26 December 2014

Some Here, Some There — December 26, 2014

by Dan Phillips

Historically, the day after a major holiday (such as, oh, I don't know... Christmas?) is a dead one at the blog. But hey, you clicked through, I hate sad and disappointed readers, so: it may be short, but it is an SHST, and it is just for you!
  • A day late in telling you, but our family appreciated Kevin DeYoung's Do You Know Who He Was? on Christmas Day.
  • On Christmas: when I was a boy, and not even a Christian boy, I remember that Christmas-time would bring all sorts of respectful nods to Christ in the culture. The comics (then called "the funny pages"), TV, all over. Then as I grew and the culture shifted, I noted that the Christ-hating Los Angeles Times would always try to warm the holiday season by scraping the bottom of the moldy wooden barrels of academia, to find some PhD to tell us about how this or that aspect of Christian faith was ludicrous hooey.
  • Newsweek follows in this hallowed tradition. This year, their love-bouquet to Christ and His bride was The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin, by one Kurt Eichenwald. It's a genuinely vitriolic hit-piece with zero redeeming value.
  • Not only that, but it's got some pretty adorable chestnuts.
  • There are those who mock even raising an eyebrow over Piper's apparently collegial reference to the Pope. This makes me wonder, not for the first time, what our leaders today do think is worth fighting over. For one thing, apparently it's worth fighting over not fighting, since that's what they like to squawk about. They don't mock, ridicule, sneer at, isolate, and attempt to marginalize those who are purveying damnable heresies, or those who are compromising core doctrines. But those who do promote sound, biblical Gospel over against false teaching and false teachers? Oh, it's open season on them.
  • As an exercise in empathy, I try to imagine myself reading some Mormon or Jehovah's Witness leader saying how they really need to flood the world with their version of the gospel. And I try — seriously, I do — to imagine myself Tweeting, "In other words, we need to tilt the world with the Gospel!" You know, use it as a tie-in with my book-title, and in effect linking to their words. I try, I say... and it's just not happening for me.
  • And factor in: if I already had my own massive instant-promotion machinery and legions of adoring, I-can-do-no-wrong fans...? Now I'm feeling like...
  • Now to funner things.
  • Re-reading Warfield's masterful statement on the presence and presentation of the doctrine of the Trinity in the NT, I realized not all will have read it, and thought it worth sharing with you.
  • Over at Cripplegate, Jesse Johnson reviews Max McLean's stage version of C. S. Lewis' The Great DivorceSounds like a great experience.
  • That book, if I may digress, is one of these books that are (A) eminently profitable if you read it with a mind to "get" the points Lewis was set on making, (B) very troubling if your stance is OH MY GOSH! THIS IS LEWIS' SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY AND IT'S TERRIBLE!!!1! Though he often noted he was no theologian and did not write as such, he did obviously touch on a lot. Sometimes he was muddled, sometimes downright bad, and sometimes absolutely amazingly wonderful. If you know how to eat a fish, you should be able to read Lewis with profit.
  • Douglas Wilson's post Racial Animosity is so, so good. So much better than so many of the vaunted posts on Ferguson, Garner, and the whole lot. It's the bottom-line truth of the matter. It should have been shared and tweeted broadly, more broadly than those which could be seen as fostering bitterness, resentment, hopelessness and anger. Was it?
  • In the spirit of the Peanuts/25 Or Six To Four video, if you haven't seen this, you must. It's absolutely brilliant, and buckets of fun:

I'll update through noon TX time if anything else strikes me. God bless!


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9 comments:

Sharon said...

I find that Laurel & Hardy clip . . . disturbing.

DJP said...

Oh, Sharon.

Sharon said...

Sorry, should I have used my best basso profundo voice when I posted that comment?

FX Turk said...

I just wanted to point out that nobody reads Newsweek, and Newsweek keeps demonstrating why.

They are the MSNBC of magazines, and they will be forgotten long before Christ returns.

Silly Old Mom said...

I saw "The Great Divorce" live, and it was excellent.

JackW said...

It's Friday?

Thanks Dan.

AJM said...

I hope you are "paid" blessed time and a half for working/providing on this day.

AJM said...

Re: Piper/Pope = Paucity
Far worse than we thought.
I recently questioned my pastor on why we were using and promoting a woman author who proclaimed the Roman Catholic Church a true church. I was told it IS a true church teaching SOME heretical doctrines. As the discussion continued I was told my position on RCC and this author would not keep me from teaching in church nor was her position going to keep her material out of our church.
Really? Really

Solameanie said...

Interestingly enough, over the weekend I was watching a documentary on the Reformation aired on H2 channel. Not one conservative Bible scholar or historian that I could identify, and the way they tried to explain/define Calvinism was so shallow and superficial - more of a caricature than reality. I guess we'd better get used to it, although I'll continue to squawk about it when I see it.