Ethics over Education

A friend said that we should be more concerned with illiteracy than illegetimacy - in other words, education is more valuable than ethics. But of what use is the sum of all human understanding without the knowledge of your Creator!

The True Humanism

Great review by David Field exposing the farce of secular humanism. The conclusions:

• that any claim to do 'good' or oppose 'evil' is meaningless when coming from an evolutionary, random-universe worldview.
• that a life of God-denying philanthropy is nothing to boast of - it is making an idol of human welfare
• that the modern Humanist movement is in large measure a negative thing - a reaction to Christianity. So many humanists are self-consciously fighting against God even while on the run from him. And it will be clear to some of them at least that the harder they resist, the more they sense that there is something to resist.
• that Christianity is itself the 'True Humanism'. (There is a 1980 book by J.I. Packer and T. Howard called Christianity: the true humanism which expounds this thesis quite superbly.) Only in relation to his Maker, only when reconciled to him, subject to his laws, promoting his glory, and relying on his strength, can man be all he is meant to be. It is the high calling of all Christian people to demonstrate this - living lives of humble, loving service to God and men, displaying the righteousness, power and joy of Christ and so inviting others to 'the life that is truly life'.

Facebook

Apt quote from the article on Midlife Crisis:

“All sorts of half-forgotten acquaintances and abandoned friendships reappear in this spreadsheet of potential reasons to feel terrible about yourself. If you’re as petty as I am, you spend a lot of Facebook time gauging your own feelings of inadequacy in direct relation to other people’s success. All these people you couldn’t give a shit about a couple of years ago are now these omnipresent benchmarks and counterpoints to measure against whatever you have or haven’t got going on in your life.”

Life without Christ

This article expresses the listless lack of purpose that defines our generation of God-haters. What's the point to life without recognition of your maker?

A man for every season

How often do you hear someone say that they "want to get in shape for summer"? This makes no sense: why would you only want to be beautiful for one season in four? Who wants to be athletic a quarter of the time? Who only needs strength when the sun's shining?

Get off your cottage cheese ass and sort it out!

The Unhelpful Divide

We cannot separate the spiritual from the material;

Often we create a really unhelpful divide in our lives between those things that appear to us to be ‘spiritual’ or of eternal consequence and those that are temporary or unimportant- but thinking theologically about everything opens-up to us a world where nothing is pointless, lost, or unspiritual. As Kuyper said, there is nothing we do, touch, see, experience, or know of which the Lord Jesus does not say ‘That is mine!’.

Full article here.

Jesus vs Kim Jong Il

When Kim Jong Il missed the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea last year, allegedly because of declining health issues, I was reminded of the permanence of Christ's kingdom against all earthly dynasties:

"He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end." [Luke 1:32,33 NIV]

Psalm 127

I'm looking at Psalm 127 atm, in preparation for Monday's CU meeting.

Some good points from the New Bible Commentary:

• "...In the Bible, the opposite of rest is not work, but restlessness,"

This is revolutionary! Society would have us divide our lives into discrete chunks: thus work becomes a separate unit to rest; and we're encouraged to think of relaxation as the absense of work and duty. But this is not the case! Adam had the responsibility of stewarding the garden before the fall; God himself holds all things together in his providence! I'm sure that there'll be work in heaven (minus the painful toil instituted in Genesis 3:17-19)

• "All life must be lived to the full, all its joys enjoyed and its duties performed in unworried reliance on him who is the doer of all. Joyful activity, toilsome activity - but full of untroubled rest."

Often I'm tempted to feel guilty about how good life is; that it's somehow wrong to enjoy peace and wealth and health when so many are poor, at war and ill. But how much more wrong it is for us not to enjoy God's great goodness to us! God's providence means that we can trust him in everything - in work and in play; in abundance and in poverty; in duty and in freedom!