How to Avoid Spiritual Suicide

by F. X. Turk

This is going to be the last post of my summer vacation from hiatus, and it was originally going to be on the topic of how the family has been redefined, given the state of current events.  However, let me say that the most enjoyable part of taking a summer vacation from hiatus is the feedback from the readers, on and off line.

The down-side of that is that many of the wrong sort of readers also feel like they need to let me know they are still at it.  However, that down-side helps me remember why I am on permanent hiatus in the first place: Jesus never called us to be virtual slaves to people who are more interested in arguments than truth, but he did call us to be members of the body of Christ, which involves being in real relationships with real people and finding out that our theology is only as good as the love it can create in all situations from the worst of sins to the hardest of life's trials to the joyful moments when God's blessings are evident.

To that end, I have a few words until we meet again. If there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort provided by love, any fellowship in the Spirit, any affection or mercy, do me a favor and find common ground in Christ by having the same love, being united in spirit, and having one purpose. Instead of being motivated by selfish ambition or vanity, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat one another as more important than yourself. Each of you should be concerned not only about your own interests, but about the interests of others as well. You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had: when he existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be held onto, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature. He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death —even death on a cross!

If that's not the foundation of your theology, reconsider it immediately as this is the Jesus who rose from the dead, and we are to be imitators of him.  Imitating another Jesus is spiritual suicide.

How do we know?  Because as a result God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow —in heaven and on earth and under the earth— and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

So then, my dear friends, just as this has always been about you personally whether I have been blogging or on hiatus, continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence, for the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort—for the sake of his good pleasure—is God. Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God without blemish even though you live in a crooked and perverse society.  Shine as lights in the world by holding on to the word of life so that on the day of Christ we will all have a reason to boast -- that none of us ran in vain, and none blogged in vain, and we are found faithful in that final day.

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Let It Go

by the Late Frank Turk

Well: did you miss me?  Did anything happen while I was gone?

Yes, sure: you have a list.  Me personally?  I have a list of items which I would like to use to return from Hiatus in a clear and cautious way.

ITEM: It was Trogdor who branded me "the Late Frank Turk" via twitter in Summer 2014, and I'm happy with it.  Here, anyway, that will be my handle from now on.

ITEM:  You have no idea who they are, but this blog would not exist today without the tireless and thankless work of two men who shall continue to remain nameless who are the minions who, every week, in spite of personal burdens and preoccupations, continue to fill and re-fill the Dose of Spurgeon and the Best of Pyro editions.  We'll get to Dan in a minute, but let's face it: those two features constitute 33% of the days there are available for posting, and in the last year it also constituted more than 50% of the blogging which happened here.  While they may continue to remain nameless and faceless, let's today not allow them to go thankless for doing more to improve the blogosphere than most people will ever recognize or appreciate.

ITEM: So that his place in the world of things is not overlooked, my friend Dan Phillips is, frankly, a pillar of a man in his family and in his church, but he has done what few people would have agreed to for the last year or so: he has manned the helm of a blog known globally for setting the world on fire essentially as the one guy.

He had one job, as the meme goes, but rather than producing an epic fail, he has frankly preserved our readership and our reputation with steady hands and (it seems right now anyway) a pure heart, a clean conscience, and a good faith.  And no medication was needed in the aftermath.

ITEM:  I suspect it will also go live today, but in case you missed it (the kids say ICYMI; to which I say, speak English), starting today I am also a contributor to the Reformation21 blog.  I think someone is likely to be brought up on charges before the session for allowing a Baptistic Dog's Breakfast like me into the fold, but because it will make all the right people angry, I'll be pleased to do it.  There are two sub-items associated with that:

SUB ITEM #1: There's no way for me to blog more than once a week about things other than building CosPlay props, so my participation here will be balanced with my participation there.  Sometimes you'll find my paw prints here, other times there.  There will be no particular method, but only the usual madness. 

SUB ITEM #2: One reason in particular for blogging at both venues will be that the internet is wrong -- but in this case, I want there to be no cause for the internet to be wrong about whether or not I'm still the same guy who wrote all the open letters and who also wrote this specific post to my fellow Pyro.

ITEM: Because I love this graphic ( →→→ over there, to the right ), some version of it will appear in all posts from me going forward for the sake of engaging those who are bound to  ask.

ITEM: For those of you who are interested, this last summer at church I expanded and revised a class I did at my previous church in 4 Sundays to 9 or 10 Sundays, and I'm pleased with the results.  I wanted to do "How We get the Bible in English," and I did.  It goes from the origins of the written word all the way through the Greek and Hebrew, the Vulgate, and then ends up with 2-3 weeks on how and why the Bible gets translated, and whether one method is better than the other(s).  You can find all of them right here.

ITEM: Along those same lines, I have made a commitment to my friends at my home church that, going forward, if I would not teach about it during Sunday school, I'm not going to blog about it here.  That limits the subjects I'll cover here pretty narrowly.  It's probably best that way.

ITEM: Also along those same lines, unless someone commits a felony (and even then, it would have to be feloniously innovative), I am personally through opining about and writing open letters to or about that fellow in Seattle.  My expectation is that the readers of this blog will not bring it up.  What has finally happened there is a terrible loss for so many reasons that to trot them out could be seen as less than virtuous.  But one can't be blamed if one wonders how this could have shaken out if the people who were so concerned about privacy and process had engaged as seriously as they are right now 5 years ago.

ITEM: Wednesday is coming.  Prepare to be boarded.

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The High Plane of Dignity and Discipline

On August 28th, 1963, (note: the internet has several sources listing this as 1962, which is wrong.  My apologies for not double-checking) in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the singularly most-important speech on race in the history of this country was given by a man who would die for his convictions.   It was a speech of 881 words, and anyone can read it out loud in about seven and a half minutes.  Think about the kind of simple and power truth that must be to be that brief yet that historically-significant.  In that speech, the right context of history is set, and the right vision for the future is set for all people because of its theology.

Before I say anything about race at this blog (I'm still on hiatus), I think it would be good for anyone asking the writers at this blog what we think about "theology and race" to review those words and take them to heart.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beckoning light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

One hundred years later the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.

One hundred years later the Negro is still languishing in the comers of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

We all have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to change racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice ring out for all of God's children.

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted citizenship rights.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

And the marvelous new militarism which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers have evidenced by their presence here today that they have come to realize that their destiny is part of our destiny.

So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its Governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and before the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the mount with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the genuine discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, pray together; to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom forever, knowing that we will be free one day.

And I say to you today my friends, let freedom ring. From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring. From the mighty Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snow capped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only there; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill in Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we're free at last!"

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Maybe We Should Call it "Parole"

by Frank Turk

Back in 1997 or 1998, I got my first high-speed dial-up modem for my Giant-Sized Mac LC 500-series  -- a GlobalVillage Teleport Platinum modem with the blazing speed of 53200 BAUD, for which my wife paid something equal to a week's worth of groceries because she loves me.  My iPhone has better internet connectivity than that today, so don't let anyone say nothing has happened in the last 20 years -- but also, don't let them tell you that it was necessarily a good thing. Nevertheless, because of the Teleport Modem and the Big Mac, I learned that on the internet, someone was wrong.  At that time, it was at the MSNBC religion forums, and after a time I graduated from those forums to a place called CARM, and then I graduated to the ProsApologian chat channel where my native Southern Baptist intransigence met the battering ram of 21st century Calvinism, and then I opened up a blob blog at Blogger before its was ingested by Google and became a permanent part of the interwebs.

So in some sense, I am a permanent part of the interwebs.

That link is fantastic by the way -- like looking at an ancient episode of Doctor Who.  I pity you if you don't follow it.

I bring that up because over the course of the last 15 years (!?) of internet mayhem, I have, from time to time, taken a hiatus.  If this were respectable academia, it would have been called a sabbatical, but since we're not that kind of people, maybe we should call it parole -- for the internet and its clown car full of people who think we can't see that they are coming out of a sub-mini compact with red and white stripes, therefore we cannot see that they are clowns (word to the wise: if the red nose fits, wear it).

In the past, I have taken these breaks from my various perches in order to remind myself that, at the end of it, this is the internet and not, for example, my family or my local church.  It's the internet and not even the real world.  Not anything like the real world -- it really is a lot more like a comic book than anyone wants to openly admit.  It has side-effects that look like radioactive mutations and weird costumes which people invent for themselves to run around in and think of themselves as heroes -- when they are, instead, such a mix of comic and macabre that they make some adults laugh, but mostly they are scaring the children.

{sigh.}

All that to say that it's time for my next hiatus, for the sake of getting the right things back in order in my life.  I'm not hardly quitting writing, or from Twitter (as Twitter - but I won't be microblogging from Twitter) but I am on a very disciplined vacation from this blog and my other "serious" (heh, as if) blogs from today until such a time that the side effects of blogging are again funny and useful to me rather than discouraging, frustrating and scary.

I have no idea how long it will last, but if you need to get in touch with me for any reason except blogging, please do get back in touch with me at frank@iturk.com.

Play well with others.  Be in the Lord's house with the Lord's people on the Lord's day.  Remember that Jesus meant "you personally" when he said all those things.  Try to do something else once in a while, Like Ministry.

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