Welterweight Monday

I never realized what a big deal Mardi Gras was for most people until I worked in a secular workplace here on the Gulf Coast. People really are looking for an excuse for fun, and they love their lasciviousness(I know that spelling’s not right). The tradition comes from a melding of the ancient Festival of Dionysis and the wonderful Christian custom of Lent. This weekend, people live it up, because starting Wednesday, they are going to have observe 40 days of penance and self-control.

I find it very sad that evangelicals do not typically practice the Christian calendar. I know that many of our Orthodox brothers and sisters have somehow attributed this custom to their sanctification, but I think it is important to realize that the traditional Christian calendar, as well as the Book of Common Prayer have their origins in early “evangelical” churches. Anabaptists penned the original Book of Common Prayer, for example. We are so afraid of adding things to grace that we have laid aside some really great aspects of Christian culture.

God gave the children of Israel a system of feasts and celebrations not only to remind them of important Biblical truths, but also to set them apart as a unique culture. Certainly, the Lord has not established the Lenten season, but I do wonder if it does not accomplish some of those same goals. As we begin the season with Ash Wednesday, we are asked to spend a day in fasting and wear the ashes of palm branches on our head as a way to appreciate the humiliation Christ was to suffer as he entered the wilderness. For the next forty days, we lay aside some indulgence (maybe alcohol or in my case, any beverage other than water), so that we may focus on the days that Jesus dwelt without food. This also helps us look forward to Easter and be mindful of the Passion throughout the final week.

So, as the secular celebrates Fat Teusday by getting as decimated mentally and physically as they possibly can, I can’t help but think back to the One who was truly decimated and mangled for my sin, and the sins of those who are marching down Bourbon Street. God Bless New Orleans. God bless us all.

Any takers? I challenge you to celebrate this season with me; see what you learn!

Some words on words

Our pastor has asked me to teach a 13 week module; he has not given me any specific requirements about content, and I a bit stumped as to what to teach on. Any ideas?

Some qualifications:
The majority of my class will be retirees who have gone to church all their lives. They have heard a lot and are pretty good moral Christians. I can’t say for sure, but I think that church is the only time they really read their Bibles–at least most of them.

I can’t be too controversial–I will be fired, but I really want to teach something these folks have not heard before.

I was thinking of teaching through Ben Witherington III’s book The Story of the New Testament. Part one deals with how we came to hold the New Testament in our hands (he discusses everything from views of inspiration to canonization), and part two actually deals with the story that the New Testament tells.

Please, please, please, any suggestions would be welcome (with the expection of Knowing God by Packer, The Purpose Driven Life by Warren, and Desiring God by Piper–these are all very familiar books.)

Hast thou walked in search of the ocean’s depths?

First of all, please do not take this post as a cue to discontinue our previous discussion…I am very interested.

I had an incredible weekend. Because of the President’s day holiday, Haley and I decided to visit my parents for the weekend. They live in historic Chattanooga, TN, and while we were there we took a trip to Ruby Falls. This has to be one of the most breathtaking things that I have ever seen. A staggering 1120 feet beneath Lookout Mountain, one can behold a truly breathtaking evidence of the extravagent, reckless creativity of our Creator.

Visitors descend 90 feet into a cave that stays nearly 70 degrees year round then walk for one-half a mile through a the cave that was only discovered in the 1920s. I cannot recommend this experience enough, guys. Please see Ruby Falls. As we were driving home through the quaint Lookout Mountain village, this passage from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea came to mind.

If his (Nemo’s) destiny is strange, it is also sublime. Do I not understand it myself? So, to the question which the Book of Ecclesiastes posed 6,000 years ago, ‘hast thou walked in search of the depth?’, two men, among all men, have the right to reply, Captain Nemo and I.

I live in a perilous world…but a good one

I don’t know if you all realized it, but the name of my blog is supposed to be a play on the word “insight.” Not that I have much insight, or regular sight for that matter, but I thought it was kind of snappy.

I was a Calvinist for a good while. When I first came to my own Christian understanding–my junior year of college–I found the Calvinist persuasion to be Biblically accurate and intellectually stimulating. As I read the Confessions of Augustine, Calvin’s Institutes (yes, I think I finished the whole thing), and Edward’s sermons, my soul was warmed with an affirmation of God’s irresistable grace. I felt for once in my life that there was a significant place for me in the world, and although I have what some would consider a tremendous physical infirmity, I was still important as one of God’s elect.

But I couldn’t stop there. Over the past year, I feel that God has caused me to really question these doctrines. I worked and learned from some very astute people while I lived in Atlanta, and I discovered that intellectuals all over the place don’t come to the same conclusions that I did about God’s sovereignty and man’s lack of will. As I sought to defend my position, I found myself holding to sinking straws of what now seemed fatally flawed logic. When I read the New Testament at face value, trying my best to perceive it in a Jewish or early Christian perspective, I found that I had indescribable hurdles to jump if I wanted to continue to hold to a Calvinist perspective, much less an eternal security perspective. From the parable of the sower, to the book of Hebrews, to the book of life, I could no longer with clear conscience say that someone could not choose to reject God’s matchless gift of grace.

I’m not telling you all how to think. I am only trying to convey what I am learning. My world is much less safe than it used to be, but I must walk in the truth of Scripture, no matter how uncomfortable it makes me.

I’m not saying that I could not be convinced otherwise, but believe me guys, I know the arguments, and I just don’t find them all that compelling anymore. If anyone would like to have a discussion about this, rest assured, I will be glad to listen, and I will walk away thinking no less or more of you after it is over.

Valentine’s Day

Thought you might find this interesting. It is from the Online Catholic Encyclopedia…

At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under date of 14 February. One is described as a priest at Rome, another as bishop of Interamna (modern Terni), and these two seem both to have suffered in the second half of the third century and to have been buried on the Flaminian Way, but at different distances from the city. In William of Malmesbury’s time what was known to the ancients as the Flaminian Gate of Rome and is now the Porta del Popolo, was called the Gate of St. Valentine. The name seems to have been taken from a small church dedicated to the saint which was in the immediate neighborhood. Of both these St. Valentines some sort of Acta are preserved but they are of relatively late date and of no historical value. Of the third Saint Valentine, who suffered in Africa with a number of companions, nothing further is known.

Saint Valentine’s Day

The popular customs associated with Saint Valentine’s Day undoubtedly had their origin in a conventional belief generally received in England and France during the Middle Ages, that on 14 February, i.e. half way through the second month of the year, the birds began to pair. Thus in Chaucer’s Parliament of Foules we read:

For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.

For this reason the day was looked upon as specially consecrated to lovers and as a proper occasion for writing love letters and sending lovers’ tokens. Both the French and English literatures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contain allusions to the practice. Perhaps the earliest to be found is in the 34th and 35th Ballades of the bilingual poet, John Gower, written in French; but Lydgate and Clauvowe supply other examples. Those who chose each other under these circumstances seem to have been called by each other their Valentines. In the Paston Letters, Dame Elizabeth Brews writes thus about a match she hopes to make for her daughter (we modernize the spelling), addressing the favoured suitor:

And, cousin mine, upon Monday is Saint Valentine’s Day and every bird chooses himself a mate, and if it like you to come on Thursday night, and make provision that you may abide till then, I trust to God that ye shall speak to my husband and I shall pray that we may bring the matter to a conclusion.
Shortly after the young lady herself wrote a letter to the same man addressing it “Unto my rightwell beloved Valentine, John Paston Esquire”. The custom of choosing and sending valentines has of late years fallen into comparative desuetude.