See what the digital life can get you, if you’re not careful. I knew a lady that was kind of like this, only she died before I think there was Ebay, and a good thing too, because she already had like forty years of newspapers and magazines saved. But she had nothing on this house.

I am going to commit a great injustice and neglect to tell you where I got the link for this site from, as it might reflect poorly on me.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the ELCA voted down both of their pro-gay proposals. A brief hesitation in their slouch to Gommorah. But the fact that such things even reached the floor, let alone garnered the support of largish minorities, says plenty about the state of the church. I simply do not understand why all the pro-gay proponents don’t just go off and join a like-minded denomination such as the UCC, instead of constantly causing schism and turmoil in their own denominations. Actually I’m pretty sure I do understand it. It’s the same reason that they’ve progressed from not enforcing anti-sodomy laws, to “tolerance” movements, to anti-hate crime laws, to positive instruction on the gay lifestyle in our schools. They do not want simple tolerance. They won’t be happy until every voice raised against them is silenced. But the voice they most want to silence of course never will be silenced. Their conscience, the voice of God’s image within them, will continue to accuse and condemn them for their wickedness, and it doesn’t matter how many denominations they wreck.

They always deny the slippery slope, but any denomination that ordains women to church office soon finds itself with no language to condemn any immorality. Having walked away from the authority of the Bible, we are left only with our own feelings and the popular consensus of the day. Those ELCA members who voted against the pro-gay movement ought to do some soul-searching about the “yes” votes they’ve cast in the past that allowed these abominations to gain such prominence in their churches.

We had good services today. It was cooler, for one thing, and I know it makes me terribly superficial to say that such a thing matters to the quality of the worship of God. But let’s just be real for a moment, and recognize the fact that the enjoyment of the service declines somewhat when one is busily fighting off heat stroke. I was rather ill for about a week and a half after my trip, and while the first Sunday was really just a blur of agony (mostly for my congregation, watching me struggle through a service the color and consistency of Mozzarella cheese, standing in a warm puddle of my own bodily fluids), the second Sunday I had mended enough to notice the ridiculous temperature. It was about ninety eight degrees, hot enough for me to swallow my pride and remove my suit coat. The second service that I preside over starts at about 12:30, so we really hit the peak right about ten minutes into the sermon. I don’t really notice the heat much once the sermon starts. But there’s a point about halfway through the preparatory Scripture reading when I feel like a small squirrel has made a burrow between my shoulder blades, and when it’s hot like that it makes the squirrel bad-tempered.

I’d like to tell myself that the congregation doesn’t notice the heat much once the sermon starts. But I’d like to tell myself a lot of things. The heart of man is deceitful above all things.

So when the temperature never broke 75 today, it made for a much more pleasant service, I thought. And the moisture puts the ranchers in a good mood too, so there’s another plus. The fair went well, I’m told, beef is still high, so all is well in agriculture-land for the time being.

Andrew is thinking about the image of God, and the implications of denying that image on our treatment of ourselves and others.

Of course, we could always be selfishly arbitrary and declare man’s right to peaceful existence simply because we are men, and it is to our personal advantage, but there is no transcendent basis for the claim. If man is not the very image of the transcendent Being Himself, then why, praytell, should I treat my fellow man with dignity? Why should I not malign and mistreat him as I see fit?

History bears him out. Christian nations have of course committed their crimes, but they are nothing compared to the crimes of nations who deny that concept. I know that there are those who will try to pin the Nazis on the Christians, but I just don’t have time to educate everyone, if they can’t bother to educate themselves.

I have uploaded four new sermons to the church website. These four sermons are the last sermons on my series in Genesis. The link is on the sidebar.

I had jury duty today. I ended up getting released quite soon, along with the rest of the pool, because of a technicality in the case which forced a delay.

But I had some time to think about it while I waited around. Most people there, and even the bailiff, talked about it as if it were an inconvenience that had to be put up with. We watched the tape that described jury duty, and they had a lot to say about civic duty and safeguarding our democracy and the like, but most people just regarded it as hokey propaganda.

But without getting into the specifics of the right of trial by jury, it got me thinking about the general lack of a sense of civic duty in this country. It seems that few people make decisions based on how it affects the rest of society, and just think of the inconvenience to them. But for our society to function as constituted, it is necessary for the populace to be civic minded. How can we recover this sense of civic pride?

In the Philippines, when I would ask questions of the locals about the state of local politics, I heard the sentiment more than once, “The Philippines needs a dictatorship.” There are more than a few there who pine for the days of Ferdinand Marcos, when at least, they say, they had discipline. This is another way of saying that the average Filipino lacks a sense of civic pride, civic duty. They feel a great deal of loyalty and responsibility to their family and close friends, often going far out of their way to help each other. But this sense of responsibility does not often seem to extend to the society or nation as a whole (please correct me if I’m wrong, any of my new Filipino friends).

But America was built on such a sense of civic duty. And something such as jury duty ought to be regarded as a privilege, an opportunity to participate in our wonderful system. Instead we regard it as an inconvenience, and try to get out of it. Or all too often, when we do serve, we view it as an opportunity to assert those selfish priorities and “stick it to the man”, awarding ridiculous and outrageous awards to the “little guy” at the expense of some corporation, with no regard for the damage that this does to the society as a whole. Instead, too many of us relish the vicarious pleasure of helping some individual reap a huge windfall at the expense of a faceless public, indicating what we ourselves would do if given the chance.

When every individual is thinking about how he can benefit at the expense of the society as a whole, it is the end of democracy. Democracy only works when those participating are willing to look beyond their narrow interests and realize that their welfare as individuals depends on the welfare of the whole society. And taking a little time off to help the jury system function is a small price to pay to live in a country where we are guaranteed a trial by a jury of our peers.

I guess there’s a trend out there to change the marriage vow from “As long as we both shall live” to “As long as our love shall last”. Which is yet more justification for my decision to never perform a wedding for anyone who insists on writing their own vows.

Good article on the subject from Imago Dei.

Hm… maybe I’ve started blogging again.

I believe I’ve talked about this before, but I doubt anyone would think I exactly exhausted the subject. And besides, my recent trip gave me much opportunity to think about worship. I have discovered that I frequently have my most interesting insights on a given topic while I am talking to someone aobut the topic. And in the Philippines, I had much opportunity to talk about worship and the Reformed view of worship, and hence, much time to think about it.

Many of us traditionalists feel there is something off-putting, something vaguely profane, about contemporary worship modes. Personally, I tend to feel soiled after such a service, like if I watch a movie with content I shouldn’t be watching. In such a movie, there are certain images, certain themes, which may get left in my head and pop back in and cause me trouble for years. Likewise, in such a worship service, I am treated to certain theological images and themes, which, while very seductive to the human soul, can be far more damaging even than images of a more carnal nature.

In both kinds of worship, there is always a worship leader. And the difference between the two services can be perhaps best be characterized by the difference in what this worship leader does.

In one kind of worship, the worship leader, who is usually the pastor, along with whatever instruments / choirs / whatever are supporting him, help the congregation through song, readings, confession and prayer verbally express their praise for Jehovah. Modeled after the Psalms, this will be on two topics- who God is, and what He has done. This can and should be a very emotional experience, but the emotion of it will always be the result of the truths expressed.

In the other kind of worship, the worship leader, who is usually someone younger and more attractive than the pastor, along with whatever bands or singers are supporting him or her, directly create an emotional state with the audience through performing arts which, since Jesus’ name is associated with what is being done, is called worship. And so, though they say they’re doing the same thing, helping the audience worship, what they mean by that is very different- by ‘worshiping’, what they mean is, achieving a certain emotional state.

I would assert that the first mode is real worship, and the second, manifestly, is not.

Worship is the human being’s highest function. We were created to glorify God, as was all else that was made. To glorify God is to reveal who He is. God is so great and so good that to talk about who He is and what He has done is inherently to praise Him. Worship then must be focused on who God is and what He has done, as the Psalmist tells us- Praise Him for His mighty acts! Praise Him according to His excellent greatness (Psalm 150:2)!

But contemporary worship, insofar as there is any content in it at all, focuses primarily on how I feel about God. It is not praising God to say how much I love Him. In fact, it may just be praising me. Certainly, when I talk about how much I love God in response to the truth of who He is and what He has done, then that can truly be praise and worship. But an emotional state is not worship. Worship is glorifying God.

And the style of music is not irrelevant either. A style of music which is performace-oriented, directs attention to the stage and the performers, and is of a level of volume and production as to make it fairly irrelevant whether anyone in the congregation is singing or not, is not a worshipful style of music. It has nothing to do with what instruments are used or when the song was written. It has everything to do with what you think you’re doing when you worship, and whether your music supports that purpose or detracts from it.

Hopefully, you now understand why a contemporary worship service makes me feel vaguely unclean. It’s kind of like watching a dirty movie to me. Images are shown and themes are expressed which are perversions of very important truths. And those images and themes are very seductive, because they play right to the heart of what makes us sinners- the desire to have a self-centered worship and a self-centered life. They take things which of themselves are beautiful, and twist them to serve man’s selfish ends. And sometimes those images are hard to get out of your head.

In writing this, I’ve recalled some other blog posts on the topic which are quite appropriate as well: Here’s one from an anonymous Reformed blogger, and I can’t find the others that I’m thinking of, at least not without spending more time than I spent writing my own article which seems kind of silly to do.

For those that are concerned, my health is much better today. I almost certainly did not have malaria; just a bad flu bug as I expected. I haven’t actually got the results of the test back yet, but since I feel so much better, it seems unlikely. I still have a nasty cough; otherwise, much much improved.

I thought since I said some kind of negative things about the Philippines, in all fairness I should point out some of the good points.

The people were very friendly and hospitable. People that had no connection to the work we were doing and didn’t know me at all were inviting my family out to stay with them next time. One gentleman, Raul, who was the brother-in-law of the other pastor I went with, tried to take us to some fantastic resorts in the Philippines, that never worked out because of our busy schedule. And the mother-in-law of one of the Filipino pastors told me that anytime I was in the Philippines, I HAD to come see her.

Also, the food was amazing. It’s a little hard to get very good seafood in Colorado, but the seafood there was probably the best I ever had. Lots of different kinds of fish, crab, clams and other stuff.

Speaking of the food, there is one dish I wouldn’t try- Balut. It’s a duck egg, and they eat it after the duck has partially formed inside the egg. I’m brave, but not that brave.