I see a note on Fox News regarding the closure of services on Christmas in many churches.

I hold Calvin’s position, which I would also say is the Bible’s position (elucidated in Col. 2:16-17 and Romans 14:5-6, and other places), that no day is religiously different than any other. We cancel services occasionally in a small church like mine for various reasons, including the services this last Sunday because power was out due to a storm. I don’t really see why, if most of your congregation is going to be gone from church for family reasons, it would be of itself sinful to cancel services. Unwise perhaps, but not sinful. We would never say that an individual family is sinning by being gone one Sunday because of travel. So if the church collectively makes that same decision when a large majority of the church is traveling, why is that different?

It seems to me to say otherwise is to run the risk of falling into a ceremonial view of the Lord’s day. I believe the appointment of Sunday, one day in seven, for worship is an ordinance of the church for the purposes of good order. I believe that the individual believer has a duty to support the church, to be present for the stated meetings of the church, and not to neglect public worship. The individual believer is also to submit to the ordinances of the church. But to make a day like Christmas into a “holy day”, or to make the first day of the week a “holy day” and then judge others for observing that day differently, I believe is to fall afoul of Paul’s instruction to us in Colossians 2:16-17:

16 Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day–
17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.

UPDATE: I want to make it clear what I’m not saying. Some of those canceling their services are quoted saying things like “you don’t have to be at church to worship” which, while true in one sense, serves to denigrate the importance of the public worship service. That is not my position at all. The Sunday services are of great importance and should be regarded as such by every believer.

My point is that canceling services on Christmas for valid reasons should be regarded as religiously no different as canceling services on any other day for equally valid reasons.

Amazon thinks, apparently on the strength of my wish list and books that I have purchased from them, that I should by Jim Berg’s book, _Changed Into His Image_. I actually already have it, but haven’t read it yet. Has anyone else? What do you think about it? Is Amazon right?

Update: Never mind. Now I remember that I bought Jim Berg’s other book, _Created for His Glory_, but haven’t read it yet. That’s why they’re recommending his other book.

But I’d still be interested in anyone’s opinion, if you’ve read it.

Here’s the list.

If you’re wondering whether or not this applies to you, it probably doesn’t. If you’re not sure, but would like it to apply to you, it does.

Just so everyone knows, some of these books are there because I am very interested in what they have to say, and some are there because I need to find out just exactly why they’re so bad. I’m not going to tell you which is which.

This week’s sermon post is from Acts 21, entitled “The Guidance of the Holy Spirit”. It shows how Paul was guided by the Spirit, how it is possible to be wrong in our interpretation of the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and how to be accurate in our assessment of what we think the Holy Spirit is telling us. As always, the link is on the sidebar, or click here.

I heard an absolutely terrible story on BBC yesterday, on their show “The World”.

Here’s the audio, though I have not found a transcript. It was an obvious attack on the Bush administration, giving all but the last twelve seconds or so of the story to “9-11 Commission” and their harangue of the Bush administration. The 9-11 Commission, which has been disbanded as a government entity but which continued on in a private capacity, thinks that the government has completely failed to protect us from terrorist attacks, giving them D’s and F’s in a variety of different aspects of the analysis.

But- and I know this might be a little too “reality-based” for some- there haven’t been any attacks.

Apparently we’ve just been lucky. Apparently Al-Qaeda (invigorated, we’re told, by the war in Iraq) just doesn’t want to attack us here anymore, preferring to attack our servicemen and women, but not our civilians. Apparently they do want to kill Spanish civilians, and Indonesian civilians, and Iraqi civilians, and British civilians, but not American civilians, for some reason. I am sure it simply isn’t possible that the reason we haven’t had a terrorist attack on our home territory since 2001 has nothing at all to do with the government’s efforts.

They quoted Daniel Benjamin, a terrorism analyst from The Center for Strategic and International Studies saying that “the White House believes its own rhetoric” that if we fight the terrorists abroad we won’t have to fight them here. First, I would question whether that is, in fact, their rhetoric, precisely. But it certainly has been the idea that taking the fight to them would decrease their ability to attack us here. And more importantly, would they prefer that the Bush administration was lying when they laid out their strategy? Would they prefer the White House’s policies to be just rhetoric, that had no actual bearing on their real positions and policies?

This so-called analyst even talked about the clear evidence that Al-Qaeda would like to attack us again, without any talk at all about why they have so obviously failed to do so.

The only quote given to the other side, in a story almost four minutes long, was from Dan Bartlett, White House spokesman, pointing out that there hadn’t been an attack in four years. But even that paraphrase was devoid of any analysis and was not allowed to stand on its own strength. They also quoted him saying that we can’t rest on our laurels.

It seems clear to me that we aren’t.

Interestingly, I originally was writing this piece thinking it was an NPR piece. I went and listened to the NPR story from “All Things Considered”. While still basically accepting uncritically this commission’s statements (remember, it’s bipartisan), it was a good deal more fair than the Beeb’s pathetic excuse for journalism.

I am preaching a three-part series on the gospel, taken from Paul’s address to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. The first two parts, on repentance and on faith, are posted. The link is on the sidebar.

Worries about money are very common, both in my own personal experience and in what I run into as a pastor.

Sometimes when we worry about money, we say things like, “we trust God to give us enough to live on”, and “God has given us lots of other good things”. And those are good and true sentiments. But we often seem to overlook the possibility that God is actively sanctifying us by withholding money.

We often seem to think that unlimited financial resources would be a good thing, but a look at the lives of the rich and famous should dispel that notion. Are they really just much more immoral people than anyone else? I don’t think so. I just think they’re a good example of what happens to people when the normal restraints are taken away.

God has all the resources in the world. He could make us as rich as He wanted to. And he’s our loving heavenly father, who would never withhold anything from us, according to Romans 8:32. Therefore, any money that we do not have must be actively being withheld from us by God, in order to work in us precisely what God wants to work in us.

So when we consider our financial hardships, or in fact any other kind of hardship, we ought not simply to say, “well, God’s blessing me in other ways.” Instead we ought to realize that God is blessing us with the hardship itself.

Nothing on this earth ultimately matters. Only the relationship with God ultimately matters. This is the only thing of eternal significance. And so, Christ tells us to use the mammon of unrighteousness for eternal benefit. That is, we ought to pray for guidance and understanding to see how God is working an eternal benefit in us through our present financial circumstances.

The Lord is not slack concerning His promises. If there’s something we think we need or want, there’s a reason why we don’t have it, and it’s because we have an eternal father who loves us who has planned our lives for maximum benefit. For the goal that God has for us, every aspect of our lives is exactly what it ought to be.

Let’s all remember that, as we remember to be thankful this Thanksgiving. We ought to be thankful not only for the obvious good things in our life, but for every single thing we have. The challenges and hardships will be a better thing for us in the long run, than the riches and easy pleasures of this life.

Instapundit apparently thinks that this is clever. It’s not.

It’s a parody site, called “God Hates Shrimp”, and the point is, if we’re against gay marriage, we ought to be against shrimp too. There’s an “About” link that explains their position, and engages in some seriously sad Biblical exegesis.

When confronted with the different nature of the Old Testament’s statements about prohibitions, some of which are ceremonial in nature and some of which are moral in nature, their response is “so what?”

Oh, right. I’d forgotten about that. Good point.

And when confronted with Paul’s statements about homosexuality their first point is “Paul’s not God.”

Again, a stinging rebuttal.

They trot out this old canard about loving, committed homosexual relationships were virtually unknown in that day, to which I’d respond, they are virtually unknown in our day too. And Paul’s statements regarding homosexuality do not specifically address one who practices homosexuality promiscuously, but simply one who practices it at all. To say that he was referring to promiscuity is an attempt to read his mind, to determine what he must have meant, instead of what he actually said. He talks about promiscuity plenty, but in Romans 1:26-27, he’s making the emphatic case for what happens to people when they reject the knowledge of God, and homosexuality is apparently his worst-case scenario for moral degradation as the result of abandoning the truth of God.

The centrality of male-female monogamous relationships in society is not “cherry-picking” one or two verses here and there. It is the uniform witness of Scripture. If you don’t believe the Bible (which Instapundit doesn’t, and which I would think it’s clear the “God Hates Shrimp” proprietors don’t either), then just say that. But you can’t accuse us of hypocrisy simply because we don’t share your unbelief.

Katie (age 3), watching me play Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4:

“Daddy, I don’t think you’re skating right.”

“Daddy, that sounded like it hurt.”

“Daddy, maybe you should be more careful.”

“Oooh.”

“Daddy, maybe you should play Halo.”

So Congress has dropped the provision to drill in ANWR, and is complaining about oil company profits.

Oil company profits are high because supply has been greatly constricted, and demand has increased. No nefariousness on the part of oil companies need be assumed. It’s simple economics. Supply has been constricted by environmentalists, by Middle East oil cartels, and by the high cost of entry.

People tell us we ought not be dependent on Middle East oil supplies. Agreed. But how do we change that? We must either reduce demand, or increase other supplies, of energy broadly understood, not just oil.

Reduction of energy demand is simply not feasible. It’s never been done to any great degree, and short of eliminating a large part of the world’s population, it’s never going to be done. Shifting energy demand from oil to other alternative energy sources is a nice idea and something we ought to pursue. But only one thing is going to drive that shift, and that’s a profit motive.

Congress is now seeing to it that supply of oil will not increase, which will only increase the profits of the oil companies by further raising the cost of entering the market. And so Congress must also see to the next level of socialization, which is to confiscate those profits.

Not only are high profits the motive for other companies to enter the market (if Joe down the street is making fat bank on his lemonade stand, that encourages me to open my own lemonade stand and undercut his price a little, thus taking away some of his business and lowering the price), in a high tech arena like this it is also the means to explore alternate fuels. New, experimental technologies are always very costly and very risky; a great deal of seed money is necessary to make these things happen.

So they’ve taken away the possibility of increasing supply, and they’ve also taken away any motivation to shift to alternate fuels as well as the profits that would be necessary to fund such research. That is, Congress is doing everything it can to ensure that we continue to be dependent on the Middle East, and that every time I fill up gas, I’m supporting a terrorist. Thanks a bunch, Congress.

As this process continues, there will be increasing pressure for government to take over more aspects of this process that they’ve broken. And so there will be cries for more government funding for alternative fuels (already happening), and government regulation of pricing (happening to some extent), and eventually government control over the energy companies (on the way to happening). We really ought to just save ourselves a lot of time, become socialist, have our economy collapse, have some civil wars, kill off half the population, revolt against our government, enter a global dark age, learn our lesson, and emerge with a little bit more wisdom about the efficiencies of a free market. With any luck, we can get it overwith before my kids have to enter the workforce.

Or, the electorate of our country can just stop electing these idiots to Congress, and pick someone who has so much as cracked an economics book before we send them to Washington to lecture us about economic behavior.

Frankly, I’m not that hopeful.

UPDATE! See, I told you so.