I Don't Make the Rules, I Just Apply Them.

Back in my youth it was always said, "Just because you were born in a garage, it don't make you a Volkswagen." The truth bearing nature of aphorisms notwithstanding I always took that to mean (in the creedal sophistication of the Jesus Freaks) that being born in a Christian home did not make you a Christian. In fact the term "Christian home" itself is slightly silly, like those that think they feel a spirit of oppression when they drive into Utah. An institution has actual regeneracy? The mind fogs. Back to the point.
As the Baby Boom reaches past its midlife crisis and into a heightened religious sense and they pull up heaving at the near side of the Tiber or the Golden Horn, more credit is given by them to the contrary of this "saying". The adjustment of the residual evangelical faith they once held has them amend the saying thus, "Unless of course you always believed that you were a Volkswagen and committed yourself to the Chilton's manual of Volkswagen repair and subscribed rather strictly to all things relevant in the storied history of VW" Of course we cannot allow the illustration to get away from us by suggesting that this claimant to VW-ness had a Beetle and Jetta for parents at which the "please-save-my-kid-by-church-magic" set says validly, "Aha!" I pause before I say "Aha!" back at them. Don't want this to turn into a shoving match.
"Aha! Not only did I refrain from pushing the metaphor further then it could communicate but never, I repeat, never has a single Volkswagen in the history of the Cosmos been brought into being by a Beetle sharing a night of passion with a Jetta (I don't care how smokin' hot she was). So it is with Christians. The genetics and the period of incarceration make nothing of a man except perhaps peer status with the demons. But you have always believed and ..and...sola fide, faith alone.

You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe -- and shudder.
James 2:19

The catechism of the First Church of Pandemonium is solid on the doctrine of God. Not only does the creed of that institution affirm it, they individually claim the belief. How long have they believed? They can't remember a time when they did not know that this was true.

Do you want to be shown, you shallow man, that faith apart from works is barren?
James 2:20

James has been on this topic a bit by the time he gets to verses 19 & 20. He seems to think that belief that matters to God (not a dead faith) is that which has promoted an action. And what form would the action take in those that believe the claims the Jesus died for sinners?
Romans 10:8-14 has an idea.

The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach); because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him. For, "every one who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved." But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?

The verbal confession includes more than saying the great creedal truths. It involves calling on the Name of the Lord. How can they call without belief? The demons believe and don't call. Is their faith not true? The Bible says that their faith is true about these things but it is silent about another belief which genetic "Christians" with them might not affirm at a level which would bring about a saving faith. They don't believe that they need to. Not sinners or not sinful enough. Regenerate from the womb, always a Christian, never unconverted. Only the sinner cries out to God, "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

I John 1:8-10 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

This is the upshot. St. Paul lets us know in Romans 7 that, yes he was born alive spiritually but as the law entered his life, sin came to life and he died. This is the death from which the work of Christ on the cross came to redeem us. The child of Christian parents is certainly benefited by the presence of the truth surrounding them but the truth is this: by the time a mind is capable of even understanding the articles of the Faith (which they will naturally believe as some naturally believe in Santa Claus) they will have fallen to the sins that come to life as they encounter the moral law. They must believe that Christ died to save sinners but they must come to also believe that they are precisely that, sinners. Those two beliefs, the need and the answer, bring about the the work of a real faith, calling on the name of the Lord to be saved. God's grace is to sinners and those who think they can just grow up knowing the truth and learning to be obedient are denying that grace.

I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification were through the law,
then Christ died to no purpose.
Galatians 2:21

Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?
Galatians 4:16

This persuasion is not from him who calls you.
Galatians 5:8

Hauskeeping

Do you want to understand The Big Haus Society?
Go here.
Do you want to help offer The Big Haus to others?
Go here.
Do you want to visit The Big Haus to gain what it is we offer?
Go here.

ART, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY, AND FAITH
At the Big Haus,
It's the Thought That Counts.

Pastoral Bestiary

I ran across this old cartoon today cleaning out my files.

All the Best People Will be There

All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
Ecclesiastes 1:8

That said, The Male Box is throwing an arts extravaganza tonight and tomorrow. I will have some unsatisfying visuals hung in their gallery and the Amazing Missus will be belting out sounds that fill not thine ears mid-Friday nite.

I will be moving the keyboard later this afternoon.
Full of weariness? You betcher!
Utter it? Watch my dust.

"God Willing"

The pious are those who take serious measure of the gods and place themselves accurately in that measure. In other words the theism of the righteous is both referential and reverential. What is your reference for the Living God? Remember that the rest of us can tell the quality of your reference by the pronounced quality of your reverence. "The God Who Made Heaven and Earth" is either just a verbal reference with equivalent verbal (and verbal only) reverence or it is how your categories and personal governmental theory has found Him placed.

The squishy melodies affirming "My God is an awesome God" sees impiety from many of the lives of the voices who sing it. The need is not only that the reference be true (He is Awesome) and that the reference be where His name appears in the index of Christian thought (God, one each, triune, awe inspiring) but where He appears as highest in the List of Lords each man recognizes and wills to govern himself. Again, piety is a personal thing and impiety is as well. It is the government of circumstantial passion that makes some bozo sing the word "awesome" juxtaposed with the Name of God fervently in one place, and in another, find that the Name is companion to "dammit".

"My brethren, it ought not be so."

The Oracle: Quit relying on the church for your reference to God. When it is distant and "endlessly repeated" you will feel that level of piety (in other words, none, or what passes for piety but is really some gaseous aesthetic brought on by Handel and Gothic architecture). Bow the knee when you are not shielded behind the force field of Christendom.

Bow your knee.

You are certainly

not bright enough

to run your own morality.

You need a god.

The Insult that is Sin

Hmmm.... Let me see.....stuff that is important.
If man is created for the potential of autonomously chosen pursuit, obedience, and worship of He who created him, then the quality we call sin is perhaps not best argued at the level of "don't do that or this". Sin (capitalized not just because it begins the sentence) is all about your personal theory of governance. The question "who is in charge here?" asked of just about everyone is easily answered by the casual tapping of their own chest. Another question comes charging up. "How is that working out for you?" Admit it, you are lousy at Life. You are not smart enough and neither is Dr. Phil. Oh yeah... and then you die. Dumb as a stump and worm feed ere long. God has given you feelings and perceptions and hopes and fears punctuated by mortal and immortal death. With that lineup He expects you would consider taking His resume, looking over His qualities for running the job to which you promoted yourself. Allowing that God is the wisest guide, Righteousness is the wisest governance of all pains and pleasures. Sin will actually be the governance that follows, not wisdom, but the folly of urge. Run to pleasure (be it drink, sex, etc.), retreat from pain (fear, cowardice, dishonesty, etc.) and nothing has governed, nothing has ruled but passion, wanting what promotes itself in Desire. To want without will is not just evil but bestial as well. The Christian, living in the light of God's governance is not just holy but humane.

Let me give you some help.

Sin is not a pattern of icky crimes but shallow ones. It is not the biology of sex that makes it bad in various circumstances but the variety of the circumstance. In fact folks are pleased with being taboo or seamy or sordid about their sin. Only a grade schooler will fall for the "icky" spit swapping barrier to kissing. Who shall I blame for this error in assessment? The church will do just fine. Augustine held that sex was even sinful in marriage. John Paul II suggested that lust was wrong even within marriage. They and their ilk built and sustained the Manichean Icky School of Sin and the sinner is oddly happy to graduate from it. Pleasure can trump icky in a heartbeat, in fact icky makes sin more pleasing still. But Sin is not the icky. Sin is the white trash level of confidence that you are capable to rule the monstrous joy of sex. A man looks a woman not his wife, or the teens park the car at the scenic overlook, or the pederast cruises the chat rooms, and each will say (to maintain the metaphor of how trashy are your choices) "Here, hold my beer and watch this."

The Chronicles of the Oracle

My abject apologies for failing to even post the mundanities of my life. You ought understand that local oracular duties take precedence over the far flung of more hyper spaces. Big thoughts were thunk, you can be sure. Vortices of conversational epiphany lay scattered like jetsam cross the hardwood floors of Big Haus. Young men tug at their forelock as they passed the manse and they murmur a slight but fervent prayer that they would grow up big and strong of mind.

Coming out of Easter things have gone from busy to bustin' loose. Davis was here for the holiday which has its own soul cleansing bout of rigorous thought. We had a church breakfast that day, then church itself, after which we invited everyone over (totaling 45 persons) for luncheon at the Haus. We then had a couple from California visit for a few days as they spied out the land. I spent that week whipping up interest and materials for The Mojo Oracles. It had a good turnout on Saturday (17 male minds awash in futility and food). The three days before the Mojo we added to the family by entertaining and welcoming cousins (1 real, 2 step) from Canada that I did not know that I had. Nice people. Add to the general hoorah Leslie's Bella "Let's look at the score from the Jazz Festival" meeting and her band practicing and that brings us to this week. Starting Monday I have been laboring to create a notebook for a conference I am doing tomorrow in Colorado (Leslie and I leave at 3;30 tomorrow a.m.). We get back Sunday night late and have to be ready Monday morning first period to teach the philosophy of Manners (The Word of a Gentleman and the Way of a Lady) at Montrose Academy. That goes all week winding up with a banquet at the Big Haus on Saturday with Leslie Wilson and Heartless performing an evening concert at the Nuart Theater after. That means I had to fabricate the textbooks for that week this week along with the other prep. My brain has started to effervesce. All I can manage for the fans of Clan MacEvan is this recounting. That and ask for your prayers that we might survive. I am trying also to get out a fundraising brochure for the ministry here. It is done but needs to be printed and mailed. Some of you will see it. If you think you might not be on our mailing list and would like to be sure that a Big Haus shakedown for support reaches you, put a comment to that effect and I will let you know how to safely get us your address.

We think we might have a free weekend in a couple of weeks. I suppose that could change. Dang free will.

An Oracle for Wednesday

Peace is not a thing but a reaction to Order. The kind of Peace gained by Order is related to the arena; if emotional, domestic, military, or spiritual.
Order the realm and gain the Peace. If you cannot master the realms of life, find a master who can.

The degree to which you successfully govern your Self and Circumstance defines your Dignity and what Honors are requisite to it.
We are Humane to the degree we govern ourselves, Civilized to the degree we are governed in an ordered society, and Noble to the degree we are of governing service to it.
We are Pious to the degree we are governed from On High.

Went Down to the River (DaDaan da Duh)

So we went down to see my baby, Michal Angela, as she has labored to become a working singer in the Portland, Oregon jazz scene. We wanted to go out on the town with her in this professional moment.

First pic: Mike getting her performance groove on.

Second: Pick out the 50 year old.


Third: Mike and the Blessed, (our "second daughter").


Fourth pic: Jake and Bethany Calene came out for the gig (which was out in McMinnville, Oregon at the NW Wine Bar.)

Next few: Mike singing with her pianist, and recording studio owner, Jonathan Swanson (he is dang good). The bass player is some old guy who sat in but Michal has played with his son and grandson who are also bass players.

Art Shot at the end (meaning by that it was out of focus and was run through some PhotoShop filters): Leslie got to sing a couple of numbers at the end of the evening.

All Souls Update

We have closed on the new home for All Souls.
This is a great blessing that our fellowship only has because our God is greater than our financial ability.

Pray for us as we learn the joys and sorrows of property.

photo: Tim Tate

Yes, Yes, Yes, Oh Yes!

Are you a Christian man?
When it come to understanding women and your emotions regarding women are you as dumb as a stump?
When it comes to being a man do you default to "behaving badly"?
Did you read "Wild at Heart" and like it?
You need help.

Finally...
... after two years...
...and a tour of the subcontinent...
THE MOJO ORACLES
March 29, 2008

Seminar Schedule: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
First Session: THE SUM OF ALL DESIRE
Are there basic reasons for everything every man does? The first session explores the claim that we are all after something simply obvious. It is the underpinning of a rationally sound pursuit of being a man.
Sandwich lunch — Noon
Second Session: HIERARCHY & SUBLIMITY
As the prerequisite to honour and dignity, a philosophy of position has been lost in modern America. Regaining that mode of thought is essential to becoming the gentleman.
15 minute break
Third Session: NOBLESSE OBLIGE & THE SEVERITIES
The more masculine virtues of Honour, Dignity, Integrity, and Gravity are the oft ignored virtues, and are not friendly to the modern egalitarian outlook.
15 minute break
Fourth Session: THE MOJO
The Biblical understanding of the Attraction called “Woman” and the benefits of that understanding in resisting temptation and winning a wife.
15 minute break
Fifth Session: The Word of A GENTLEMAN
Gathered from the teachings of that penultimate gentleman, Philip Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield,
and the Book of the Courtier by Count Balthazar Castiglione.
1 hour break

Roast Beast Dinner— 7:00
Attire: Casual
with after dinner
CIGARS

FIN — 10 p.m.

It costs $50.

If you would like to attend click here to reach a PDF of the brochure and registration.

For the Philistine

A couple of posts back I put up a picture of the house across the corner from ours, to which Philistine asked if the Big Haus had mutated into something he did not remember. His memory had to stretch over two decades into the humbler times when he and I spread polyurethane on the oaken floors of the dining room...

...in this,...
(thunder and numinous light blinds us momentarily)

...the Big Haus.

The Conscience of Art

With such a title one would half expect some gasbag arranging an event o'erwhelmed with artistes, while standing under, around, between articles and banners with the word "Darfur" emblazoned thereon. There is something about the claimants to art, who, facing doubts and questions rightly posed about their actual gifts, must prove that they have the soul of an artist. A car mechanic would never think of traveling to some sandy place to walk their artificially tanned arse through starving crowds while mentally composing their U.N. testimony. Yep, mechanics can't do that. And, nope, I am not talking about this conscience posing as an artistic soul leaking out of fleshly finite containers due to over filling (but I did enjoy describing it).
Each part of any art betrays that it is art by this function of conscience. Like the conscience that bothers you when you lie to you friends, this conscience is "with (con) knowledge (science). When any portion (a tone, a color, a shape, a placement, a timing) shows that its participation is with knowledge of the other participants, art's conscience has been expressed.
I used to say the parts of arts functioned "in agreement" but, though that explains a lot of successful works (if not most) I think that parts in disagreement can be valid if that disagreement shows knowledge of the other (rather than mere chaos). Art has a conscience. It wrestles across a medium in or on which the artist shows that the various parts can nod politely, rudely, or amorously at the others,... but they will nod.

We've had Some Snow this Year

Credit where Credit is Due

It is apparent that the faith of a man (his coming to a belief regarding the Gospel) is the thing which God asks to see and subsequently graces the man of faith unto salvation. Some would say that if a man's faith is of himself it is a work and as a work cannot save. But what would keep it from being his work? The answer comes that God gives him the faith as well as the grace.
I ask (as a humble seeker after truth) on what basis was that removal of credit? I answer (because this is a blog and not a forum) that the appeal of the credit removal is our fully functional common sense. It is based on the fundamental nature of justice stated thusly: The agent responsible (and thereby credited) is the agent causal to the degree causal. If God is 100% causal to a man's faith, God is 100% to be credited and man can claim 0%. I believe that is fair, don't you?

But hold on! But wait a dang minute!

Those that claim such a "who do believe, me or your own lyin' eyes" explanation for the source of faith are doing so to protect a broader system in which God is exhaustively sovereign. In such a view, all things, from monad to mood to movements of the heavens, are decreed by God and His will is 100% and no other thing contributes an iota of autonomous causality.
If that is so, and for the sake of taking from a man his own faith, supporters of this broader view have assented to the definition of justice, how is it that any works (denied as a source of salvation) can be works at all? How is it man receives 100% credit for his sins although he is 0% causal? If a man is credited for one, why not the other? If sins are credited because they look like they are done in the here and now by the man willing them and doing them, why not his faith which looked like he had done actually within himself?

I don't ask that that my brothers in Christ who hold such a notion abandon their system of sovereignty but that they admit to proposing a sophistry regarding faith. Its strength as an argument is based on an idea of justice to which they do not subscribe.

On Story

In any narrative laid out before us, we are drawn to inhabit varying degrees of audience-ness. On one pole, that of entirely audience, are those which watch, read or listen to the story from without. They do not identify with any aspect of the story. That is extremely disconnected to what stories involve and reflects on the story (if it managed to represent nothing that is "true" to us) or on the audience (who lives as a practical solipsist). One the other pole is the complete identification with the story. This characteristic in ourselves finds us taking a role in the story like some plain, intellectually self gratifying female of perpetual singleness finding that she breathes the very atman of Elizabeth Bennett. Again this reflects either on the quality of the story or its audience.
The first pole mentioned is pointless to story as stories seek to convey and nothing was conveyed. It was just some thing, an article, like a rock, but a rock has no intention of communication. The second or other pole matters a great deal. The actualness of the story, its truth regarding objective truth, calls to everyone to align themselves truly to the parts they ought. There are women just like Elizabeth Bennett and they should see themselves in her. Tragically there are more Mr. Collins than those who recognize it and equally tragic, fewer Mr Darcys than the actual Elizabeths would like.
But for all this I think about the Gospel. The narrative told us by God is that we are sinners, every man jack of us, and as sinners damned eternally. Now the above description of audience applies. Within Christendom (not Christianity) there are many who see the narrative of God's salvific purpose without seeing their participation in the story. They may advance the story. They may say the story is true. Certainly they, in this advocacy of the story (remember they inhabit Christendom), are not at the first polar extreme. They have heard the story with the attendance and enjoyment of a Stars Wars fan. They have willfully suspended their disbelief and they pretend that the story is true and the equally pretend (for the serious fans) that they are like one or more of the characters. While at a Christian church or conference or concert they participate in the story with the back or nature of their mind ready to realize, on leaving the "theater", that they are not Han Solo. Christianity asks for something more. It tells a story that we are not supposed to enjoy temporarily as if only meeting it with story and audience clearly distinct. It tells a story that is about us. We don't just find that we are "like" a character in it, we "are" a character in it. Those sinners it speaks of are all of us who hear it. To fail in this identification is to fail to have a faith that will beseech God for forgiveness of Our Sins.

The great thing, if we wish to visit our Jane Austen motif again, is that once we discover that we are, actually are, Elizabeth Bennett we know that the story has promised Mr Darcy. We are the sinners in the story of the Gospel and Jesus Christ has died for us.

Can I Get A Witness?

As we know from countless Christian weddings Love is defined in I Corinthians 13. Our souls recoil in horror and our moral rectitude becomes questionable, since desiring to choke the life out of any minister who allows it is probably questionable. Our eyes bug out as the right reverend doesn't even bother reconciling the idea that while agape love is not jealous, there is a natural jealousy of erotic love. But wedding tradition will have its way with us,so let's make do.
In that passage we find a lot of what love is not but two words describing what Love is.
“Love is patient and kind.”
Now, please be patient with me for a bit.

It is not just that agape love and romantic love are not the same thing. In a wedding we are bound to find, not one or the other, but four kinds of Love. Saint Clive gave his remarkable Four Talks on them and the book version is worthy of your time. I had my future wife listen to his talk on Eros back in 1976 and we have now been married over 29 years. This is magical stuff. Pay attention.

At a wedding Eros or Romantic love is a bit obvious. The bride is ramped up to an unusual state of hotness. The music swells. The flowers run riot and smiles bedeck whomever with a faint whiff of sexuality. The ritual is festooned with unnatural aristocratic decorations and people move in paths they will never move again, because they are middle class. It is the honor that Eros receives from us. All of the peripheral universe disappears and the couple becomes the conclusion of the "most important romantic novel ever written".
The presence of friendship or Philia is probably more modern and it is a gift for which modernity should be blessed. In courtship/patriarchal societies of the past, the wise guidance of a certain number of goats struck a chord with the Fathers and, TA DA, a marriage! We allow friendships to develop and we like it more when a friendship has developed before vows are taken, just as we prefer that Eros develop before vows. At least Jacob wished it with Leah.
Moving on to Storge or Family love, a wedding is almost primarily this love. If nothing else, two families are joined, one family is made and "all their worldly goods" are cross given and endowed.
Much more can be made of this list of loves but let it suffice to say that these three are not, by Pauline definition, that which is "patient and kind".
What he defined, is Agape or Charity. We must now apply our way to some meaning.
What we see at a wedding, and as a congregation we witness, are the vows taken to so love in this fourfold way. "I swear," you say, "to be lover, family, friend, and neighbor regardless of our fate."
Now this is a pretty big deal. Possibly bigger than you think.
As many of you know, all Christian ethics derive from Love. Those that don't, give me a call.
Romans 12:8-10
Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
If four loves are being vowed at a wedding, our witness of those vows, in varying ways, involves us too.
A bridal couple is a picture of us all and so we don’t just witness, we participate.
While many Christian weddings misapply the I Corinthians 13 passage, as many, gladly and correctly apply the Ephesians 5 idea that they are a metaphor of Christian charity, the patient and kind love. They are to be seen ultimately as Christ and his church and Christ giving himself up for her as the penguin-suited groom is to give himself up for the waxed and buffed bride. You, sitting in pew twelve, are called to witness both the mundane and the transcendent wedding. The "patience and kindness" that the couple vow to start giving each other is that which you all must witness, value and enjoy. You sat there and witnessed a monumental metaphor and it wasn't about them but about you and between you all and each.
Witnessing wedding agape is to witness where you stand morally, because you witnessed a picture of Christ and His redemption. Lots of portent there, my friend.

But the Romantic Love and Friendship Love that they have is private. Yes, private but objectively there or not and witnessed as there or not. The congregation does not participate actually or metaphorically but witnesses them as those who want its best expressed in them, and by its lessons, in you.

The Family Love is also all around on the wedding day. Each family is donating parts of themselves for this new family unit. The metaphor in Ephesians 5 is so dynamic and Christ-centered that the demonstration of it in the couple's attachment, service, and obedience is hard to move past. But the family they primarily but collaterally make, it too is a metaphor, and an important one.
Matthew 12:46-50
While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother."
If the couple exchanging vows have both passed from Death to Life, their creation of family calls out to the congregation to value the real family of the kingdom of Heaven and not just the new "Mr. and Mrs." in their home.

Weddings are not like another floor show, which for the cover charge of acquaintance and a gift, we can attend. They speak to and of us. What we witness is a set of grand loves which all touch us with some necessity. What we see we only see at perhaps 20-30 weddings in our lifetimes and, (this is of some moment), only for you lifetime.
The vows show us that this lesson is before our eyes only temporarily.
“till death do us part”
Christ agrees.
In Matthew 22:29-30
But Jesus answered them, "You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

This message is for both you and and any besotted, charming couple standing before the vicar.
The wedding is the beginning of a lesson from God, witnessed by you all and vowed by the celebrants.
It is a lesson that best be learned for it ends for us all one day.
Matthew 22:36-39
"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The life of complete holiness is preached at every wedding across the land.
The love on display on any wedding day seeks not its own but seeks its God above and seeks, in the believers, its family, and in all, its neighbor.

Who Are You?

Definitions, as I have pointed out before, are different than Circumstances. For the sinner, it is of some moment and relief that Christianity changes the definition of a man rather than his circumstance. The rest of the world's religions (and much of Christendom) stress the religious circumstances of the life they recommend. The New Covenant has made a man's nature different. He is redefined. Whatever his circumstance, Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free, his definition has shifted and he is now filled with the Holy Spirit. This is necessary to even call yourself a Christian for "you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him." Romans 8:9

Many churches give a list of circumstances (from wet the baby to walk the aisle) perhaps because the circumstances of a Christian's life do change. You can't change the definition of something without it changing the world the new being inhabits. This will be so much that, as St. James says "I, by my works, will show you my faith." He didn't say "I will create my faith."

The worldly mind takes this continuum between who you are and what you do and switches where the definition resides. "I'll make a faith," says he, " from my ritual to moral to cultural deeds and it will be the biggest, grandest Christian faith you ever did see." He thinks that the definition is made by the circumstances not vice versa. He looks at the change described by the apostles and falls into the same slavery that he came out of.

If a man is defined as a featherless biped and believes wholeheartedly that that circumstance is what makes him a man, two errors are eventual. One, a plucked chicken is a man and, two, if he loses a leg, he lost his humanity.
Applied, we see that someone who insists that a Christian will be defined by x-ritual observance and by x-cultural condition, the church will soon (and has been) cumbered with those who meet the external definition who have not Christ and some who have Christ will be left wondering, should they lose access to x-ritual, if they are Christians.

The Christ says, "You must be born again."
Let Christ make a new man of you.
"whereas the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith." I Timothy 1:5

A Father's Good on Christmas Day

Here lie, in the sanctum sanctorum of Big Haus (where the Oracle receives his supplicants), the offspring of greatness. Cradled by leathern couch, feet draped on leathern hassock, sit the four who will carry Clan MacEvan into a dark future.

In that dark tomorrow:
One is to be a lawyer.
One is to be a jazz singer.
One is to be soldier.
One is to be a philosopher.

All are Christians with faithful effect for the Kingdom of Heaven. What better Christmas gift could I be given?

A Mother's Good Example on Christmas Day

There are six of us in Clan MacEvan. In past years the Christmas table was always enjoyed by a wider array of folk than our mere six. The Amazing Missus, in those past years, always put on a spread that set new standards for the Northwest Regional Hostette AAA Division.

But something different happened this year. We decided, what with 3 of our 6 returning from points elsewhere, we would just have MacEvans at table. A simpler circumstance with that MacEvan futilitarian ease and comfortable, non competitive dining.

We found out that it never had been competitive for the Amazing Missus. It is who she is. Her family will be served at the level of guests.
Just look at that table.

Keeping it Simple

This last Sunday I preached on why some unbelievers, in spite of being intelligent, hearing, and even understanding, don't turn to God and cry out for salvation, while others in the same state do.
Simple question.
Some theological persuasions make it more difficult and raise new questions (about the goodness of God) by their handling of such a simplicity. I forgive them as they are trapped by an anthropology that forces them into complexity.

I said it was a simple question.
It has a simple answer.
Why don't they repent?
They don't want to.
My anthropology has been mentioned on this blog before. The central task of man is to resolve the nature of feeling. He must govern it into some satisfactory semblance of peace. He chases after his lusts, moderates them and minimizes his pains. He develops his understanding and justifies his action. He knows that he has been given the first draft in the task of governance. He soon finds that he must allow others to share in the governance for he, alone, could not arrange life well enough. He collects into cities and solves thereby some of his needs. They together develop economics and armies and laws. We all know what we are about in this regard. Everything we do is answering the question of who is "lord" over "what".
Enter the God, the God who made Heaven and Earth.
He says, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
He is asking for everyman to make a crucial grant of lordship and man guards that privilege very closely. In addressing the unbelief of the Jews in Romans 6, St. Paul quotes Isaiah 65.
I spread out my hands all the day
to a rebellious people,
who walk in a way that is not good,
following their own devices;
3 a people who provoke me
to my face continually,
sacrificing in gardens
and burning incense upon bricks;
4 who sit in tombs,
and spend the night in secret places;
who eat swine's flesh,
and broth of abominable things is in their vessels;
5 who say, "Keep to yourself,
do not come near me, for I am set apart from you."

Note the last line of verse 2.
It is their own devices they follow. They want to arrange their lives their way for what they perceive will be an adequate peace.
And verse 5 is their conclusion.
Their every hope is to have a life following the oft remarked key of conservative politics.
"The government that governs least governs best."
Man's own passion, their own feeling, their own way is the single explanation for the wide variety of sin in this world.
As Christ quotes Isaiah 6 in Matthew 13:15
"For this people's heart has grown dull,
and their ears are heavy of hearing,
and their eyes they have closed,
lest they should perceive with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their heart,
and turn for me to heal them.'"
They choose to be blind. They do not honor God as God or give Him thanks.
They would like to be healed (it is our primary need) but they don't want God to do it.
They would be the "master of their own fate, the captain of their own soul" no longer if they bowed the knee. They are no different from the wingnut that refuses to get a social security card, lives in a single wide in Montana and doesn't pay his taxes. He thinks he is man enough to command that difficult task called the human life.
He isn't that smart and neither are we.
While we may be more sensible in our willingness to absorb a loss of individual governance because more power than we have is necessary to fight a war, print legal tender, and maintain sewer lines. We allowed for it and became citizens of it because we knew we needed something we could not individually access and that this fraternity or overlord provided.
God has asked for something more directly about and within us than a city's infrastructure can offer. He has asked to rule our passions directly. This is the seat and motivation of all our pursuits. It is what we feel, both painful and pleasurable. He will have nothing less from us than authority over the arrangement of our feeling. Others, like cult leaders or megalomaniacs and even Satan of Christ, have asked for this control but only a God can provide a moral governance validly. It is a big submission and it must be made and must be made correctly. Heaven knows we need it. He who refuses to submit to God thinks he can make a "good" that is good enough.

The Heavens and the Earth are a monarchy.
Jesus Christ is King and Lord.
The peasants are, well, peasants.
They look on the claim of Christ and sound like the mud farmer in Monty Python.

Man: Come and see the violence inherent in the system! HELP, HELP, I'M BEING REPRESSED!
Arthur: Bloody PEASANT!
Man: Oh, what a giveaway! Did'j'hear that, did'j'hear that, eh? That's what I'm all about! Did you see 'im repressing me? You saw it, didn't you?!

Parishioners, Congregants, Occasionals, & the Curious

This Sunday, December 9, 2007
All Souls Christian Church
will meet at its new building
(217 E. 6th, Moscow, Idaho
and it looks like the church pictured below)

Regular time: 9:30 A.M.

Tell everyone that you know who might accidentally go to the American Legion Cabin and think that despite my views on the Rapture, it happened anyway.

Come ready to be Very Thankful!
signed, The Bish

Praise God From Whom All Blessings

Blessings!

Thanksgiving Prayer

Rendered words will to Thee, on knees before,
Call blessings down on us from blessedness
On all the temptings, Thine, we do adore
But hold as bliss in brief possessedness.
O, Giving One, Thy name on high be praised,
Thou, us, hast given surfeit, rich with wine
Not want. Here satisfacted hands are raised
To call this Annum’s bountied harvest Thine.
And families all, beneath thy heaven sing
Of faithfulness to such as mortal clay.
Your eyes and ears patrol the earth to bring
Our humbly proffered plea to thee today.
Before Thy throne we lift the goodly year
May Thy great goodness bless today with cheer.


by Evan Wilson

I Got Me A Hat!

I have been in many arguments involving the compelling wonders of Open Theism and its Promethean carriage of light to the tired darkness of determinism. I have left the half dead khaki clad forms of many a young turk crying for mercy on my library floor.

But then, on the wings of the U.S. Mail came a sign, a portent. I sat there stunned. All my human pride gathered in puddles doubly wet with my tears of shocked clarity about deterministic..um... stuff. The postal service winged thing claimed to be a demonstration, obviously, of decree.

What's the picture for? Hold on, hold on! I'm getting to that.

St. Joe of Mikler camest to town some years gone. Since he had known and been taught by an old friend of mine (who had recommended and warned St. Joe of me), it necessitated that we meet. Meet we did at Bucers one night. Short swords were drawn, blood was spilt, and the emblematic khakis were ruined. After Joe got out of hospital a friendliness to those of heterodox opinion had grown. In due course this monk of Miklerburg, this anchorite of Orlando graduated and moved back to the spiritual and moral wilderness that is Florida. One day he walked into a skate shop and there, the decrees insisted, was a hat. Not just any hat but a hat that could turn the Oracle from his free willin' ways. I know you can't read it but emblazoned thereon, for all the world as unanswerable as Gideon's fleece, it says "First Church of Evans". If this is from the hands of Providence may I suggest that they should cast their graphics department into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing. St. Joe sent it unto me with a warning to mend my ways. I have submitted (in insincere external gesture without any true repentance) since Floridian decrees are hard to resist. I wore it to church.

May I say this is the best argument I have ever heard from a Calvinist?

Yes, that is as good as it gets.

And I got a hat.

One up for the Open Theists!

Are You a Compelling Argument?

In two conversations recently a certain thought has crossed my mind. That thought involves what passes as an compelling apologia for the Faith.
For some, the authority of the Church, with its various levels of priestcraft and tradition, whether it be ancient or new-fangled, is the proof offered. It is the proof of an insistent, bigger voice which, while not God Himself, makes the hearer feel sufficiently dependent and small.
For others it is the philosophic/historic/debate driven proof that evolution is wrong, God exists, the Flood happened, etc. etc.. This is the most popular apologia and where, if you buy a book on apologetics, you will find yourself immersed.
Some find that the Fake is sufficient to prove the Faith to themselves and to others. This involves stories easily checked on Snopes.com which everyone (everyone with a modicum of smarts) knows are a fraud, but the desire to believe that Life is this way, creates the offering of a lie in exchange for a "willful suspension of disbelief". It is an apologia of "I really want this kind of thing to be true and you told me it was". I have been in embarrassing conversations with college educated Christians sharing tales where only my breeding as a gentleman kept me from informing them in front of their wife and offspring that they, yes they, had managed to make the word "retard" a necessary and helpful part of my vocabulary.
Rarely, and this is my thought in these recent conversations, are the apologies of the Authority of the Church, the Debate on Facts and Ideas, or the Born Fools Believing Abject Lies any match for the Grand Battle between Sin and Righteousness. Catechize your kid, wrap their reading up in Philip Johnson and Josh McDowell, and send them off to Creation concerts where they can hear the latest of Christian mythologies and when they go off to college, what do you know?, they tube it. Sin seems fully capable to trump everything but actual Righteousness. Why not prove the Faith by proving in your life what the Faith was supposed to do? That a lot of people have believed it, or that it is true, or that it even excites rumours is no replacement for it working. I guess it is easier for most (thinking their doing Our God a favor) to read Michael Behe or C.S. Lewis and spout a regurgitated argument than it is to be holy and point your child (ah, there's the rub) or the nonbeliever that knows you well, at your life. Wouldn't it be nice if the Grand Victory of Christ over Sin at the Cross had some practical evidence?
Of course its true, look at what it has done for me!

Graeme Stanford Wilson

I am duly proud of my children. Number 3, Graeme, is almost done with boot camp at Ft. Leonard Wood. He has done very well and is currently first in his platoon in physical training.
After this he is on to Advanced Infantry Training (home for Christmas, thankfully) and then finally home to attend the University of Idaho in the U.S. Army ROTC.

Pray for him. You can be proud too as he serves us all.

The Way of a Man with a Maid

I was asked the other day by a man who needed to know, "What areas of doctrinal agreement make for a spiritually happy marriage?"
A couple of things need to be cleared up first.
One: I don't expect a wife to agree doctrinally with her husband. They usually do agree but I don't think it helps a man already too pleased with himself to have another soul, who loves him romantically, adding her voice by default to the cheers. That she does agree and knows that she need not is a great freedom and greater confidence within her own thoughts that she has processed, not merely 'slept with' her husband's views. Plus, he will be able to trust that if he can't convince her, he might still be right but he will know that the transferring argument needs work.
Two: It is not the 'agreement' that makes for the spiritual happiness. If the two agree and are wrong in their view they have team happiness. They have just what two advocates of, or members in, a particular sporting franchise have. The weight of spiritual happiness in a marriage is that degree of agreement on that which is sufficiently correct that the Powers of Heaven conspire to aid and comfort.
Primarily I am thinking of a man with a maid though I imagine a young lady of mental means might find this helpful as well.
The Preacher saith "Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life which he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun."

Three conclusions or opinions must have been reached by a young lady if you hope to be happy with her in daily tests and maturings with which this futile life is encumbered.
They are, The Gospel, the Primary Desire to Please God, and a Knowledge of where Truth comes from.
The first is obvious. Without regeneration by a belief in and a calling out to God through His Son Jesus Christ, the hottest for you, most infatuated in you, sinner on the planet will be Hell on wheels. In the lightest and heaviest way, God Help You.
The second is about her opinion of her Christianity relational to all else in her life. The Powers wish to aid and comfort. Does Christ not merely save her from sin but buy her attention as Lord? Just like a man would not like to discover that she married him for an occasional romp and as a day laborer, so also would that man want to have someone as committed to pleasing the Lord as is he. Remember this is about agreement. They, the two of them, must have met the Gospel with effect. They, the two of them, must take the position that Christ is Lord.
In looking for a wife it is a reversal of Christ and the centurion. Christ is impressed with the Roman soldier's understanding of authority and comments about such a one that, "no greater faith is found in Israel". I say 'reversal' for a man wants to find a wife that understands (before she becomes his wife) that God rules the world of men and as such she is more ready to be what God commanded for a wife.

"Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands."
Ephesians 5:22-24

Let us recap. Evangelical faith unto salvation and an abiding desire to please God. Sounds like a great gal. Without getting into a systematic agreement on your particular creed, what more could be needed? The third thing, that I mentioned above, is the thing that puts legs on the spiritual relationship between man and wife.

"If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home."
I Corinthians 14:35

What I said above was "that they know where truth comes from" and then just now I quote a little more Pauline misogyny. No, I am not saying that truth comes from the husband. I think you would have figured that out by my first aside, that a wife need not agree with her husband on doctrine. The husband needs to know that he is Biblically mandated to be a teacher for his wife and like Christ and the Church "wash her with the water of the word". So what quality in her should he be looking for. Many women are saved. Many want to please God. And tragically, many of these many make up their minds by what their pastor says, what their father says, what their husband says, what friends, commercials, traditions, superstitions, passions, and emotions say.
If she ends up in a correct opinion about anything, she was lucky.
Above all else pick a wife from a set that knows whence truth comes. You have to guide her and answer the questions. Watch for these evaluators.
When she holds a position which is revealed to be opposite from what she sees in Scripture, run like Hades.
When she, on encountering a rational proof against what she thinks, makes her defense in the tall grass of passion and/or what people important to her said, resign yourself to a longer search for love.
If what is apparent on the grounds of a shared phenomenal reality is set aside for vain imaginings, faeries, conspiracy or worse, conveniently forget her phone number.
You cannot lead, and you cannot spiritually enjoy a woman who doesn't know where truth resides. You cannot hope to have a wider range of agreement in doctrinal nuance with some babe for whom the Scriptures, logic and empiricism are just 'guy think' and against which she decides and lives because of the oatmeal she calls gray matter bubbled up at the sight of a puppy.

"Like a gold ring in a swine's snout
is a beautiful woman without discretion."
Proverbs 11:22

Respecting Fathers

The writer of Hebrews suggests this:
"Besides this, we have had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them."
Of course it could go without saying that the parent who does not discipline gets no respect, either in the upper crust liberal whose enlightened approach to child rearing has rewarded him with children who hate him or the perennial example of the harried mom in WalMart threatening to count as little Cletus goes ballistic on the floor. We can write off the foolish who think they can do better than what ages of human experience has taught us. The can look forward to a future with an emo kid cutting herself at thirteen because of reasons she knows not or an absent wife working so the family can stay affluent AND afford the Ritalin for the boy . Odd, I said "it goes without saying" and then I proceeded to say it. I'd better let them be. They have sufficient crisis without me.

But what about the devout Christian family that lovingly disciplined and still got handed the adolescent from Hell? They did discipline (and we are talking spanking here) and yet no respect.
Look at the signals your child is getting. What is it about a larger person hitting them that will make the smaller respect the larger? Fear perhaps? Why would they resent such an action? And why, just about the time they get big enough to resist the discipline, their resistance increases like they were waiting for the advent of physical equalization?
If you are just bigger physically you are a tyrant and a bully. You get your way in the house because you are larger. The child is taught only one thing, that size matters because it is only size that defines the right of rule. But might does make right (not moral right but allowance). Why should a family be any different. It won't be. If a population conceives that they are being ruled by their equals, great force and consequently greater tyranny is need to maintain government. If successful in quashing all rebellion the citizens turn out to be servile. So it will be with your family. You will have to become more tyrannical and hope to crush the spirits of your children until they flinch fearfully at the possibilities of the broader world. If you fail to crush them, and with boys it is harder, prepare for a civil war about the time they can look you in the eye. All this unless you and they perceive that the rule comes down to them from their better. They are children, and by good and necessary consequent, idiots. You are adults, a powerful race of demigods wearing the wedding rings of Doom.

When law and discipline comes down on you from above, the ruled know that the betters are supposed to govern them. Equals are not "supposed" to do so. When equals try, all Hades breaks loose.

Brazenly Citified

Wes and I can't help ourselves. As candidate Obama says, it is the "audacity of hope". We cobble together a body of irrelevant knowledge, wrap a day around it, offer victuals, and ask them (who are "they"?) to pay $50 for the privilege of hearing us.

Four Cities: Wes will be doing Byzantium and Alexandria while I dodge the obvious of Athens or Rome and pick up Pergamum and Antioch of Syria.

This is what anyone with a soul will be doing on November 10. It will be a comfortable Autumn day and the humane attendees will be scribbling notes that will map a future sophistication. After supper we will once again gather in comfy chairs and read of things the pedestrian ignore.

Be there.
Contact me at ewilson@turbonet.com if you are interested in joining us. If you are from out of town, The Big Haus has 3 guest rooms at no extra cost.

It sounds like you mean something to someone else

"He was my mentor."
"We are living in community."
These are phrases that give me that searing pain running from my jaw to my right eye which I usually only get while looking at certain small children.
"He is my lover," doesn't bother me at all. But it is a kind of relationship like "mentor".
"I'm from Idaho," equally gets a pass. But it is a locational belonging like "community".
What is the deal? It could be merely the place those words hold in trend-speak. Having a mentor became as necessary as having an iPod and the hobbits buying their dirt cookies at the whole foods store could not imagine being so pedestrian (though they recommend the practice for planetary good) that they merely would live in a "city" and be "citizens". There is wrath in plenty for any whose vocabulary follows the trends. But what is it that the trend violates in us? Mentors exist. Communities exist. Lovers exist. Idaho exists.

I think that part of the crime is that they "name and claim". These are measuring words. The ears that hear need help defining us so it is good for them to hear these words of measurement, words that say a "good" thing without concrete claim of the good it actually bore. No one claims to be someones lover without wanting people to conclude that the two of them are having sex, consensually and regularly. The good claim it makes is specific. Living in Idaho allows even the hill apes back east to realize, with certain specificity, the shape and range of borders inside which I sit.
Mentoring is soft, fuzzy, indistinct and pointless except in the use of the word. The use of the word suggests Socrates and Plato. It is suppose to make you feel that, like lovers in the sack, the mentor and menti are out striding the moor, pipes clenched twixt teeth, with a constant barrage of questions and returning fire of answer ennobling and shaping the man that was into the man with whom he walks. The hearer wants to become, with almost cult member fervor, like his mentor. Now it is actually the guy who shows you where the coffee room is and which middle management poseur you need to avoid. But now you have a "mentor". My objection is that it means more than what they are gaining but they want you to hear the "more". It is like a girl claiming to be someone's lover after having been on date ending in a chaste embrace.
People want the words "mentor" and "community" to still carry the weight of their claim without the needs of performing that which they claimed. It can be beneficial to be guided by someone else's wisdom and it is good to live harmoniously in a social construct. Within the trend all conversations with a more advanced agent are mentoring and every social existence is "in community".
A young lady had expressed recently the interest in living at Big Haus so she could live in community. I told her that we are not interested in living in community, we are a community. The titles are their own delicacy, and their sweetness to our spoken reputation is that of saccharine not sugar. Artificial sweeteners are a sweet without the cost of calories but they are also a life not even half lived.
Many hope the spoken word calls things into existence which are not yet but many have learned to like the "taste" of the fake flavor. The more they say "community" the more it feels to them that they have one. I say if you find a mentor, be then mentored but never say it, even in your dreams.

Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.
I John 3:18

The Semi-Pelagian Self

I have to admit that I like Pelagius. Hey, he was a Briton. I differ with the man on a number of fronts as well. Like the rest of his generation he held to baptism as a passage of grace. He was ascetic in his personal spiritual exercises but probably accepted those that weren't. He believed that pieties could be lived that were not required. But I agree with Pelagius where most disagree with him.
His popular reputation as a heretic is primarily on two fronts, (1) his denial of original sin (which I, with him, deny) producing a lack of necessity for infant baptism and (2) his belief in the possibility of holiness (which I also aver). He did support infant baptism but for very different reasons.

Why would I suggest that the arch heretic of Augustine's wrath should be considered on those very points that give the orthodox fits? I grew up in a home that centered itself on the Word of God and on the practical handling of that Word. My parents did not hold anything because the historic church told them it was decided thus. My father has taught for many years that Romans 7 was St. Paul recounting his life as an unbeliever. This challenged a proof text of those who wished to have it describe the necessary sinfulness of the believer. Interestingly, if you read Jacob Arminius on Romans 7, he says the same. More to our topic, if you read Pelagius' commentary of Romans (Oxford University Press) he also makes the same suggestion. For you followers of tradition, it is the faith of my fathers and I come by my Pelagianism tribally. Actually, I too find this an irresistible force in the Scriptures. Reading Pelagius one finds a mind traveling along rational paths with the Word of God as his guide while with Augustine you feel like you are in a vortex of allegory and still tainted by his rejected Manichee gnosis. Pelagius is more modern.

The notion that Pelagius believed that man could be sinless without conversion (which I don't hold) stemmed from his view of the distinction of ability, volition, and actuality. Summed up it is more like man could but wouldn't and didn't. Pelegius' disciples like Coelestius ramped up that claim to the extent that Pelagius denied that teaching explicitly at the Synod of Lydda (415)
" I say again, that these opinions, even according to their own testimony, are not mine; nor for them, as I have already said, ought I to be held responsible. The opinions which I have confessed to be my own, I maintain are sound; those, however, which I have said are not my own, I reject according to the judgment of this holy synod, pronouncing anathema on every man who opposes and gainsays the doctrines of the Holy Catholic Church."

Pelagius states his position to the same Synod with these words.
"But we never said that any man could be found who at no time whatever, from infancy to old age, had committed sin: but that if any person were converted from his sins, he could by his own labour and God's grace be without sin; and yet not even thus would he be incapable of change ever afterwards. As for the other statements which they have made against us, they are not to be found in our books, nor have we at any time said such things."

Those Christians who desire holiness and see such promise in the Holy Scriptures find a common thread in Pelagius.

On My Father's 80th Birthday

THE PATRIARCH'S LAMENT

A father once spoke to himself in his age
"My kids are too smart for their good,"
thought the sage.
"But my sons married swell,
And the daughter as well,
So my sorrows will grandkids assuage."


by Evan

A Nimbus of Tweed About My Head

Tomorrow, today online, appears an article by a young lady of considerable mental stature named Molly Worthen. It is about New St. Andrews College here in Moscow. It is pretty fair article. "Big Whoop" says the casual observer. Here is where the whoop comes in. The article appears in The New York Times Magazine. The second whoop arrives on our lips when we realize that the Oracle of Evantine Abbey has been quoted 3-4 times by name. Sure, I say somewhat unremarkable things but the mere mention has caused Fred Banks of the Drones Club (an avid reader of The Times) to pay up on his offer to agree with me for two weeks running (beginning tomorrow). The rest of you might wish to try it. Consider it a fasting from incorrectitude.

A Thought Following after Davis' Thought

When a person wants to do and does that which he knows is evil, he is being not just darkly evil but a dim bulb rationally. His internal admission that good and evil exists (handy to have in blaming everyone else for their sins) is an admission that an authority exists greater than man with the power and intention to reward or punish those actions respectively. The effort of evil action is preceded or followed by the wicked judging his own actions by his own feelings on the matter. "It wasn't that bad," or "It was deserved," or "But I love her," is said only by someone who believes that this ethical lapse is vindicated in the court of final appeal, the Self. Self-justification for a moralist is idiotic. Morals can only be justified by the governor of that realm (a decision rendered above man may only be rendered by a god) and I may only call on that god for justification. So you are either the god or you are not. You can't have it both ways. If I revisit what I knew was evil with my own authority I am saying that there is no oughtness, no morality.
I am speaking of the man who has acted against what he knows is good. He is a man who believes that this moral realm is like the American Constitution. He is counting on a balance of power between the president (his god) and a representative legislature (his own voice). He errs. God is a monarchist and has not called for a Senate. Our cacophony of self serving legislative voices rise up to override His veto and He will not, for morality's sake, be overridden. As we persist, we speak treason against the morality and its judge. We will be tried and we will be punished.

Isaiah 5:20-24
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,
and shrewd in their own sight!
Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine,
and valiant men in mixing strong drink,
who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
and deprive the innocent of his right!
Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble,
and as dry grass sinks down in the flame,
so their root will be as rottenness,
and their blossom go up like dust;
for they have rejected the law of the LORD of hosts,
and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

As an aside: One may have feelings of justification by an internal conscience (rightly or wrongly) and not be inconsistent. When questioned, that one would say that their conscience, which all men share from the god's design, carried the correct measure of the deed. He, the conscience follower, thought it good from the outset and was not trying to overturn a decision already made. He will agree with the above, that what makes it known as good is that God has spoken of it thusly to him. This just absolves the man of the charge of inconsistency but does not make him good.

Romans 2:15-16
They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

A Report from the Shadow Side of Aging

The Amazing Missus is Old.
She plummeted into the Dark Realms surrounded by the graces of good friends and family with the ministrations of a Walla Wallaean tour of wineries capped off with fine meal in the lap of ostentation. Seven wineries, a box lunch in a spectacular park, the surprise of her eldest son popping out of his sister's car trunk having been smuggled in from Manhattan, a splendid dinner, singing with her daughter in the Marcus Whitman lobby, and cigars on the patio combined to keep her smiling. Scenes of such seen below.

Bad Manners

Pease porridge hot,
Pease gettin' cold.
Please pass the porridge pot
Of pease afore I'm old.


be Evan Wilson

A Woden's Day Apocalypse

The Big Haus fall Bible study began last evening on the perennially ignored (by me in schedule not in assessment) Revelation of John. As you who have read this blog regularly know, I am not eschatologically riveted. The views expressed at this Bible study are those never heard dropping from any other lips in Christendom. The word Apocalypse means "a lifting of the curtain or veil" and that is precisely what I hope to do.
Last night the faithful were told of the need to resolve certain issues in their minds in order to approach the Revelation.
First: Is the Future actual or conceptual? In other words was John's vision a transport through time to look upon the events and describe them OR does God provide a symbolic image of what He will bring to pass.
Second: Are we willing to hope patiently in that which we discover is still to come rather than fictionalize a fulfillment so we can believe it better? Romans 8 reminds you that hope which is seen is not hope. Future stories are fiction. Do not write them. Instead read real stories for the Glory of God's prophetic will is only to be seen in the histories of the past. Did it happen? How will you know about it unless you read the histories. When Tacitus mentions the host of armies in the clouds over Jerusalem prior to the fall in 70 A.D., God is potentially glorified for seeming to fulfill His promise to show those who pierced him his coming in the clouds.
Third: Can we recognize the distance in the relationship that each symbolic item has to the symbolized? For instance, the 7 heads of the sea beast measure three distances. 7 heads= literally 7 hills and 7 kings. The first distance is the number seven's symbolic distance from the number seven is zero. The second distance is the heads representing kings, which is not 1:1 but is a natural poetic distance. At the same time, in the third distance, the heads are hills which, without that being told to us, the distance of head to hill is so great we would never have figured it out. The heads are not hills like the 7 are 7. A greater distance, perhaps an recognizable distance once pointed out, exists between the realities of the 7 hills of Rome and the 7 heads of the beast. Christ is in the same book one like the son of man, a wounded lamb and a small child. Each has varying distance from the thing symbolized.
Fourth: Let the clear passage define the unclear. If the book tells you something means something, set that point as an anchor and chart the more vague portions from its vantage.

The Costly Virtue of Politeness

It began here.
Yup, here on the Evantine Abbey blog.
And the project of saving Western Civilization from itself is done.
The Amazing Missus has both written four short chapters on basic manners and has added all the requisite commas to that which the Oracle wrote.

You are saying to yourself, "Self, how can I get a hold of 1 or 50 of these puppies?"
That is a problem. I can print them out myself complete with color card cover. I took the first one to FedEx/Kinkos for cutting and coil binding and they charged me $5 for a 8" plastic coil (which I like the best cuz it can lay flat). Heavens! The work is extremely valuable but add the $5 to the other costs of toner and paper and the "extreme value" registers as "excessive cost" to the man on the street. How would you possibly afford the fifty copies you want?
I would like to offer this contribution to Western Civilization for sale but I don't know how to keep the costs down to a reasonable level. Comments with "helpful" ideas (not involving becoming a Calvinist) are encouraged. I have already looked into buying the dang machine that will do this magical binding but they run between $400-600. A lot of you would have to order your 50 copies lickety split. I figure the final cost should look like $5 retail. No ones face would turn ashen when looking at a 5.5"x8.5" spiral bound, 60 page, color covered booklet and hearing me say "That'll be $5, please".

Afterthought:
Some of you who are new to the meanderings of the Oracle are wondering what the above "actually is". It is 30 one page observations/arguments/philosophies following the 30 Rules for a Gentleman and a Lady (15 each). The seminars I hold at the Big Haus called The Mojo Oracles (for men) and The Tao of Eve (for women) ended up producing certain observations based on my study of Lord Chesterfield and Balthazar Castiglione. I wrote the Rules a few years back to help the observations of a "gentled condition" fit the seminar format. As requests for explanations continued, I, in the last couple of years, wrote one page defenses for each.
Also, having run a boarding house for college students for 27 years my wife and I were acutely aware of the bad manners that were the norm in the middle class. We added chapters at the end on attire, conversation, public behavior and dining to address the most basic, foundational manners. We even included pictures to distinguish between how a lower primate holds a spoon and how a human being would do the same.
I gave a talk at the Society for Classical Learning conference last year in Greensboro to great response and a year later (at this year's conference) people were asking me for materials. I knew a single affordable volume was needed and something schools or individuals could use or give away. Today we have a product but we are working on "affordable".

Last Sunday was My 29th Anniversary

Where I Would Rest

Some holies say the Sabbath is the day
Where rest for six is found for all the saints.
Some claim that “rest” by fiat stray’d and pray’d
The church to Sunday them to death. This ain’t
My mind to thus esteem either or each,
To keep my goodly soul in cosmic trim.
While no “new moons, sabbaths, or feasts” I preach
(The week is named for other gods than Him.)
I certain do more blessed days revere.
Mine own nativity I toast and love,
And accidental Sundays in a year,
Though not for church or rite or perks above.
This Sunday is above all days in life.
This rest I took when you became my wife.

the husband

Boogie, Children

The Amazing Missus and I went to see Jonny Lang in Sandpoint with Jay and Noelle Zmuda. The setting was marvelous, the weather beyond compare, and, as fans of Mr. Lang lo, these many years, we smiled the smile of the blessed.

That boy can play the geetar.

An Abstruse Remark for the Emotionally Vulnerable

I wonder.



That's pretty much it.