In the interim

Yep, it's been a long time. Mea culpa. There's been a lot going on (as always) in the Parker household. New baby, summertime sports, vacation, etc... But it seems like one of the good things about a blog is it's still there waiting for you when you're ready to come back to it.

I've read several books since my last post. I've finished A Life in a Year, at least as much of it as I'm going to finish any time soon, which is about 2/3 of the book. It is pretty good - it just got sidelined, and torturing my way through a book is not really one of my hobgoblins. We finished CS Lewis' Mere Christianity and have started on Barbara Brown Taylor's Gospel Medicine. When we finish that we're going to be working our way through Augustine's Confessions. I've also started Richard Strozzi Heckler's In Search of the Warrior Spirit, which is another interesting, but frustrating book for me. I'll definitely have a review of this book, perhaps on my martial arts blog.

Anyway, perhaps I can get back to a more regular posting schedule on this blog...

Belated Blessings Blog

I love all of my family, but this past Sunday I felt God's blessing particularly in the form of my second son, Knox. Knox is the quiet, sensitive, loving, compliant one. He had ear problems early on, and is late developing speech, but he is a master of mime and gets his point across. Sunday I'd forgotten to give the kids some money to put into the offering plate and Knox cried because he had nothing to give. I don't think that was humiliation, I think it was a heart for giving. Moments later, at the children's' sermon, Knox gave the pastor a hug. Often at the end of the children's' sermon, Knox shouts out, "alleluia." Though most folks probably don't understand what he's saying because it sounds like "la la lu la." But Elise and I understand, and so does God.

Lord, thank you for blessing us with Knox to love us and teach us about giving. In your Son's name, Amen.

Historical Confessions

Throughout the history of Presbyterianism in America there has been an underlying debate as to whether or not pastors, elders, or even members must subscribe to some statement of faith other than the bible. Traditionally the subscription debate revolved around the Westminster confession. The pro side felt that Westminster was a faithful statement of what we believe as a group. The con side felt that to be forced to subscribe to Westminster was to reduce orthodox Christianity to a summary of fundamentals, and that it was also to lose the freedoms of conscience provided in the bible.

The PCUSA, in which I was raised, has as part of its Book of Confessions, several varying statements of faith, including such beautiful, historical confessions as the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds, The Scots, Second Helvitic, and Westminster Confessions, The Westminster and Heidelberg catechisms, as well as several various newer declarations of faith. The good part of tihs is the variety of statements of historical orthodox belief. Such variety lends perspective to our understanding of our faith. The bad part of having such variety in our Book of Confessions is that one may, conceivably choose to believe anything that one wants (even blatant heresy), and it is possible to find some spurious statement somewhere in the confessions to imply credibility to that belief.

In the next post or two I want to investigate where our ideas of biblical inerrancy and infallability come from, using the confessions, and sort through some recent ridiculous heresies that I've heard voiced about the bible as a purely human, uninspired collection of partially fictitious texts. I also want to get into the idea of whether spiritual guidance is a matter of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit or of biblical understanding.

Lord, God, Help me! I'm surely in over my head in this study, but it is something that I felt led to learn about. Please, Lord, guide my thoughts and my writing, and silence me if what I am saying is not a right understanding of Your Truth. In your Son's name, Amen

Blog your Blessings Sunday

There's this meme thing going around on the blogosphere called Blog Your Blessings Sunday. I couldn't find the origin post, so, I figured I'd pick up the meme and make up my own rules as I go along. Basically, you Blog your Blessings each Sunday. Easy enough.

God has blessed me in every way, but today I want to write about my third son, Quin. Quin is a boy's boy. He loves to run and fight and loves to dismantle and destroy things. he has earned numerous nicknames, including Quin the Destroyer, Quintilla the Hun, Quinzilla, and Quinsidious. I've written posts on my other blog about him here and here is some video. But, contrary to that destructive nature, Quin is the best snuggler. It is as if, when he chooses to be sweet, he is doubly sweet because it seems so out of his nature. Today in church he snuggled up in my lap and began rubbing my furry cheek with his little smooth one. It was completely endearing. You know, that must be how it is when we, as rebellious, depraved sinners choose to worship God, our Father and Creator.

Thank You, Lord God, for blessing me with Quin. Please use him to teach me how to worship You better.

Run, it's an Evangelist!

Our Sunday school class is studying the book, Gospel Medicine, by Barbara Brown Taylor. In the first chapter she talks about evangelism becoming a very distasteful thing these days. Brown talks about watching Oral Roberts in the 1950's doing his ridiculous faith healing routine and her reaction was to pray she'd never meet an evangelist in person and to swear that she'd run for her life if she ever did. Even as a preacher years later, she was offended when someone called her an evangelical. Even as a preacher she equated evangelism with radical insanity.

The following is an entertaining and disturbing video of some of the sort of faith healing I think Brown was talking about. I don't know who this preacher is, but the only video of Oral Roberts I could find was so old and grainy that it was impossible to even see what was happening.




Let me set one thing straight right now. This is not evangelism. This is spectacle. Evangelism is simply the act of telling people about how good Christianity is. Sharing your experience with God's and Christ's true spiritual healing.

Jonah overboard

Today's sermon was on Jonah 1:1-17. The story of a man called by God but unwilling to speak up against the wickedness of the world. Jonah fled from his calling. You know the story. The sailors cast lots to figure out who was to blame for the storm, and found out that Jonah was fleeing from God. They tried to row to land but the storm got worse. They finally threw Jonah overboard and the storm subsided.

Now, I don't have anything in particular against literal interpretation of the Bible. In fact I believe it is inspired and inerrant. But one of the really neat things about the scriptures is that they are true on many levels, both literal and metaphorical. This story may be literally true, but it also stands as a metaphor for a situation that people find themselves in too often.

Running from God's calling to be holy (that is, unique, different) and to speak out against the evil in the world. When we do this (and we all do), we find that things get stormy. When we try to ride out the storm under our own power we find the chaos gets worse. When we commit ourselves to the company of people who are fleeing from God's call we find that the chaos becomes unbearable. There is no peace until we let go of them and let them fall.

Interestingly, that is what we are doing in Aikido - using physical conflict as a vehicle to explore this principle that sometimes people who are on the wrong path require more strength than you have to use to support them.