After an Advent reading at the Eyres, Rachel’s 10 y/o bro pipes up: “Why do I always get only one verse to read while everyone else gets lots of verses? Am I not a good enough CHRISTIAN???”

I posted this about three years ago, but it’s worth posting again. It’s a song I heard about ten years ago that I fell in love with.

Opener
by Lost and Found

I went to my church on Sunday, just to hear good news.
And I confess it’s been years more or less, since I’ve warmed these pews.

But I’m looking for something stronger than my own life these days,
but the church of my childhood seems like the YMCA–

where every Sunday is just like the last.
As if the church has no history, and the people have no past.

We just what we like to sing and we preach about the news,
and think up some new thing, just to fill up the pews.

I want palms on Palm Sunday and Pentecost still to be red.
I want to drink of the wine and ear of the bread.

But they strive for attendance
while I starve for transcendence,
but I count amond this body both the living and the dead.

Whether its guitars and amps, video screens, cordless mics,
or incense and robes and copes and candle light.

Just stop all your fighting over words and ways,
and tell me of Jesus, like in the good old days.

One thing that I think is pretty moronic about the whole reformed catholicity is that it too is just a bunch of talk.

Reformed catholics don’t really want to be catholics; they just want to have the bare minimum of ecumenism: “oh yeah, I believe they’re Christians (even though they’re totally way off and not living their faith and criticism after criticism).”

I’ve been an Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed, so I guess I have a little bit of an advantage in practicing my catholicity. I’m too picky for my own good. Because of my pickiness and the amount I’ve traveled, I’ve visited a lot of churches: Southern Baptist, Reformed Baptist, Free Will Baptist, liberal baptists, Free Methodists, United Methodists, PCUSA, OPC, PCA, EPC, RPCNA, ARP, RPCGNA, PNP, ECUSA, CREC, CRC, (As I write this, I’m noticing that denominational schisms suck) REC, LCMS, ELCA, AFLC, AME, AG, Inderdenomational, Non-denom, Holiness, CofC, DOC, the list goes on and on; I’ve been forced to practice catholicity.

I think a lot of Reformed Christians don’t want to attend these churches because they’ve heard they’re less faithful, but I don’t you can really love and extend true catholicity to other Christians.

That’s another reason I love pintnight. Actually, I’m usually pretty bored, but I have a lot of fun when Christians of other denominations come to visit. We’ve had Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Methodist pastors. I hope more come. Catholicity is a great thing.

But it’s not enough to say, “I have a heart” or “I have a foot.” Your neck has to be connected to your chest and your chest has to be connected to your arms and guts, and your belly trail has to lead down to…your legs and feet and toes. Get what I’m saying here. I’m glad you know you have a foot in some other denomination. Go rub your feet with cream and clip your toenails.

(sometimes I think I’m insane)

Doug Wilson saaays,

I am working my way through a new book, and I cannot wait until I am done before recommending it. Entitled Reclaiming the Center, this book does a number on all the postmodern hooey that is afflicting contemporary evangelical types. The subtitle is “Confronting Evangelical Accommodation in Postmodern Times.” The hooey is decked out in different ways, as with the absurd moniker postconservative, and the contributors to this volume promise to give this nonsense the thrashing it deserves. Of course, from what I have read thus far, it appears they will deliver said thrashing in a courteous, gentlemanly way.

For myself, I could stand to see a good deal more fur fly. What are we to make of postmodern evangelical accommodationists? My tentative judgment is that this is a movement that is straight from the Pit of Hell, old Slewfoot himself is the chief philosopher involved, and all the adherents of this movement, head for head, are all headed straight for the Bad Place. Of course, this initial assessment may need to be nuanced somewhat.

I give my last final of the semester tomorrow, so maybe I’ll blog a bit more. I’ll see Isaiah in the flesh, so maybe I could put him in a headlock until he helps fix the format (hey, if anyone else can do that, I’d appreciate it). I’m getting sick of our words running off the side of the page, and I don’t know PHP.

After I give the final at 8, I’ll try and stick the final grades in before 10:30 and catch an 11:37 flight to Spokane.

I’ll have to wear my coat for the first time since last winter. (It was probably in 70’s today.)

So Rachel just auditioned for the ULM orchestra. They gave her full tuition and fees. An academic scholarship will pay for her books and give her a little bit of cash in her hand. Yay for her.

I’d really like to write a post on Jim Jordan’s visit this weekend and a post on postmodernism, but I’m really tired and I have a lot of work to do before we leave this Thursday, so I hope just the thought of the posts is good enough.

I’ll leave you with this thought: We receive life by eating dead things. What’s up with yogurt?

I was reading an article on what seems to be the first surgery in the American colonies. I just love this:

“Owsley thinks the man was hit in the back of the head with a stone ax and suffered a fractured skull. That would suggest the blow came from an Indian, Straube said. But Straube said it is also possible the man simply tripped and fell and hit his head on a rock.”

Yeah, since the Jamestown colony Indians were known for their drug induced peacefulness, it’s likely that the Indians were really nice, and that they gave the colonist so much corn that he couldn’t see, and so he tripped and fell and hit his head on a rock.

I remember a few years ago that I took a “Which John Cusack Character Are You Most Like” test, and I was most like Lloyd Dobler from “Say Anything.” After watching “Say Anything” earlier this week, I have to say, without a doubt, that the test was correct.