Island Time

is the name of the most recent episode of This American Life, which you can still download here for free, for at least a couple more days. The entire episode in on Haiti, but I found the third act most compelling with Ben Fountain's apocalyptic vision of the earthquake and its aftermath. My own experience in two earthquakes in 1992 was echoed here: when the ground and everything else start moving, one's own insanity can seem the most readily plausible explanation.

R.R. Reno gets optimistic

in this insightful review essay on Dakotas culture on the First Things website. Here's the payoff:

Thus my optimism, encouraged by my experience on the Great Plains. Most of us do not want to live in the political equivalent of a housing project administered by remote bureaucrats. Nor do we want to live in the political equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange where every dimension of civic life has a selling price. And because we don’t, if we are reasonably vigilant and energetic, odds are we won’t.

The structure of 1 Corinthians 8-10

Whilst preaching on 1 Corinthians 8, I had occasion to comment on the unusual way in which the Apostle Paul deals with the sin of idolatry in 1 Corinthians 8-10. I wrote on the implications of his argument's structure in the October 2002 issue of New Horizons in an essay titled "On Charity."

Michael Erard's Pledge to his Readers

I first came across this essay when it was read on the "World in Words" podcast, and since have been trying to figure out why it's so funny. Of course, the notion of growing and transporting words and figures of speech is intrinsically ridiculous, and hence amusing. More substantively, though, Erard here takes a typical bit of locavore/environmentalist doggerel and, by substituting nonsense for all its valid points, exposes the arrogance and self-congratulation so typical of the genre.

In this way, it's a model bit of satire: funny, subtle, and ultimately substantive.

Theses on preaching: For even if he be evil and a sinner

"If?"

I have so had it with all the puritan-reading hi-falutin' the-pastoral-ministry-is-a-high-calling-therefore-pastors-must-always-be-on-some-kind-of-spiritual-high types. Thank God for the Second Helvetic Confession, particularly the paragraph in chapter one which says, "Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is proclaimed...: and that now the Word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; for even if he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the Word of God remains still true and good."

Not "if." I be evil and a sinner. Nonetheless, the Spirit of God makes my preaching of the Word an efficacious means of convincing and converting sinners. If my confidence in my work rested on my own personal piety, I'd have none. Since it rests not on me at all, but on the Spirit himself, it is boundless.

Not personal charisma. Not profound eloquence. Not exciting schemes for saving western civilization. The Holy Spirit. The reformed, not the pentecostalists or the other enthusiasts, are the genuinely Spiritual.

On the Air

To all you East Coast sophisticates: the cowtown isn't Denver, it's Greeley, way up north from here. When the wind is just right, you can smell Greeley, and believe me, you don't want to. Greeley's saving grace is the University of Northern Colorado, or, more specifically, its radio station, KUNC. It's notable for its offering of "eclectic music:" classical, jazz, pop, and treacly folk which appears to be straight out of the free-to-be-you-and-me 70s. Despite the last, it beats the snot out of most of the FM offerings in Denver, so that's what I turn to when the new's not on and I'm not in the mood for jazz. (For the record, Denver does have one of the objectively best jazz stations in these United States, KUVO. But I digress.)

And so it was that one Wednesday morning I heard "On the Air" by Girlyman. An instantaneous 5 stars in my iTunes. The extended metaphor is an aging actor looking back on the early part of his career as an actor in a TV comedy in the 1950s, a show from which he wanted to break out for bigger things, but now realizes was really as good as his life ever got. At first, I thought it was (like all pop songs) about romantic regret, but upon obsessive relistening, realized is a metaphor for life itself, for our insistent refusal to be satisfied with the good we have because we've deluded ourselves into thinking there's something better. Maybe there is, but often there's not. Rock music often keeps us from seeing this; who'd have thought pop could bring everything into focus?

Girlyman's label, Daemon Records, will let you download this pop masterpiece here. Do so. Immediately. Girlyman may never create anything this astounding again, but they can go to their graves knowing they did it once.

Not a bad way to die.

This feels familiar

So it looks like Foster Baby will go to her birth father. After some initial dithering, he's gotten his act together and, it appears, done everything which social services has asked of him. Recently, Mrs. Curmudgeon and I had a meeting with him, his fiancee, the baby's caseworker, and her guardian ad litem (court-appointed attorney), and a week later the juvenile court judge signed off on the reunification plan. We are now in a 6-week (or thereabouts) transition. Around the middle of June, then, she'll be out of our home and in his. Permanently.

So we've begun mourning, even though Foster Baby is still very much present in our lives. Actually, crying in the middle of the night again, after a couple months of allowing us more or less reasonable amounts of sleep. Of course, this is part and parcel of what we signed on for; we were warned; we knew this was a possibility from the beginning; blah, blah, blah. No less painful for all that. I have been up with this child nearly every night since she was born. As far as I'm concerned, she's mine.

Accordingly, the sense of loss is palpable. It's hard to describe what it is I feel I've lost, exactly. On the one hand, she's still here. On the other, she's a baby and changing rapidly. I don't know what she'll be like as she grows older, and so in that sense I don't know what it is I'll be missing. We haven't lost anything we've already experienced with her; what we are losing is the relationship we might have had.

That may explain why this feels familiar. While the comparison may be trivial, this feels very much like the end of a relationship that I had hoped was headed toward marriage. You fall for someone, you allow yourself to begin arranging your mental and emotional furniture around that person, and then she's gone. We had begun to expect our family to look a certain way, and now we're trying to adjust to it looking entirely different. It's a sort of emotional vertigo in which you know your world has been radically altered, but everything around you looks the same. Perception and reality just don't match up.

In the end, you can't describe mourning. If you haven't felt it yet, you will. For me at least, I have no question about God's goodness or his plan. I don't know what will come of all this, and I don't need to know.

What I need, and what I will probably need for the rest of my life this side of glory, is my daughter.

Make the pastor work with the deacons

I hope all congregations have a sessional liaison with the diaconate. At the very least, sessions need to know what the deacons are doing so they can provide proper oversight to their work, and, as needed, assist with counseling or other tricky situations.

In my opinion, the pastor should serve as said liaison. While deacons certainly must hold firmly to our faith, they may not know the Scriptures as well as an elder might. Thus, the pastor (who is usually a congregation's "chief teacher") can help the deacons study the Bible when they need guidance on a thorny problem. Along with insight into God's Word, the pastor can offer the deacons insight into people; that is, if anyone knows what's going on with members of the congregation, he does. That knowledge can prove very useful to the deacons when processing requests for financial assistance.

At the same time, the diaconate offers the average pastor the opportunity to do his work much better. Let's face it: at least in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, said average pastor tends to be cerebral and bookish. He may be good at exegesis, but not so good at helping people put the pieces of their lives back together, which, of course, is what deacons (should) excel at doing. The more the pastor learns about the mundane problems which are consuming the lives of the members of his congregation, the better he'll be able to preach to them. Instead of warning them about the lastest theological controversy amongst seminary students, he can offer his hearers the comfort the Scriptures bring to those who mourn and struggle to faithfully tithe each week.

If elders want a better pastor, they should make him work with the deacons.

Theses on Preaching: If the preacher preaches long enough, even he'll get hungry too

For some reason, many presbyterians I meet seem to think a good sermon will be a long one, "long" being defined as "an hour at minimum." In my experience, however, such sermons rarely stick to an exposition of the text being considered, but frequently digress into extended consideration of some topic mentioned in the text, but far from central to its point. That is, the really long sermons aren't (always) long because the text has so much within it, but because the preacher has so much to say.

The preacher's job, however, is not to talk. Rather, it's to explain and apply the text. That's it. If we believe in the Spirit-driven power of God's Word, then it doesn't need our help. People aren't going to get saved or sanctified because the preacher kept talking until he explained the idea in just the right way to every individual in the sanctuary that morning. They'll get saved and/or sanctified because the Holy Spirit used the Word to that end at that moment.

To my brethren: trust the Word, don't talk it to death. As Lyle Lovett, the prophet from Katy, Texas, once sang, "If the preacher preaches long enough, even he'll get hungry, too." In other words, shut up already and let us get downstairs for the coffee.

Theses on Preaching: the Word Preached is the Word of God

From chapter 1 of the Second Helvetic Confession:

Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is proclaimed, and received by the faithful; and that neither any other Word of God is to be invented nor is to be expected from heaven: and that now the Word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; for even if he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the Word of God remains still true and good.

This claim, that the Word of God preached is the Word of God, strikes many as presumptuous and extreme. This may be due in part to the fact that thosewho most frequently assert it in our day happen to be professional preachers. Nonetheless, it's a fairly straighforward application of Romans 10:14-15.

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they preach unless they are sent?

In confessionally reformed circles, this doctrine is widely accepted. However, I don't believe the preaching class, as a whole, has really grappled with its implications. Hence, I hope to present a few theses on preaching which will explain what I believe are important and neglected implications of the thesis that the Word of God preached is the Word of God.