Not So Famous…

Links open in new window.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/rhode_island/articles/2006/11/20/christian_conservatives_at_odds_with_liberal_ri_university/

http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTQ3MmJkNDczM2RlZWRmMWFkNTBmNDRlZTUwYWNhNDI=

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20061121/23595.htm

Now, I am of two minds about this story. On the one hand, for a liberal university who supposedly espouses tolerance and acceptance, this is a rather intolerant and un-accepting thing to do.  On the other hand, it is a private university. Now, admittedly, I don’t know what the laws on religious tolerance are in such cases, but the one article seems to indicate that the students have far fewer options with regards to legal action. If the university is, in fact, funded significantly by the government, then this action by Brown is preposterous. If the university is supported entirely by tuition and donations, then I don’t see that the students have any option.

As Christians, we definitely have options, though. I don’t care what degrees for which Brown University is particularly sought after…If I were a Christian looking for a college, I wouldn’t choose Brown.  If I were an alumnus, I wouldn’t even consider donating to Brown. In fact, I would make my displeasure known in a letter, indicating that they can expect no more donations from me, monetary or otherwise. Heck, even if you’re a liberal who thinks that this is going way too far, and it is, cut them off.

This country was founded on freedom of religion…not freedom FROM religion. I may not agree with the theology of Islam, but I am not suggesting that student-led Muslim groups be thrown off all campuses.

However, something I am considering as I write this. Do Christian universities have the right to reject the applications of gay and lesbian students wishing to attend?  I’m not saying whether they should or shouldn’t do this…but I do think I support the right of these institutions to do so if they want. I definitely support the rights of a church to hire only those who agree with their particular beliefs, if that’s the course of action they wish to take.

Having said all that, I think it’s somewhat ridiculous for an ideology to spout religious tolerance and then not tolerate a religious group. Maybe they should change their platform to say “Down with Christ and those who follow Him”?

Some of my more observant readers may have noticed that I hinted that I would be reviewing The Saint by Ted Dekker soon.  I did indeed read The Saint, and I do indeed have a review brewing.  However, in my reading of The Saint, I discovered that it was book 2 of a 2 book series. Those of you who know me well may know that I have a…thing…with reading books in order. It is the same oddness that leads me to alphabetize my movie collection.  (And I forgive those of you who have taken advantage of that particular oddity to try and get me to lose sleep by putting my movies out of order.  I won’t mention any names, Gabe, so don’t worry.)  :)

Anyway, I have already purchased book 1 of the series, and I will review both of them as soon as I read book 1.  (I may have to re-read book 2 as well.  We’ll see.)  Just wanted you to know.

Stephen Lawhead is well-known for his works of Historical Fiction. From Arthur, King of the Britons, to Patrick: Son of Ireland, Lawhead excels when writing about what could have happened in the lives of these heroes. Lawhead is also well-known for writing about the Celts in the most engaging fashion. Specifically, one can tell that he LOVES writing about the Britons, or Welsh as they are known now. I can easily see his love for this land and its people in his writing, and Hood continues this tradition quite excellently.

Characters: I usually heap high praise on books with deep characters, and for good reason. However, I must reserve some praise in the character department for this book. While Lawhead writes compelling characters, I feel that Bran, Iwan, and Friar Aethelfrith suffer here. Bran (Robin Hood) is a roguish young man who is thrust into his rule far before he is able or willing to do so. Iwan (Little John, so named by Friar Tuck) is a fearsome fighter who once served the King. Friar Aethelfrith (named Friar Tuck by Little John) is a jolly priest, whose love for his friends is only matched by his love for ale. (wink.) These are the main characters, and I feel that Lawhead has only begun in his trilogy to flesh these characters out. It seems to me that Lawhead has spent far more time on the villains than he usually does, here. I feel that this is because Lawhead feels that in order to explain why there is a need for Robin Hood, we must understand who threatens the land. The villains are VERY well done, in my opinion. When reading the thoughts of the villains, one can almost see where they are coming from. In fact, when reading one of the villains, I was almost tricked into thinking he was a helpful ally to my protagonist. Alas, his duplicity was made manifest to me soon enough. I think that Lawhead will continue to provide more depth to the protagonists as the trilogy continues.

Writing: This is what I almost always enjoy about Lawhead’s more epic works. Byzantium was a little slow for me, but I can honestly say that in the Pendragon Saga, “slow” doesn’t even enter into it. The writing in Hood reminds me much of the writing of Taliesin, Merlin, Arthur, Pendragon, and Grail. His love for the Celts comes through strongly, as does his dislike for their enemies. One of the coolest elements of any of Lawhead’s Celticized legends is trying to figure out who is who. Because Bran is the main character, you know he’s Robin Hood, but it’s hard to see it in the first half of the book. As I enjoyed figuring out who Gwacmai, Gwalchavad, Llenlleawg, and Gwenhwyvar were in the Arthur books, I really enjoyed trying to pick out who the main characters were in Hood. I don’t think I spoiled it for you, as you find out pretty quickly who the main three are in this book. There are more…keep an eye out for them.

Plot: I feel that Plot is the element that many readers might have a problem with. You see, there are many things that many feel are untouchable in legend. I’ve seen reviews by some people who apparently feel that Robin Hood is English, and cannot be budged from his stronghold in Sherwood Forest. Lawhead, however, has chosen to set his retelling of the Robin Hood legend in the primeval forest of Wales, with Robin Hood himself being a Welsh nobleman. He argues his position admirably in an Afterword at the end of the book, citing the fact that the earliest legends of Robin Hood had no placename attached to them at all. He defends his time (mid-late 1000’s) as well as the place to set Robin Hood quite well. It’s definitely believable as a story. Lawhead researches his novels so thoroughly that when you do your own homework, you can easily see the story he is weaving without being distracted by what you perceive as historical inaccuracies. Robin Hood could easily have been born in what is now known as Wales. Many readers will not like it, as I have said, but it’s a fresh retelling of a legend, performed by a master.

The plot itself is quite believable. Basically, the story is set in the Norman conquest of England. Wales was left well alone by William the Conqueror, and for good reason. The Welsh people were not easy to subdue. William’s son, William the Red, was a greedy tyrant, however, and desired the Welsh people to pay taxes and swear allegiance. Against this backdrop, the legend of Robin Hood is born. Bran, the only son of the former king of one of the cantrefs of Wales, is thrust by events outside his control into a leadership role. The story of this first book is his journey into adulthood; his transformation into a real leader.

Conclusions: Lawhead has hit another one out of the park. While I enjoyed Patrick and Byzantium for what they were, I was sad that they were not the epic historic fantasy that I loved from Lawhead. This first book in the King Raven Trilogy promises an illustrious return of Stephen Lawhead to the realm that he made his own in Taliesin. Fans of his Pendragon series will love the references to Taliesin, Arthur, and Myrddin Emrys. Furthermore, those who have done some more research into the historic characters Lawhead has written may recognize a heavily veiled reference to Taliesin. Bonus points to anyone who can figure out this reference. (wink.) I really did enjoy this novel, and my only sadness is that I must wait for book 2.

Well, the simple fact of the matter is that I’ve either been busy or sick.  I don’t mean that I don’t know which it is…it’s both.  lol.

Thanksgiving weekend was pleasant…missed spending time with family and friends. Some of these friends I hadn’t seen for awhile. And the family that we spent time with is always a lot of fun, even though some of them had colds.  :)  I managed to avoid getting sick with their plague somehow.  Who knows?

However, Monday after the long weekend more than made up for having 2 extra days off.  When I was on my way in, I was informed by the CEO of the company that he could not log into Citrix.  Now, I don’t want to make this entry any more confusing than it needs to be. Suffice it to say that my company uses a program called Citrix to make a remote connection for our remote offices to get e-mail, etc. When it doesn’t work, the remote offices can’t access their files at all. And, naturally, it falls to the IT guy to figure out what the problem is and fix it. However, in my case, while I could easily figure out what the problem was, it was completely out of my hands to fix it. Part of our web hosting wasn’t working, and that was definitely the problem. Ultimately, it all got fixed, and everything was up and running. However it was a day of severe stress.

Tuesday, I woke up feeling kind of weird in the back of my throat, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be getting sick or not. The kind of stress that happened Monday tends to precede me getting sick, but I was keeping my spirits up.

Tuesday carried its own kind of stress. I decided that morning to work on a database query that my boss had asked me to do over a week ago. Now, the delay in getting it completed was just due to the fact that I had so many off-site trips planned the week he assigned it, etc.  So I made a backup copy of the database and began working on the query.  I soon discovered that it was a far nastier query than I had initially assumed.  (My bad.)  Basically, I worked non-stop from 8:30am until 3:45pm on this single query.

The reason for the difficulty of the query are threefold:
1. I’m not really a database guy.  I’ve written queries, and I’ve designed databases, but my primary strength is networking and hardware. Of course, in the course of my education I had to do some study of databases.  In these database classes, I had to design and create database queries in SQL. So I wasn’t lost, really.  It’s just not something I think about a great deal on a regular basis.

2. The design of our database is quite poor, really.  It does its job, of course.  It stores data and can perform calculations on it, yes. But it is not really a database in the strictest sense of the word. It’s really like a flat file.  That being said, it made the query I was writing far simpler than it could have been. I didn’t have to do any joins, or try and keep all the tables I was pulling from straight. It could have been worse, for sure.  However, most of the fields in the database are text fields, and when it comes to filtering data, nothing could be worse for query writing. I had to filter out all of the completed records, and that alone took me a couple hours.  Furthermore, I had to conditionally query many different fields. I am not going to go into this, but I didn’t have a single field I could query on for my WHERE clause. I had to use a good many AND and OR and NOT operators to make this thing work.  When I finished my query, I showed it to a database-wise friend who exclaimed that it was the largest query he’d ever seen for an Access database. This brings me to my next point.

3. It’s an Access database. While Access uses a subset of the SQL commands, it’s not the same, and anyone writing a pure SQL query for an Access database will become quickly frustrated. For me it wasn’t nearly as big of a deal, as I was already expecting to have to learn what Access SQL commands I had available, but it definitely made things a little more difficult, as I found some commands on some sites that would have made my job a little easier. They didn’t work, however, on an Access database.

Finally, Tuesday night I discovered I was getting sick, and when I woke up Wednesday morning for work, I felt terrible. As is usual with my colds, I was getting dizzy and wanted only to sleep. I slept most of the day Wednesday and today (Thursday). However after my extended nap today, I feel much better, and will be going in to work tomorrow. yay.

Maybe I’ll have more to write tomorrow or Saturday.  It is definitely blessedly cold around these parts right now.  (Not cold for Wisconsin…or Maine….or many other states.  But definitely COLD for California. Below freezing, anyway.)  Well, I’m going to get back to reading or something.

I should have a book review to post soon.  I am almost done with Hood, Book 1 of the King Raven Trilogy by Stephen Lawhead. It looks to be a good revisionist take on the Robin Hood trilogy. I’ve read some of Lawhead’s justifications on his setting Robin Hood in Wales rather than the traditional location of Sherwood Forest in Nottingham County, England. They make a lot of sense, really.

Almost forgot! I did a great deal of research last night on some of Lawhead’s assertions in his Pendragon Series. He really did his homework, as the names he uses are spot on with the older versions of the legends, such as those found in the Mabinogion. These older versions of the legends really match up with what Lawhead has written about Arthur actually being from Wales and thereabouts rather than England.  Furthermore, it is clear in my mind that the Celtic names of Arthur and his battlechiefs point to Arthur as a far more Celtic king than he is usually made out to be.  Do some research of your own, and you’ll be amazed at Lawhead’s accuracy to the Celtic legend of King Arthur, as well as many Celtic legends and myths.  For example, every story that a bard tells in his books is merely a retelling of a classic Celtic Myth.  Absolutely amazing.

Yes, I know.  I’m a little late for Thanksgiving Day greetings.  I was busy, ok?

You know, that’s another thing that is sort of a bummer.  When I think 4-day weekend, I don’t think about being so busy that I barely have time to breathe. Thursday was Thanksgiving, and I got to spend the day with family, which was nice. Friday was supposed to be a family day, but it turned out that half the family was going to see another branch of the family tree, so I got to play some video games.  (That definitely helped to de-stress me.)  Today was the wedding of a couple dear friends, which was way cool.  I miss them quite a bit.  Was good to see them, and was definitely good to see them embark on the most amazing part of their life…their marriage.

Tonight is more events, though I’m looking forward to them as well.  Some friends that we miss terribly came back from Pittsburgh to go to the wedding, and they’re putting on a shindig.  We’re going to have pizza and beer (with an emphasis on the beer), and then we’re going bowling. Now, I hate bowling with a passion.  However, with enough beer thrown into the equation, (not getting drunk, mind you, just buzzed enough not to care how badly I suck) even bowling can be fun.  And at any rate, I’ll be spending the time with friends.

Well, gentle readers, I must draw my Thanksgiving Day ramblings to a close.  Tomorrow is church, God willing, and I truly miss my church family as well. So the Lord’s Day should be a wonderful day of rest.  Family heads home after lunch, and I think I’ll spend the rest of the day pondering the word “rest”.  Maybe I’ll even take a nap.  :)  For now, I must go back and spend some time with family.  :-D  See you l8er, and I hope all of your weekends are going well.

This is something that is really bothering me because of events that only marginally concern me personally, but because they directly concern my friend, they definitely concern me.

There is a set of beliefs out there that is pretty messed up with regards to Scripture.  Well, let’s face it, there are a good MANY sets of beliefs that are messed up concerning Scripture, but the ones that really bother me are the ones from people who claim to be Christian.) In this case, I’m speaking of the belief that there are many valid interpretations of Scripture.

First off, the Bible quite clearly says “no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation”.  The word translated “prophecy” there is not just a prophet of the Lord telling hte future.  It’s more than that.  It means “teaching”.  So no teaching of the Word of God is of a private interpretation.  Now, there are things that many churches teach that are not from the Scriptures, I’ll give you that. However, when faced with that Scripture, there is really no other way we can understand it.  The spiritual journey of the Christian ought to be one that encompasses the identification of wrong doctrine in his or her belief system for the purpose of eradicating it, and setting up in its place a correct doctrine. Just because there are many churches out there that teach different interpretations does not mean that this jusifies the belief that there are multiple valid interpretations….it simply means, as Christ indicated in His sermon on the mount, that there will be many people in the last day who will think they are saved because the preached in Christ’s name, but who are in fact unsaved.  They will be insistent that they are saved, but Christ is adamant, and will tell them that He never knew them.

A friend of mine put that Scripture to someone of the multiple interpretation camp, and they patently ignored it, and talked about how God wouldn’t make just one narrow interpretation of His Word, etc.  No Biblical support…no care to the fact that the Word of God itself contradicts their position.  And they’re content to believe this way.  Does ANY church have a perfect set of doctrine?  No, we’re mere men, after all.  However, it’s important to realize that this shouldn’t be an excuse not to seek after proper doctrine. It also shouldn’t be an excuse for us to not contend earnestly for the faith.

People, the Word of God is the only source of our knowledge of God!  You can’t state whatever you want about God and claim that it is valid. You can’t claim that God was accepting of whatever people wanted, when His Word clearly states that homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God. You can’t claim that we are not to condemn sin, when the apostles after Christ’s example clearly condemned sin, and in some cases it is recorded that they cast brothers out of the church when they would not conform to the clear teachings of the Word of God.  People claim that we are not to judge, lest we be judged.  Ok, if I point out that someone is in an adulterous relationship, I can easily point it out…we are told what is right behavior, and we are told not to cast our pearls before swine, which means someone has to figure out who the pigs are, as D.A. Carson stated at the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology.

Having said all of this, please pray, gentle reader.  Pray that those who are not persuaded that the Word of God has any power over them will come to realize its authority in their lives.  Specifically, please pray for someone I know named Michele.  She’s pretty messed up, and believes that the Scriptures can say whatever she wants them to.  She doesn’t think she has any responsibility as a wife, and that the Lord is supremely concerned with her happiness.  She believes that she can disobey His Word if she doesn’t like what it’s telling her.  It’s an ugly situation, to be sure, but the Lord isn’t powerless here.  He can change her heart.  From man’s perspective, we see it as nearly hopeless, but the Lord CAN still do an awesome work in her life, and I pray He does.

Several of you may recognize the author of Byzantium as the same author of the Pendragon Saga, and you would be most correct. I’ve liked pretty much everything Stephen Lawhead has ever written. When I started this book, however, I was wondering if this would be the first one I didn’t like. Allow me to explain:

Characters: I have always loved Stephen Lawhead’s characters for a couple reasons. First, Lawhead writes each of his characters with different motivations and personalities. As the hallmark of a good author, Lawhead’s characters are recognizable by the words they use, the phrases they utter, and the thoughts and motivations they have. Motivations are never simple in Arthur’s stories, and while the Kingdom of Summer is what Arthur strives for, his journeys are not always easy. The other reason I like Lawhead’s characters is that his characters offer you a glimpse into Lawhead’s mind as well. For example, Arthur hates cities. In the books he journeys to Londinium, and hates every moment of it. Aidan, Gunnar, the amir…all of the characters in Byzantium are very real. The point of the entire book, you might say, is the character development of Aidan and those he meets in his pilgrimage to Byzantium. As usual, Lawhead gives us an excellent glimpse into the mind of a Celt and the early Celtic Christian church, the Céle Dé. His development of the characters he writes are excellent, and my favorite is Gunnar, by far!

Writing: This is the part that sort of made me afraid that I might not like this book. In the beginning of Aidan’s journey, I found it difficult to continue on. It’s entirely possible that I read Byzantium much too close to Patrick to really enjoy Lawhead’s writing again. Whatever it was, the book seemed to crawl in the early quarter of the book. However, I must say that it definitely picked up the pace immediately after that. Where before I had to force myself to read to get to the good parts, thereafter I found myself reading when I had the opportunity, which is my experience with most Stephen Lawhead books before this one. I must say that his writing in the narrative style became quite addictive. Knowing what Aidan thinks and feels was crucial to understand his character’s change from devoted monk to…well, read and find out.

Plot: Aidan’s journey is a sad one in many aspects. One can’t see Aidan being brutalized by his circumstances, see the way it shakes his faith a little more each time, and not wince. As I said before, the entire book is an excuse to show the development of Aidan as a character, and the last half of the book is one more problem after another for Aidan. Not a “my computer is slow” kind of problem. More like an, “I was in slavery for 2 years” kind of problem. At first, I was amazed at how much Aidan’s faith was being tested and shaken, but then I began thinking about what little I have had to endure. Now, some of my readers may here wonder if a Christian can truly lose his faith, and how that squares with the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints. Of course a Christian cannot lose his or her faith. Those who are the elect of God will not be lost. But that doesn’t mean that one can’t slip now and again. Furthermore, if someone does slip like that, and they are the elect, they are not really in dangers of the fires of hell. If the Christian slips, and he is truly a Christian, then he will return to the fold. Have no fear. The question then is, “Are they truly saved?” Good question. When I was 19 and went through the partying/drunkenness phase, was I truly saved? Yes, but you couldn’t tell by looking at me. I did come out of it, as the Lord promised I would. With the Christian, there is sin, but there is always growth, and while that was a low period of my life, I returned. Most of my friends can look to a section of their lives and point to that as a very low time when they were not living their faith as they ought. But they returned to the fold. Is there a danger of us losing our faith? No…but we do need to “work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling.” On the last day, there will be people who ask Christ, “Didn’t I preach/perform miracles/etc. in Your Name?” And Christ will say, “I never knew you.” We are not given to know beyond a shadow of a doubt who is in what group, but if there are people who thought they were saved and weren’t, which group are you in? Which group is Aidan in? It’s easy to see the uncertainty one can have when they realize that the sinner’s prayer really isn’t worth much. People can pray it, mean it, and fall away. They prove which group they are in by their lives. Scary, really. So while this presents a theological quandary, I don’t know that it’s actually a “problem”.

Conclusions: Byzantium starts off slow, but persevere, gentle reader. The ending will vindicate all the time you spend poring through the first section. And to be honest, many of you may not even experience what I did in terms of being exceedingly bored at first. Aidan’s story is a compelling one, sure. But keep an eye on that Gunnar. He’s definitely not what he initially appears to be. For the Christian, this book is filled with those redemptive moments we expect from such Christian works. They never fail to make me happy.

Coming soon, a review on Ted Dekker’s Saint. An excellent novel, so far!

edit: I can’t believe I forgot one of the most important aspects of my review.  I include it below as sort of an addendum.  Please don’t neglect to read it, as I feel it’s very important:

Theology: In addition to the question of whether or not one can lose one’s salvation, another major theological question is brought to my mind in this novel, and I feel any potential readers should be forewarned against this.  First off, Lawhead’s theology isn’t very orthodox, as I believe I pointed out in my review of Patrick: Son of Ireland. This is highly noticeable as Aidan comes into contact with the Saracens, who are definitely Muslim. Lawhead’s view of the Muslim religion is that Allah and the Lord Yahweh are the same God.  On his website, he points out that the Muslims descended from Ishmael, son of Abraham.  However, I should point out that while Abraham was the father of many nations, Ishmael is not the person through whom the Christ was to come, and therefore most, if not all, of the promises made to what the bible terms the seed of Abraham were not for Ishmael. Furthermore, while they may believe in an omnipotent God of creation, the God of the Bible is NOT the same as the God of the Que’ran (I apologize for the spelling of that…I didn’t have time to research the proper spelling.)  Lawhead promotes a very liberal theology in his books, and readers of his work should know to expect that. I don’t know that Lawhead ever said in Byzantium that Muslims are saved…I don’t know that he actually believes that.  However, while the belief in a single God may have descended from their common ancestor, the beliefs on who exactly that God is these days differs, and it should be noted that their Allah is a false God.  While they believe that Christ was a Prophet, they do not believe that He is the only Son of God, and is the only way to heaven.  Their beliefs on what heaven constitutes are also significantly different.

This is not that hard to spot in terms of theological inaccuracies, and in my mind doesn’t diminish the story in the least.  Readers should be aware of it, however. In the interests of fairness, this is what Lawhead says on his site.  Let this inform you as to Lawhead’s views on theology, and I do not endorse this view:

The simple fact is that the God of Islam is also the God of Israel worshipped by Jews and Christians throughout history. The Muslim doctrine is that they are descended from Ishmael, who was also Abraham’s son, and to whom God also promised a mighty nation. Thus, the Muslims trace their origins back to Abraham, just like the Jews. Allah is God’s name in Islam. Different name, same God. Although, it could be added that the particular views of that one God have diverged significantly since their common origin.

As I said before…I don’t feel this diminishes the story, and in fact adds to its authenticity.  At the point Aidan actually comes into contact with the Muslims, he would be entirely likely to believe such a view about God.

Overall Recommendation:

The answer, sure it is!  SHOULD IT BE???  No.  Duh.

I’m not going to tell you what you should be thankful for.  Spend some time and figure it out, if you don’t know.

I am here to tell you that I am thankful for my wife. This weekend, I was provided with a sad reminder of just how awesome what we have is. Those of you who have never been married can never understand what happens when the Lord brings husband and wife together to create one flesh.  You really do become half a person.  I only feel whole or complete when I’m with my wife.  When I’m telling stories, I’m only truly happy when she is there.  When I’m eating, I really only enjoy the food when my wife is there.  When she’s not with me, I’m wishing she was so that we could experience the day together rather than apart. I enjoy telling her of my day, but there’s always a part of me that wishes I could have experienced it with her rather than apart from her.

Recently, we went to the movies with some friends, where we sat in a guy row/girl row.  I enjoy sitting with the guys, but when the lights dimmed, I found I wasn’t enjoying the movie.  I wanted to sit with Kim.  So I did.  :)  Hey, she’s my wife!  I can hold hands with her in a darkened theater without a chaperone.  :-D

There’s no reason not to spend every possible minute with your husband/wife, and every reason to do so.  I am thankful to the Lord for giving my wife to me, and as I’ve said from the beginning: I can only hope to be a fraction of the blessing to her that she’s been to me.

Mo annsachd thu, mo bhean.

This is going to be somewhat revelatory as to what has been going on in my spiritual life in the last couple of years.

In the last couple of years, I have made a rather drastic shift in my theological leanings from the mainline evangelical church theology into the Reformed position on most topics. Calvinism, the sovereignty of the Lord, far less emphasis on man, covenantal theology…all of this has become more of my focus. Ultimately, the aim of it all is to focus more on the Scriptures as our sole source of God’s Word. As a result, I have come to feel that the mainline church is focused more on man, and how we feel about God. This, to me, seems to be backwards from what it ought to be.

All of this is to explain that my attitude toward most mainstream churches has been that of disdain. After all, I see them moving away from the Scriptures and into the realm of subjective experience, which removes our objective commandments, etc. Their position is a rather untenable one, where they have no ability to declare anything to be sin, because their canon, or rule, is the Bible, which importance they have diminished. Rick Warren’s thing of late has been that the church has focused too much on creeds, and not enough on relationships. You know what? If you can prove to me that the modern church has been focusing too much on creeds and doctrines, I’ll give you that argument! (I won’t agree, though.)

However, the church’s lack of doctrine notwithstanding, my attitude was inexcusable. It has led me into some errors that I could have avoided in and of itself. While I’m not going to blindly agree with everything the mainstream evangelical church teaches, that doesn’t mean I should ignore it all. Lately, I’ve heard a couple really good sermons from some modern evangelical pastors, one of whom I once heard give an exceedingly heretical sermon over the radio. (I’m not going into details, but it was very bad…I can’t believe he was espousing the view he was.)

In another instance, when the Session of our church was examining my wife and I for membership recently, one of the members of the Session asked me if I thought it was the Pastor’s job to provide application in his sermons. My immediate reaction was “no…just preach the Word of God. Let me provide application.” How retarded was THAT response?? Of COURSE the pastor is supposed to provide application. But coming from a church where all there was consisted of application, and little to no Scripture, I was throwing out the baby with the bathwater so to speak.

If you are in a Reformed church, think before you test the spirits. Don’t let the source of the sermon, statement, or position be the sole logic you use to dismiss something. Analyze what is said through the lens of Scripture rather than through your prejudice, as always. I’m sure everyone who is reading this is far better in this area than I am, but it’s just something I’ve been thinking about, and I thought I’d post it. :)

The reason the blog looked all jacked up was that the calendar was really messing with the formatting.  I’ve removed it, placed it on the right-hand sidebar, where it usually is, and it looks normal in all browsers now.

Thanx to everyone for providing feedback, by the way. Please let me know if you notice things like that, as I don’t always check IE. I try to avoid using it whenever possible.  ;)