The other night…

Rick: “Who’s that guy who isn’t married and tells everyone how to live?”

My parents and I, in unison: “Bill Gothard?”

Rick: “Right.”

I was supposed to be researching enthymeme and syllogisms for my lecture tomorrow. Instead, I decided to read papers from the Trinity Foundation. What else could be more fruitless in a time of procrastination. You have to wonder what goes through that guy’s mind.

Here are some good ones:

The Heresy Matrix: In this article, Robbins talks about how Richard Gaffin, Cornelius VanTil, and Herman Bavinck are heretics. Obviously, since I think they’re pretty good on justification, they must be heretics.

Rethinking the Apostles’ Creed: Here, one of Robbins’ cronies, tells us the Apostles’ Creed is bad. This stems from the Clarkian propensity towards heresy.

OPC Acquits Kinnaird, Indicts Itself: In this article, we learn that sessions that ignorantly accuse people of teaching the heresy of justification by faith and works lose in judicial hearings, but hold a special place in John Robbins’ heart.

You would think calling VanTil a heretic, the OPC apostate, and denying the Apostles’ Creed, along with being a proponent of Nestorianism, would make Robbins’ think again. But hey, at least he left that apostate PCA. Watch out for pod people.

Things for which I am thankful

Salem ELCA A congregation in which I often serve as cantor. I’ve never had to worry about hearing liberal quack theology coming out of the mouth of the pastor.

The Approaching Advent Season Advent happens to be one of my favorite times of the year because of all the extra worship services. I find much comfort in being in worship and being with God’s people.

Candles Candles are very soothing. They really relax me.

Being in a city with a river I don’t think I could handle living in a place without water. I can always find comfort near water.

Nathan Blevins Nathan is a faithful friend that I’ve had since Belhaven.

Rijel Because she makes Moscow look better.

The Rosary It brings me one step closer to earning my salvation every day.

The Eyres We had a rocky start, but I couldn’t think of a better family to join.

Joost He puts up with me. He’s a godly man; I can’t imagine who he’ll be in twenty years.

Mike and Kristen RRR,

Episcopals They’re finally making the neo-conservative quacks look stupid.

Liberals They actually know what they’re talking about before they say stupid things.

I didn’t mean for the last post to be a complaint solely against my church and denomination. I love my church (I can’t say I love my denomination). I’m still adjusting to the Christian culture shock of the West. Several weird things stick out to me.

People often skip worship out here because they’re too tired to make it to church. It baffles my mind how anyone can just skip worship because they stayed up too late the night before. Part of this is my upbringing. I’ve never missed a Sunday worship in my life. Never. I can’t imagine why I would want to skip church. It’s such a privilege to come and worship before the living God.

People don’t join churches out here. There are so many people who don’t become church members. They won’t put themselves under the discipline of a local body.

Why? Because they’ve been burned not once, but two or three times by a church. I’ve been here nearly a year, and I still cannot comprehend how shallow the foundation of the faith is in the West. I live in North America. They live in North America. I thought this was a Christian land. I thought my faith had deep roots everywhere in this country. Not really.

Out here, this manifests itself in “wolfie-tale theology.” Everyone is a heretic. Just wait. They’ll come out from us. Just give them time. Even Rachel is suspected to the point where her parents have been told they need to make a choice between Christ and family.

I ask for your prayers for Rachel who has been persecuted for her August 12th post on baptism by those who lack knowledge of the Reformed tradition on these particular issues.

Tim was excommunicated yesterday. It was a bit weird for us. Rachel and I cried, but it seemed like no one else cared. Now, I know that’s not true; I know our pastor cared. I know at least two other men in the church sought Tim out. But the lack of emotion in the congregation was very odd to me. I don’t mean to criticize my congregation; it’s a cultural thing that we, as a church, need to grow out of. People out here are considerably less physically emotional than any other culture in which I’ve been. In any case, it made Rachel and I very uncomfortable yesterday.

I won’t excuse Tim, but both of us were born in the Northeast and both of us spent our time in that area which we called the Midwest but everyone up here calls the South, so we have fairly similar cultural backgrounds. When we first moved out here, we could empathize with each other concerning our cultural shock.

Our pastor made the analogy yesterday of the church being like a cabin in Alaska. Outside of the church is a blizzard; inside is a fire and a feast. It reminded me of Psalm 23, where God sets up a feast in the midst of our enemies.

But for Tim (and to a lesser extent, myself), moving out here hasn’t seemed like a feast in the midst of enemies. I don’t mean to sound like the lonely blogger poet; that would hardly be true. But on days when I don’t get to go to Rachel’s house, I feel like an orphan. That’s no excuse for Tim to do what he did. His conversion to death reminds me of something out of Lord of the Flies. He went to evil side because they were at least eating something.

Sometimes, it’s a bit hard to not look for food elsewhere. Our local CRE brothers are so busy building and feeding their families that they don’t have time to take singles in (which makes so much more sense to me than the CRE brothers that act like cannibals, having nothing better to do than to eat each other, one Christian at a time).

Mike linked an interesting article about the destruction of a Russian Chapel after a “gay marriage.”

I’ve always wondered how these people can really think of themselves as faithful Christians. Just Saturday I was discussing this with a man I’ve known for about 18 years although he’s been a sodomite/catamite for about eight years. Everytime we talk, he pulls out the same passage, “Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged.” It gets pretty old because he ignores the rest of Scripture. I wish he’d just take after his lesbian sister. She doesn’t even pretend.