Montreal

I heard about the Montreal shooting while I was leaving class around noon. Awful, awful news. I trust none of Frank's Canadian readers had friends or family at Dawson College during the attack. Take a moment to pray for the friends and family of the one woman confirmed dead, and for those victims who are still in critical condition. And I don't think I have to tell this readership to pray as well for a clear gospel witness to those who came far closer to eternity than they expected today.

[frivolity]

I don't want to appear flippant about the horror of the shooting, but I must share my bemusement with our local news media. The anchor of KNX 1070 here in Los Angeles got on the mike to report the attack. At that point, SWAT was still clearing the building and details were both sketchy and contradictory. Before going to a remote reporter, the anchor solemnly announced that a gunman had entered the cafeteria of Dawson College.

He paused dramatically.

"With guns."

Well. Hm. Yes. Thanks for clearing that up, Mr. Anchorman. For a second there, I erroneously thought the gunman had entered the cafeteria with nunchucks. But now I see how misguided I really was. Yay for the MSM.

[/frivolity]

Okay, enough of that. If you haven't done it yet, quit surfing the Internet and petition the God of all comfort on behalf of the victims, their friends, and their families. Pray for the staff. Pray for the faculty. Pray for the administration. There are a lot of hurting people in Canada right now, so let's get on our knees and get busy.

Poking fun, because... well... it's funny

I have been so busy all day long, that I haven't even had a moment to blog at my own blog. Just when I did find the time to address a few things I felt worthwhile to address, my friend Sandi emailed me and there was no question that this post had to be put up, and put up right here. Due to the fact that I'm the only girl sidekick, I'll just assume I can get away with this! (If not, Frank will have to delete it when the smoke clears)

BOYS WILL BE BOYS:

1.) A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 sq. ft. house 4 inches deep.
2.) If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.
3.) A 3-year old Boy's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
4.) If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound Boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20x20 ft. room.
5.) You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on. When using a ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.
6.) The glass in windows (even double-pane) doesn't stop a baseball hit by a ceiling fan.
7.) When you hear the toilet flush and the words "uh oh", it's already too late.
8.) Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it.
9.) A six-year old Boy can start a fire with a flint rock even though a 36-year old Man says they can only do it in the movies.
10.) Certain Lego's will pass through the digestive tract of a 4- year old Boy.
11.) Play dough and microwave should not be used in the same sentence.
12.) Super glue is forever.
13.) No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you still can't walk on water.
14.) Pool filters do not like Jell-O.
15.) VCR's do not eject "PB & J" sandwiches even though TV commercials show they do.
16.) Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.
17.) Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.
18.) You probably DO NOT want to know what that odor is.
19.) Always look in the oven before you turn it on; plastic toys do not like ovens.
20.) The fire department in Austin , TX has a 5-minute response time.
21.) The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy.
22.) It will, however, make cats dizzy.
23.) Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.
24.) 80% of Women will pass this on to almost all of their friends, with or without kids.
25.) 80% of Men who read this will try mixing the Clorox and brake fluid.

Fluff.

I will be honest with you - I am a little intimidated to post on Frank's blog, and in the aftermath of that intimidation, I find myself almost unable to think of anything relevant or interesting to add here. If Frank's blog lacks anything, it is those sort of fluffy posts that don't add anything to anyone, and just fill space. So I thought -HEY- I could re-post a funny article I posted on my own blog last year about this time, and that would fill up Frank's Fluff quota for a while.

Enjoy.

--------8<--------8<--------8<--------
(From Sept. 17, 2005)

I went fishing last weekend.

I caught some fish.

But I almost caught something else too. Something ... big. Very big.

We were out in your standard fishing boat - shallow bottom, aluminum, twelve or fourteen feet long, an older outboard motor on a wire so that you could throttle and steer from the forward seat. The boat was like an older more beat up version of the typical three seat fishing boat you might see on a fishing show (I know you don't really watch fishing shows - but maybe you saw such a boat as you were quickly flicking past the channel).

Well, we had been fishing for many hours - and catching many fish - mostly Jack Fish (Northern Pikes) and Bass, both small mouth (they have the red tinted eyes) and large mouth. We did catch a pickerel or two, but that was it - amongst the three of us who were fishing, we caught perhaps 40 or so fish. The Jacks were particularly thick - as they are getting fat for the winter - which is one of the reasons we were out fishing - we like to catch, big fish.

Things were going swell - we were doing a lot of trolling, and some of the jacks we were bringing in were big - eight or nine pounders - and upwards of 30 inches in length. But it wasn't until the later end of the day that something changed.

We had been pulling them in pretty regular - the water was choppy, on account of the wind - but that wasn't stopping the fish from biting, and it wasn't stopping us from fishing. On Shaol lake in Ontario (where we were fishing), there are many islands -and when the wind gets too bad you can swing behind an island and troll there for a while in the relatively calmer waters. In this capacity we were trolling along the length of one of the "skinnier" islands when we began to notice a slump. The fish just stopped biting.

Recall if you will, that fishing is, essentially, throwing a string into a giant puddle of water, and hoping that something living unseen beneath the waves will be in the vicinity of that line as it goes in the water - and will in fact be so hungry that it is willing to eat anything attached to that string - even say, a sharp hook that has been dressed up with a metal spoon in the hopes that it resembles a smaller fish.

I am not a fish psychologist. No really, I am not. But I am capable of empathetic reasoning. That is, I can put myself in the fish's head. "My wife thinks that such a thing isn't all that big a jump", which I regard with cautious suspicion - is she saying I am talented, or fish brained? Hmmm. Talented. It's gotta be. Anyway, I can picture myself as a humble little fish, well, I mean not so little as humble - I would be a big enough fish to command some sort of respect in the food chain. I see myself swimming around beneath the lake - perhaps I am singing a song to myself - well, humming - I wouldn't really be a singer since fish haven't any language per sé - but it would be a cool hum - not tethered by the frailty of human endeavor, it would be like a pure instinct driven humming. Na -na - na - humph-ah, Dum de dah DUM dah! - I think fish can probably hum like that - some kind of high energy driving beat, screaming through the fish mind like a maddening jungle drum pounding out a frantic primal heart beat in time with that mysterious unseen submarine dance. You get the picture. Here I am some fish in tune with the world around me - I ignore the shadow of the boat and the noise of the engine - I am hungry, and I am a predator.

What's this? A shiny piece of metal attached to a sharp hook, about which a spoon of metal is revolving. Hmmm... I -am- hungry... I think I can digest that... I'll just give it a little nibble here to see if it tastes yummy or not...

That is how I see it at least - you know, the fish is down there, it knows that this thing isn't from around here - and it doesn't care, it just wants to eat it.

So we are trolling and it suddenly gets all quiet - like in the movies before something really, really, terrible happens. The water is still, and even though the motor rumbles on, there is a stillness that doesn't seem right. The sun has slipped behind some clouds, and into this sudden vacuum where life seems to have suddenly paused - it happens.

I snag a weed.

Weed snagging is the anti climax of trolling. You experience a pull on your line, and pregnant with hope you pull a bit to set the hook - but instead of feeling the fight, you feel like you have pulled up a bit of salad and now your hook is heavier, and you have to reel in and cast out again.

So I started to reel it in. But sometimes when you are reeling in a weed, the hook grips other weeds and you get these little phantom jerks - not unlike perhaps a very clever fish. So you pull a bit harder - but then the line is just as heavy and unresponsive as before and whatever hope you had of perhaps landing a clever fish washes away. ... Unless - perhaps it is a very, very clever fish - who knows that the best way to appear not to be a fish is to swim along all slow like - and pretend to be a weed. It could happen.

It did happen.

I was hauling in what I was sure was a Caesar salad, complete with the salad bowl, when the strangest thing happened. We wouldn't have noticed it, but Dave, who was driving, killed the motor. Now if it had been a bonifide snag, I would notice that when I stopped reeling the line should go slack - but that didn't happen.

Smart fishy.

It was at this point that I got back into fish psychology mode. This was no bass - they fight like the dickens the moment you get them on the hook. Nor was this a small Jack - they fight too - not quite as rigorously as a bass - that is, they don't change directions ten times in the space of five seconds, but instead fight to go one way or the other, and you just have to crank it to get them in. They fight, but it is not the same as a bass, or of an older Jack.

The older, bigger Jacks - they tend to be pulling in a log - they are heavy, and sometimes roll themselves in your line so you pull them in sideways -and they feel like you are pulling in something much bigger. They may fight at the boat - but they are not athletes - they give a charge or two, then tucker out.

So I am thinking this isn't a young Jack - but it feels pretty light.

Smart fishy.

It was then that I began to reel "in earnest" - at first I was reeling in a diagnostic fashion - perhaps I had had my brow was knit, my expression thoughtful and my head tilted towards the reel as though I were a doctor listening to a patient's faint heart through my stethoscope - my reeling went from "whirr... [listen and wait] to a frenzied WHIIIRRRRRR. Where before I was pensive and even distant - now I was biting my bottom lip and pumping at the reel like a wild man - yet it was still somewhat diagnostic - was this fish was gonna fight me? Was there really a fish there?

Nothing.

At this point I accepted defeat - I was clearly dragging in a log. Then something odd happened.

I should explain that I am not your finesse type of fisherman - that is I have a nine foot cat fishing rod that is practically unbendable - and I use fifty pound spider wire - I don't lose hooks, I will pull up a tree from the bottom and even straighten out a thick metal hook - but my line doesn't break. In pulling up a log however, I expect certain things given the laws of physics - that is, I expect that when I am pulling up inert, and water-logged debris - to experience in my line only as much resistance as my own reeling produces. If I slacken up - I expect immediate an "real time" reponse. Only that didn't happen. I slackened - and so did my "load" - but there was a pause between the two events that shouldn't oughta have been there. Hope rekindled in my heart - surely, this was no log - it was just one, street "lake smart" fish.

So I began to suspect that I was pulling up something - something big - and if I might digress into prose - something so ancient and beautiful in its obvious antidiluvian splendor - that it was clearly a crime against humanity to exhume it from its dark watery journey and into the harsh naked light of day.

I confess, the stress of that moment still plays on my reasoning - I am not sure that I actually saw the foam - or if my mind was simply supplying the details that my eyes had missed, but surely there was a barmy wake rising from the deep - the roiling of sizzling water as something unnatural meanders through it.

It was at this point that a pull came from the line. A pull I say, that had authority in it. Supreme authority. I put my fish psychology aside - there was something very big on my line, and in that one pull, I suddenly wondered who had caught who.

I shouldn't dwell on that one tug - but how can I not?? It was perfect. It was a 49.99 pound tug, the kind that says, "Humph - 50 lbs Spider wire... I have to be careful not to pull too hard..." I mean it was a long pull - one that said, "I have you, you don't have me." I may have lost control of my bladder at this point, I am not really sure, a chill passed through me, and I was wet - it could have been splashing water, my mind wasn't really paying attention.

If you could picture 30 feet of water heaving up suddenly, you might understand what it looked like when this thing came up out of the water. Not all of it mind you - just it's head. It's head was black as the depths of the sea, and this salty demon wasn't showing itself to us, it just came up to look at as. It hung there motionless for a long moment - it's impossibly massive head standing out from the water. Not in the manner of a dolphin - you know, wagging its flipper to keep its head out of the water, and thereby giving the dolphin a sort of happy bobbing up and down kind of look - no. It was as if most of this thing were still laying on the bottom, and it raised its head above the water while still touching the floor of the lake - it didn't bob or waver - but held the air for a second looking for all the world like a massive stone trunk motionless and ungiving.

It's big, wide, blacker than black, back was to us, glistening like an obsidian statue in the last rays of this days light - that is, it's large head was slightly turned, and it's one eye observed us - like a man looking over his shoulder back at something - was that smoke coming from it's nostril or mist from the lake?

What happened next happened so fast it is hard to really describe it. There was a sinking feeling in the lake, as though the water level in the lake suddenly dropped on six inches, and simultaneous to this the thing moved, though it seemed to disappear in a flash. My rod told the story that my eyes couldn't follow, bending full in half, and receiving three sharp jerks.

I pause at this point because there were three of us in the boat. Hmmm. Three jerks - what was this fish saying??

But then it happened. My rod came snapping up, no hook, no fish.

He bit through my leader -that is the metal part that you tie the hook to. you know, you could suspend your boat from it - he bit through it. There followed a moment of silence - not like it should have been - you know, the removing of your hat in respect for the mercy shown by a superior foe on the field of honor - no, this was the utter disbelief kind of silence, where you shattered psyche is trying to put enough of you back together to form a coherent thought.

I think I babbled for a bit - but the guys were wise. You don't make jokes about losing something like that. It would be like asking how your mother's dancing lessons were going if she had just lost both legs to cancer - it ain't right, and no one has to explain it to you.

Sometimes at night I wake up screaming...

But that doesn't really have anything to do with this story.

The bottom line? It was a great time fishing, and I really did almost catch the big one.

Christian Superstition

Don't shoot me because I'm reading a book co-authored by Ehrman, okay? I may be nothing but a lowly sidekick, but I am a sidekick, and you don't want the Turk to open a can of baptism all over you.

That said, this morning I took great interest in a portion from The Text of the New Testament (p. 49-50):

Finally, a curious but unimportant source of our knowledge of the Greek text of the New Testament consists of a number of talismans, or good-luck charms. These amulets range in date from the fourth to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries and are made of vellum, papyrus, potsherd, or wood. The superstitious use of talismans, so prevalent in the ancient world, was scarcely less popular among Christians than among pagans--if we may judge from repeated remonstrances against them issued by ecclesiastical authorities. Four of those catalogued contain the Lord's prayer, and five others include scattered verses from other parts of the Old and New Testaments.

You can go read something more relevant now, since this post won't apply to you. You and I are well above superstition, of course, being the modern enlightened Reformed-type Christians we are. We laugh at Romanists who see Mary in their dryer lint, and send missionaries to the benighted savage who worships lizards.

"Lord, we thank thee that we are not as other men are."

This ancient practice of Christian superstition is interesting. The use of amulets, magic charms, potions and the like are all part of our insatiable drive to control our own destinies. The Tower fell, but we've never stopped trying to rebuild it. When the Greco-Romans made the switch to Christianity, the traditions of manipulation died very hard--and Scripture became the new portal to power.

It would be very easy at this juncture to launch into a tirade against angel pins and horribly decontextualized Scripture art (my favorite being Genesis 31:49). Certainly, these are no more honoring to Christ than carrying around the Lord's Prayer to ward off bad luck. But I'm interested first in considering what superstition is. Or perhaps more to the point, what Christian superstition is.

Think about it this way. Scripture was never intended to keep vampires away, right? So if you drill a hole through your pocket New Testament and string it around your neck, you're using Scripture for a purpose which God never intended His Word to accomplish. That's a severe misunderstanding of Scripture's purpose (not to mention a sign you've had a little too much Buffy lately). In other words, that's Christian superstition: using Scripture to achieve a goal beyond its intended purpose and redounding to our own benefit.

I submit that the church is drunk and drowning from Christian superstition. One has only to crack the latest edition of CBD's catalog to be crushed by the avalanche of "God wants you to be happy" bookettes. Most of them include little verses ripped from their contexts, folded into paper swans, and set sail on the sea of superstition. Promises of aid to the righteous are transformed into ironclad guarantees of wealth. Warnings of purging through fiery trials, if acknowledged at all, become vague warnings of "everyone has problems, but God will help you out because He still wants you to be happy and wealthy and successful." If all you had by which to judge Christianity was the majority of today's best-sellers, you'd think Christ died to redeem us from discomfort.

It's round Scripture crammed into a square hole.

That's Christian superstition.

I've got to pause here and say that righteous indignation is a sweet, sweet feeling. I like feeling superior to the unwashed masses of Christendom, knowing that I use Scripture exactly as it was intended. For instance, I hide God's Word in my heart that I might not fall behind on my daily reading schedule. I search the Scriptures daily to see if these things can be used against my opponent, who needs a severe and very public pounding. I study to show myself approved to my peers, a hypocrite who feels no shame, rightly dividing the latest liberal nonsense. The Word of God truly is sharper than any two-edged sword, occasionally nicking my skin.

Look: God forbid I should ever have magic charms engraved with verses, or be a sloppy evangelical who can't tell a pretext from a context. But God also forbid I should be equally superstitious with my love for sound doctrine. Scripture is meant to make me look like Jesus, and part of that is getting the message right. I can't be like Jesus if I don't understand what He's saying. But if I twist the Bible to achieve intellectual superiority or systematic pride, I am no less superstitious than a guy fingering a charm or reciting The Prayer of Jabez.

God didn't give us Scripture to make us smug.

He gave it to make us holy.

Is it working?

How does this work?

Frank has some of the most sharp readers in the blogosphere. That's a given. Based on that, I'd like to understand how this works.

Specifically, how does the pastor effectively minister to a congregation he doesn't know?

As well, how does accountability in a local church work (for church members), in a church where the pastor doesn't know the people, and the people don't know him?

I look forward to your thoughts on this one.

Forgiveness--Doing the Math

Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.

"Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.' And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, 'Pay what you owe.' So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you.' He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart." (Matt 18:21-35, ESV)

I'm a numbers guy, so this passage is right up my alley. And perhaps it's even fitting to be posting this in the twilight of my current career.

The challenge with passages like this is that since they refer to units of measure that we are unfamiliar with, they can sometimes lack the intended impact. It's like not being able to see it even though it's right there.

Traditionally, this challenge has been tackled in two different ways. Literal Bible versions have tended to use the traditional units of measure, the talent & denarii, and put a footnote of explanation. So, for example, the ESV's note about ten thousand talents reads "A talent was a monetary unit worth about twenty years' wages for a laborer," and for a hundred denarii it says "A denarius was a day's wage for a laborer."

This works ok, so long as your copy has the footnotes and the readers pay attention to them. Not only do they make versions without footnotes (blasphemy!), but you can't even guarantee people will read them when they do (Cretans!).

The second alternative is the one used by most dynamic translations & paraphrases--pick a comparable unit of measure in the functional language/culture, and then use the corresponding ratio. So, you have the first debtor owing millions of [silver coins, dollars, etc.], and the second debtor owing just a few (or perhaps a hundred).

Each of these is perfectly adequate, in their way, in expressing the message that this passage is trying to convey. And given my normal predeliction against paraphrase or even dynamic translation, I would be loathe to translate it any more loosely, even if they didn't.

But adequate isn't always enough when digging a little deeper. For instance, there is some evidence that this was more an idiom, as opposed to being literal. A study note in the MacArthur Study Bible indicates that "ten thousand talents" was commonly referred to as meaning a great or virtually infinite sum of money (kind of like the function that "million-billion," "gazillion," and "four hundred and two" serve in my household).

So, with this in mind, if I was teaching this passage (especially given my financial background), here's how I would frame it up:

The denarii was worth a day's wage. If we take a person making $5/hr, that equates to roughly $40 per day. If we further assume 250 working days per year, that gives our laborer an annual income of $10,000. Now we've got something we can work with. Understand, we've simplified the math here, in the interest of making the illustration accessible (and as a bonus, our base is a round number that you can easily factor into your own financial situation, should you so choose).

Since the second debtor owed the first about 100 days worth of wages, that comes out to about $4,000. Not an unsubstantial sum, to be sure.

But remember the talent? It was estimated to be approximately 20 years' wages. So, using the base that we just calculated, we see that each talent equates to about $200,000--meaning that our $5/hour employee has managed to run up a debt of $2,000,000,000.

Yes, you read that right--two billion dollars.

Are you starting to get the picture? The debt this guy owed was more than he could pay even if he lived multiple lifetimes, yet he refused to forgive a sum that, by comparison, is almost trifling. Knowing as we do the kind of grace he received regarding his own staggering sum, his lack of forgiveness is stunning.

The type of debt we owe God as a result of our sin is the staggering kind. And after having been forgiven a debt of that magnitude, to maintain a hard heart that would refuse to forgive others seems, well, unforgiveable.

from vacation, cent adds this: I have the bestest sidekicks in the whole world. But you should have said this, Gummby -- "the type of debt we owe God as a result of our sin is of the -unrepayable- kind; it is utterly out of our power to repay the debt we owe to God. Until we act like that's true, blogging about it or (allegedly) believing it only makes us more guilty."

(All Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.)

too much work?

Read this, and then ask yourself: "What exactly is the definition of 'work' these people are using?" It's "too much work" to use an iPod with iTunes?

Listen: if Steve Jobs could figure out a way to beam music telepathically to you and charge you for the service, [1] he'd be doing it already, and [2] some people would find it a drag on their time to wait the telepathic streaming buffer to be ready to play. Too much work to use an iPod?

BTW, I have a theory about the reason the iPod lost iots cool: they sell them at WAL*MART. You buy eggs and toilet paper at WAL*MART -- things which are a commodity and sell based on lowest price. There's a reason you can't buy a Mac laptop at WMT, and it has everything to do with making sure its image and price do not erode.

Enjoy your Sunday. Back to the SIdekicks.

More on Publishing--A Cautionary Tale

Before he left, Frank posted this piece, which made some pointed arguments concerning the responsibilities of publishers. Among them was this: "Publishing books is a form of teaching. In exactly the same way that a University tacitly promulgates what its faculty teaches as truth, a Publisher is tacitly promulgating what it prints and distributes as truth."

I happen to agree with that statement, but I wonder if publishers do.

Consider this real-life example, brought to us courtesy of today's Wall Street Journal. Just in time for the 5 year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a publishing house under the auspices of the PCUSA has published a book that claims that the U.S. government orchestrated the WTC bombings to help secure a global empire.

Here are some questions.

First: does the author, David Griffin, have a right to be heard? Well, the First Amendment says he does.

Second: does Presbyterian Publishing Corp. have an obligation to publish him? If you're Henry, perhaps you think that it does. But unlike the Blogosphere, in the publishing world, just because you've written something doesn't mean it is entitled to be printed.

Third: why would a publishing house knowingly publish something that, in the words of the moderator of their own general assembly, is "too over the top to be taken seriously"? Apparently, we're not alone in asking this question, as the front page has a link that answers that very question.

Here's where the red flags go up. Did you notice the word "conversation?"

As I said before, this is not the Blogosphere, and not everything that is written automatically gets a approval with the push of the "publish" button. So what qualifies this book to achieve dead-tree status?

Professor Griffin’s thorough research and intellectually rigorous arguments have persuaded us that this book should have a place in that conversation, regardless of the conclusions readers come to accept.

Maybe it's just me, but this sounds like academic-speak for "whether this is actually true or not is immaterial--you need to think about it."

Want more? Here is the statement of the rationale for publishing the book from the President & Publisher of PPC, Davis Perkins.

The claims David Ray Griffin makes in Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11 will not be universally accepted by his readers, but the arguments supporting those claims merit careful consideration by serious-minded Christians and Americans concerned with truth and the meaning of their faith. Professor Griffin employs established principles of intellectual argument in a book with 192 pages of carefully researched text and 49 pages of extensive scholarly notes. This book is not an off-the-wall polemic but rather a considered work that deserves to have a place in the public forum of discourse about Christian faith and U.S. policy.

The mission statement of the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation calls for us to publish “resources that advance religious scholarship, stimulate conversation about moral values, and inspire faithful living.” We believe that Griffin’s book fulfills all three of these aims and accordingly that publication of Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11 was a responsible act on our part. We sincerely hope publication of this book will challenge American Christians on both ends of the spectrum–and in the middle!–to see beyond their respective ideological impulses and provoke discussion on substantive issues about faithful citizenship in this country.

In other words, the ends justifies the means. The "end" of provoking a "discussion on substantive issues about faithful citizenship in this country," justifies the "means," which is publishing a book whether or not the claims will be convincing or are even true.

That, friends, is frightening, though perhaps not so suprising. Most organizations experience mission drift, and that drift inevitably seems to be a liberal one. When your starting point is the rejection of many or most of the core doctrines of Christianity (such as the PCUSA has), is it really that much of a stretch to get here from there?

In closing, let me take this opportunity to sound a cautionary note, particularly to those of you in the Emerging Church: this is exactly what happens when you value the conversation over the truth.

How then shall we blog?

We all know that Frank's readers come by here to read Frank's take on those things which interest us. Well, now that Frank's gone (we assume, unless this is some diabolical sidekick loyalty test!?), how about we just sit around and talk about Frank? Yeah, that's no good.

In lieu of that, I submit a bloggerview I had with Frank last New Year's Eve that was posted at Reflections (for those that haven't read it):

December 31, 2005
Reflections Bloggerview: Frank "centuri0n" Turk

I have no doubt that most of my readers here, are at the very least, aware of who Frank "centuri0n" Turk is, if not regular readers of his blog. When I started doing these bloggerviews, I thought it might be fun to pose key questions to certain bloggers, maybe even questions on issues they haven't addressed on their own blogs yet! With that in mind, welcome to the next installment of Reflections Bloggerview: "centuri0n"

Carla: Who is your personal hero & why is he/she so special to you?

Frank: There's a man in Syracuse, NY, by the name of Bruce Aubrey. He's the pastor who baptized me and made me realize that being a Christian is not just about admitting out loud that Jesus is right and you are wrong. He has a wife, a family, a growing church, and a love for God that you just can't beat.About 2 yrs after I was baptized, I got promoted at my job and had to move. My new position was about 4 hrs away from that church, and my wife and I were having a devil of a time finding a church that was alive and preaching the word. After a couple of months like that, I got a phone call from Bruce asking me how things were, and I told him, and he started making a trip out to have lunch with me once a month until we found a church that became our home church - a process that took about a year. Bruce never said, "listen: you have to find a church and stay grounded in the word, and until you do I'm going to check up on you and make sure you don't fall off the apple cart." He just did it. And he did it in such a way that it was obviously out of love for Jesus, His church, and me and my wife.That's what it's all about, and anyone would be blessed beyond measure to have a pastor like Bruce. I think he'd take issue with being listed as a "hero", but he's living the life. One of the things Paul says over and over in his letters is, "if you want to know how to live your life, use me as an example." Bruce can say that without any pride or shame, and I think that's the definition of being a hero.

Carla: How would you define "orthodoxy" as it pertains to the Christian faith?

Frank: Well, no softballs, Carla. That question is why I started blogging in the first place. Orthodoxy starts with the Gospel itself - that's why I have 1Cor15:1-4 listed and hyperlinked at the top of my sidebar. If you properly define the Gospel, you have God's idea about what's important. For example, in 1Cor 15:3, Paul says, "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures" - well, who is "us" ("our" is the possessive of "us")? When you know who "us" is, it turns out that "us" are not just receivers of a gift and it's vacation time: "us" has received a gift which in turn places a responsibility on us to demonstrate we have that gift. So for example, "us" are "believers"; "us" are all baptized; "us" are in fellowship with other believers; "us" are repentant; "us" are in prayer; "us" are doing good works; etc.This definition of "us" is the whole practical matter of our faith, but it is not just some kind of pragmatic issue. It is a result of a right understanding of who God is, what He has done, what He is doing, and what He intends to do. I have also blogged (once) on an ancient and somewhat-anonymous Epistle to Diogentus, which was penned some time before 200 AD. If you take the time to read that letter, it is striking in the way that what the Christians believe is related directly to, without any Rube Goldberg explanation, how they live, what they do.
That's what Orthodoxy is: a total package of belief and action that distinguishes Christianity from everything else in order to proclaim the message of Jesus Christ.

Carla: Your position in a Christian retail business gives you a unique perspective to notice key trends (programs, books, marketing, etc.) that affect Christian thought. If you had to name one trend, or fad that seems to have taken off the most, which would that be?

Frank: Well, to clarify, my "position" in Christian retail is really just participation. I'm an upper-middle manager in a Christian publishing company (which prefers I not use them as an example of anything; because I like getting paid I will oblige), and I'm the owner of a successful Christian bookstore in a market area of about 40,000 people. I'm sure I don't set any trends.
For better or worse, I'm going to answer your question the long way around. I got into Christian retail in part because I felt gifted and called, but in part because Christian retail makes me sick. Most non-chain Christian retail looks like is it run by very nice, ministry-minded people who think that the ideal setting for Christian retail is a flea-market or pawn-shop type environment; most chain CBA retail looks like it is run by somewhat-cynical second-rate retail executives who think that orthodoxy is not their business. When I got into the business, I thought that if we couldn't be a city on a hill, we could at least be a voice crying out in the wilderness.
One of the great lessons I learned (or rather, re-learned, because I knew this when I worked for the WAL*MART in another life) is that while 50% of the problem in any retail car wreck is the retailer's fault, the other 50% is the customer's doing. The matter of whether your store looks like a flea market or a pawn shop (disorganized; rarely cleaned; third-rate fixtures; lousy inventory control; tons of old inventory; dark; etc.) is your fault, and it's going to define what kind of customers you get. But even if you have the sense to control all that and your shop looks like Barnes & Noble, you can only sell what people are going to buy - and you have to sell what people are buying because you can't take a collection at the end of the month to cover the rent and the lights.

Carla, I am sure you and I know a lot of people who are disappointed by what they find at their local Christian bookstore. But you know what? That's the stuff that sells. Let me be very clear what I mean by that:

• That's the stuff 90% of Christian shoppers are looking for
• That's the stuff pastors and preachers are recommending
• That's the stuff people are using for spiritual reference

So the major trend I see in Christian retail is a kind of perpetual dumbing-down of the Christian life. It's horribly ironic - we have at our disposal extraordinarily-powerful means of delivering any message we want, especially when we compare it with first-century means, and rather than people lining up for Mahaney and Sproul and MacArthur and Piper, they are killing themselves for Lucado, Osteen, Warren and Joyce Meyers. In the end, it may not be so ironic since it is in our weakness that God is strong - maybe Christian retail turns out to be a man-centered religion of works as opposed to faith.

Carla: What has been your greatest joy in life, so far?

Frank: [snark for the fans]I have no joy. I am a dour Calvinist who wants to suck the joy out of all the lives I come in contact with.[/snark](editorial: I'm sorry Frank, that job is already taken by ME, you'll have to apply elsewhere!)

Leaving atheism in 1991 was a joy; finding my wife was a joy; growing with her in Christ is a joy; raising my kids is a joy. Not to be a smarmy greeting card, but today is a joy. Being able to be grateful even in hard times is a joy.

Carla: What would be the number one thing you'd like people to think of, when your name, or your blog, is mentioned?

Frank: For the non-believers who wander through my blog, I want them to be completely rattled by it. I want them to see true Christianity, which, as they say, is not actually a very tame Christianity. Christianity is not a bacchanalian frenzy, but it is not a passive, stoic, theoretical thing. For the believers, I want them to think about things they aren't thinking about, and to start doing things they didn't think they could do. So "the number one thing I'd like people to think of" in reference to me is "radical Christian message".

Carla: What’s the one thing that might surprise people about you?

Frank: This is not a joke. I was a cheerleader in an all-boy's Catholic High School.

Carla: If you could only have 5 links on your blog, which links would they be, and why?

Frank: That's a somewhat-unfair question because I have so many links and someone (Challies) is bound to get his nose out of joint.

In no particular order:
http://www.aomin.org/ -- because James White is smart enough to be able to make you feel stupid, and loves Jesus enough not to.
http://www.dougwils.com/ - because someone has to keep an eye on Doug Wilson ...
triablogue.blogspot.com - because Steve Hays is the man, and in 2006 he is going to have both Jonathan Felt and Gene Bridges as sidekicks. Did you know he is about to publish a 500-page e-book refuting atheist arguments against the resurrection? I'm trying to write a review/recommendation for it that does it justice.
PyroManiac - Phil's a great blogger because he has a conversational style and, unlike me, he can stay on-topic. Some day he is either going to just blog and stop worrying about how many posts he makes a week, or he's going to quit because it's too distracting. I hope it's not the latter.
A blog aggregator for Calvinst Gadfly, Brad Williams, Daniel @ http://doulogos.blogspot.com/, Eric Vestrup (to whom I owe a phone call - I'm such a lousy friend), Kerry @ http://theologicallycorrect.com/webmaster/blogs/, and of course my sidekicks JIBBS and Gummby.

And I would sneak links to Kim and Carla in when no one was looking. :)(awww, how very kind of Frank to mention myself and Kim!)

In closing, I’d like to thank Frank “cent” for agreeing to do this interview, and sharing his views. I really enjoyed reading Frank’s answers to these random questions. I hope you’ve enjoyed it too. (I will refrain from making any comment about the cheerleading thing – I’ll leave that with the readers).

Be sure to read the initial comments here, as well.

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