating that he had not read the New Testament even though he had been a monk for some time and Cardinal Cajetan saying that the Bible is too complex even for most Priests to understand so providing it in the language of the people would be a bad idea. Those two points illustrate a lot of the reason why Luther (and Calvin and Melancthon, etc.) was deperately needed in the 16th Century.

When Christian Conservatives become Legalistic Liberals

I have long believed that the fundamental tenet of Conservatism is a belief in smaller Government. Conservatives are supposed to support lower taxes and less Government involvement in our day-to-day activities. A Conservative does not believe it is the Government's job to protect us from ourselves or to guide and direct our morals. Those jobs fall to the Family and the Church, respectively.

There are some issues, however, when even the best intentioned of Conservatives slips into a Big-Government Liberal mindset. For some reason, many folks who are otherwise solidly Conservative in their political outlook think that we have to prevent people from participating in the "evils" of gambling. Now, why the Government should protect people from their own stupidity is beyond me.

I've heard more than one Conservative refer to gambling as a "Tax on the Stupid" or a "Tax on people who are not good at math." First, gambling is not a Tax of any kind, and calling it one waters down the principled Conservative opposition to new and/or higher taxes. Second, there are all kinds of entertainments out there that may be just as stupid and money-wasting as gambling, but we don't hear the clamor to outlaw them.

Some argue that gambling breeds crime, but like many things that are claimed to be causally linked, the proof is very hard to make. Poverty is said to cause crime, too, but Conservatives rightly counter that it's not the role of Government to protect people from poverty.

It is time for Conservatives to stop confusing what may be a sin with what should be a crime.

***
THANKS to DK for pointing out my typo to me.

My Daughter the Theologian

My four-year-old daughter, Hannah, has come down with the Chicken Pox. Most likely, she caught the varicella zoster virus from me as a result of my outbreak of Shingles.

This morning, my wife was giving Hannah an oatmeal bath to help alleviate some of the itching. I was in the bathroom talking to Hannah when she said, "If nobody got Chicken Pox, that would mean nobody ever did anything wrong, and nobody would ever have to eat soup." My four-year-old has apparently already come to an understanding of the pervasive effects of the Fall of Man.

Hannah is a very emotional child. She wears her heart on her sleeve, but in many ways, she's the deepest of our kids.

A Simple Prayer

The other night, my two-and-a-half year old daughter (also known as Calvinatorette III) wanted to say grace before dinner. Here, I replicate the exact transcript of what she said. Some might not appreciate it, but I thought it was great.

This is the food.

The end.

I am Thankful

KThis is the time at which we naturally start to think about all for which we have to be thankful. For me, the list is very long.

I am thankful for a wife who loves me no matter how difficult I may be at times.

I am thankful for four beautiful and healthy daughters who love me.

I am thankful for a brother who was a good example to me when I was growing up and who still challenges me to think.

I am thankful for a sister with a loving spirit who can make me laugh when she laughs with abandon.

I am thankful for a father-in-law and mother-in-law who raised a wonderful wife for me.

I am thankful for a job that I enjoy that feels worthwhile.

I am thankful for a part-time second job that I enjoy that helps pay our monthly bills.

I am thankful for living in the United States where I can enjoy the freedom to believe what I want, think what I want, and say what I want.

I am thankful for a home, despite all the chores it requires.

I am thankful for the ability to spend my free time in activities that stimulate me and foster my creativity.

I am thankful for a mother who taught me what it means to be a Godly woman, and who showed me a model for a wife.

I am thankful for a father who taught me how to be not just a father, but a dad; who showed me that what you do is even more important than what you say; who went outside his own comfort zone to pursue a career that provided for our family generously; and who loves his grandchildren and great grandchildren.

I am thankful for a Father who has forgiven me, not based on any thing I am or have done, but just because He wanted to.

About that "Rapture" thing

I think I should point out in light of my reference to Maureen Dowd's comment about the coming Rapture that I do not believe in the concept of the Rapture as it is depicted in such popular media as the "Left Behind" books, Hal Lindsey's books and TV shows, and television programs by the likes of Jack van Impe, Pat Robertson, and John Hagee.

What's in a name?

It's been a while since I was last asked, but I figure now's a good time to explain my Screen Name, The Calvinator.

Shortly after I started using the World Wide Web, I found that I had to have some sort of handle to use in chat rooms and on message boards. At the time, I spent a lot of time at a website that doesn't exist any more at inchrist.org. They had a chat room called Disciple Chat that was a chat room for Christians to discuss all types of things including theology and other Biblical topics.

Not too long before that, I had been introduced to the Reformed Faith. The link is to a great explanation of the Doctrines of Grace by Loraine Boettner.

Because much of what I saw in the chat room was inane babble from evanjellyfish, I decided my purpose was to try to bring the light of the truth of Scripture to folks who seemed to have a very narrow view of what Christianity is all about.

I soon found a compatriot there handled Keltoi who remains a good internet friend today. In fact, she and I have traveled the internet from Disciple Chat to irc chat to AIM. She and I would regularly infuriate many of the teeny-boppers that inhabited Disciple Chat by our insistence on examining what the Bible actually said about the subject at hand rather than just relying on our personal opinions.

I only know of one person who came to the Reformed Faith as a result of her contact with me in that room, but she's the most important person I ever met there.