A big two hearted ale

At last, a beer to drink whilst reading my favorite Ernest Hemingway story ever.

Frankly, he was my third favorite Monkee

But I hasten to add that Peter Tork was a very strong third. Arguably the Monkees' overall best musician, his hippie charisma (sort of a real-life Maynard G. Krebs) made him more interesting than the manic Mickey Dolenz whom I preferred during my misbegotten youth. His banjo licks and laconic vocals made many a B-side as worthy as the titular single. If you haven't heard the spoken word piece Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky, you haven't heard Peter Tork.

Go listen to it now. I can't think of a better tribute.

The handmaids understood the Lord's plan

In 2 Samuel 6:20-23, Michal accuses her husband, King David, of embarrassing himself by freely and ecstatically worshiping the Lord in public. Indeed, even the lowest of the low, the "handmaids of [David's] servants," witnessed his shameless, empty and foolish behavior. By implication, Michal's father, the deceased King Saul, never would have opened himself up to mockery in that way.

It was the women, however, who first recognized that David was greater than Saul (1 Samuel 18:6-9). This provoked Saul's envy and led to the sequence of events by which the Lord would replace him with David on Israel's throne. Therefore, David was wise to put his confidence in the opinion of handmaids over that of Saul's daughter (2 Samuel 6:21-22).

Godly discernment is far more important than royal blood or social position.

We wish you two merry Christmas albums

After years of my whinging about the depressing dearth of quality Christmas albums, 2018 has produced two from the middle portion of the alphabetical list of my favorite bands.

Things started looking up in my world when the latter-day countrypolitan Mavericks started recording again a few years ago. Lead singer Raul Malo's Marshmallow World has long been a favorite of myself and the curmudgelings, so I had high expectations for the Mavericks' Hey! Merry Christmas! Unlike Malo's solo offering, it's mostly new compositions. As such, it didn't really connect with me on a first listening. However, I decided to give it another chance whilst baking Christmas cookies and was quickly converted. The Mavericks swing, children; they really do.

Strangely, the Monkees never recorded a Christmas album during their heyday, so they're offering one now before they're all dead. Don't be cynical, but get thankful: Christmas Party is a marvelous pop confection of Yuletide goodness. The only melancholy comes from two tracks by the late Davy Jones. He wasn't resurrected, but the tracks were unearthed from a vault somewhere. His voice is as sweet as ever, but we're reminded that the fates are allowing fewer and fewer of us to all be together with each passing year.

Angels of Advent

On the one hand, I am as convinced as any other curmudgeon that angelogy is where crazy goes to live. On the other hand, I am intrigued by the angelic message, "Fear not." Holding both those thoughts in mind, Peter Leithart offers a helpful meditation on angelophanies over at the First Things website.

You say you want an eschaton

I can't be the only reactionary hard-shell Calvinist who misses Marxism's rhetorical domination of the educated elites. I enjoyed having a vocabulary in common with my opponents on the left. In particular, I really liked talking about what would happen when the Revolution comes (as in, "When the Revolution comes, the Republicans will be the first with their backs up against the wall." Ah, the good old days.). In the Marxist cosmos, "the Revolution" is that glorious impending moment in which the proletariat will rise up against their bourgeois oppressors, seize the means of production, and usher in an age of harmony and peace in a finally-classless society.

As a (nearly-)infinite number of Christian critics have noted, the Revolution is Marx's eschaton, his endpoint of history and new golden age. In that sense, Marxism is just another Christian heresy. In Christian orthodoxy, human history ends in Christ's return, the end of the present evil age, and our Lord's establishment of the new heavens and earth in which peace and justice reign. Marx (conveniently) removes Jesus and divine intervention from the scenario, but he does teach his students to look forward to an age of peace and justice.

Marx's vision will never, ever be achieved until the Revolution comes. (For what it's worth, I rather doubt it will.) Conversely, while the Christian eschaton is utterly dependent on the Lord's good pleasure to inaugurate it, it nonetheless is manifested in the present by the Christian's faith. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1) Along with the Old Testament saints, we are called to live in the present as though we already live in the age to come, according to the values of the city which has foundations (Hebrews 11-12). In other words, we are to live according to the Biblical principles of peace and justice now, even though they will not be rightly, fully, or permanently established until our Lord returns in glory.

Which brings us (at long last) to my point: an inaugurated eschatology requires the Christian to maintain a commitment to social justice. The perfect social justice of the new heavens and earth is not yet, but must be already present in the political agenda which the Christian pursues. Christians may, and certainly will, disagree as to how to pragmatically and prudentially pursue social justice in this present age; indeed, they often disagree as to what social justice even looks like. Nonetheless, whether they find themselves on the left or right of the political spectrum, whether they are politically active or inactive (or, in my case, only a reluctant voter), they must be bound by a desire to bring about as much social justice as is possible in this fallen world.

Accordingly, it is wrong, bordering on eschatologically heretical, to assert that Christians ought not be concerned with or driven by social justice. At their very best, such critiques evidence a rather poor grasp of Biblical eschatology.

I can't make myself look away

I retired from the Boy Scouts of America after they changed their membership requirements, but before the name change to "Scouts BSA." I really, really want to be done with the organization, but people (by "people," I mean "Mrs. Curmudgeon") keep alerting me to stories such as the Girl Scouts USA suing Scouts BSA for creating confusion between their programs. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm taking the Girl Scouts' side. Scouts BSA, a once-noble organization, is only adding to the overall addledness of this gender-confused generation. And in the process, they are neglecting the single most important reason to maintain entirely separate programs for boys and girls.

That reason, of course, is cooties.

And you doubt the end is nigh?

Pringles™, being as they are the particleboard of the snack chip world, are well-suited for the dubious enterprise of flavoring the otherwise-noble potato chip with unnatural and unreasonable flavors (ex. barbecue, ranch dressing, and other abominations). Perhaps, then, we should not be surprised that Pringles™ can now be had in "Thanksgiving dinner flavors." Having destroyed both Christmas and Halloween, popular culture is now busily at work bringing down Thanksgiving.

If this is not enough to disprove postmillenial optimism, nothing is.

Nehemiah cleansed the Temple

But during all this I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I had returned to the king. Then after certain days I obtained leave from the king, and I came to Jerusalem and discovered the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, in preparing a room for him in the courts of the house of God. And it grieved me bitterly; therefore I threw all the household goods of Tobiah out of the room. Then I commanded them to cleanse the rooms; and I brought back into them the articles of the house of God, with the grain offering and the frankincense. (Nehemiah 13:6-9)

I can't be the first to observe this, but I would like to point out that this is an example of Nehemiah as a type of Christ. Nehemiah's response to Tobiah and Eliashib was identical to Jesus' when he entered the Temple:

Then Jesus went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple. Then He taught, saying to them, “Is it not written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’ ” (Mark 11:15-17)

I don't know

Just found this while going through some old pictures: it's from a form we were asked to fill out for the county while Thing 3 was in therapy a few years ago. On the one hand, I suppose not knowing your child's gender might well explain why said child needs therapy. On the other hand, I am sure this is proof the end truly is nigh.