Probably would deserve it

“If our forefathers who were godly and holy and maintained a strict walk with God were alive again, they would spit in the faces of many who think themselves eminent professors of religion, because of the looseness of their conversations [carelessness of their conduct]. And this is the worst, that they can all put it upon Christ and the doctrine of Christ.” Jeremiah Burroughs, Gospel Conversation copied from Jeremy Walker's book Passing Through

Wedding Hymn

By Sidney Lanier

Thou God, whose high, eternal Love
Is the only blue sky of our life,
Clear all the Heaven that bends above
The life-road of this man and wife.
May these two lives be but one note
In the world’s strange-sounding harmony,
Whose sacred music e’er shall float
Through every discord up to Thee.

As when from separate stars two beams
Unite to form one tender ray:
As when two sweet but shadowy dreams
Explain each other in the day:
So may these two dear hearts one light
Emit, and each interpret each.

Let an angel come and dwell tonight
In this dear double-heart, and teach.

A Properly Framed Life

Be Content 

"The last thing to be observed is, that the Lord enjoins every one of us, in all the actions of life, to have respect to our own calling. He knows the boiling restlessness of the human mind, the fickleness with which it is borne hither and thither, its eagerness to hold opposites at one time in its grasp, its ambition. Therefore, lest all things should be thrown into confusion by our folly and rashness, he has assigned distinct duties to each in the different modes of life. And that no one may presume to overstep his proper limits, he has distinguished the different modes of life by the name of callings. Every man’s mode of life, therefore, is a kind of station assigned him by the Lord, that he may not be always driven about at random. ...in every thing the call of the Lord is the foundation and beginning of right action. He who does not act with reference to it will never, in the discharge of duty, keep the right path. He will sometimes be able, perhaps, to give the semblance of something laudable, but whatever it may be in the sight of man, it will be rejected before the throne of God; and besides, there will be no harmony in the different parts of his life. Hence, he only who directs his life to this end will have it properly framed; because free from the impulse of rashness, he will not attempt more than his calling justifies, knowing that it is unlawful to overleap the prescribed bounds. He who is obscure will not decline to cultivate a private life, that he may not desert the post at which God has placed him. Again, in all our cares, toils, annoyances, and other burdens, it will be no small alleviation to know that all these are under the superintendence of God. The magistrate will more willingly perform his office, and the father of a family confine himself to his proper sphere. Every one in his particular mode of life will, without repining, suffer its inconveniences, cares, uneasiness, and anxiety, persuaded that God has laid on the burden. This, too, will afford admirable consolation, that in following your proper calling, no work will be so mean and sordid as not to have a splendour and value in the eye of God."

John Calvin, On the Christian Life

HT: Tim Bayly 

The Owl-Critic

By: James Thomas Fields

"Who stuffed that white owl?"

No one spoke in the shop,
The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop;
The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading
The "Daily," the "Herald," the "Post," little heeding
The young man who blurted out such a blunt question;
Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion;
And the barber kept on shaving.

"Don't you see, Mr. Brown,"
Cried the youth, with a frown,
"How wrong the whole thing is,
How preposterous each wing is,
How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is --
In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 't is!
I make no apology;
I've learned owl-eology.

I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections,
And cannot be blinded to any deflections
Arising from unskilful fingers that fail
To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.
Mister Brown! Mr. Brown!
Do take that bird down,
Or you'll soon be the laughingstock all over town!"
And the barber kept on shaving.

"I've studied owls,
And other night-fowls,
And I tell you
What I know to be true;
An owl cannot roost
With his limbs so unloosed;
No owl in this world
Ever had his claws curled,
Ever had his legs slanted,
Ever had his bill canted,
Ever had his neck screwed
Into that attitude.
He cant do it, because
'Tis against all bird-laws.

Anatomy teaches,
Ornithology preaches,
An owl has a toe
That can't turn out so!
I've made the white owl my study for years,
And to see such a job almost moves me to tears!
Mr. Brown, I'm amazed
You should be so gone crazed
As to put up a bird
In that posture absurd!
To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness;
The man who stuffed him don't half know his business!"
And the barber kept shaving.

"Examine those eyes
I'm filled with surprise
Taxidermists should pass
Off on you such poor glass;
So unnatural they seem
They'd make Audubon scream,
And John Burroughs laugh
To encounter such chaff.
Do take that bird down;
Have him stuffed again, Brown!"
And the barber kept on shaving!

"With some sawdust and bark
I could stuff in the dark
An owl better than that.
I could make an old hat
Look more like an owl
Than that horrid fowl,
Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.
In fact, about him there's not one natural feather."

Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,

The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,
Walked around, and regarded his fault-finding critic
(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic,
And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:
"Your learning's at fault this time, anyway:
Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray.
I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good day!"
And the barber kept on shaving.

Christ-Haunted

“Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn't convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.”

 Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners

The second half is as true as the first

Tuesday with Timothy # 18

I Timothy 2:11-12  Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

The church is not to be segregated but we also see that the church is not without order. Nothing could be as clear as to what this passage is saying, except perhaps I Corinthians 14:33-35. Only those with an agenda or those who care little for what Paul has to say on the subject can offer an objection to the clear teaching found in these passages. It is an authority issue, and not the kind you are probably thinking. It is authority of the Word of God and whether or not we will we listen and obey. B.B Warfield said "We may like what Paul says, or we may not like it. We may be willing to do what he commands, or we may not be willing to do it. But there is no room for doubt of what he says."

As we saw last time, the first half said women are to learn, the second half of the verse is as true as the first.

There are two negative commands, i.e., prohibitions.
There are three positive commands, something to be done. All five deal with the same topic at hand, the woman's place in the church.

First, let's look at the positive commands.

• Woman are to learn.
• Women are to be silent (commanded twice, once in each verse).
• Women are to be in subjection.

The negative prohibitions are:

• The woman is not to teach.
• The woman is not to usurp authority over the man.

That is the plain facts of the text. You can have a Greek study until you are making Moussaka all night or at the very least, μέχρι τις αγελάδες έρχονται σπίτι... but there is no place for a woman preacher in God's House, nor is there any place for a woman to usurp men in God's house, not in any language. There is a kind of study that seeks to understand what the author was saying, which is good. There is also a kind of study that seeks to muddy the waters so much that who knows what anyone is saying anymore.

Since blogging is a hobby of mine, not a job, I'll come back again and look a little closer at the text and go ahead and answer some of the objections that I anticipate.

A Confession

By - CS Lewis

I am so coarse, the things the poets see
Are obstinately invisible to me.
For twenty years I’ve stared my level best
To see if evening -- any evening - would suggest
A patient etherized upon a table;
In vain. I simply wasn't able.
To me each evening looked far more
Like the departure from a silent, yet a crowded, shore
of a ship whose freight was everything, leaving behind
Gracefully, finally, without farewells, marooned mankind.

Red dawn behind a hedgerow in the east,
Never, for me, resembled in the least
A chilblain on the cocktail-shaker's nose;
Waterfalls don't remind me of torn underclothes,
Nor glaciers of tin-cans. I've never known
The moon look like a hump-backed crone--
Rather, a prodigy, even now
Not naturalized, a riddle glaring from the Cyclops’s brow
Of the cold world, reminding me on what a place
I crawl and cling, a planet with no bulwarks, out in space.

Never the white sun of the wintriest day
Struck me as un crachat d'estaminet.
I'm like that odd man Wordsworth knew, to whom
A primrose was a yellow primrose, one whose doom
Keeps him forever in the list of dunces,
Compelled to live on stock responses,
Making the poor best that I can
Of dull things...peacocks, honey, the Great Wall, Aldebaran,
Sliver weirs, new-cut grass, wave on the beach, hard gem,
The shapes of horse and woman, Athens, Troy, Jerusalem

The Fallen of WWII

From: Slate

So much for resolutions

In the book  John Adams by David McCullough, we have an interesting journal entry from a young John Adams. I think we can all identify with a willing spirit and a weak flesh.

"He vowed to read more seriously. He vowed to quit chewing tobacco. On July 21st 1756 he wrote' I am resolved to rise with the sun and study Scriptures on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings, and to study some Latin author the other three mornings. Noons and nights, I intend to read English authors. I will rouse up my mind and fix my attention. I will stand collected within myself and think upon what I read and what I see. I will strive with all my soul to be something more than persons who have had less advantages than myself.' 

But, the next morning he slept until 7, and a one line entry [in his journal] the following week read 'A very rainy day. Dreamed away the time.'

I think he turned out alright. You could do worse than being President of the United States.

Let the Women Learn

Tuesday with Timothy # 17

1 Timothy 2:11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.

The first part of the text is as neglected as the third stanza of a Baptist hymnal because of the attention the latter part of the verse receives. The passage begins with a divine commandment of action, not a prohibition. This imperative differs Christianity from the cultures throughout the ages. We have a command that women are to learn. As I have said before, Christianity is the greatest blessing to women the world has ever known. We have in the opening verses and divine command upon the house of God, that all of God's people are come to learn of Him. God's people are to hear and to learn God's Word through the proclamation of divine truth. All of God's people are to be in the house of God to learn the Word of God. 

The Bible does not give categories of theology that only certain people should learn certain subjects. Let everyone of God's people be learned in the doctrines of God's Word. Christian people should desire to learn of their God. Perhaps part of the problem is we have got to the place that the only reason there is to learn of God is to be have enough fodder to choke out a sermon for Sunday. We say that theology is for the preacher so he can craft his homilies while the church members come and be entertained and vote in business meetings. No, God would have all His people actively learning of Him. Theology is necessary for all of God’s people to live and walk in the Spirit.

Women are not to be regulated to the kitchen during the church service or off to do other duties while the Word of God is being preached - but they should be among the congregation learning of their God.  It is theology that will make a good wife and a good mother and a godly lady. How can you raise up a child in the fear of the Lord if you do not learn more of God and more of the truth of mankind? Only by being grounded in Biblical theology does a parent have the ability to know that Little Susie is not a spotless petal of perfection with a heart pure as the driven snow but has inherited a guilty and depraved sin nature. It is through theology that a woman can understand her children's true nature and to deal in a godly way. How can a woman understand her calling as a godly wife, except she know it from God's own word?  But even further, to understand and know the Word of God enables God's people, to live, to worship, to pray, to serve -- all to the glory of God. Is it only certain members of the body of Christ need to understand what it is to be in Christ? Is comfort only to be found in imputed righteousness equaled by testosterone levels? I think not. Let the women learn, and not just "women's issues" but theology. 

 The temptation is for women to learn to trust their feelings and emotions rather to learn solid truths. That is why Sarah Young's abominable book Jesus Calling is so popular.  It causes women to doubt that God's Word is enough or God's Word doesn't have a place for their lives and look for God within. Many times, books written for women's studies play upon the emotion and direct women to "hear from God" outside of God's Word. This is the same tactic that Satan used with Eve, to go outside of the revealed Word and look for something else, something you are missing, something...better. The greatest thing a church can do is to tear down the barriers of separation in the learning process of the congregation. Man or women, boy or girl, all should come to God's house to learn of God. God’s way is for the whole congregation to come together and hear God’s Word preached together and sit and learn together. We are a body, after all. 

Let the women learn.