solution: cancel

Oh brother: Townhall meetings start going awry, so our brilliant representatives of the people, by the people, for the people have determined that the right answer is "cancel the meetings".

You know: because when they disagree with you, you don;t have to listen. You have better things to do, "like ministry".

I'll be moving 10,000 lbs of bookstore fixtures across the Ozarks today. You make sure you're with God's people in God's house on God's day this week, whether you agree with them or not. Man up.

cent cites JT cites Tozer

The man of pseudo faith will fight for his verbal creed but refuse flatly to allow himself to get into a predicament where his future must depend upon that creed being true. He always provides himself with secondary ways of escape so he will have a way out if the roof caves in. What we need very badly these days is a company of Christians who are prepared to trust God as completely now as they know they must do at the last day.

News Flash

Obama natural born citizen.

The best part of this archived version of the National Review editorial (HT: JT) is to find that the accusation probably started on a blog from a supporter of Hillary Clinton. The left makes the best crazy people, I swear, but the ones who won't die are always on the Right.

That essay's archived for your future personal edification, but it is copyrighted by the national Review. Don't make copied, but if JT's NRO link goes dead you can find it here.

Culture and Science

Here's something I ran across in which scientists think machines are becoming too close to human intelligence. And I'm publishing this on a Sunday, so I'll be brief.

I have two bizarre obsessions on this blog: global warming and the progress of robotic and computer science toward "lifelike" robots/machines. Here's why I am obsessed with these things: they are false religions which will ultimately hurt us more than help us as created beings made in the image of God. For example, it may be interesting or even cheaper or more efficient to have an answering machine that acts like a person. But if what we really want is to interact with people, we shoudl interact with the people God has made.

I realize that this has nothing to do with accounting or time management -- but those are not Gospel virtues. The Gospel virtues are to love God above all things, and your neighbor as yourself -- and to build a machine because you are philosophically a misanthropist and a committed worshipper of yourself violates both of those, no matter how you dress it up.

Think about this: the scientists are the ones here noticing that the trend is toward something which will cause social and societal upheaval. Why is it that they can say stuff like this, and care about stuff like this -- even in what is today a sort of back water of technological development -- but we Christians are somehow unable to get to the place where we can call me out of the rest of their sins with equal precision and clarity to the true solution to their culture?

Mostly right

Because iMonk is made that I picked on him via Twitter, here's something he said recently that I'd own:

It’s hit me like a ton of bricks this past year: the blogosphere is full of voices that think we are all a bunch of big brains, and nothing more. We need more information. More data. More sermons. More books. More facts. More lectures. We are what we think. We are what we hear, read and think. So open up those brains and pour it in…after an appropriate prayer.

Behind this is a view of humanness that needs to be called out. (More SHOCKING REVELATIONS!!)

What thousands of evangelicals are experiencing is not a call from the Holy Spirit to become an overstuffed theological brain with a vocabulary that can only be decoded by a committee of seminary professors and a reading list that looks like the “atonement” shelf at a seminary bookstore.

I think he's mostly right. The lopsidedness of the 4 corners of English-speaking Evangelidom is true -- even if it's not all the same lopsidedness.

I think iMonk is right about the people who are big brains, or want to be. The rest of his post you might haggle over, but here's the thing: you gotta do something. You have to do more than read books all day and call yourself a Christian -- because the truth is that the Christians who overcame the pagan world frankly didn't have a lot of books. They had a life in a community around a Gospel which was given by God through His resurrected Son. And somehow they did it without being any kind of belligerent: they did it by being grateful and generous and loving and kind.

Can you say the same thing? If not, leave iMonk alone.

George Will wakes up from his nap long enough to say something worth reading.

I don;t think I could have siad it better myself.

Phoning one in today to thank Dr. Paul Foltz for keeping me real regarding the diet. However, being fat is not a virtue, either.

You will regret it

Read the whole thing. Don't complain to me if you suddenly realize that your religion isn't all it's cracked up to be -- but I think I can overcome your new-found concerns with the Gospel.

Just say no, I guess

Just saw these videos, HT: Doug Wilson.

I can remember in the 80's when "just say no" was ridiculed as a somewhat-backward approach to dealing with the issue of drug use. Some of you may remember that as well -- some of you weren't out of diapers yet, so you won't have any grasp of the events in question.

But in order to stem the broad use of the phrase "that's so gay", apparently it'll do just fine -- or its cognate "knock it off" will. Perhaps it is a more-earthy rendition. "Just say no" sounds so earnest and clean; "knock it off" is more, um, something.

Starting a new diet today. Weighed in at 202. That is depressing.