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Thursday, September 25, 2003 posted by Rick 1:53 PM link |
Babies. We love babies around here, and so it was an especially happy event when the Hays brought their newly adopted seven-week-old triplets Calvin, Alan, and RoseMarie, to the Bible study on Tuesday. You can see pictures of them here. [comments] |
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Wednesday, September 24, 2003 posted by Rick 1:55 PM link |
Comments. Don't forget that your comments on what we publish, positive and negative, are still welcome here. We'll read and contemplate anything you tell us, and respond directly to you if we think it is appropriate. And if you'd like to send us a letter to the editor, we'll consider it for publication here on the weblog. As an ongoing reminder of this, we'll be adding a comments link at the end of most weblog entries; rather than being a link to the forum, though, it will be a link with an email address to which you can send your comment. [comments] |
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posted by R.C. 1:47 PM link |
Moby Dick Adrift At Night So far I have been spared that stern warning about talking and writing about my family. The professionals tell us that it is important to separate your family life from your work life. Which is why I’m no professional. My family is a vital part of my work in at least two senses. First, they are my work. That is, what I am doing now is secondary. What I will be doing in a few minutes, feeding Shannon her dinner, is primary. But they are also a vital part of my work in that much of what I teach about is the family, and so stories of my family make it into print, and onto tape. Which means, when I show up in another town to do a conference, people always graciously note that they wish I could have brought my family. It is no easy thing raising six small children. It is harder still, however, to do it on the road. It is a rare thing for me to bring my wife along. It is rarer still for me to bring one or two children along. But bringing them all is virtually impossible. In six hours, however, I will be loading up the children into our white, fifteen-passenger van. (We consider the van—nicknamed alternately White Lightning and Moby Dick—to be a challenge to God, to see if He will fill it.) I will then drive it all night, twelve hours, to Michigan. I’m going there to do a conference on the family. And while family is the motivating factor in bringing my family on this trip, it is only indirectly my family. That is, I’m bringing my family not because I’ll be speaking on the family, but because we’ll be visiting a family, a family that is good for my family. In my last squib I mentioned other congregations that share much of our vision. One such is Christ the King Church in New Era. The pastor there, Mark Dewey, became a dear friend to me when they moved here from Michigan to be a part of our community. When he announced roughly a year ago that he and his family wanted to go back to Michigan to plant a church, I was both enraged and endeared, enraged because I didn’t want to lose them, endeared because that’s the kind of people they are, more interested in giving than receiving. But we are behind Mark and his work not just because he agrees with us on stuff—they too have dropped the fifteen passenger van gauntlet before God—but because of what really matters: he is a godly man. And there is no greater attestation to that than the godliness of his wife, and his children. I’m bringing my family along not only because I love to have them along, but because the Deweys are good for all of us. I’m bringing my family to work with me, because such will work for my family. I hope we’ll see many of you there. [comments] |
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Tuesday, September 23, 2003 posted by R.C. 3:07 PM link |
Grace, Covenant and Joy I don’t know if they’ll be coming with names, I only know they are coming. I’m not even clear whether they are two little boys and a little girl, or whether they are two little girls and a little boy. But I know they are coming. This is the day that the Lord has blessed, and we all rejoice, and are glad in it. It was less than a year ago that the Hays families arrived here. Three generations shared a vision, and a home. Wayne, the patriarch of the clan, exhibits his godliness through an uncannily kid-like enthusiasm, and, at the same time, the wisdom that comes with age. Barbara, the matriarch, is likewise a walking paradox, she an endearing mix of earthy- earth mother, and no-nonsense headmistress. Mark, the son of Wayne, looks like Nathan Bedford Forrest—as played by Opie. Like his parents, he has a zeal for the kingdom of God that works itself out not in thunder-puppy theological arguments, but in service, especially to Jamie, his wife, and Lilly, their precious little girl. Rarely have mother and daughter been so cherished and nurtured, as the glow of their faces attests. The Hays bought the old Schultz place. The Schultz family, though they never attended Saint Peter, and though they may not have known this, served as unofficial patriarch/matriarch of my own clan. From a distance, we watched as they are raising up their nine blessings, and doing so with joy. Which means, of course, that their home, despite having three generations of Hays, was rather empty. Until today. Today three more precious covenant children will fill that home, as the Hays return with their infant adopted triplets. On the back cover of Eternity In Our Hearts, my publisher wrote this copy, “What sort of vision leads a budding Christian writer, teacher and thinker to move his wife and young family from the city of Orlando, Florida, to the hills of southwestern Virginia?” Such sounds, of course, like I was making some sort of sacrifice. It sounds also like the issue was city versus country. While I do in fact much prefer the country, the vision wasn’t to get everybody into the country. Rather it was to help encourage, and to learn from young men like Country Boy Hays, the father now of four. That is, we are not here to build a cult, nor a monastery, nor a Moscow East. We are here because we get to live in community with people like the Hays. We are here because here Grace, Covenant and Joy take on flesh, and we get to hold them—whatever their names. |
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Tuesday, September 16, 2003 posted by R.C. 8:34 AM link |
Goodbye to All That Wisdom, it seems to me, is the art of drawing lines. I believe in homeschooling, but I allow others to teach my children. They take piano, or ballet, or play little league, and I feel no guilt about it. (And with the latter two they are engaged in another no-no, age-segregrated behavior.) My children are permitted to watch a video twice a week. Does the Bible say twice is okay, but the third time’s a sin? Of course not. But I had to draw a line somewhere. Another line must be drawn as we hone our educational theory. We believe here that education is conversation. Our resident students read, and thus converse with assorted sages. And then they meet with me, and we talk about what they have read. Every Thought Captive has a conversational tone for much the same reason. And then, of course, there are the Basement Tapes, an unusual method of teaching through conversation. There is, however, a line to be drawn here as well. Though I have from time to time learned real and important things in my meetings with resident students, there is a line that separates teacher and student. I don’t hire students to teach me. In ETC, while we print letters to the editor, we do not give over half the magazine to the voices of those with whom we disagree. And while everyone is invited to listen to the Basement Tapes, not everyone is given a microphone. One of the bits of worldly wisdom that we are seeking to take captive, one of the strongholds we are trying to tear down is the tendency toward egalitarianism. As Lewis wisely put it, no Doberman ever had to say to a toy poodle, “I’m as much a dog as any dog.” Yet in the beginning of the twenty-first century in America, everybody’s an expert. That spirit flourishes no where more than the internet. As we have noted before, the internet makes mincemeat of the media elite, because now everyone has a platform. It is no harder to find some blogger at www.pleasewontyoulistentome.com than it is to find www.cnn.com. In many ways I’m delighted about this. Lord knows neither Fox News nor TBN are beating a path to my door. But as little as my little corner of the internet is, as small a number as come to my cyber-basement, there is still a cacophony of voices. We have too much talking, not enough learning; too much conversation, not enough education. And so we are taking steps to stop it. We are not going cold turkey, so please, nobody go postal due to RYM flashbacks. And Rick’s job is secure. Our forum will operate as it has until Monday the 22nd. After that it will function in a sort of moderated forum/letters to the editor kind of way. We still love feedback. We even like to be challenged, to be taught by thoughtful folks. But now, before we put you up on our platform, you’ll have to actually be thoughtful, at least in our judgment. We will, if we ever receive any, post thoughtful responses. We may—though I’m not promising—post thoughtful responses to thoughtful responses. In short, you’ll have to raise your hand to speak. We’re not angry, uptight, not even overly frustrated. We’re just moving a line a bit, because we think it wise. Feel free to disagree—until Monday—in as sloppy a way as you like. After Monday, you’ll have to be a bit more careful. [comments] |
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Friday, September 12, 2003 posted by R.C. 9:01 AM link |
The Mirror Crack'd It is as true ideologically as it is aesthetically. And that we miss it in both places baffles me. Whether it is your ideas or your image, any attempt to look “now” will, with the speed of light, become a look of “then.” As some wag put it, Thinking we have become men of the moment, we have become instead momentary men.” While many of us as youths daydreamed of living in a home just like the Bradys', now we’d probably rather have to dress like Johnny Bravo than live in that house. Ayn Rand was once all the rage, but most of us probably hide our copy of The Virtue of Selfishness in that corner of the shelf that the couch covers, right beside our cherished copy of Hoffman’s Steal This Book. Even knowing the names of these books, once a shibboleth for the Schaeffer quoting Christian cultural warrior, is now a sign of being hopelessly behind the times. If you want to connect with today’s youth, better to have People magazine in your back pocket than a tattered copy of On The Road or Mao’s little red book. This amorphous, but unbiblical call to be in the world but not of it touches on our own temporal ambiguity. As Christians we are indeed born into a particular time, but we are likewise in union with the Lord of time. Because what we affirm is objectively true, and beyond the whims of fashion, we affirm timeless truths. And because these truths are in organic union with the Lord of Time, we will never have enough time to plumb their depths. But that same Lord commands that we would speak the freeing, unchanging, eternal truth to those who are slaves to the times, who know no truth. Paul at Mars Hill, I’m happy to admit, made a connection. He built a bridge. But his connection was done with care. The heathen, the pagans, the infidels, while not bearing the name of the Son, nevertheless bear the image of God. The fall has shattered that image, like a mirror cracked. What Paul did was connect not with the crack, but with the mirror. They worshipped as blind fools, but they worshipped as men. Or to use Paul’s language, they worshipped the creature—but they did worship. When we seek to connect with folly, we practice the folly of hugging the tar baby. When we seek to seem down with the damned we fall into the cracks. Our calling is not to take the contemporary and clean it up a bit so that we can connect. No, our calling is to remove the temporary, to find the eternal. The only context into which we must place the gospel is this—we proclaim it in those places where men still sin. Such, though it will be in fashion for centuries to come, isn’t quite timeless, for a day is coming when we shall be all mirror, and they shall be all crack. [comments] |
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Thursday, September 11, 2003 posted by Rick 2:05 PM link |
Expectations. How could we ever approach each new thing in our lives in all its fullness, giving it all the attention it might possibly bear? Expectations help us manage the process; we make numerous assumptions about new things based on our past experiences with similar things. And we deliberately ignore many aspects of new things, having decided in the past that they can be safely ignored. Which often leaves us in the position of dismissing things that could have true and lasting value for us, if only we approached them with an open mind. This sort of closed-mindedness has its virtues. Just because there is a good thing out there doesn't oblige me to benefit from it. Even more important, the time and effort that it might take to get me to the point of benefiting might be better used elsewhere. This is the way, as an example, that I view classical music. I won't deny that classical music is probably the finest music there is. But I will argue that I have gone fifty years without even beginning a study of it, and since time grows short, the time and effort that such a study would require is better spent on other, simpler music. Expectations can definitely get in the way, though, when you decide to change your attitude about a particular thing. Until two years ago I never had any direct experience with bluegrass and old time music, but it reminded me greatly of country music of the Nashville variety, a genre I had written off early on in my music listening. And so as I began to study bluegrass and old time—not because it attracted me, but because a friend whose opinion I value recommended that I do so—there was a lot of baggage that needed to be jettisoned; I couldn't even hear the music until I could quash a gut reaction that it was simplistic, sentimental, melodramatic, ignorant, and backwards. I had a similar experience in the days before my conversion. When I first became interested in spiritual matters, I sought out a way to deal with it that deliberately did not involve a Christian church—because I viewed Christians as ignorant, credulous rubes who had nothing useful to tell me. So I went and spent a couple of years hanging out with Unitarians, who turned out to be ignorant, credulous rubes who had nothing useful to tell me. Except, of course, that Christians were the scourge of the earth. Finally I decided that if these folks disliked Christians so much, and I disliked them so much, then it was probably worth taking a second look at Christianity. Which I did, with predictable results. Still, it was very difficult to buy that copy of "Mere Christianity", and even more difficult to walk into a real church on Sunday morning, given the preconceptions I had yet to quash. Even given a proper intellectual understanding, preconceptions can inhibit you in surprising ways. I love most bluegrass now, but still struggle as I come to grips with certain vital elements, such as bluegrass gospel—I don't yet get it and don't yet know why, but I know that the problem is mine. As I've been working on my singing, one of my teachers recommended that I study closely the style of Larry Sparks. So I bought a number of his CDs and listened to them repeatedly—and though they struck me as pleasant, I couldn't figure out why my teacher considered Sparks to be a master stylist (an opinion he shares with a large part of the bluegrass audience). Finally, I took a Sparks greatest hits CD on a four hour car drive, and sang along with the songs over and over again—and light began to dawn. Perhaps the best example was Sparks' most famous song, "John Deere Tractor." For a long time I couldn't listen to the song very closely—it struck me as mawkish, telling a sob story about a country boy who couldn't make it in the city, the kind of stuff I had disliked so much in Nashville country music, using a vocal style that sounded manipulative to me. But as I sang along I was able to put that aside, and the drama of the story began to sink in—a country boy in the big city really is a sad thing! The lyrics are a letter home, in which a son, who has clearly boasted to his mother and father about how he is bound to take the city by storm, is embarrassed and ashamed to admit to them that it only took three weeks for the city to defeat him. Take the story seriously, understand the vocal conventions for what they are, and the mawkish song becomes a morality tale that will have you in tears. More and more often I have a similar experience with God's Word. As I learn from teachers like R.C. and Peter Leithart and James Jordan how to approach the Bible poetically, I find myself struggling to get past preconceived notions of how to interpret various passages. But once I can get past them, it is as if I'd been given new eyes with which to read, and the Word once again has the power it had when I first encountered it. So I highly recommend that you study the work these teachers have done on the poetic vision—R.C.'s tape series Beautiful in its Time, Peter Leithart's A House for My Name and Blessed are the Hungry, James Jordan's Through New Eyes. |
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Wednesday, September 10, 2003 posted by Rick 2:24 PM link |
Hungry yet? You might want to read through this forum thread which discusses, among other things, whether we put too much emphasis on celebration. And then you might want to take a look at some photos of our latest celebration, in honor of Sunday's baptism of Maire Belle Daugherty, daughter to Jonathan and Katie. |
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Tuesday, September 09, 2003 posted by R.C. 9:30 AM link |
The Marks of a Cult, or They’ll Know We’re a Cult By Our Love We recently completed three Basement Tapes on the marks of the church. While I’m a little unclear how things broke down, we did talk about love as the forgotten mark. For those of you unclear on church history, at the time of the Reformation it became prudent for the church to take pains to distinguish itself from the non-church. Since the advent of the parachurch movement, their work is even more valuable. The Reformers argued that for the church to be the church it must rightly preach the word, rightly administer the sacraments, and rightly exercise discipline. That was how Christians were told to recognize the church. The forgotten mark serves a different purpose. It is to show the heathen we are the church. Jesus told us that the world would know we are His by our love for one another. Saint Peter Presbyterian Church has, for some time, suffered the slings and arrows of being called a cult. The first such accusation, that I’m aware of, happened when a new member of the church mentioned to a young lady where he went to church. “That’s a cult” was her warm reply. When the gentleman asked for evidence she said, “I was at the Sprouls’ house, and R.C. asked Denise to do something, and she did it…right away.” So, apparently submissive wives is a sure sign of a cult. (Lest you think the young lady was an ordinary angry young feminist, she was in fact a professing evangelical, and a homeschool graduate.) The other accusations, sadly, haven’t come equipped with reasons. So I am left to guess. I know that Saint Peter is committed to the Westminster Standards, and that is what we preach. I know that we baptize babies, and celebrate the Lord’s Supper. While we believe in paedocommunion, we don’t practice it, because we are under the authority of a presbytery that doesn’t allow it. (So much, by the way, for a cult being defined as a group led by a single charismatic leader.) (By the way, neither Laurence, nor I, nor anyone in our presbytery, is charismatic.) And we do practice discipline, having excommunicated the one unrepentant man from our midst several years ago. So what does that leave? One member of our church posited that it is rather our love that is prove that we are a cult. Surely something must be wrong. I mean, how else can you explain a month of meals for a bed-ridden pregnant mom? How else do you explain a pig roast in celebration of a baptism (we had no kool-aid, though we did have beer)? How else to you explain taking folks into our homes and caring for them? Maybe we’re not done with that Basement Tape series after all. Perhaps we forgot the most important mark of the church. “A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” [comments] |
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Friday, September 05, 2003 posted by Rick 10:23 AM link |
Legacies. I was always a voracious reader. And for nearly twenty years, from my mid-teens to my mid-thirties, I was a studious aficionado of science fiction, focusing on writers that were part of the "new wave", an attempt to turn the genre into something competitive with mainstream literature. I also had a notion of passing on not only my reading habits but a thousand or so SF novels to my children. Instead, after faithfully moving those boxes of books from place to place, I jettisoned the complete collection about ten years ago. And now when I see one or another of my kids engrossed in a book, I am likely to consider whether or not they've been reading too much lately, and if so, I am likely to tell them to go find something else to do. Have I gone sour on reading? Not a bit. Our kids love to read, they read a lot, and I'm pleased about that. But I have had a good deal of time to think about reading, and my conclusion is that like every other good gift from God, reading can be used well or badly. At one time I thought that it was a good thing to be thoroughly knowledgable about a certain category of writing; but eventually it dawned on me that such wasn't the case if the writing was mostly without lasting value. And it is definitely the case that the defining characteristics of new wave SF were a dystopian vew of society, a studied cynicism, and an affinity for graphic sex scenes. What little good that might have been found here and there could be found more easily in other genres, without the need to sift through huges piles of dreck. So out went the books. Similarly, there is no benefit (and much danger) in reading voraciously if you haven't chosen your material carefully. Too often my goal was merely to consume an author's words, rather than to engage in thoughtful conversation with him. When such is your goal, the emptier the calories the better, and I ended up reading stacks of books whose content was designed to stick with me for about as long as it took to read through it. And so when I encounter one of our kids re-reading a favorite Boxcar Children installment for the twenty-seventh time, I tell them to put it down and go get some fresh air. All that to say something that Jonathan once said much more simply: we must view our lives as the stories that we will eventually tell our children. A family tradition can be a burden as well as a blessing. And we need to be deliberate about thinking through our emerging family traditions, pulling up by the roots those which are of no value, being careful to tend and weed the rest. Our family tradition of spending an evening gathered around the television is long gone. The tradition of being a family of readers is constantly supervised, and constantly pondered. The tradition of holding a baptismal feast is refined each time around, as we have another opportunity to think about ways to share with friends and family our joy over being blessed yet again by God. The proto-tradition of music is one that occupies a lot of our attention, as we struggle with learning how to make music a family matter rather than a solitary pursuit. And as good postmillennialists, we strive to pass along to our children just such an attitude toward tradition, in the hope that a lasting pattern will be established, one that leads to a progressively deeper and richer family life for generations yet to come. |
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Wednesday, September 03, 2003 posted by R.C. 12:56 PM link |
Death Be Not Proud As I write, the death of Paul Hill at the hands of the state of Florida is but hours away. Mr. Hill killed an abortionist, and another man providing volunteer help. I remember where I was when I first heard the news. The staff at Ligonier was gathered in the conference room on an unrelated matter. Someone reported what happened, and one lady shook her head in despair and said, “He must be crazy.” I think not. In fact, that day I argued not that what Mr. Hill did was right, but that the issue was incredibly complex, that a razor’s edge separated judgment against Mr. Hill for what he had done, and judgment against the rest of us for failing to do the same. Mr. Hill made one small slip in his reasoning, and so made the headlines that day and this. Murderers deserve to die—“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image.” The state, while content to put to death Paul Hill, failed to put to death the man Paul Hill killed. In fact, the man was on his way to murder again. The state affirms the right to use deadly force to protect life. Had a police officer shot Mr. Hill in the act of shooting, the officer would not be facing execution today. Neither would Mr. Hill, if, instead of shooting the man, he would have taken him hostage and cut off his thumbs. Which is why it is complex. Paul Hill did not justifiably kill to stop murder; he murdered to execute “justice.” Countless pundits on the pro-life side then and now wrung and wring there hands at the blow this event was to the rhetorical war over abortion. Which demonstrates that they have precious little understanding, just as those who stand behind our “pro-life” President. We’re not engaged in a rhetorical war, but a real one. And the far greater tragedy than the death of the abortionist was the deaths of 4,000 unborn children that day. And the far greater tragedy than today’s death of this husband and father of three is the death of 4,000 unborn children. Paul Hill understood that this isn’t a political issue, a parlor game, or a mere social problem. What he failed to understand was that he was doomed from the start. Even he missed the blackness of the shadow of abortion over this land. He would not, indeed could not be exonerated. Because we live in an evil land, where death is dealt by doctors and mommies four thousand times a day. And the state cheers them on. Paul Hill wrongly left his wife a widow and his children fatherless to do this grave deed. We won’t even vote for pro-life candidates. Paul Hill, because he erred in his thinking, faces execution. We won’t even think, or face the issue. He has done a great wrong. And we have done far worse. [comments] |
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Monday, September 01, 2003 posted by R.C. 2:42 PM link |
Small tests I received a gracious email nine days ago. A gentleman had heard me on the radio and was looking for some suggestions on some resources that would help him raise his small children. The Highlands Study Center, much to my chagrin, is not at this time the kind of operation where we have “people” to handle such letters. And so it sat in my in box awaiting the time when other things did not take priority. I received in my in-box a less gracious email three days ago, from the same gentleman, though this time he was less gentle. It said something like, “Please reply to my previous email.” I read that one the same day I read the third email from this person. That was two days ago. (I had been away from my office and the internet for a few days.) This one said something like, “I don’t appreciate not receiving an answer. Thanks for nothing.” Now there are few things more effective at diminishing the priority of a response than rudeness. On the other hand, there are few things that are apt to goad me into action than rudeness. Sadly, I took the low road. I did write back, quickly and hotly. I let this man know, in no uncertain terms, that hearing me on the radio did not grant him ownership on my time, and that he would in fact receive no answer from me. I sent it off, and walked away from my desk feeling wronged and victimized. Which was wrong, and the only thing I was a victim of was my own sin. One of the truths we seek to emphasize here, one that may seem ironic given our less than irenic reputation is this, that we would all be better off if we would focus on tending our own gardens. That is, it would be better for me to ask myself, “What is the godly response to rudeness?” rather than, “If this guy wants to play rude, I’ll show him rude.” That is, the best way to tend my own garden would have insured that I did not return evil for evil, and would have allowed me to be a help to his garden. I should have written something like this: Dear Brother,The devil likes us to think that as long as we are ready to go to the stake for the faith that we’re doing just fine. The truth is that the small tests are the most telling. And so I must repent. But there is joy at the end of that tether, for if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ... [comments] |