The Secret

So, how about that massively popular bestseller, The Secret? It's a bunch of nutty crap, isn't it? I've been reading with interest the various articles on slate.com about why it's, in the words of one author, "pernicious drivel." That, in addition to being an incredibly satisfying and evocative turn of phrase, pretty well characterizes the whole book. Emily Yoffe says:

Clearly, The Secret is drivel, but why should that stop me from sincerely throwing myself into seeing if it worked? I am already deeply susceptible to superstition and seeing signs—if I find a penny (faceup only), I pick it up knowing something good will happen to me. As self-absorbed as I already am, I loved the permission the book gave to sink deeper into a Jacuzzi of megalomania. As The Secret points out: "You are the master of the Universe. You are the heir to the kingdom. You are the perfection of Life." Just as I'd always suspected! So, I vowed to follow Byrne's simple rules for abundance and see what happened. The book encourages one to start big: "It is as easy to manifest one dollar as it is to manifest one million dollars." But I thought starting with the million-dollar manifestation was like saying, "I love you" on a first date; I didn't want to scare the universe into not taking my calls.

Furthermore, according to Karen Cerulo in her book Never Saw It Coming, we, both as individuals and as a society, are obsessed with "positive thinking" about our futures. Think about it: did you ever hear of a little girl acting out a game of "miserable, eccentric, lonely dowager" with her dollies? Our obsession, Cerulo claims, with positive thinking extends to the point that we actively shun and ignore potential danger -- consider how few of us wear sunscreen even though 1 in 5 Americans will be diagnosed with skin cancer in their lives, or the fact that only 30% of Americans have wills.

So basically, the secret of The Secret is that the author has outlined a pseudo-religious system that affirms and feeds our infantile demand for our own way as well as our fundamental terror of future pain. It's works salvation writ large -- "thoughts" salvation, if you will.

Stay far away. And warn your friends. And if you absolutely must read it, at least get it from the library.

Really Quick...

What's the good news about the rapture?
The people who believe in it disappear and we get all their stuff.

What's the bad news about the rapture?
All their stuff is from K-Mart.

Loving Ned Flanders

This blog post by Matt Chandler over at The Resurgence convicted the heck out of me -- just what do I think I've become when I criticize, judge, and secretly (or not-so-secretly) despise believers who wear suits to church, sing tearfully that "the cross is my statue of liberty," carry tapestry-and-mauve Bible holders, and frown disapprovingly at any artwork not by Thomas Kinkaid? I've become, Matt reminds me, the very thing that I despise! If I angrily denounce their efforts to make punks take out their gaged earrings and comb their hair and purge all the black from their wardrobe, shouldn't I reject with as much fervency anyone's attempt to make them start singing Matt Redman songs or dress down for Sunday services?

I'm still going to question my friends who listen only to K-LOVE or Air1. I'm still going to challenge folks who think you have to dress a certain way to go to church. I'll probably never watch TBN, nor will I stop discouraging people from doing so. I'll likely never be comfortable with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance or the singing of patriotic songs in church. But it's high time I started re-evaluating the attitude of my heart towards believers who are different than I am.

Heavenly Father,

It was your eternal purpose to give all people life through mothers,
and to send your Son in flesh through a mother’s womb.

Bless our mothers as they follow you,
and guide them as they seek you.

Give them wisdom, that they may instruct their children faithfully.

Grant them discernment as they pray for their children;
shape their hearts that they might desire the gospel to shine forth in their children’s lives.

Lord, you know what we need even before we ask. We earnestly seek your perfect will for our mothers, so that they might raise up children whose lives declare the Gospel of your Son, by whose sinless life, perfect death, and glorious resurrection we come before you with our requests.

Amen

To Keep You Busy, Dear Reader(s)

Hey, friends. I'm working on a longish post about my brother's wedding, which was this past weekend, so don't despair. But in the meantime, check out this article on immaturity from one of my favorite websites. Here's an excerpt:

Regardless of the context, to make a decision is to intentionally limit oneself from other, potentially good options. As a single guy, it was a challenge to think of marrying the woman God had clearly given me, since I would no longer have the option to pursue the women I might meet someday. An indecisive man is recognizable by a perpetual inability to make and keep commitments — a failure to "swear to his own hurt and not change" (Ps. 15:4). A decisive person, by contrast, can choose what he loves, and later (when the going gets tough) nurture the love he previously chose.

Indecisiveness renders significant accomplishment (and the deep joy that often comes with it) out of reach. It hinders our progress in the Christian life, because God calls us to steward our gifts and talents. Non-growth is not an option.

Ten Thousand Times Ten Thousand

Ten thousand times ten thousand, in sparkling raiment bright,
The armies of the ransomed saints throng up the steeps of light;
’Tis finished, all is finished, their fight with death and sin;
Fling open wide the golden gates, and let the victors in.

What rush of alleluias fills all the earth and sky!
What ringing of a thousand harps bespeaks the triumph nigh!
O day, for which creation and all its tribes were made;
O joy, for all its former woes a thousandfold repaid!

O then what raptured greetings on Canaan’s happy shore;
What knitting severed friendships up, where partings are no more!
Then eyes with joy shall sparkle, that brimmed with tears of late;
Orphans no longer fatherless, nor widows desolate.

Bring near Thy great salvation, Thou Lamb for sinners slain;
Fill up the roll of Thine elect, then take Thy power, and reign;
Appear, Desire of nations, Thine exiles long for home;
Show in the heaven Thy promised sign; Thou Prince and Savior, come.

This is some serious stuff from my home state. God help them!

GRACE CHURCH AND SAINT STEPHEN'S PARISH
A DECLARATION OF ANGLICAN FIDELITY

From the vestry and leaders of Grace Church
3/26/2007

WHEREAS, four centuries ago our spiritual forbears brought to this continent the Christian faith as expressed in the Anglican tradition, led by the Rev. Robert Hunt, the first Anglican mission in America celebrated Holy Communion on the Third Sunday after Trinity upon the banks of the James River shortly after the landing of the Virginia Colony in 1607 A.D. So began our unbroken religious heritage in the New World.

WHEREAS, the Church of England in America was our foundation, nurse, and protector for many generations, its greatest gifts to our faith were an unrivaled English translation of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. In the course of Divine Providence when our country became politically independent of Great Britain, the American Church became ecclesiastically independent of the Church of England. So began the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

WHEREAS, in continuity with the faith received from the Church of England, the Episcopal Church adopted the apostolic doctrines and disciplines of the Church of England as reflected in the Book of Common Prayer and incorporated the Articles of Religion into its Canons. In this shared faith and practice the Episcopal Church remained in communion with the Church of England as an independent province within what eventually became the worldwide Anglican Communion.

WHEREAS, tragically today the American Episcopal Church no longer believes the historic, orthodox Christian faith common not only to Anglicans, but to all believers, some Episcopal leaders expressly deny the central articles of the faith -- saying that traditional theism is "dead," the incarnation is "nonsense," the resurrection of Jesus is fiction, the understanding of the cross is "a barbarous idea," the Bible is "pure propaganda" and so on. Others simply say the creed as poetry subjecting it to fashions of deconstructionist literary criticism.

WHEREAS, revisionism has permeated and fatally contaminated the Episcopal Church, its leaders now openly deny what their faith once believed and celebrate the heresies that Christians in previous ages have gone to the stake to resist.

WHEREAS, Episcopal revisionism abandons the fidelity of faith, the Hebrew Scriptures link truth to a relationship with God. They speak of apostasy as adultery -- a form of betrayal as treacherous as a husband cheating on his wife.

WHEREAS, Episcopal revisionism negates the authority of faith, the "sola scriptura" doctrine of the Reformation church has been supplanted by the "sola cultura" heresy (by the culture alone) of post-modernism. No longer under biblical authority, the Episcopal Church today is either its own authority or finds its authority in the shifting winds of intellectual and social fashion of the day.

WHEREAS, Episcopal revisionism severs the continuity of faith; cutting itself off from the universal faith that spans the centuries and the continents, it becomes culturally captive to one culture and one time. While professing tolerance and inclusiveness, certain Episcopal attitudes toward fellow believers around the world, who make up a majority of the Anglican family, have been arrogant and even racist.

WHEREAS, Episcopal revisionism destroys the credibility of faith; there is so little that is distinctively Christian left in the theology of some Episcopal leaders. It is no accident that orthodox congregations like Grace Church and St. Stephen's Parish are growing and that in the last century great converts to the Christian faith have been attracted to biblical orthodoxy, not to revisionism. The prospect for the Episcopal Church, already plainly evident in the Diocese of Colorado with its recent closure of its churches in this city, is inevitable withering, decline, and death.

WHEREAS, Episcopal revisionism obliterates the very identity of faith; when the great truths of the Bible and the creeds are abandoned and there is no limit to what can be believed in their place, then the point is reached when there remains little that is identifiably Christian. Would that Episcopal leaders showed the same zeal for their faith that they do for their property. If the present decline continues, all that will remain of a once strong church will be museums - empty buildings kept going by the finances, though not the faith, of the fathers.

WHEREAS, recently the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops has spurned the Dar es Salaam Communique of the Anglican Communion's Primates by declining to accommodate a pastoral scheme for orthodox clergy, congregations, and dioceses in the Episcopal Church; we see no future for orthodox believers in the Episcopal Church. The Presiding Bishop's recent nullification of Fr. Mark Lawrence's election as Bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina is further evidence that orthodox clergymen, congregations, and dioceses in the Episcopal Church have no hope of perpetuating their faith, witness, and ecclesial life in the Episcopal Church.

WHEREAS, these are the apostasies we protest and lament; these are the infidelities that drive us to depart from the Episcopal Church in order to remain faithful to Christ, the Bible, and our received Anglican tradition; these are the reasons why we seek to affiliate with an orthodox and mission-oriented community of congregations who remain in continuity with our great spiritual heritage.

WE, the vestry members and officers of the corporation, DO HEREBY RESOLVE on this 26th Day of March in the Year of our Lord 2007, that Grace Church and St. Stephen's Parish will leave the Episcopal Church but remain in the Anglican Communion.

We resolve to leave the Episcopal Church because it first left the biblical and historic faith and us. Here we stand, our consciences held captive by the Word of God. We cannot do otherwise. God help us. Amen.

I'm Sorry...

I have been the Worst. Blogger. Ever. in recent weeks.

But perhaps a brief update will clarify why I've been MIA from blogland: I recently got a job. That's right, people, my first full-time job ever, and it's in an office, no less! I'm now officially the church secretary (or "administrative assistant" if you prefer) at Sojourn. I've been working 40 plus hours a week, and it's been pretty mentally draining. When your teaching pastor is a visionary who is amazing at setting a vision for Gospel transformation before the people but who is Not Into Details, and when your church has exploded from around 400 on a Sunday to over 800, and when you've recently moved into a building that's still under construction, and when no systems of organization have been put in place in the office, and when your church has never had a paid secretary... Well, let's just say that things are a little chaotic in Sojourn's offices right now.

In other random news:

I know April is Kill Your TV/Cultivate Beauty month, and I'm cultivating it, already! But I had to watch House tonight. And it was weirdly pro-life. There's been a subtle undercurrent of pro-lifeishness, or at least questioning the pro-"choice" agenda, for a while now, with some of the characters debating the whole it's-a-person, it's-not-a-person thing (which, incidentally, seems to reflect the growing national discomfort with killing someone whose face and fingernails you can see on a 4-D ultrasound). But tonight House performed a surgery on an unborn baby, at about 21 weeks, and they showed the baby grasping House's finger from the womb. It's based on a real picture (view here if you're not squeamish), and shows in a pretty intense way that this baby, though he could legally have been killed, is in fact a person.

Alanis Morissette, whose voice has just gotten cooler over the years, has covered/spoofed the execrable Black Eyed Peas' song "My Humps." Seriously. Google it if you don't believe me. A slate.com reviewer called the original song (and I use that term very, very loosely) "so awful it hurts the mind" and "so bad as to veer toward evil."

Because I have a job, I can now buy stuff! Stuff like groceries and shampoo, and a very cute dress for my friend Lindsey's wedding. I can also wear this extremely cute dress to church on Easter, because in grand Southern style, the ladies of Sojourn have decided to dress up for Easter. Ordinarily that would involve putting on the dark-wash jeans, but we're not going halfway on this puppy.

Well, that's about all that's going on in my life. Don't give up on me! I hope to have something actually of substance here in the next few days... Lord willing!

A Long Road to Recovery: the Wounds of a Friend

Two of my friends were recently in a car accident. They both lived to tell about it, but the car is totaled, and they both will have to spend quite a while getting better. One friend, especially, is now looking forward to weeks, maybe even months, of physical therapy to get her spine back in alignment. It's going to hurt. A lot. And, since it's her spine that was most affected, there are a lot of things she won't be able to do until she's completely healed -- things that wouldn't be a problem ordinarily.

That got me thinking.

I'm a sinner, "wrecked" by sin, if you'll pardon the bad pun, "lost and ruined by the Fall," as the song goes. I know from experience that if my back goes out, or I sleep the wrong way on my neck, or get too tense, my whole body feels it -- not just the parts that are directly involved, but everywhere, and the longer it goes on unaddressed, the worse it gets. The same is true of our sin: even something that seems small and insignificant can start to take over our lives.

A couple of months ago, two of my dear community group sisters saw one of those kinds of sin in me. As I stood in front of them crying, they lovingly and gently called the sins of my heart to my attention. They showed me where I was deceived, where I was sinning, where I had erected idols, and they pointed me to the truth. They humbly admitted their own similar failings and told me of the Lord's work in their lives as they had submitted to His correction.

It hurt.

But, thanks only to the grace of God in restraining me, I kept my big mouth shut. What I wanted when I poured my heart out to these wonderful, compassionate women was a band-aid. I wanted them to say, "Oh, there there, it's all right, you're just so sweet and we can't understand why something like this would be happening! Shame on those other people!" I wanted them to pat my shoulder and give me comfort, not point out my sin! But Proverbs 27:6 says, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy."

My friend's physical therapy is going to take a long time. But wouldn't it be foolish of her not to go through with it simply because she knows it's going to be unpleasant? The fact is, she's already injured, and she'll take the only wise course of action over the next few months as she recovers -- she'll obey the instructions of her doctors and keep working at it, no matter how difficult or interminable it seems.

And that's true for us as well. We've already lived with the grave and deadly injury of sin, but God by His grace has placed us in a community founded on the Healer, Christ, and imbued with the Holy Spirit, that great diagnostician. And when a believing friend loves us enough to obey God's command that we "exhort one another every day, as long as it is still called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin" (Hebrews 3:13), shouldn't we humbly listen to their exhortation, before it's too late -- before our hearts are hardened?

Are You Smarter Than a Late 1800s Schoolteacher?

OK, granted, it doesn't have quite the ring to it that "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" does, but still...

There's been a hoax going around for quite some time about a test that Kansas eighth graders purportedly had to take in 1895 in order to go on to the next grade -- the "test" is crammed with humdingers like, "Write ten words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and syllabication."

According to Snopes, that test is a fake. But on the page where they debunk the maybe-my-grandaddy's-eighth-grade-education-was-enough myth, they list an 1870s test for school teachers. I would have failed it sure as I'm alive, but one question I could actually answer. Let's see if I'm the only one.

Write the past tense and past participle of these verbs:
Two freebies as an example, and one hint: if you start each one with, "Today, I ___," "Yesterday, I ____", and "I have ____", it'll help a lot.


Today I Lay (Yesterday I Laid -- Past, I have Lain -- Past Participle)
Seek (Sought, Sought)
Sit
Get
Dare
Thrive
Lie
Set
Light
Loose
Fly
Flee
Chide
Overflow
Catch
Lose
Swim
Climb
Drink
Stay
Leap
Quit
Swell
Burst
Eat

Past participles, in case you're wondering, indicate completed or past action, and are often paired with "has" or "have" (I have taken this test before.), or with a form of the verb "to be" to form a passive construction (This post was typed by my own two hands.).

Have Fun!