A few more photos

There are, of course, many more photos. I hope to find time to put a bunch of them on the photoblog over the next week or so, but these will suffice for now.

Baptism & Testimonies

Imagine that you're staying at the Marriott for the weekend, and on Sunday morning you decide to head down to the pool. Then imagine that a couple hundred people gather around the pool and 18 of them are baptized in the shallow end. That was the scene Sunday morning as our weekly meeting included a fun time at the pool witnessing so many baptisms. I enjoyed seeing fathers baptize their teenage kids and couldn't help but think about the day when I hope to do the same.

It was also nice to hear the testimonies of a few of the people participating - there was unfortunately not time to hear all of them. I just read a rather remarkable story that we were not able to hear. It's worth the read.

A few vacation photos

Calvin on Knowledge of God

A thought for the day:

Like Augustine before him, John Calvin talked about the pursuit of happiness as the beginning point for the knowledge of God. Calvin, however, kind of went through the back door in saying we need to first come to grips with our deep unhappiness, with the ruin wrought by sin in our lives and in the world. Calvin:

Each of us must, then, be so stung by the consciousness of his own
unhappiness as to attain at least some knowledge of God. Thus, from the feeling
of our own ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity, and - what is more - depravity
and corruption, we recognize that the true light of wisdom, sound virtue, full
abundance of every good, and purity of righteousness rest in the Lord alone. To
this extent we are prompted by our own ills to contemplate the good things of
God; and we cannot seriously aspire to him before we begin to become
displeased with ourselves.

In other words, we must first deal with the reality that things are not the way they are supposed to be; that something deep and fundamental is wrong about ourselves. We must be honest with ourselves. In so doing, we can begin to find God as He redeems and makes whole what is broken.

Quoted in David Clyde Jones: Biblical Christian Ethics.

Happy Anniversary

Happy anniversary, Keri!

Kierkegaard's Wound

One of the interesting paradoxes about pursuing holiness is that the more one advances in holiness, the more one feels the weight of sin and dependence upon God. People who are not serious about moral and righteous living often have a high esteem of themselves and of their virtue, while often those who really are more virtuous feel less so, because they are more aware of and more sensitive to the depths of sin in the heart of every person.

Kierkegaard scholar C. Stephen Evans writes: "Kierkegaard speaks of this split between what one is and what one knows one should be as a wound, and says that it is the mark of the truly moral or ethical person to 'keep the wound open.' and not bandage it with superficial palliatives."

In other words, it is painful to recognize sin within us - it hurts. And we live in a culture that wants to psychologize and medicate any kind of pain (even good pain) and convince us that we are really OK and good - it wants to kill the vestiges of sin by telling us there is no such thing. So we are taught to put band-aids on this wound, and to kill the pain through endless rounds of business and distractions that never give us time to rest and feel the pain of our sinfulness.

So Kierkegaard (who primarily wrote against the shallow superficiality of cultural Christianity in his day) is wise to warn us to "keep the wound open." That way we are wary of pride and constantly reminded of our dependence upon God's grace.

True Beauty

In a 2004 cover story in Spin Magazine, U2 frontman Bono (note: if you're new to the blog, you'll know that U2 holds a unique position in my personal music pantheon) says, "The job of art is to chase away ugliness." (By the way, you can read the full article here). It seems to me that such a view certainly comports with Scripture. God is a creative God and one who loves beauty - He didn't have to make the sky turn glorious hues of orange and purple when the sun sets, for example. His creation was good. By contrast, sin brings ugliness - none worse than the ugliness inside the human heart. The goal of good art should be, as Bono says, to chase away ugliness, to remind show us beauty. There is a transcendent quality to art that does this, something that ought to remind us that True Beauty exists, and that ugliness will ultimately vanish in Christ's kingdom.

Of course, many in the arts celebrate ugliness. Think of the compositions of John Cage, think of infamous art exhibits that draw publicity by shocking ugliness. A poll of 500 influential arts figures, released in 2004, declared that the most influential work of modern art is Marchel Duchamp's "Urinal." And yes, it is basically a white porcelain urinal like you would find at your favorite rest stop. Don't believe it - look at it here. This is what the cultural elites of our day think is good art. I guess we might agree that it is influential, and certainly says something about the culture that produced and celebrates it. "Ugly" art attempts to subvert (or "deconstruct") the norm, what most of us would consider beauty. The purported aim is usually to "push the envelope," which they would have us believe is a high calling of art. Yet these things are subversive and destructive.

True Beauty exists, and it ought to be the goal of art to celebrate it and draw us to it, to remind us of the beauty of our Creator. The Church should celebrate such art and this high calling.

At the Beach

By the time this is actually posted, I trust we will be well on our way to a much-anticipated (and much needed!) vacation at the beach. We sure love the beach (Keri and I often think we are misplaced beach bums)! To prevent any cobwebs or rust from developing on my recently resuscitated blog I've pre-set a few posts from a few years ago to reappear over the next week.

Have a great week. Cheers!

Eli's First Haircut

After some debate, we determined it was time for Eli to lose the Austrian-punk-rocker do and get his first haircut. That way, or so the logic went, he won't be bothered by having hair in his eyes on the beach next week. So, though I felt like a dork, I took the camera in and got some photos of the event while simultaneously trying to entertain Asa.

Quotable

Yesterday Asa was speculating as to whether or not someone would be coming over after his afternoon nap. He said, "Who's coming over when I get up? Nobody or yesbody, which one?"

It reminded me of when he says, "That's mines" (not yours). It all actually makes a little bit of sense.

Great Offer on ESV Study Bible

The long-awaited ESV Study Bible is slated to be released in October. Crossway is making a very kind and generous offer: If you pre-order before July 31st you will get 35% off. Additionally, if you use this link to order, 5% of your purchase will be donated to Sovereign Grace Ministries.

The ESV is my favorite translation of the Bible, and I've read and heard that this study bible will be bar none the best one on the market.