The only problem is that it doesn't crunch on the gravel with the big plastic wheel.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Cultural Perspective on Children
We don't allow the culture to instruct us in how to think.
Rather, we do, and we shouldn't.
As I trust in Christ, He does make me a new type of creation, apparently. At least, that is what I hear. That new creation is not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of the mind, in light of the great mercies of God.
The white European birth rate, which has plummeted below the recoverable line in some countries is pointing out to us one of the ramifications of thinking from an Enlightenment perspective, allowing the culture to instruct our priorities, rather than allowing the King to inform us of his priorities for His beloved sons and daughters.
This quote, from Rachel Jankovic at Desiring God is a sobering way of putting the underlying priorities of the culture around us, and unfortunately the same priorities rule in the church. Click on the link to read the whole article. It is worthwhile, I think.
"The truth is that years ago, before this generation of mothers was even born, our society decided where children rank in the list of important things. When abortion was legalized, we wrote it into law.
Children rank way below college. Below world travel for sure. Below the ability to go out at night at your leisure. Below honing your body at the gym. Below any job you may have or hope to get. In fact, children rate below your desire to sit around and pick your toes, if that is what you want to do. Below everything. Children are the last thing you should ever spend your time doing.
If you grew up in this culture, it is very hard to get a biblical perspective on motherhood, to think like a free Christian woman about your life, your children. How much have we listened to partial truths and half lies? Do we believe that we want children because there is some biological urge, or the phantom “baby itch”? Are we really in this because of cute little clothes and photo opportunities? Is motherhood a rock-bottom job for those who can’t do more, or those who are satisfied with drudgery? If so, what were we thinking?"
Jankovic, Rachel. www.desiringgod.org. "Motherhood Is a Calling (And Where Your Children Rank.<http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/motherhood-is-a-calling-and-where-your-children-rank#.Th9FVu89gWY.facebook>. Accessed 16JULY2011.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Productivity advice from a rail splitter
"If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I would spend the first four hours sharpening the ax."Apparently Abe Lincoln said that.
Good advice. Get the right tools, and keep them in good working order.
My problem is that if I have six hours to cut down a tree, I will spend 5 hours and 51 minutes sharpening the ax, because for me most of the fun is in the planning and preparing stage of a job, and the actual productivity itself is only moderately satisfying.
I know I am eccentric, so you don't have to tell me.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
In hard times and easy times...some thoughts from Ann Voskamp
Ann Voskamp has written on her blog today something good to ponder.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Historical Revisionism
Del Tackett makes this comment in his teaching series called "The Truth Project":
If I can change your historical context, I can change the way you view the present. This is the power of historical revisionism.As I have been reading history over the last 5 years, I have grown to understand the nature of this truth. By investigating what the history of the West is, I have come to understand better what my own history is, and therefore to understand what the nature of the present is. To revise history is to change our understanding of ourselves, which leads to making different decisions, and responding to changes around us in a different way.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
A deep breath of cool clear water (or something like that)
For several years now I have been attempting to understand how the culture I am immersed in (as an American, and with Western History in my particular past) has influenced me. How has it shaped my understanding of reality and the truth about the world I live in? It has been an exhausting investigation as I realize that I have been radically and fundamentally influenced by the last 400 years of culture currents. In several senses, I have never had an original thought in my life, but have been fed every thought I have ever had by others, and I have been curious about who those others are, and what it was they were attempting when they passed on their thinking to subsequent generations. In some ways, this whole endeavor has been unhealthy, causing a large dose of epistemological claustrophobia. In other ways it has been a spreading of my horizons as I understand who I am better.
For example, try reading Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. This book will alter your view of what it means to be an individual, and forces you to realize that you are only "individual" and "authentic" in roughly exactly the same way as everyone else in this American Democracy is "individual" and "authentic". That book made me laugh out loud, it was so startlingly accurate about me and my neighbors. And it was written by a Frenchman in the early 1800s!
So, for a couple of years now I have been trying to figure out how to respond to this strange, constricting realization I have come to: how deeply the philosophies around me (in particular, the branches and fruit and fruit pies coming from the philosophies of the "Enlightenment" (really, the Endarkenment) and Romanticism have been all I have ever partaken of, in some senses. In fact, in a difficult and sometimes amusing way, I only ever assess the Enlightenment on its own terms...from an Enlightenment perspective. Arrgh! How to escape from this philosophical tail-chasing.
Along comes a couple of quotes in the last few weeks that have helped me take a really deep breath for the first time in a while. One from Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas
THEN, along comes a few more thoughts, this time from Tim Keller's book, Gospel and Life.
Ken Myers suggests that we must make a decision. Do we interact with that worldview in a mode of acceptance and adoption, or do we interact with it at some points in a mode of resistance and rejection.
Tim Keller's thoughts added to Ken Myer's help me to have a framework for thinking about these things. And Bonhoeffer's helps to relieve the incapacitating pressure to think that I have to get it all logically and philosophically perfect before making decisions, and the Gospel itself, most importantly by far, has helped me to understand that it was for such an errant philosopher and sinner as myself that Jesus came to die, and restore me to right relationship with Himself.
For example, try reading Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. This book will alter your view of what it means to be an individual, and forces you to realize that you are only "individual" and "authentic" in roughly exactly the same way as everyone else in this American Democracy is "individual" and "authentic". That book made me laugh out loud, it was so startlingly accurate about me and my neighbors. And it was written by a Frenchman in the early 1800s!
So, for a couple of years now I have been trying to figure out how to respond to this strange, constricting realization I have come to: how deeply the philosophies around me (in particular, the branches and fruit and fruit pies coming from the philosophies of the "Enlightenment" (really, the Endarkenment) and Romanticism have been all I have ever partaken of, in some senses. In fact, in a difficult and sometimes amusing way, I only ever assess the Enlightenment on its own terms...from an Enlightenment perspective. Arrgh! How to escape from this philosophical tail-chasing.
Along comes a couple of quotes in the last few weeks that have helped me take a really deep breath for the first time in a while. One from Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas
To procrastinate and prevaricate simply because you are afraid of erring...seems to me almost to run counter to love. To delay or fail to make decisions may be more sinful than to make wrong decisions out of faith and love.In the middle of trying to carefully weave my way through decision-making, attempting to take into account all of the philosophies that are informing my thinking has been pretty crippling. Here, Bonhoeffer reminds me that LOVE is the goal, and (I add) since I know I am probably not going to get it perfect, even if I reflect on a topic for decades...why not put love at the forefront, pray, think and then take action...then assess, and take more action...then assess again, etc. I am trying to make that my new Mode of Operation.
THEN, along comes a few more thoughts, this time from Tim Keller's book, Gospel and Life.
A worldview is...the story of the world that operates at the root of a person's life.And
We cannot help but participate in the worldview of our particular culture and generation. But the gospel changes the way we look at everything. We are to look at everything...and decide (a) what to keep as good, (b) what to reject as just too distorted, and (c) what to revise, rename, and reshape with the gospel.Very helpful thoughts for me. I have realized for a while now that I can't "get out" of my own worldview, and that participating at some level in the worldview around me is impossible to escape.
Ken Myers suggests that we must make a decision. Do we interact with that worldview in a mode of acceptance and adoption, or do we interact with it at some points in a mode of resistance and rejection.
Tim Keller's thoughts added to Ken Myer's help me to have a framework for thinking about these things. And Bonhoeffer's helps to relieve the incapacitating pressure to think that I have to get it all logically and philosophically perfect before making decisions, and the Gospel itself, most importantly by far, has helped me to understand that it was for such an errant philosopher and sinner as myself that Jesus came to die, and restore me to right relationship with Himself.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Make sure you are on the right train
"If you board the wrong train," he said, "it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction."This was Dietrich Bonhoeffer's comment to those who thought that he should join the "German Christians" (the National Socialists nationalized church) and work as a change agent from within.
When I read a historical account of the West, it makes me wonder what train I am on, and which direction we are headed in.
And I pray.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Suggestion
Go use the bathroom before watching this video, so that you don't wet yourself from laughing so hard.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Wisdom, or knowledge?
Ken Myers, in his book Signs of the Times, makes the following distinction between knowledge and wisdom.
"Literary critic Cleanth Brooks, in an essay on literature and technology, once obverved: "Secretly we may hunger for wisdom, but our overt craving nowadays is, of course, for information." Later in this article, Brooks later made mention of the famous lines from T.S. Eliot which lament the loss of wisdom in the growing flood of public knowledge, and the loss even of knowledge in a deluge of sheer information. Mere knowldege can easily be mistaken for wisdom, just as the accumulation of info-bits, factoids, and trivia can replace the pursuit of knowledge .
Richard Weaver, a thinker committed to the recovery of the tradition of wisdom, wrote in 1948 that, "Having been told by the reeltivists that he cannot have truth, [modern man] now has 'facts'....the acquisition of unrelated details becomes an end in itself and takes the place of the true ideal of education." Weaver believed that our view of reality had become thoroughly fragmented; modern culture had forgotten (or rejects) the context of truth within which individual facts make sense. Education itself has become an elaborate form of Trivial Pursuit for credit."Citation: Myers, Ken. Signs of the Times: the Table Talk Columns. Mars Hill Monographs.
Friday, May 20, 2011
My Brother, My Hero
“Are you guys ready?” My dad mouthed the words through the pane of glass between us.
Gary and I looked at each other, and shrugged, and started delicately pounding on the bottom of the 4’x4’x1/4” glass window with the rubber butts of our Estwing hammers. Is it possible to “delicately pound”? We were trying.
My dad, my brother and I were working on a window replacement job. It was on the historic Ravenel house. Dad was outside standing on the top of an extension ladder, looking in the second floor window that we needed to remove. On either side of his ladder was another ladder. The plan was: Gary and I would ever so gently ease the window out of the casing by tapping on it with the butts of our hammers, which were handled with soft-ish rubber. Dad, balancing on the top of the ladder, would ease his fingers under the window as it edged out of the casing, and then Gary and I would run down the flight of stairs, out the door, and around the house, and sprint up the ladders on either side of Dad, and then all three of us would slide the window down the front face of the ladders to the ground. (To any OSHA official reading this: Just Kidding!)
This sounds like a ludicrous plan, perhaps, but we had already successfully executed it with about 6 other windows, so we were feeling pretty secure.
As Gary and I continued to tap gingerly along the base of the window, we heard a tiny brittle sound, and looked at the bottom edge of the glass. There was a miniscule crack in the glass. Gary and I looked at each other, and then glanced out at Dad, who was staring at the defect.
Hmmm…
Nothing more happened, so we collectively shrugged our shoulders, and Gary and I resumed our activity.
Tap…tap…taptap…tap…taptaptap…tap
Tap
Abruptly, 16 square feet of ¼” thick plate glass disassembled itself into exploding shards. As I fell backwards in shock and survival, I saw two snapshot pictures in front of me.
My dad, hammer in hand, reaching through the rain of glass, trying to hook the hammer claw over the window frame, and missing as he reeled backward, losing his balance at the top of the ladder.
My brother, wading into the killing glass that I had shied away from and grabbing my dad’s arm, pulling him back into balance just before he fell backwards to the ground.
And then silence, as the glass window that was, crunched under Gary’s feet.
And that day, my brother became a hero to me.
Gary and I looked at each other, and shrugged, and started delicately pounding on the bottom of the 4’x4’x1/4” glass window with the rubber butts of our Estwing hammers. Is it possible to “delicately pound”? We were trying.
My dad, my brother and I were working on a window replacement job. It was on the historic Ravenel house. Dad was outside standing on the top of an extension ladder, looking in the second floor window that we needed to remove. On either side of his ladder was another ladder. The plan was: Gary and I would ever so gently ease the window out of the casing by tapping on it with the butts of our hammers, which were handled with soft-ish rubber. Dad, balancing on the top of the ladder, would ease his fingers under the window as it edged out of the casing, and then Gary and I would run down the flight of stairs, out the door, and around the house, and sprint up the ladders on either side of Dad, and then all three of us would slide the window down the front face of the ladders to the ground. (To any OSHA official reading this: Just Kidding!)
This sounds like a ludicrous plan, perhaps, but we had already successfully executed it with about 6 other windows, so we were feeling pretty secure.
As Gary and I continued to tap gingerly along the base of the window, we heard a tiny brittle sound, and looked at the bottom edge of the glass. There was a miniscule crack in the glass. Gary and I looked at each other, and then glanced out at Dad, who was staring at the defect.
Hmmm…
Nothing more happened, so we collectively shrugged our shoulders, and Gary and I resumed our activity.
Tap…tap…taptap…tap…taptaptap…tap
Tap
Abruptly, 16 square feet of ¼” thick plate glass disassembled itself into exploding shards. As I fell backwards in shock and survival, I saw two snapshot pictures in front of me.
My dad, hammer in hand, reaching through the rain of glass, trying to hook the hammer claw over the window frame, and missing as he reeled backward, losing his balance at the top of the ladder.
My brother, wading into the killing glass that I had shied away from and grabbing my dad’s arm, pulling him back into balance just before he fell backwards to the ground.
And then silence, as the glass window that was, crunched under Gary’s feet.
And that day, my brother became a hero to me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)