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Wednesday, December 29, 2004 posted by R.C. 6:07 AM link |
In Praise of A Great Man It is easy to overlook that which is closest to you. By God’s grace some things, and some people, just become so much a part of what you are that it seems that to praise them is to praise yourself. Humility boldly oversteps its bounds, and gratitude shuts its lips. About six months ago I wrote a brief piece noting how I had failed to communicate the depth of my appreciation for the faithful labors of my friend Rick Saenz at Draught Horse Press. In the coming ETC I take a moment to remember the faithful labors of Jonathan Daugherty. I told the congregation last Lord’s Day evening that both my greatest shock and my greatest joy has been the godliness of the people He has been pleased to send us. God in His infinite wisdom has sent us precious few starving sheep, and a cornucopia of vibrant sheep. It’s as if He is saying to us, “Here’s some hearty ones even you couldn’t kill.” But before there was a Draught Horse Press, before Jonathan was old enough to drive, before all these families moved here to make this a blessed place, there was the first family to move, the Windhams. We have not yet told this story in ETC, but tonight I write it for our website. Though we had shared classes before, the first class that I remember taking with Laurence was a Homiletics lab with Dr. Sproul the Less Handsome. I remember four things about the class. First, there was the synonym game. Dr. Sproul divided the class into two teams. Each player was given a word, and was given five seconds to name three synonyms. The more obscure the synonym, the more points you won. He would say, “Downpour” and we were to reply in rapid succession, “Gulley washer,” “Toad Strangler,” “Visit From Jupiter Pluvious.” The second thing I remember was his exercise designed to teach us to be less self-conscious in front of people. He asked us to come before the class, and imitate a piece of bacon in a skillet. Whom do you suppose he called on to be the first victim? Third, he spoke to us about what our clothes communicate, a subject I covered in a previous squib. But fourth I remember this, this rugged, handsome man whose character made you forget what a rugged, handsome man he was. Laurence was an earnest fundamentalist, but one earnest enough to immediately impress me. Soon he began working at Ligonier, and there we became friends. We hung out together before we had even met our respective wives. As I grew closer to Denise I grew closer to Laurence as well, telling people, “Denise is my woman, but Laurence is my man.” Our friendship deepened such that one day, after we had both married, I said to him, “Laurence, we each have our own responsibilities. We each have our own dreams. But if it should please God, I pray that we will be able to pursue them together.” Laurence worked in the warehouse at Ligonier Ministries. One day in the course of his labors, he came across an old banner, complete with 70’s colors and fonts that said, “Ligonier Valley Study Center.” Familiar with my own nostalgic bent, he hung that banner in my office one day while I was out of town. When I returned and found it, I laughed, and left it there. A week or two later, I looked up at that banner, and thought, “I’ll go back and start it all over again.” That night I called Laurence, asked him to come over to my house, and we began our discussions about what would become the Highlands Study Center. In the providence of God, I sold my house in Orlando the same day Laurence signed a one-year lease on a house in Orlando. We came here without Laurence and Angela. But we knew they were coming, and so we pressed on. Likewise in the providence of God, Saint Peter Presbyterian Church didn’t really begin to grow until we made the decision that Laurence would become the senior pastor, and I would be the Associate Pastor of Teaching. In the providence of God, we are the mirror image of each other. He is tall and handsome. I am short and, uh, handsome. He is a wise man and a fine teacher who can relate to people. I have a few friends, and think a lot. I could go on and list his fine qualities, but such would end the squib and begin the book. The key thing is this—Laurence is a man who loves Jesus, and who knows that Jesus loves him. That’s why I admire him. That’s why I listen to him. That’s why I thank God for him. [comments] |
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Saturday, December 25, 2004 posted by R.C. 11:09 PM link |
Blog Humbug Redux There has rightly been much rejoicing of late regarding our emancipation from the media elite. Time was that technology provided a vehicle to reach great numbers of people, but that technology was available to precious few people. Unless you owned one of the big three networks, your message was doomed to a limited audience. Unless you owned the New York Times or the Associated Press, your wisdom would be of necessity relegated to the backwaters. The computer has changed all that, and now tiny little nobodies like me can labor away in their basements and crank out magazines. Tinier still, teenagers in their bedrooms can blog their way into the consciousness of thousands. Two cheers. Back in the olden days you could reach no one until you could reach everyone. Now you can string together referrals, citations and a loyal following such that hundreds if not thousands read your wisdom bombs every day. That, after all, is how you found this. It would be worth celebrating, were it true that the several hundred people who read this were as shaped by what they read here as the several million people were that used to read The Saturday Evening Post. Trouble is, apples to apples this ain’t. That is, not only are our numbers smaller, which we’re willing to accept, because they’re so much bigger than they could have been in the days of the oligarchy, but the impact per person is asymptotically approaching zero. If those who read my squibs read me in the same way that I read the blogs of others, then the spirit of Mars Hill is alive and well. When I decide to invest some time in skimming the blogs I read, I am not typically going in search of wisdom. Rather I am looking to see what the scuttlebutt is all about. And I read some wise folks, my friends Valerie (kyriosity.com) and Carmon (buriedtreasure.com), and Dougs Phillips and Wilson. I check out the relevant crowd, and the catholic crowd from time to time as well, looking not for wisdom, but to be entertained. I read the politics over at Polemics, and my favorite ideologue who makes me look like a pussycat, Brett over at Acid Ink. But the sad truth is that I’m disposably reading disposable thoughts, just I am now disposably writing disposable thoughts. Books change people’s lives. Blogs change people’s moments. One of my favorite squibs I ever wrote touched briefly on that perennial fodder for blogs, Auburn Avenue. It was called “Adoption, Perseverance, and the Objectivity of the Covenant”. There I had the opportunity to praise a family that is now a part of our church, a family that doesn’t even have access to the internet. Rather than contend for the faith in the cyberworld, they live the faith in the real world, raising two outstanding young men that they adopted. As fine a piece of writing as it was, it was such only because it pointed to fine living. In like manner, today the best wisdom I can give you is this—turn off the computer, go find one of your children, look them in the eye and tell them that you will love them forever, no matter what. I am not signing off. I am not going Garver, though the fact that I know what that means suggests that maybe I should. I’m just reminding me, and perhaps a few dozen of my friends, that real life is real. If I can get us to believe it, then maybe all this isn’t in vain. [comments] |
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Saturday, December 18, 2004 posted by R.C. 4:07 PM link |
And here is the more... Our apologies for any inconvenience we may have caused you. We have been less than deliberate, and planned our conference for the one weekend in the spring when there won’t be a hotel room to be had within a two-hour radius, the weekend of the spring race at the Bristol Motor Speedway. As such we have rescheduled our conference two weeks later, April 15–16. Our speakers, themes, times, costs, etc. will stay the same. I’m guessing we won’t let this happen again. Soon we will have the pdf version up here. Read through it, plan to come, but remember the correct date. Visit this page for conference details. |
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Wednesday, December 15, 2004 posted by R.C. 10:13 PM link |
Clothes Make the Boy I wrote about my own personal Waterloo in my book Tearing Down Strongholds. But since I come out looking like the fool that I am, the story bears repeating. When I was fifteen I began attending Wichita Collegiate School, a private prep school in Kansas. My family still lived in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. This was one of those decisions where you choose the hard thing because you figure it’s better for you. I responded to the challenge of being several states away from home by turning into a sophomoric cliché. I dressed in black. I spent my spare time singing loud and flat while listening to Pink Floyd on my headphones. I wrote morbid poetry, and adopted the pose of the angry young man. The first time my father came to visit me he asked right off, “What are you angry about?” I don’t remember much about that conversation, but it was peaceful. The next time I saw my father, however, was back home over the holidays. He and my mother met me at the airport, and he was less than warm. As he harrumphed into the front seat of the family car he said to my mother through clenched teeth, “We’ll have to find a barber shop on the way home.” We drove down the parkway in Pittsburgh as my dad alternately communicated his anger by punching the gas, and meandering down the road while plotting his big speech. Finally he let loose. He told me that he knew that I had grown my hair as a self-conscious personal assault on my father, that I wanted to hurt him. Here’s the first embarrassing part. I told him that my goal wasn’t at all to hurt him in any way. I grew my hair, I explained, simply because I didn’t want to look like the cookie-cutter Midwestern bland boys I was stuck with. He conceded that maybe I believed that, but he was reserving judgment about my subconscious. He then more graciously went on to explain to me that when people looked at me they would see a drug abuser, a hippie, someone whose ethics were rather looser than mine. Here is where all that wisdom I had accumulated came in. “Oh Dad,” I gently explained, “don’t you see that if people are going to judge me because of the length of my hair, that that is their problem? Why should I concern myself with such judgmental people?” Here is the Waterloo part. “Son,” my dad reasoned, “I thought you just told me that you grew your hair because you wanted people to make some judgment about you.” It took less than a second to realize that I had just been logically checkmated. “Any barber will do” I replied. The Christian world is full of young ladies dressed like tramps who then blame those sinful men that make an issue of their clothing. But I’m not writing to decry the immodesty of today’s Christian women. I’m writing to decry the immaturity of today’s Christian boys. Why is it that every time I see an 18–25 year old male in the church he is wearing t-shirts, and jeans, tennis shoes and baseball caps? Stranger still is that these young “men” grumble that they can’t earn a decent living, or that young ladies won’t take them seriously. They dress like slackers, and then complain like slackers, instead of changing. Has the world run out of khaki? What we wear speaks of who we are. Only a fool complains when others hear what they are saying. May our young ladies grow more modest, and may our young men grow up. [comments] |
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Friday, December 10, 2004 posted by R.C. 8:08 AM link |
His Ways It was rather a coup that the public relations department of the enlightenment succeeded in getting itself called the enlightenment. This mechanistic view of the universe brought forth wonders like cars and computers, and all it cost us was our sight and our souls. Few places manifest this more than in our prayer lives. Here we not only insult God by looking at His creation as if it were some sort of machine, at our prayers as if they were some sort of requisitioning machine, but we likewise make Him out to be a machine, to be as blind as we are. We begin by praying for something. Then, like the child that ordered x-ray glasses from the back of a comic book, we confront the mailman every day to see if our prize has arrived. “Lord, make Denise well.” And then we hold our breath until some enlightenment priest in a lab coat announces that she is well. We recognize that sometimes God’s will is wiser than ours, that there are things we ask for that we ought not to have. We can keep checking the mail, but eventually the non-response becomes a clear “no.” God, however, is no celestial engineer. He not only answers prayers, but answers them in ways that won’t fit in our mailboxes. It is a regular part of the liturgy at Saint Peter Presbyterian Church that we pray, “Deliver us from hardness of heart.” That’s a good thing to pray for, one that we ought to pray for until the answer reaches its culmination in our death. But He won’t do it by sending a UPS man with a box full of heart softening pills. I’m just back from visiting my friend Earl Starbuck in the hospital. Earl has renal cancer, and the doctors suggest that he will be with us for 8 to 18 more months. Earl and his beloved wife Sue have a little boy Jake. Earl is a stout-hearted Calvinist, a member in good standing at the local Orthodox Presbyterian Church. His elders, and the other sheep of that flock, no doubt are praying for Earl and his family. The elders and the sheep at Saint Peter church are likewise praying for the family. Together we are praying that God would be pleased to heal Earl, to ensure that his wife will not be widowed, his son left without a father. We’re asking God to send this cancer into oblivion. Earl and I share a deep commitment to, and an existential understanding of the sovereignty of God. We know that God not only can relieve this hardship if it is His will, but that He sent it in the first place. As I walked out of the hospital, though, my heart heavy, it dawned on me that this hardship that I’m asking God to take away, may well be the answer He sent to something else we asked for. My own heart is softened. The same is true of all of Earl’s friends. And so God is answering our prayers. [comments] |
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Tuesday, December 07, 2004 posted by R.C. 5:04 PM link |
Aim Small, Hit Small Like separate, the word “agrarian” needlessly freaks people out. To espouse an agrarian worldview suggests in the minds of most adopting the practices, and the relative isolation of the Amish. Funny hats and no zippers make Jack a dull boy after all. Many of us are uncomfortable around dirt, around animals, and worse, around sweat. Citizens of this cubicle nation may not be at peace, but they know one thing for certain, green acres is not the place to be. Much of this is evidence that people don’t understand even the most basic tenets of the agrarian view. It’s not about farms versus factories, nor is it even country versus city per se. Indeed one of the most astute prophets of the agrarian view was that city-dwelling, upper-crust Brit, G.K. Chesterton. He didn’t, of course, call his vision agrarianism. He called it distributivism. (Read The Napolean of Notting Hill for a delightful fictional account of this worldview in action.) But the fundamental principle is the same—close is better than far, and small is better than big. Think locally, act locally. My own life brings shame to my own ideals. While I am building a home on ten acres of farm land, I am not building the house. It was built in a factory several hours away. (It is a modular home.) My own attempts to keep chickens have been as macabre as they are entertaining. I fly often and far enough away that I get special perks every time I fly. Indeed, the lady at the check-in counter knows my name. That I fail my ideals, to twist a bit of Chestertonian wisdom, doesn’t mean that my ideals have failed. It simply means that they are better than I am. Two events in the past twenty-four hours brought forth the very delight that small and close can bring. I’m sure, had I so desired, I could have driven to Knoxville or Charlotte last night, and seen someone perform that you would have heard of. I certainly could have traipsed off to the movie theater and seen the latest scenes from Hollywood. I would have, in either case, had some minute point of contact with all those who watched with me. But that’s not what I did. Last night I visited the local coffee shop, Java J’s, owned by a local homeschooling family. There, playing their music up on stage, was the Ridgewood Boys. I suspect that it was an unpayed gig, though it was rather professionally done. Rick, the older of the two boys, sang well and earnestly while playing the stand-up bass. Chris, the younger of the two boys, added his voice and played alternately the banjo and the guitar. I was able to bring all six of my children along, and while I was there, got to visit with the eight to ten families from Saint Peter Church that showed up that night. The Ridgewood Boys are Rick Saenz and his son Chris, likewise members at Saint Peter. This morning the presentation wasn’t quite as professional. The venue was a local home for the aged. The musicians were too numerous to list, though they all take piano lessons from Mrs. Hall. About half of them, and again, half the audience, are members of Saint Peter Church. Children I have baptized played. Buddy French sat in front of me, his sister one of the players, his father our family dentist. Two children belonging to our family doctor played as well. So did one of the pastor’s children, my daughter Darby. I could have been home watching professional athletes, several states away, doing their thing. But instead I got to see Zach and Grace and Grace, and their parents, and so many more. Lest you think we’re too isolated, remember that you can stay small, and still have big hearts. The key is to bring far near. That’s why in our small circles we had Haitians and Chinese, Russians and Indonesians, and even a few American born Scots. I’d venture to guess that last night and this morning we had the most ethnically diverse bluegrass concert and piano recital on the planet. And lest you think all this is the work of Saint Peter church, none of it is. We sponsored none of these events. Neither are we putting on the Christmas pageant tonight out in Mendota, Virginia, population 500. But there we will be, nevertheless. None of those who play and act, I trust, will make the big time. Neither, I trust, will any of those who watched and listened. But each will appreciate, and love the others. And that will get noticed, where it counts. [comments] |
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Thursday, December 02, 2004 posted by R.C. 7:21 PM link |
A Man, A Plan Never let a visionary be in charge of your marketing. Were my friend and partner Laurence Windham (who will be speaking there as well) to title our conference for April it might be something like, “The Greatest Conference of All Time, No, Better Than a Mere Conference, Better Than Sliced Bread, The Best Possible Thing You Could Be Doing at that Time.” Were I to give it a title it might read, “Well, No One Will Come, But Here’s What We’ll Talk About…” My friend Jay Grimstead suffers from Laurence’s weakness rather than mine. So when he called and asked me to speak at the “Western Hemisphere Consultation on Theology” I accepted despite my reservations about the title. Isn’t that a little grand for thirty guys meeting in a back room at Coral Ridge Church? Jay’s endearing big eyes likewise titled my talks. I was asked to speak on Strategies for the 21st Century. Strategies for what you might ask? Only to manifest the reign of Christ over all things. Whatever God’s plan is, I doubt that when the century ends the history books will point to my talk as laying out that strategy. I like to think of myself as a good guest. On those occasions where I am invited to speak at a Baptist church, I don’t sneak in arguments in favor of paedobaptism. I don’t, when addressing classical schoolers, give my time to persuading these good folks to tear down their schools and bring their children back home. Nevertheless, this time I failed. While I admired the zeal that created that title, I couldn’t help but take the opportunity to preach against my title. I started out playing along. I conceded how horribly we are doing in making visible the reign of Christ. I, in line with my pessimistic approach, covered our failures. Then I began to speak in the most vague terms of the opportunities that were before us. I spoke broadly of our power in Christ, that we are more than conquerors. I began to wax poetic over the prospects for change, that we really could remake the world, if we would just all get behind the right, sound, effective strategy. The strategy I would lay down not only could change the future, but had shaped our past. I had them all on the edge of their seats. “Okay,” I said, as my time drew to a close, “here’s what we need to do. Each of us, along with all those whom we can influence, our families, our churches, our friends, each of us together, in order to change the world, what we all have to do is to leave this building, go out there into the very heart of the world, …and die.” Jesus, the second Adam, is fulfilling the dominion mandate. He has made us, His bride, to be a helper fitting for that calling. But as His bride we fulfill that role not by having power meetings with power point programs designed to show our power to change the world, but by obeying. His goal is world conquest. His strategy is simple, pick up our cross, and die to self. This, and no other way, is how we change the world. The next time some think tank guru, or culture wonk lays out his grand scheme, tell him to drop dead. [comments] |