Does It Mean That I'm Getting Boring?

Hello People,

I wish you all post-Valentines happiness. Valentines evening saw Hazel and myself having a romantic dinner (prepared by Hazel), baking cookies, and curling up to watch 16 Candles in what is to have been our last Valentines completely to ourselves for the foreseeable future.  I'm really blown away by God's goodness recently and always.  I realize that in a few months I will long for the relative quiet of the past few years, if you would call them quiet.  Actually, looking back I wouldn't call them quiet at all.  In the past 3-4 years I've experienced two very drastic pendulum swings, one a fairly private, but nevertheless bitter swing to almost utter unbelief, and now to a firmer belief than I have ever had.  I've married the love of my life and had 3 1/2 awesome years with her and now she and I are starting our family.  I've been blessed beyond my comprehension.  Soren Kierkegaard wrote, of the passage 'Every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights in whom is no change or shadow of turning' (James 1:17), "These words have been repeated over and over agin in the world, and yet many live as if they have never heard them and perhaps it would have disturbed them if they had" (Spiritual Writings p. 4).  I will not take for granted how good our God has been to me and my family.  In a few months Orbit will be born and life is going to change.  I'm going to find myself responsible for a life 24/7 for the rest of my life.  What an awesome responsibility and great opportunity!  I can't imagine anything more frightening or more exciting.  And to be able to approach this as a team with my wife is a blessing that I can't even begin to be thankful enough for.  It is with tongue ever so slightly in cheek that I now dedicate this song of the week to Hazel and baby Orbit.

Belle and Sebastian

My Wandering Days Are Over

Song of the Week

Hello People,

In a lesson yesterday I was explaining to my students about the rise of the Industrial Revolution in America when my British associate, Fortescue, piped up "Always stealing from England."  Now before you get defensive, it is a common occurrence for Fortescue and myself to make jokes to one another in the midst of lessons. We share a classroom and have been known to interject on a regular basis.  My answer to his, mostly true, comment was, "At least you have us to thank for giving you punk rock."  It is one of many long standing debates between the two of us, one of which has to do with why the chicken crossed the road, about who gave the world punk rock, America or Britain. After he said, "What about the Clash and the Pistols?" My lesson briefly, but quickly, devolved into a cursory glance at the birth of punk rock as a minority within the more major rock'n'roll scene.  My students were shocked.  One student raised their hand and informed me on behalf of the rest of the class that "Mr. Strange, you don't look like you would like punk rock." I suppose I'll take that as a compliment.

The Ramones

Today Your Love Tomorrow the World

Discovering New South Wales

Hello People, 


  This post is dedicated to one of my best friends, Stevesy, and comes more or less (more) from an email I sent to him recently.  In college he was that friend with whom I would sit around and talk about life, the universe, and well EVERYTHING.  Now he's even more so. 


     I love the idea of moving back to Northeast GA someday after I come back to the states.   It has, for as long as I can remember, been my favorite place on earth.  It has that element of being home and an adventure.  When I'm in Northeast GA I feel like G.K. Chesterton talking about the Scotsman who thinks he's discovered a new island when in reality he's landed back in England.  I know exactly what he means when he says, 
"What could be better than to have all the fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting necessity of landing there? What could be more glorious than to brace one's self up to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales."
     The city is nice, but being here I've realized that my heart stayed behind in the woods and hills of NE GA.  I think that especially now that I am going to have a child around soon, I've realized that that is where I want to teach them about life and godliness.  I want to take them to the streams, waterfalls, and mountain tops, and say "Look at how good this is. What a good God we serve."  I want to take this child there to tell them that their  life isn't about them. They are not the point.  Greatness comes from giving up your own greatness and living for God's.  I mean this philosophically.  I am not going to, at least at first, literally say, "Kid, you aren't the point."  But I do hope to impress on them what G.K. (once again) said, "How much larger your life would be if you your self could become smaller in it."  Or as John put it, "He must become greater, I must become less." (3:30)  This is a dream, but maybe someday...
     I have been reading a book for a teaching certification called  Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcey. I cannot recommend it. It deals, as you may deduce from the title, with truth, but I find myself disagreeing with it on several points. However, it does have me questioning.  If all truth is God's truth, does it not follow that all truth is God's TRUTH?  After all, God did create the world; He set it in motion and ordered it in such a way as He thought was "good."  Yes the world is fallen now, but can we not still attribute truth to God and his Truth?  Does not the sum of truth add up to God's Truth? 
     A book I would like to recommend to you though, without hesitation, is Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton.  It isn't long, only about 110 pages, but he deals with the roots of much modern thought while showing why Christianity gives more freedom than any other way of seeing the world.  He has, over the last year or so, become one of my absolute favorite authors; an "Author of Impact" if you will. I want to use one last quote from him which, I think, touches on what we were talking about previously, the division of truths, and I think that he is correct.  

"If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them.  His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.  Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also.  Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth.  He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not.  It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man."

     The fact of man is a dual one, and I think that N. Pearcey  is wrong for denying that.  Man dwells at once in the spiritual world and the physical; and he has citizenship in both.  She says that Augustine was wrong for this idea, and yet how could he be?  Everything in Scripture points to it.  When Jesus was praying in the garden he felt a spiritual anguish equal to what on the cross he felt as a physical anguish.   We live a divided life of two truths which are really only the two halfs of the one Truth and together add up to show us our need for God.  Christianity can not be proven or disproven by arguing with science.  Science is a different religion entirely, the religion of health, but Christianity is the redemption of the whole, pointing to the ultimate redemption to come when we are totally and unbreakably reconciled to God after this life.  
     And yet, we do Christianity an injustice by dividing it.  When we put religion into the corner of personal beliefs we strip it of its redemptive potency.  Especially in the West, we have focused too much on the personal redemption that Christianity brings at the expense of the social redemption that this world will  experience when the kingdom of heaven is brought about on earth. This redemption will only occur when God brings it forward, and yet, did God not call us to a work of redemption in the meantime?  Did the disciples limit themselves to a mere door to door evangelism to aid people in their personal redemption?  No, they healed the sick, fed the poor, ministered to one another. So why do we get the attitude in the church of door to door evangelism for the individual, while ignoring the society?  How often do we let our "personal beliefs" only fill the purpose of personal belief?  Why has religion ceased to permeate our entire lives in the West?  Why has religion become what happens in our houses without having any effect on what we do.  I don't mean "how" as in how we live our lives, but what we do in our lives.  


Thanks, Stevesy, for making me think.