"A wild stirring in its ancient sleep..."

When in my early teens, having graduated from the Hardy Boys, I consumed the Saint books by Leslie Charteris. I have taken a break from other reading, seeking something undemanding, and chose to see whether I could, so many years later, still enjoy one of those books. They are all now available for Kindle. I chose The Last Hero (1929), one of the earliest, now titled for some reason, The Saint Closes the Case. I am enjoying it. I just read this: Simon Templer (The Saint) is hurtling through the night on a quest to save his love who is held hostage by a really evil villain...

That he was going to an almost blindfold assault took nothing from his rapture. Rather, he savoured the adventure the more, for this was the fashion of forlorn sally that his heart cried for—the end of inaction, the end of perplexity and helplessness, the end of a damnation of doubt and dithering. And in the Saint's heart was a shout of rejoicing, because at last the God of all good battles and desperate endeavour had remembered him again.

No, it wasn't selfish. It wasn't a mere lust for adventure that cared nothing for the peril of those who made the adventure worth while. it was the irresistible resurgence of the most fundamental of all the inspirations of man. A wild stirring in its ancient sleep of the spirit that sent the knights of Arthur out upon their quests, of Tristan crying for Isolde, of the flame in a man's heart that brought fire and sword upon Troy, of Roland's shout and the singing blade of Durendal amid the carnage of Roncesvalles. "The sound of the trumpet. ...."

Would any teenager today have a clue about the references in that last paragraph? Or have the curiosity to find out? Today Google could discover the answers very quickly but in the '20s, or even the '60s, discovering their meaning would have been a considerable break in reading an adventure.

"A vivid sense of...grandeur and drama"

I taught required American history classes for high school students for thirty-five years, but never a US History AP class (some of my Pol. Sci. students did take the AP exam for that subject and did well). The most effective way to teach history to secondary students is to leaven factual information with story. The tendency over recent decades has been to de-emphasize facts and drama in favor of make-work projects (boring to the bright) and ideological abstraction (boring to everyone). And the textbooks, written by committee and made inoffensive as possible, do not engage readers. The newest version of the AP test for American history has become very controversial among teachers, parents, and serious historians. Some fifty-five scholars signed this statement:

.... "The College Board’s 2014 Advanced Placement Examination shortchanges students by imposing on them an arid, fragmentary, and misleading account of American history. We favor instead a robust, vivid, and content-rich account of our unfolding national drama, warts and all, a history that is alert to all the ways we have disagreed and fallen short of our ideals, while emphasizing the ways that we remain one nation with common ideals and a shared story. ....

.... The new framework scrubs away all traces of what used to be the chief glory of historical writing—vivid and compelling narrative—and reduces history to an bloodless interplay of abstract and impersonal forces. Gone is the idea that history should provide a fund of compelling stories about exemplary people and events. No longer will students hear about America as a dynamic and exemplary nation, flawed in many respects, but whose citizens have striven through the years toward the more perfect realization of its professed ideals. The new version of the test will effectively marginalize important ways of teaching about the American past, and force American high schools to teach U.S. history from a perspective that self-consciously seeks to de-center American history and subordinate it to a global and heavily social-scientific perspective. ....

We believe that the study of history should expose our young students to vigorous debates about the nature of American exceptionalism, American identity, and America’s role in the world. Such debates are the warp and woof of historical understanding. We do not seek to reduce the education of our young to the inculcation of fairy tales, or of a simple, whitewashed, heroic, even hagiographical nationalist narrative. Instead, we support a course that fosters informed and reflective civic awareness, while providing a vivid sense of the grandeur and drama of its subject.

A formal education in American history serves young people best by equipping them for a life of deep and consequential membership in their own society. ....

I just read an informative review of a book, Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab that does provide a "warts and all" version of a shameful part of US history. Why is Jackson still honored?

"How can I keep from singing?"

Suggested by "Sheer Joy" at Ricochet:

Magna Carta

Daniel Hannan on "Magna Carta: Eight Centuries of Liberty":

.... It was at Runnymede, on June 15, 1215, that the idea of the law standing above the government first took contractual form. King John accepted that he would no longer get to make the rules up as he went along. From that acceptance flowed, ultimately, all the rights and freedoms that we now take for granted: uncensored newspapers, security of property, equality before the law, habeas corpus, regular elections, sanctity of contract, jury trials.

Magna Carta is Latin for “Great Charter.” It was so named not because the men who drafted it foresaw its epochal power but because it was long. Yet, almost immediately, the document began to take on a political significance that justified the adjective in every sense.

The bishops and barons who had brought King John to the negotiating table understood that rights required an enforcement mechanism. The potency of a charter is not in its parchment but in the authority of its interpretation. ....

Magna Carta instituted a form of conciliar rule that was to develop directly into the Parliament that meets at Westminster today. As the great Victorian historian William Stubbs put it, “the whole constitutional history of England is little more than a commentary on Magna Carta.”

And not just England. Indeed, not even England in particular. Magna Carta has always been a bigger deal in the U.S. The meadow where the abominable King John put his royal seal to the parchment lies in my electoral district in the county of Surrey. It went unmarked until 1957, when a memorial stone was finally raised there—by the American Bar Association. ....

Eight hundred years is a long wait. We British have, by any measure, been slow to recognize what we have. Americans, by contrast, have always been keenly aware of the document, referring to it respectfully as the Magna Carta.

Why? Largely because of who the first Americans were. ....

As early as 1637, Maryland sought permission to incorporate Magna Carta into its basic law, and the first edition of the Great Charter was published on American soil in 1687 by William Penn, who explained that it was what made Englishmen unique: “In France, and other nations, the mere will of the Prince is Law, his word takes off any man’s head, imposeth taxes, or seizes any man’s estate, when, how and as often as he lists; But in England, each man hath a fixed Fundamental Right born with him, as to freedom of his person and property in his estate, which he cannot be deprived of, but either by his consent, or some crime, for which the law has imposed such a penalty or forfeiture.” ....

The American Revolutionaries weren’t rejecting their identity as Englishmen; they were asserting it. As they saw it, George III was violating the “ancient constitution” just as King John and the Stuarts had done. It was therefore not just their right but their duty to resist, in the words of the delegates to the first Continental Congress in 1774, “as Englishmen our ancestors in like cases have usually done.” .... [much more]

Also: Dan Jones, "Magna Carta: the things you didn't know"

Magna Carta: Eight Centuries of Liberty - WSJ

"Whoever would be first among you..."

From "Who Are Leaders Accountable To?" by Matt Perman:

.... Congregationalism can certainly be applied in ways that constrict the proper functioning of leadership. But at its essence, it means that the church members are ultimately responsible for what their church becomes, and the pastors and elders are accountable to the members — not simply themselves or a higher governing board. ....

We could ask, “where is this taught in Scripture?” Consider Jesus’ statement in Matthew 20:27 where, in teaching about Christian leadership, he says “whoever would be first among you must be your slave.” A slave is accountable to their master to carry out their priorities. Since leaders are to see themselves as slaves of those that they lead, then, that means that leaders are to see themselves as accountable to those whom they are leading. .... [more]

Who Are Leaders Accountable To? - What's Best Next

"...I will spue thee out of my mouth"

Matthew Parris — although agreeing with the result of the Irish referendum — finds the response of Catholic prelates rather frustrating:

.... Even as a (gay) atheist, I wince to see the philosophical mess that religious conservatives are making of their case. Is there nobody of any intellectual stature left in our English church, or the Roman church, to frame the argument against Christianity’s slide into just going with the flow of social and cultural change? ....

So, wearily and with a reluctance born of not even supporting the argument’s conclusion, let me restate the conservative Catholic’s only proper response to news such as that from Dublin last weekend. It is that 62 per cent in a referendum does not cause a sin in the eyes of God to cease to be a sin.

Can’t these Christians see that the moral basis of their faith cannot be sought in the pollsters’ arithmetic? What has the Irish referendum shown us? It is that a majority of people in the Republic of Ireland in 2015 do not agree with their church’s centuries-old doctrine that sexual relationships between two people of the same gender are a sin. Fine: we cannot doubt that finding. But can a preponderance of public opinion reverse the polarity between virtue and vice? Would it have occurred for a moment to Moses (let alone God) that he’d better defer to Moloch-worship because that’s what most of the Israelites wanted to do?

It must surely be implicit in the claim of any of the world’s great religions that on questions of morality, a majority may be wrong; but this should be vividly evident to Christians in particular: they need only consider the fate of their Messiah, and the persecution of adherents to the Early Church. ‘Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you,’ says Paul. ....

Have some of us, in short, made the mistake of taking the church at its word? Was it always, anyway, about going with the flow? Was it always secretly about imposing the morals of the majority on the minority — so all that is necessary is to discover which way the preponderance falls? ....

Abortion next, I suppose. Here, too, shall I live to hear the divine ahem? Silly me. And there I was thinking they meant it. As so often in my life, I have missed the big celestial wink. [more]

As a gay atheist, I want to see the church oppose same-sex marriage - Spectator Blogs

"We should not want the Bible to sound modern"

From Philologos at Mosaic: Advancing Jewish Thought:

Stephen M. Flatow asks why, in my column “The Paradox of the Transmission of Sacred Texts” that appeared two weeks ago, I used the King James translation when citing verses from the Bible. ....

The reason I...prefer the King James Version (KJV) is that, despite its age, its archaic English, and its often outdated interpretations of passages that subsequent knowledge has thrown new light on, it continues to be the best English Bible translation in existence.

This is, of course, a matter of taste and opinion, but the taste and opinion are not just mine. Millions of English-speaking Bible readers share them.... These millions of readers would agree with Adam Nicolson, who states in his God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible that, more than any other English translation of Scripture, the KJV is driven by an “idea of majesty” whose “qualities are those of grace, stateliness, scale, [and] power.” What its admirers sense in it above all, writes Nicolson, is what they sense in the Hebrew Bible itself: “a belief in the enormous and overwhelming divine authority” of the text. ....

...[It is] the product of a historical period in which the Bible’s divinely revealed character and literal truth, every word of which was assumed to matter supremely because it was God’s, were still taken for granted by most people, including the King James’s highly cultivated and sophisticated translators.

Indeed, the KJV’s archaic language, often cited as a point against it, strikes me as one more argument in its behalf. The language of the Hebrew Bible, after all, is archaic, too; it is precisely this that makes us feel when reading it that we are in contact with an age more wondrous and fervent than our own. The same holds true of the KJV. We should not want the Bible to sound modern. Of modernity we have more than enough; the Bible needs to be read against modernity’s grain. I’ll stick with the King James. [more]

My own preference is usually a compromise between the KJV and the modern translations and paraphrases — I read the RSV or, more usually, the ESV  — but the KJV works very well for worship if read by someone who can read well aloud and, of course, almost everyone uses the KJV versions of things like the 23^rd Psalm and the Lord's Prayer.

Why the King James Version of the Bible Remains the Best » Mosaic

"The most interesting man in the (Bible) world"

The Bible Exchange interviews Mark Bertrand. "If you have rediscovered reading Bibles and prefer a single-column edition with as few reading distractions as possible, chances are you have imbibed the literary philosophy of Mark Bertrand either wittingly or unwittingly." Bertrand's site is the Bible Design Blog. He converted me to the idea of "reader-friendly" bibles. From Bertrand's answers in the interview:

...I think we don’t know the Bible as well as we think. All that comfort and familiarity is misplaced, and sometimes even a little condescending. The real quest isn’t about dressing the Bible up; it’s about seeing the Bible for what it is, with new eyes.

.... I’m not reviewing Bibles for the sake of reviewing them. I have an agenda: to make them better. Specifically, to make them more readable. And I have particular ideas on what does and does not do that. You may agree or disagree, but either way, it keeps things interesting. ....

Bible apps have pretty much rendered all print editions but those designed for reading obsolete for me personally. I don’t need all the extra apparatus on the page, because I have all that on my phone or laptop. What I ask of the printed Bible is that it offer me a satisfyingly immersive deep reading experience. ....

That’s why, to me, the quest is not just about the binding, it’s about the design. And what matters about the design is that it honors the notion that the Bible is a text to experience—that as a reader you submit to it, you immerse yourself in it. You don’t stand above it looking down through a lattice of numbers and divisions and references, taking and leaving it based on your interest at the moment.

Now I realize it’s possible to have this experience regardless of the barriers put up by the design. I just wonder what would happen if we designed with this kind of deep reading in mind. .... [more]

The interview is at BibleExchange.com, which Bertrand describes as "an eBay for Bibles."

The Bible Exchange – Buy Sell and Trade High Quality Bibles |

"Their name liveth for evermore"

Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us. .... All these were honoured in their generations, and were the glory of their times. There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them. But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been forgotten. With their seed shall continually remain a good inheritance, and their children are within the covenant. Their seed standeth fast, and their children for their sakes. Their seed shall remain for ever, and their glory shall not be blotted out. Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore. The people will tell of their wisdom, and the congregation will shew forth their praise.
[The Apocrypha: Sirach 44:1-15 KJV]

Decoration Day

Amy A. Kass and Leon R. Kass, "Take Time to Remember" in The Weekly Standard:

.... Memorial Day, once called Decoration Day, is a post-Civil War holiday. It was first instituted by the Grand Army of the Republic on May 30, 1868, “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.” If the Fourth of July renews the memory of the birth of the nation, Decoration Day renewed the memory of those who gave their lives “that that nation might live,” or again in Lincoln’s words, that this nation would have a new birth of freedom.

On Decoration Day, May 30, 1871, at Arlington National Cemetery, it was an ex-slave named Frederick Douglass who delivered the memorial address near the monument to the “Unknown Loyal Dead,” before a gathering that included President Grant, his cabinet, and many other distinguished people. “Dark and sad,” Douglass began, “will be the hour to this nation when it forgets to pay grateful homage to its greatest benefactors.” Giving eloquent expression to that homage, he concluded: “If today we have a country not boiling in the agony of blood, like France, if now we have a united country, no longer cursed by the hell-black system of human bondage...if the star-spangled banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army who rest in these honored graves all around us.”

On this occasion and for the rest of his life, Douglass was at pains to keep alive through speech the memory and meaning of the deeds of that noble army of men who gave their lives to preserve the Union. ....

After World War I, Decoration Day was expanded to commemorate the lives of all those who have died in service to our country. Later, the name of the holiday was changed to Memorial Day; later still, it lost its fixed date in the calendar, celebrated instead on the last Monday in May. ....

Take Time to Remember | The Weekly Standard, May 29, 2011

"Underneath are the everlasting arms"

From C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady:

Magdalene College,
Cambridge
17 June 63

Dear Mary

This is terrible news. The doctor who refused to come would, I think, be liable to criminal prosecution in this country.

Pain is terrible, but surely you need not have fear as well? Can you not see death as the friend and deliverer? It means stripping off that body which is tormenting you: like taking off a hairshirt or getting out of a dungeon. What is there to be afraid of? You have long attempted (and none of us does more) a Christian life. Your sins are confessed and absolved. Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

Remember, tho' we struggle against things because we are afraid of them, it is often the other way round — we get afraid because we struggle. Are you struggling, resisting? Don't you think Our Lord says to you "Peace, child, peace. Relax. Let go. Underneath are the everlasting arms. Let go, I will catch you. Do you trust me so little?"

Of course this may not be the end. Then make it a good rehearsal.

Yours (and like you a tired traveller, near the journey's end)

Jack

C.S. Lewis died on November 22, 1963

C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady at Amazon

"Never trust anyone over..."

A Chesterton quotation that could arguably be applied to my generation:

A generation is now growing old, which never had anything to say for itself except that it was young. It was the first progressive generation – the first generation that believed in progress and nothing else…. [They believed] simply that the new thing is always better than the old thing; that the young man is always right and the old wrong. And now that they are old men themselves, they have naturally nothing whatever to say or do. Their only business in life was to be the rising generation knocking at the door. Now that they have got into the house, and have been accorded the seat of honour by the hearth, they have completely forgotten why they wanted to come in. The aged younger generation never knew why it knocked at the door; and the truth is that it only knocked at the door because it was shut. It had nothing to say; it had no message; it had no convictions to impart to anybody…. The old generation of rebels was purely negative in its rebellion, and cannot give the new generation of rebels anything positive against which it should not rebel. It is not that the old man cannot convince young people that he is right; it is that he cannot even convince them that he is convinced. And he is not convinced; for he never had any conviction except that he was young, and that is not a conviction that strengthens with years. — G.K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News of July 9, 1921

85 Years Ago, Chesterton nailed the Boomers

Just so absurd

Excerpted from the Prologue to Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence:

.... "People have completely forgotten that in 1972 we had over nineteen hundred domestic bombings in the United States," notes a retired FBI agent, Max Noel. "People don't want to listen to that. They can't believe it. One bombing now and everyone gets excited. In 1972? It was every day. Buildings getting bombed, policemen getting killed. It was commonplace." ....

Imagine if this happened today: Hundreds of young Americans—white, black, and Hispanic—disappear from their everyday lives and secretly form urban guerrilla groups. Dedicated to confronting the government and righting society's wrongs, they smuggle bombs into skyscrapers and federal buildings and detonate them from coast to coast. They strike inside the Pentagon, inside the U.S. Capitol, at a courthouse in Boston, at dozens of multinational corporations, at a Wall Street restaurant packed with lunchtime diners. People die. They rob banks, dozens of them, launch raids on National Guard arsenals, and assassinate policemen, in New York, in San Francisco, in Atlanta. There are deadly shoot-outs and daring jailbreaks, illegal government break-ins and a scandal in Washington.

This was a slice of America during the tumultuous 1970s, a decade when self-styled radical "revolutionaries" formed something unique in post-colonial U.S. history: an underground resistance movement. Given little credibility by the press, all but ignored by historians, their bombings and robberies and shoot-outs stretched from Seattle to Miami, from Los Angeles to Maine. And even if the movement's goals were patently unachievable and its members little more than onetime student leftists who clung to utopian dreams of the 1960s, this in no way diminished the intensity of the shadowy conflict that few in America understood at the time and even fewer remember clearly today. ....

The story she [Kathy Wilkerson - a member of the Weather Underground] tells is like many I heard from those who joined Weather and other radical underground groups of the 1970s, who mistakenly believed the country was on the brink of a genuine political revolution, who thought that violence would speed the change....

"It's all so fantastic to me now," [Cathy Wilkerson] says as we rise to leave.. "It's just so absurd I participated in all this."

"The challenge for me," I say on the sidewalk outside, "is to explain to people today why this all didn't seem as insane then as it does now."

"Yes," she says, stepping into a morning rain. "That's it exactly." ....

Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence at Amazon

A safe stronghold our God is still...

Thomas Carlyle's 1831 translation of Luther's Ein' feste Burg. I think I like these words better than the Mighty Fortress words we usually sing:

A safe stronghold our God is still, A trusty shield and weapon; He'll help us clear from all the ill That hath us now o'ertaken. The ancient prince of hell Hath risen with purpose fell; Strong mail of craft and power He weareth in this hour; On earth is not his fellow.	And were this world all devils o'er, And watching to devour us, We lay it not to heart so sore; Not they can overpower us. And let the prince of ill Look grim as e'er he will, He harms us not a whit; For why his doom is writ; A word shall quickly slay him.
With force of arms we nothing can,     Full soon were we down-ridden; But for us fights the proper Man Whom God Himself hath bidden. Ask ye who is this same? Christ Jesus is His Name, The Lord Sabaoth's Son; He, and no other one, Shall conquer in the battle.	God's word, for all their craft and force, One moment will not linger, But, spite of hell, shall have its course; 'Tis written by His finger. And, though they take our life, Goods, honour, children, wife, Yet is their profit small; These things shall vanish all: The city of God remaineth.

“Would you want your sister to marry him?”

Concluding an essay about the devolution of fraternities on the American college campus, Emily Esfahani Smith writes: "The problem with Greek life today is not Greek life itself; it is that the masculine ideal the fraternities currently celebrate is depraved." In its beginning the Greek system affirmed values not usually associated with it today:

.... The first fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, was founded in 1776 at William and Mary. That society, which still awards membership based on academic performance, strove to promote fellowship, intellect, and moral conduct. By the 1820s, Phi Beta Kappa had transformed into a purely academic society as fraternities started to spread across American colleges. These organizations, which were literary and social societies, were founded very much in the same spirit as Phi Beta Kappa. They fashioned themselves with the model of ancient Greece in mind. They were named after Greek letters during a period in American history when “Greece eclipsed Rome as the model for virtuous citizenship in the American imagination and at colleges particularly,” ....

Like the band of friends in Plato’s Symposium, fraternity members came together around two common interests: fellowship and intellectual cultivation. To discipline one’s mind, as Syrett notes, was part of living a virtuous life, which is what the fraternity brothers aspired to do. Meeting minutes from the mid-1800s show brothers at schools like Amherst, Yale, and the University of Michigan gathering to discuss Shakespeare, the benefits and drawbacks of the United States admitting New Mexico into the Union, and “the character of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.” Manliness was defined in terms of being intelligent, socially graceful, handsome, and morally upright—that is, being a gentleman. In 1836, a fraternity at Williams College determined whether to admit men into their brotherhood by asking: “Would you want your sister to marry him?”

By the 1920s, the ideal of masculinity changed from the more genteel manliness of the antebellum period to one grounded in physical prowess, athleticism, sexual virility, and aggression. Drinking had occurred previously in fraternities, but the fraternity brothers tried to drink “gentlemanly” quantities—that is, in moderation. But by the post-World War I period, excessive drinking—not self-control—became a mark of masculinity. .... [more]

On fraternities & manliness by Emily Esfahani Smith - The New Criterion

"At the centre"

From "A Thicker Kind of Mere" by Timothy George:

The term “mere Christianity,” of course, was made famous by C.S. Lewis, whose book of that title is among the most influential religious volumes of the past one hundred years. Since 2001, more than 3.5 million copies of Mere Christianity have been sold in English alone, with many more translated into most of the world’s languages....

Richard Baxter

"Mere Christianity” is actually a phrase Lewis borrowed from the seventeenth-century Puritan divine Richard Baxter. ....

But Baxter’s “mere Christianity” was not “mere” Christianity in the weak, attenuated sense of the word mere. Both Lewis and Baxter used the word mere in what is today—regrettably—an obsolete sense, meaning “nothing less than,” “absolute,” “sure,” “unqualified,” as opposed to today’s weakened sense of “only this,” “nothing more than,” or “such and no more.” Our contemporary meaning of the word mere corresponds to the Latin vix, “barely,” “hardly,” “scarcely,” while the classical, Baxterian usage corresponds to the Latin vere, “truly,” “really,” “indeed.”

Baxter had no use for a substance-less, colorless homogeneity bought at the expense of the true catholic faith. Indeed, he had his own list of non-negotiable fundamentals, including belief in one triune God; in one mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ, the eternal Word, God incarnate; in the Holy Spirit; in the gifts of God present to his covenanted people in baptism and Holy Communion; and in a life of obedience, holiness, and growth in Christ. ....

...[W]hat Baxter and Lewis called for...is a thicker kind of mere—not mere as minimal but mere as central, essential; mere as vere, not vix. C.S. Lewis put it this way: “Measured against the ages, ‘mere Christianity’ turns out to be no insipid interdenominational transparency, but something positive, self-consistent, and inexhaustible.” ....

“It is at her centre, where her truest children dwell, that each communion is really closest to each other in spirit, if not in doctrine. And this suggests that at the centre of each there is a something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice.” .... [more]

A Thicker Kind of Mere | Timothy George | First Things

Do what you know for certain

Several years ago I posted about a new book, not yet published, in which Kevin DeYoung approached the question of how to discern God's will for your life.  This is a slightly modified version of that post:

The title alone would seem to sum up its thesis: Just Do Something: How to Make a Decision Without Dreams, Visions, Fleeces, Open Doors, Random Bible Verses, Casting Lots, Liver Shivers, Writing in the Sky, etc. The intended audience was young adults, but as DeYoung described its purpose, it is relevant for any Christian.

The gist of the book is that too many of us spend too much time trying to divine God's will and too little time striving to obey the plain commands of Scripture. God's will is not a corn maze or magic eight ball. His will is our sanctification. God promises to direct our steps all throughout life, but he never promises to show us what each step is ahead of time. Too many of us are prone to passivity and indecision, because doing nothing feels more spiritual (and less risky) than doing something. So we stumble around in chains of subjective impressions and wander here and there and in and out of our parent's basement.

God's will is not a bullseye to hit, but a life to live.

I've since read that book and it reminded me of an older book that greatly influenced how I thought about discerning God's will for my life, Decision Making and the Will of God: A Biblical Alternative to the Traditional View [1980] by Friesen and Maxson. The emphases are different. Friesen and Maxson are concerned with those who are burdened by the need for specific direction out of fear that they might be "out of God's will" for their lives. DeYoung, on the other hand, focuses on those who lack decisiveness and find safety in inaction—for whom not knowing God's specific will grants permission to do nothing.

Friesen and Maxson argue that quite enough of God's moral will for our lives is clear in the Scriptures, and that we should occupy ourselves doing what we know. From that book:

...[T]he emphasis of Scripture is on God's moral will. In fact, the Bible reveals nothing of an "individual will" governing each decision. Rather, the teaching of Scripture may be summarized by these basic principles:

1. In those areas specifically addressed by the Bible, the revealed commands of God (His moral will) are to be obeyed.
2. In those areas where the Bible gives no command or principle (nonmoral decisions), the believer is free and responsible to choose his own course of action. Any decision made within the moral will of God is acceptable to God.
3. In nonmoral decisions, the objective of the Christian is to make wise decisions on the basis of spiritual expediency.
4. In all decisions, the believer should humbly submit, in advance, to the outworking of God's sovereign will as it touches each decision.

By "spiritual expediency" in point three, they mean wisdom, and say "The ultimate Source of the wisdom that is needed in decision making is God. Accordingly, we are to ask Him to provide what we lack. God mediates His wisdom to us through His Word, our personal research, wise counselors, and the applied lessons of life."

Both Decision Making and Do Something seem to be saying that we should be about doing what we know is God's will—not agonizing over, or complacently waiting for, what we do not know.

DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed: Just Do Something

In spirit and in truth

Rev Paul Manuel is the reason I first thought seriously about the meaning and manner of worship. While a member of our church he taught our adult Bible class. One of our studies investigated what Scripture shows about worship, especially in the Old Testament. The result was not a commitment to a particular style of worship but a recognition of its importance and purpose and a consciousness by both worship leaders and congregation of we are doing when worshipping. After that study we thought intentionally about how to do it.

Albert Mohler, the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, has recently listed ten of the books published in 2014 "that every preacher should read." The first title on that list is For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship, by Daniel I. Block, an Old Testament professor at Wheaton College. I believe Pastor Paul might approve.

From the first review at Amazon:

...[H]e states the two foundational principles of the book; First, true worship is about the glory of God, rather than human pleasure; and second, the Scriptures guide us in how to worship God. Block then brings out the legitimacy of looking at the Old Testament – what he calls the “First Testament” – with regard to this subject, "Although most assume that unless the New Testament reiterates notions found in the First Testament the latter are obsolete, we should probably assume the opposite: unless the New Testament expressly declares First Testament notions obsolete, they continue.." Finally, the author crafts a working definition of God-honoring, Biblical worship: "True worship involves reverential human acts of submission and homage before the divine Sovereign in response to his gracious revelation of himself in accord with his will." ....

Block then goes on to tackle a host of matters in “For the Glory of God”. Each chapter follows a basic pattern of looking first at the Old Testament, moving to the New Testament, and then coming around to how it all helps the reader to think about the facet of worship he has just covered....includ[ing] the object and subject of worship; daily life, family life and work as worship; the many ordinances and rudiments of worship to include hearing and reading Scripture, prayer, music, sacrifice, the liturgical calendar, design of sacred space, and role of leadership in worship. ....

Last fall the book was reviewed at the TGC blog:

.... Block wants to “recover” a biblical theology of worship. Why does a biblical theology of worship need to be recovered? First, he doesn’t like the pragmatism of much of today’s evangelical worship and believes the pragmatic approach can be remedied with deep biblical reflection on the subject. Second, he observes that many Christians tend to skip over the Old Testament when thinking about worship. Block, professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College outside Chicago, believes a true biblical theology of worship must incorporate all of Scripture, including extensive interaction with Old Testament worship forms and principles. In other words, he wants to give people a biblical theology of worship, not just a New Testament theology of worship. ....

Since each chapter tackles a specific element of worship, the book is almost a collection of biblical theologies of worship that helps us think biblically-theologically about each worship theme. This makes it a great reference resource for those needing to think carefully about a certain aspect of worship, such as the ordinances and music. ....

That reviewer, Grant Gaines, also identifies what he considers a weakness in Block's approach, but concludes "The book on the whole is a superb resource for helping the church think biblically about worship in light of the entire canon of Scripture, and I highly recommend it."

The book's contents:

1. Toward a Holistic, Biblical Understanding of Worship

2. The Object of Worship

3. The Subject of Worship

4. Daily Life as Worship

5. Family Life and Work as Worship

6. The Ordinances as Worship

7. Hearing and Proclaiming the Scriptures in Worship

8. Prayer as Worship

9. Music as Worship

10. Sacrifice and Offerings as Worship

11. The Drama of Worship

12. The Design and Theology of Sacred Space

13. Leaders in Worship

Appendix A: Doxologies of the New Testament

Appendix B: Hymnic Fragments in the Pauline Epistles

Appendix C: Sunday Worship in Early Christianity

Indexes

To order the Kindle version (I just did): For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship

A Man for All Seasons

A Man for All Seasons won the 1966 Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor (Paul Scofield), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, etc. I saw it in a theater in Janesville, Wisconsin, and then enthusiastically recommended it to anyone who would listen. A member of the college-age youth group at church went to see it and was disappointed – nothing but people talking, he said. But that was one of the best things about the film, the talking, the dialogue. Robert Bolt adapted the screenplay from his very successful play, also starring Paul Scofield. The cast was perfect: Robert Shaw as Henry VIII, Orson Welles as Cardinal Wolsey, Leo McKern as Thomas Cromwell, Richard Rich played by John Hurt, etc. I bought records that included all of the dialogue and listened over and over. Eventually I could recite all the best bits without having consciously engaged in memorization.. 

Posted here once before about the film, and re-posted to illustrate:

A young poor student, Richard Rich, has asked Sir Thomas More for a position. More is willing, but not to provide the kind of position Rich really wants:

Rich: What post?
More: At the new school.
Rich: A teacher! [….]
More: Why not be a teacher? You'd be a fine teacher. Perhaps a great one.
Rich: lf I was, who would know it?
More: You! Your pupils. Your friends. God. Not a bad public, that.

Here More is talking to his son-in-law about Rich who has just left:

More: Go he should, if he were the Devil, until he broke the law.
Roper: Now you give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes, what would you do? Cut a road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: Yes. I'd cut down every law in England to do that.
More: And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned on you where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted with laws from coast to coast... Man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the wind that would blow then? Yes. I give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake.

Toward the end of the film More is on trial and that same Richard Rich — who has advanced considerably in the world — provides false but damning testimony against More. More now knows he will be executed. Before Rich is excused from the court:

More: There is one question I would like to ask the witness. .... That's a chain of office you're wearing. May I see it? .... The Red Dragon. What's this?
Cromwell: Sir Richard is appointed Attorney General for Wales.
More: For Wales. .... Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. .... But for Wales...

The film and the play on which it is based is about very good dialogue delivered by very good actors about very important principles.

As soon as there was home video I purchased a copy, first for Betamax, then for VHS, then a DVD, and now, finally, Blu-ray. It has taken this long for it to be released on Blu-ray. My copy arrived today.

The Blu-ray version has been released by Twilight Time. Twilight Time does limited releases of only 5,000 copies, and does them beautifully, but charges $29.95, considerably more than one would ordinarily expect to pay for a DVD these days (but far less than I paid for that original Betamax version). It is worth it to me.

I recommend the film today just as much as I did in 1966 – enthusiastically, even if it is just a lot of talk. Amazon sells the DVDs and the film can also be purchased on Amazon Instant Video. The Twilight Time Blu-ray version can only be purchased at www.screenarchives.com.

‘When Pigs Fly’

Sometimes the slope really is slippery. Rod Dreher:

… Asked whether the hypothetical religious college at the top of this article could lose its tax-exempt status for refusing to recognize John and James as married students, constitutional law scholar Cass Sunstein said: “Sure–and if pigs had wings they could fly.”

“The answer is no,” said Sunstein, a professor of law and political science at the University of Chicago. “That’s an argument that would be generated by advocacy groups trying to scare people. The likelihood religious organizations would lose their tax exemption is as close to zero as anything in law is.”

That comes from a Chicago Tribune article in … 2006. Meanwhile, last month at the Supreme Court:

Here is an exchange between Alito and Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., arguing for the same-sex couples on behalf of the Obama administration.

Justice Alito: Well, in the Bob Jones case, the Court held that a college was not entitled to tax-­exempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating. So would the same apply to a university or a college if it opposed same­-sex marriage?

General Verrilli: You know, ­­I don’t think I can answer that question without knowing more specifics, but it’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is­­ going to be an issue.

If pigs had wings they could fly … as close to zero as anything in law is. So it’s not true after all. Oh well, when it happens, the bigots will deserve it anyway.

Perhaps needless to say, I have every confidence that the BJC will complacently assure us that there is no real danger and, anyway, "when it happens, the bigots will deserve it."

‘When Pigs Fly’, and Other Lies | The American Conservative