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Does God Exist?

A little quirk happening made me think of a quote by G.K. Chesterton from The Everlasting Man:

One of my first journalistic adventures, or misadventures, concerned a comment on Grant Allen, who had written a book about the Evolution of the Idea of God. I happened to remark that it would be much more interesting if God wrote a book about the evolution of the idea of Grant Allen. And I remember that the editor objected to my remark on the ground that it was blasphemous; which naturally amused me not a little.

I was watching a debate on YouTube and saw the title of a video which began, “Does God Exist?…Dan Barker Debate” But in my first (very quick) glance, I actually thought it said, “Does Dan Barker Exist?” I think that would be a much more interesting video and topic of debate.

God is not to be discussed or debated. God is not a subject for debate, because He is Who He is. We are told that the unbeliever, of course, does not agree with that; and that is perfectly true; but that makes no difference. We believe it, and it is a part of our very case to assert it. Holding the view that we do, believing what we do about God, we cannot in any circumstances allow Him to become a subject for discussion or debate or investigation…God is always to be approached ‘with reverence and with godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire’…

We believe in the almighty, the glorious, the living God; and whatever may be true of others we must never put ourselves, or allow ourselves to be put, into a position in which we are debating about God as if He were but a philosophical proposition (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, pp. 46-47).

Inside We’re All the Same

INSIDE WERE ALL THE SAME LADIES TEE

My wife came across this Peeps shirt in a store the other day and told me about it. I actually think it’s true, but I don’t think they were thinking about the same thing I am – the sinful nature.

  • And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Eph. 2:1-3).

Adios Google Reader

I use this blog to write about things I read. And I read Google Reader a lot. I’ve used it for several years. I was disappointed to find out that it is going to the way of all the world to be buried with its interwebs-gadget-fathers in the near future. Adios, Google Reader.

I thought about giving up on blogs. It would probably save me at least 30, and probably more, minutes a day if I quit. But Reader has also been the primary means I have used to keep up with all the news that is news every day (outside of the non-stop force feeding of Fox News that I get at work every day). Besides that, Reader has been my primary means for keeping up with sports. Reader, I just can’t quit you. But, alas, you no longer want me.

The good news is that Feedly has stepped up to the plate as an acceptable replacement. And, lo and behold, I actually like Feedly more. My new reader is more attractive and plans to stay around for a while.

Check out Feedly (click the link above) if you haven’t. It’s an easy to use app for organizing the blogs and newsfeeds you like to read.

Become like Children…Not Like Teenagers

  • Matthew 18:3 and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 ¶ “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, 6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

Reading some reviews of a relatively new book on the ‘juvenilization’ of the church got me to thinking. Such ‘juvenilzation’ involves the pop-izing (going pop, okay?) of music, holy (as in holes in them) jeans in church, spikey hair, fauxhawks; edgy, entertainment-driven messages, etc, etc, ad nauseum. This youth-driven form of Christianity, some say, is responsible for a resurgence of, and injection of life into, many churches in the United States. It has its drawbacks, and it has its positives – or so say the reviews of the book.

I simply submit the reminder that Jesus says ‘unless you become as children,’ not ‘unless you become as teenagers‘ (I suppose you could insert college student or celebrity in the place of teenager and the line of thought would work just as well).

One of my favorite Chesterton quotes from Orthodoxy is:

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

The child says, ‘Do it again!’ The teenager says, ‘let’s do something new.’ The little one isn’t particularly concerned with being hip. He wants to eat, laugh, play, love, and be loved.

The childlike qualities of awe, wonder, dependence, humility, and the love of the simple and monotonous are sound aspirations. The teenager’s (pardon my generalization)  gravitation toward faddishness, insecurity, self-analysis, and the need to be, and participate in, ‘the cool,’ are not sound aspirations, but flaws worth avoiding.

Childlikeness doesn’t mean needing more entertainment. It means being able to be entertained by the same things over and over again. Childlikeness doesn’t mean constantly searching for the next cool and flashy thing, it means that the simplest thing can be cool and flashy so long as it is in the near vicinity. A little child can say the Lord’s Prayer or the Apostle’s Creed over and over again and be just as excited as if it were the first time (I know this from experience with my own kids).

Us grownups act like we want to become teenagers, but the truth is that even teenagers themselves must become as little children. Don’t cause a little one to stumble by making them want to be a teenager, even if that little one is a grownup, or a teenager.

Crickets and Tolkien

The crickets have been chirping on the blog for a couple of weeks. The reason being: I had finals, two sermons, and a Sunday school lesson to work on. But alas, all of the above are in the books, and I actually have a week off from any particular study obligations. This means I will try to do a bit of catching up on the blog this week. I’ll mainly be posting quotes but I have been working on a couple of other things to post.

As for my practice of recording quotes on the blog, today illustrates my primary reason for doing so. In my sermon and Sunday school preparation I pulled four or five quotes directly from the blog that I wanted to use in my sermon and lesson. It comes in very handy. It’s nice to have helpful quotes cataloged and readily available. But I digress.

If you’ve been around the blog for the full two years of its existence I usually declare summers to be ‘the summer of biography.’ I may read a biography this year, but my plans are different. I’m planning on rereading the second volume of Calvin’s Institutes and reading The Silmarillion for the first time (I started it and failed to finish a while back).

Speaking of which, HERE is a link to the lecture that motivated me to get back into The Silmarillion. Click lecture 3. It’s worth a listen if you enjoy Tolkien’s work. As a matter of fact, all of the talks are worthwhile, and the interview at the bottom of the list is very, very good.

Speaking of which again, I had a massive project to work on for my technology in education class and I decided that I would put together a mock course for a 12th grade English class on the subject of 20th Century Imaginative Literature featuring Lewis and Tolkien. We had to come up with ten projects that integrate a technology into each. It was worth a third of our grade and I got a big fat 300 out of 300 on it, so needless to say, I’m proud of it. The ‘livebinder’ for my project, which outlines the course and its projects, is available online, and you can look at it, if you so desire, HERE. It’s obviously a mock lesson plan, but, nonetheless, my focus was on coming up with a strategy for fostering the development of the imagination through the examples left for us by Lewis and Tolkien.