Josh: thanks for the “minors are minors” argument; it’s why we finally decided to homeschool our son, despite misgivings, and despite him having had two magnificent public school teachers in 1st and 2nd grade. One of the experiences that helped me along: when my wife and I objected to a movie that was shown, school officials wanted us to write out our objections to the content of the movie. Having the bloggers’ flaw of being easily drawn into epistolary argument I was ready to jump right in, when I realized: I don’t care whether these people agree with me. I want to raise my own son.

Leopard lives and works. Took me about 90 minutes.

Off to see Elizabeth today. We haven’t been in a movie theater since I joined Netflix.

One of my mentors and heroes is a man named Henry Walters. He came to OBI from many years as a pastor and public school administrator. His wife passed away here, and he stayed on teaching and eventually serving as principal. He retired and continued working with students in a state placement facility as a chaplain. He’s a brilliant, eclectic, quick-witted, jazz-loving, book-reading combination of Socrates, Steve Brown and Mike Yaconelli. Many of the men (and many, many of our male students/graduates) have been befriended and mentored by Henry and love him dearly. This past week he had a massive stroke, is paralyzed and has lost his speech. He’s in a rehab center in Lexington and several of us hope to see him soon. I can only imagine what it must be like to be trapped inside a body that cannot move or communicate. Pray for Henry, his family, and those caring for him. He gave us many great years and we love him.

At OBI, this has been a week that we’ll be talking about for many years to come. Events planned and unplanned came together, and our school community lost- through expulsion- more students in 4 days than we usually lose in half the year. Very, very painful. Lots of tears. But also lots of blessings as I’ve seen some amazing examples of repentance, forgiveness and love. One thing that remains with me is what a toxic culture so many of our students have absorbed. What goes in does come out, and it’s sad. Pray for me this weekend as I preach twice to the students and try to encourage them. Everyone lost friends and it’s hard to grieve and then move on, but that is what needs to happen. So please pray again.

Richard: I have many thoughts on that video. The main one is this: Any decent classroom teacher should work on the assumption that education can be promoted in classes, but it happens spontaneously, at moments in, but (mostly) outside of, class, in ways that transcend the entire process of formal school. Any of us with an education know this. It is a combination of teachers, books, moments, anger, reason, relationships, discoveries, eurekas and so on. School takes up too much time- I totally agree with that- but anyone who thinks “school=education” is in the dark.

If you haven’t read Half-Blood Prince, don’t click on “more.” More »« Less

If you haven’t read all of the Harry Potter books, especially The Half Blood Prince, don’t click on “More”. More »« Less

Tom, I agree. This is Rita Skeeter at her worst. The media has been ridiculous with this, acting as though Rowling strutted out on stage for the purpose of saying, “Dumbledore is gay.” When she talked specifically about the books’ Christian content, only mtv reported it. When she said, “I’ve always thought of Dumbledore as gay,” it was on all the major news sites that night, and it was a media explosion the next day.

The conversation at “The Dumbledore Dialogue” actually isn’t about Dumbledore or the books at all. It’s a conversation about Christians and homosexuals in our culture that resulted from the initial “Dumbledore is gay” statement.

I’ll be totally honest here. I’m sick of the “Dumbledore is gay” stuff. Rowling also discussed the Christian symbolism in the Harry Potter books, but nobody’s talking about that. It’s all “gay, gay, gay, gay” like that’s the only thing that matters. To me it just shows, once again, the idiocy of pop culture. I didn’t see Dumbledore participating in any sexual activity, gay or otherwise, so it’s really irrelevant. The Christian symbolism, on the other hand, is right there in the books, but nobody gives a crap. I’m tired of it and I’m done with it.

The Dumbledore Dialogue. 

If anyone thinks I’ve absolutely lost my mind, let me know.  Otherwise, over the next several weeks, I’d appreciate any and all constructive criticism on how this all plays out.

My initial post will go up tomorrow night, and then I’ll start posting at the beginning of next week.

Preachers and teachers, listen up!

While I grant that there’s more than a bit of self-indulgent whining in this video I think that the students did a good job of telling us a bit about themselves and what their lives are like. These are the people we have to teach. These are the people we have to proclaim the Gospel to. What’s the best way of doing that? I’m not at all into technology as a means of proclaiming the Good News. But how do we communicate to this generation? What do you think?

I know the Left Behind video game is old news, but I saw a copy for the first time today and read the box.  You have the option of playing as Tribulation Force or the forces of the AntiChrist.  I know that this is the Christian alternative to evil video games and all that, but isn’t being a minion of the AntiChrist worse than being a space mercenary or an orc?

Josh, I totally agree.  After three years with Jesus, grandeur is not the issue.  The priorities for me would be:

• A kickin’ band, and lots of emotion in the worship


• An Aggressive compassion that helps the poor in the community and around the world


• racial diversity


• and the best prospects for organizing the local church around me so I could be the “rock star” and center of attention. 

If I’d spent three years with Jesus, which club has the greatest grandeur would be the absolute least of my concerns. No JN.

Leif, I absolutely, unequivocally disagree that it should be up to the teachers to decide what minors are able to handle, and that if the parents don’t like it, the burden on them is to prove that what the teacher is doing is inappropriate. That’s why minors are minors and why your idea essentially transfers the powers and rights of the legal guardian to the teacher. To the contrary, any time the teacher is doing something that may be over the bounds of his rights as the non-guardian, he should do what he has to do in any other situation involving the kids: check with the parents. Teachers can’t even put the kids on the bus and take them to the museum without getting the parental OK; why should assigning reading material with explicit depictions of necrophilia be any different? Textual descriptions of sex acts are less subversive and dangerous than riding a bus or playing basketball? When education so much as thinks about giving the appearance of maybe requiring the educator to sort of step into territory exclusively reserved to the legal guardian, we always require the parental OK a priori rather than putting the burden on the parents of constantly monitoring the teacher’s activities and proving to some higher authority he’s overstepped his bounds.

Where I’m coming from is minors are minors are minors. In that context, it doesn’t matter why some non-guardian thinks they should be the final arbiter over what a particular minor can and can’t do. It doesn’t matter if it’s for the pursuit of truth and beauty and educational exploration or if it’s just to make a quick buck. Minors are people who legally aren’t allowed to make significant decisions for themselves, but their guardians can. Any time you start moving that power away from the guardians and to anyone who claims a right to on purely ideological grounds, you’re on shaky, dangerous territory. You’re an educator, so you have a strong bias toward trusting teachers to make these decisions without prior parental consent…but what if you were a casino boat manager? What if you ran a sex shop? Loan shark?

Doesn’t matter at all whether it was built by slave trade money, mafia money, or abortion industry money.  Again, I think it is human nature to think that if God is going to be represented by anyone it would be royalty, internationally recognized political power etc.  That’s why Jesus was born in a great palace, lived a rich care free life, and after receiving laurels of honor, crowns and diadems with gem stones, and the adoration of all, he was beamed back up to heaven….  where He could inspire us all to improve ourselves and live our best life now…

So on the Catholic side, we have buildings that represent the selling of Jesus for cash. And on the “Protestant” side, we have renovated basketball arenas that represent the selling (a really watered down version) of Jesus for cash – by a guy who has better teeth and hair than the Pope.

How about we all build some really nice buildings somewhere just because they’re really nice?

At least there’s the Hagia Sophia. Oh wait, a whole different group took that one over. Crap.

Well, given that it’s a bunch of ex-Calvinists joining the RCC with reasons like “the mystique of the buildings,” and it’s a bunch of ex-Catholic Hispanics down at the Pentecostal store front, and a bunch of twenty-somethings of all varieties turning black rooms into emerging churches, I think we’re not going to see the era of the Cathedral much longer unless Joel becomes pope of a resurgent, formerly Presbyterian wing of the RCC.

Since the topic has come up again (thanks, Josh!), I’ll something: I spent the weekend in Boston a couple of weeks ago, and I shot ~1000 photos, many of which were of churches. However they were financed (and I’m more or less with Josh there), whatever value they might or might not have, I observed a few things about churches in Woonsocket, RI, and Boston, MA.

The biggest, most beautiful church buildings were either Roman Catholic or Episcopal. The ugliest, most run-down church buildings tended to be pentecostal. I saw a couple of really nice Baptist buildings, and a variety of Catholic but non-Roman buildings.

As a complete outsider, I could certainly understand why people would feel drawn to the group that could build such grand buildings, or feel repulsed by the idea of leaving one to hang out in a run-down rat-hole. Of course, it should be more complicated than that, because most of the RCC buildings were largely empty, one even for sale, but I suspect that has more to do with the activities of the arch-diocese of Boston vis-a-vis molested kids than anything else.

Should it be why people ignore the protestants? Of course not. But is it? I see how it could be. In some areas, at least.

This is way late, sorry, but grad school is kicking my butt. I wanted to just point out to Bob Myers that all that beautiful stuff in Vatican City was largely built in the Renaissance and funded by indulgences, taxes, and the spoils of war. The money hardly came from the average European’s idealistic love of great art or strong desire to see the churches in Europe beautified for the sake of God’s glory. So no, the Vatican doesn’t give me “Catholic envy” in the slightest once I realize where it came from. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the building of St Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel, there might not have been a Reformation at all.

I know this is way delayed, but it’s kind of a pet peeve of mine to hear people talk about the beauty and grandeur of Vatican City as though it were some kind of evidence that Catholics are more godly with their money than Protestants when in fact it is a lasting testament to the willingness of the Renaissance-era popes to sell Jesus for cash.

I have no idea how much of Rome’s cash today comes from sales rather than freewill offerings.  I suspect that selling candles and Masses is not a neglibible part of Rome’s income.

Oh what a difference 50 years makes.

• William Willimon, former chaplain at Duke and now a United Methodist bishop, tells about the time he invited Jerry Falwell to speak. He did it on a dare, not expecting Falwell to accept. But Falwell showed up with bells on, so to speak. The Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgendered Alliance demanded Willimon be fired for inviting a man infamous for his “closed-minded, racist, homophobic, self-righteous, incendiary rhetoric.”

On the appointed evening, the student crowd was baited for bear. One of the first questions was, “How many African Americans do you have at your Liberty University?” “Young lady,” said Falwell, you could not have asked a question that hurts me more deeply.” He went on about how hard he had worked over the years to recruit minority students and how he regularly discussed the matter with Coretta Scott King. “She told me not to be so consumed with this problem. But I can’t help myself.” He finally allowed that only 12 percent of the students at Liberty are African Americans.

Then he asked, “Do you know, by the way, how many African Americans are enrolled at Duke?” No response. Falwell said, “I’ll tell you. Six percent. Six percent! Your endowment is 50 times bigger than ours. You have had years to work on this issue (though admittedly you spent half of your life as a racially segregated school). In fact, I struggled with whether the Lord wanted me to come here tonight to a school that, though you have been given great gifts, has such a poor record of minority enrollment. I pray that you will let the Lord help you do better in this area.”

Willimon writes of the students, “They were putty in this Baptist’s hands. When Jerry finally finished his avuncular banter, he received a warm ovation. ‘This man’s no fool,’ I thought to myself.”

As Long As They Spell Our Names Right by Richard John Neuhaus
Copyright© 2007 First Things (November 2007).

Just to show you that I can laugh even when the leader of my own theological home team is lampooned, let me be the one to link to Brant on Piper on manliness and preaching.  Hilarious.

Jason: Thanks for the tip re Norton. I suspected that might be the culprit.

I’ve now managed to restore my sanity by booting into Puppy Linux from a USB key. (Not that I’m a hopeless geek or anything…)

This morning, I resisted the Leopard temptation by spending exactly what Leopard costs on getting rid of more debt.

I don’t always have that sort of wise presence of mind (usually don’t, actually), so I went for it while I could.

I want to go (watch the video). But the best I can do is to re-read Screwtape over the weekend. Oh, well!

I’ve already got a Family Pack of Leopard on the way, but I’m not going to upgrade tonight. Not because I’m concerned some of my apps might not work properly afterward, though that’s possible, but because I don’t want to take the time right before my wife and kids return from a long vacation tomorrow.

Next weekend, maybe.

It does look impressive.

Kurt is bound to love this.

Found through “John”.

Leopard today…I’m going to have to spend the day convincing myself that I have enough money for that.  I should NOT have watched the guided tour at apple.com.

Michael, count me in on that Lexington BHT-3D.  And if you (or any of you other fine BHT’ers or lurkers) happen to be in Lexington in November, you can come see me make an ass of myself in real life (instead of just here in the typed world):

November 15-17, 8pm, Lexington Downtown Arts Center: I am Ralph Waldo Emerson in “The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail,” a surprisingly entertaining play.

November 30, 2pm, Bluegrass Community and Technical College Library:  I will be reading some of my original writing.  Come see why no one will publish me!  Eat standard refreshments!  Watch the enrapt faces of the crowd (as they make grocery lists in their heads and wonder why Jim Nicholson quit Facebook)!

Interesting: In promoting Tim Challies’ new book, Adrian Warnock takes a two paragraph bite out of Phil Johnson’s contention that Willow Creek has a lot more to do than just repent of bad programs.

Leopard arrives today. School play tonight. Preaching three times before Monday. I want a BHT 3-D in Lexington.

I’ll pass on the Huckabee bandwagon. Kucinich, on the other hand, appeals to my demographic. The big black triangular craft have signaled their support for DK. That’s good enough for me!

The truth about the Druids.

We have several correctional facilities in our immediate are and several more downstate.  Given our local economy, the facilities are often seen as an inevitable career move for young and older men alike in this area.  We have COs in our church, in my wife’s family, and have more church members and family investigating it.  Although I understand how these guys feel drawn to this job, I shudder every time one of them jumps. From what I have seen, it is a life-sucking, joy-killing job.  The moment you enter, you begin counting the days until you retire.  I hate to see it.

Now Jim, I know the real reason you left Facebook is because only five people joined the “Mutual Friends of Jim Unite” group. (c8

(Yes, it can be a time sync. I had to ration myself to going there at specific times.)

I believe that few scholars today accept the “Druids” as a definable, self-identified, evidenced culture. I am fairly sure much of what is popularly considered Druidism is considered mythology. (I think.)

Every October I do a re-read of James B. Jordan’s essay, “Halloween: A Distinctly Christian Holiday,” and every year I come across this line:

The origin of All Saints Day and All Saints Eve in Mediterranean Christianity had nothing to do with Celtic Druidism or the Church’s fight against Druidism (assuming there ever was any such thing as Druidism, which is actually a myth concocted in the 19th century by neo-pagans).

Anyone heard of that before?  Is Jordan off his rocker, or is this an accurate statement?

Three decades later….

I drove a long way today to speak to a few people way up in the mountains. I’d love to write more about this, but I can’t say much. This was right across the road. It was big. Much bigger than ours in Clay Co.

Gene Cook, Jr. does a killer imitation of Joel Osteen. Apparently Osteen is sounding really good as he discusses the fires in CA.

John H: I just got this notice in the mail. Can you represent me?

We wish to notify you again that you were listed as a beneficiary to the total sum of £4,600,000.00 GBP (Four million Six hundred thousand British Pounds Sterling) in the intent of the deceased (names now withheld since this is our second letter to you). We contacted you because you bear the surname identity and therefore can present you as the beneficiary to the inheritance since there is no written will.

I just quit Facebook.

John, without knowing anything else about your parent’s computer, I’m pretty confident Norton is the root of their problems. I’m no Microsoft apologist, but XP running on any decent system made in the last couple years should be plenty fast and stable. Get rid of Norton and go with other stuff for protection. AVG Free, Spybot, and Zone Alarm make a nice combination for the average home user. (Yes, I know it’s three programs to replace one, but they work, and they don’t eat 90% of your systems resources.)

That said, I just put the newest release of Ubuntu on an old P3-800 system to play around, and it looks quite nice. The real test will come when I download the server edition and try it out on an old PII-300 system that still acts as my home file server. It has been running along nicely with Fedora for a few years, but it could use a little update, and Ubuntu’s package management is about as easy as it gets in the Linux world.

I want one.

You know it’s a bad day at the office when any mention of a rectal thermometer can lift your spirits.

We’re staying at my parents for the weekend, which means I’ve been using their Windows XP setup.

I try not to be an anti-MS troll, but really: running a Windows system would drive me to drink. It’s so achingly slow and unresponsive (it’s just taken about half an hour to upgrade Adobe Reader), it won’t do as it’s told – and don’t get me started on Norton (hawk, spit).

As I say, this isn’t a troll: it’s a heartfelt cry of frustration and bewilderment. Frustration at seeing hours of my day slip away as Windows grinds away to no great effect, and bewilderment that anyone would want to stick with this instead of installing another OS.

Even my wife – who is as ungeeky as they come – was moved to comment on how appalling Windows was compared with our home system. My parents, needless to say, don’t see the problem: after all, that’s just the way computers are, isn’t it? Only a weirdo would want anything different.

From social networking to antisocial networking: Hatebook.

A tip: if you are looking for the opportunity to defame and traduce people on the internet, a website that requires you to give your postal address when registering is probably not the best place to start. You’re better off
sticking with Blogger for now. (jn)

I can has cheezburger? Need napping. Iz mai happy place.

I think I’m a little tired of all these pointed remarks

Thanks to everyone for weighting in on this, and helping to keep our readers abreast of current events. We need to boost our sagging hit-rates and nurse our Google ratings after that lunch-meat fiasco.

One of them was quoted as saying, “If you let me go, I cross my heart that I will never get in such big trouble again.”

A common MO in a case like this is for the thieves to lift, and then separate, to avoid capture.

Isn’t that store just down the street from a Dairy Queen Brazier?

 If they catch these thieves, they might escape with a snap.

I hear that the store is now laced with booby traps.

The thieves slipped in under the wire.

This isn’t a real news story, it’s just padding.

I read that the authorities removed the culprits from the store with just one hand.

Makes me wonder how often this kind of crime happens abroad.

Crime is on the rise again.

There, I got that off my chest.

Hope they can get their hooks into the culprits.  Otherwise, folks may withdraw their support.

Certainly can’t help the sagging economy.

Crime is on the rise again.

Crime is on the rise again.

Here’s an E-mail I got from my dad this morning. It should explain a lot.

All,

Impress your friends!

I couldn’t let another October 25th go by unnoticed.

October 25th used to be the feast day of St. Crispin*, until it was cut from the roster by Vatican II. It’s mostly remembered today, however, because of it’s connection with the Saint Crispin’s Day Speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V (Act IV, scene iii), wherein the King rallies his beleaguered army minutes before the Battle of Agincourt, fought on October 25th, 1415.

This site gives an animated overview of the actual battle:
http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/site/microsites/line_of_fire/

Here’s the speech. It’s great. Enjoy! (Note: Henry refers to himself by his nickname “Harry”.)

Travis won’t be in today. He popped a blood vessel.

Having just led my students through an examination of two of the “masters of suspicion,” this was a timely post.

Jamie Smith on the God-O-Meter.

Want a foster child in England? Then agree to teach them about homosexuality.

Michael, yes, it’s a matter of where you and I live and minister. Where I minister Protestants are the minority group, very small in comparison. In my neighborhood there’s 60 houses, and I know of about 6 Protestants, probably only 3 go to church ever. Most of the other 54 are RC’s, and half of them would go to Christmas Eve mass at least and identify with the local parish. That makes a big difference in perspective, and I appreciate the difficulty folk have in coming over to our side.

What keeps me Protestant is we have a kicking good band… jn!

And yes, I slyly market to these Catholics, call myself an Apostles’ Creed Catholic, and even refuse to correct them when they ask what time our Mass is! A few of our members still call our service a Mass, something again, I won’t correct.

Jason, yes, I think Frame would like the BHT. He says we ought to collect and tell jokes that make fun of our little denominational party, and look at the areas other denominations put us to shame, rather than their weakest parts that make us feel superior. It’s a good read and I’m sorry no one has seriously interacted with it, far as I know.

Bob: Not to be argumentative, but that’s NYC and the East coast. In the rest of the country and the rest of the world, it’s not as grand.

When someone looks at a building and says it doesn’t look like a church, I usually,

a) agree b) and say “because it’s not.”

John Frame’s book “Evangelical Reunion” is the only Gospel Centered book I know of that points to how we might really get rid of all the denominations.

Finish the quote: “Real Christian Men……”

Anyone, I’ve read up to Book Three in Augustine’s “Confessions”. If every Christian were required to read this, Luther, Calvin, and other assorted work that manages to stay in the discussion for more than a few hundred years, would it help rid our Christian bookstores of all the garbage they print? Or, would it just put them out of business? Probably not.

Michael, my wife’s side of the family is Italian and Roman Catholic and from NYC.  When they have visited our church, they often say, “doesn’t look like church”.  In other words, if God were going to appoint reps they would wear the uniform.  If God were going to meet with us in a building, it would have stained glass.   That’s very very common among New York and City Catholics everywhere.  They are used to BIG.  Their parishes are HUGE!  The Catholic parish here ministers to thousands.  Seems like reasonable human nature to me. 

Yes….once again….we return to the question on which the Christian blogosphere turns…..

Finish the quote: “Real Christian Men…...”

Jason, I agree with you, and have had to repent of some of that in terms of coming out of the mainline (liberal) stream.  And I also identify with how proximity limits perspective.  I see the deadness of what I’m close to as magnified.

Denominational chauvinism needs to die in all of us.  John Frame’s book “Evangelical Reunion” is the only Gospel Centered book I know of that points to how we might really get rid of all the denominations.  Scholars get tied to denominations/ or Christian traditions and then wind up defending them, only seeing their virtues. 

First, I’d get the Gospel Centered Presbyterians together.  Let’s see, that’d be about 2/3rds of the PCA…  jn !

I’ve never heard a Roman Catholic Christian take particular pride in the church’s money and buildings as proof that the RC is the true church. Art? Heritage? Spirituality of architecture? Ok..somewhat. (Protestants and their money and buildings….now that I’ve heard about.)

Catholicism worldwide is full of poor parishes and older churches. RCs don’t build many suburban megachurches these days. I’m just confused by the fellow’s logic and how it pertains to why one would remain in a church.

“The sweet blessings of a masculine Christianity.”

I dunno, I’m more the savory/spicy type. How about this:

“The spicy blessings of a tender Christianity.”

This is making me hungry. I forgot the topic.

“Why everyone should value biblical virility?”

Weird, weird stuff…guys.

Michael, how so?  .....  I thought it was an obvious point. 

 As a Protestant, I totally resonate with this man’s point of view.  I visited Catholic University in D.C. and the Shrine and was very impressed.  Pope John Paul II’s funeral was amazing. (Again, lots that I disagreed with at the Shrine and the Pope’s funeral but still very impressive)  And look at the whole Vatican along with the fact that  Many Roman Catholic buildings are beautiful architecture.  All around Philadelphia, New York City, etc. are gorgeous buildings. Where is the Protestant equivalent?

 As for money, someone is funding all of this.  What do Protestants do with their millions?  Build theme parks?, pay celebrity pastors?

 And NCAA basketball teams that make it to the Sweet 16 and beyond.  Georgetown, Saint Joes, Villanova,  etc.  I mean if God is not interested in NCAA basketball then what is He about.  Could it be that God is sending a message to evangelicals by so consistently putting Roman Catholic teams in the NCAA sweet 16.  I mean it’s not likely that Baylor, Wheaton, or Pensacola  is going to get there….

If those things don’t give you “Catholic envy” then you are just free from the kind of worldiness that is in me.  I see our underfunded and small efforts dwarfed by the Roman Catholic institutions.  Not to mention, five Supreme Court Justices are Roman Catholics, giving intellectual leadership….  zero for evangelicals.   

Did we miss each other in this?  What Roman Catholic doesn’t take pride in all this stuff?

You make a good point. I easily see the deadness in my own tradition, and I easily see what more catholic traditions have kept alive that my team has killed or neglected. This carries over into a lot of perceptions about many things. The grass may be the grass wherever we are, but it looks greener looking across the river to where the sun is shining on the other hill.

I know I’m asking for a fisking for this, but that never stopped me before.

For all these stories I read about Catholics going Protestant, Evangelicals going Catholic, etc., I wonder how much any of them has to say is a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the Tiber. Theological differences aside, so many “converts” stories center around perceptions of dead religion in one camp or the other. Maybe (not for every example, to be sure) the case is that they had been laboring under the delusion that the religion they were personally practicing was dead, and that when they had their “conversion,” they had to move to another tradition to get away from everything that represented their deadness.

I see this tendency in myself, too. I’m an evangelical. I was saved in college, and the people who were ministering to me were evangelicals. I grew up in a mainline, so obviously I thought the mainline was full of non-Christians and dead spirituality. (This is an attitude I have repented of.) Later, going back to my childhood church, I heard the gospel clearly in the liturgy. The problem wasn’t with that church, it was with ME. I was dead, and now I’m alive, thanks be to God. Had I gone to that church regularly at the time God was getting my attention, I might still be in that tradition. Of course, now that I’ve had plenty of time to steep in the Evangelical tea, I’ve slowly perceived problems there as I read “the dead guys.” This is making me want to go back to a liturgical form.

When you bring someone’s theological convictions into all this, it gets messier. I hear beloved brothers and sisters make comments to the effect that they are praying for a Catholic neighbor to get saved. This makes me sad. I think to myself, maybe they need saving, and maybe they don’t. Why don’t you talk to them about Jesus and see if they trust Him or not? The same thing could work the other way. I checked out a Catholic book store in my neighborhood a few months ago, since the evangelical Christian bookstores around here certainly don’t have much in the way of the early Fathers and church History. The person working there was a former Baptist turned Catholic who, upon learning that I was an evangelical, spent the rest of our conversation subtly witnessing to me of the Catholic faith.

I know there are many real problems of theology and praxis between Christian denominations. Still, there must be some way to see Christians for who they are, without resorting to picking on denominational errors(!) that probably don’t disqualify us from the Kingdom.

Piper says Christianity ought to be masculine, and particular blessings will come from masculine Christianity.

Bob: I would think that any of our Roman Catholic friends would find that brother’s comments to be rather odd, to say the least. Money and buildings?

Bill: I don’t think Jack is checking in very often these days. At least I suspect not, because I’m still out of bourbon.

Jack: If you’re reading this, send some  Knob Creek next time.

Josh: In your response to Leif, you were being sarcastic, right?  If so, I forgive you. If not, I would submit that one of three scenarios is possible:

a) Some parents protested the assignment of a particular book by a teacher by confronting the teacher. The teacher gave a compelling argument in support of the assignment. The parents didn’t like not getting their way, so they sued. Let’s call this the there’s no problem we can’t make worse with lawyers scenario.
b) Some teacher decided to get some publicity for the issue of ‘literary censorship’ by assigning a controversial book and getting a lacky to ‘protest’ it to make a test case. Let’s call this the put the monkey on trial for show scenario.

c) Some kid didn’t like the teacher, and so they provoked their otherwise disaffected and uninvolved parents into outrage by highlighting all the naughty bits of one of their required reading books. Let’s call the my dog ate the pornographic novel you assigned me to read scenario.
There’s no problem we can’t make worse with lawyers: This is very American, in the sense that acting like a complete ass-hat is very American. Suing each other for trivial perceived offenses is the quintessential American past-time, far outstripping other candidates for the title such as baseball, driving everywhere even for ridiculously short trips, ignoring our children, and even downloading pornography from the Internet.

Put the monkey on trial for show: I find it very interesting that this news item comes to light just after the ALA holds its annual ‘banned book week’ cry-fest over how terrible it is that community standards for acceptability are sometimes applied to art and media acquired with public funds. How dare the unwashed protest how librarians spend our money? It’s un-American! We should.. protest it.

My dog ate the pornographic novel you assigned me to read:  This one would have been a stretch for me to grasp, since I never actually had the experience of not liking an English teacher in school. (Oh, wait, we call them ‘language arts’ teachers now to avoid being Anglo-centric and possibly offending people who can’t understand what we’re saying anyway.) However, my daughter has entered the remarkably absurd world of public high school this year, and she’s now experienced having her language arts teacher state that homework assignments should be written out long-hand rather than typed on a computer, because ‘in the real world, you’ll have to write things out by hand.’  (I’ve been a hiring manager in said ‘real world’ for over 25 years. If I asked someone who works for me to write something  for me, and they handed me a paper with things hand-written on it, I would smile at them the first time and ask them to type it; the second time they did it, I would fire them.) So I can understand how a student might possibly become so frustrated that they resorted to desperate action. Of course, the really absurd idea in this scenario is that a 13-year-old, presented with the opportunity to read something risque for a school assignment, would leave the bathroom long enough to let their parents discover the material.

I will admit to typing my first message in haste, as I was angry and had just read the article in question.  So if my post implied that there should be no restrictions on minors’ school reading materials, I apologize.  However, I say again that the burden should be on those who want to restrict material rather than those who are assigning it.  By that I mean: teachers should be given the freedom to teach what they think their students are prepared to handle.  If a teacher violates trust or does something outrageous, that situation calls for attention.  What I am witnessing is a push for ”Restrict first, ask questions later.”  This, to me, runs counter to education, which should be an open-minded, exploratory pursuit that intentionally challenges students and their intellectual (and yes, sometimes even their moral and social) comfort zones.  If and when that challenge turns into an affront or an assault, the situation should be addressed, in an appropriate way that still values academic freedom and inquiry.

Unfortunately for some people and their seemingly uncontrollable urge to make a list of pre-emptive rules and regulations for every social and moral issue, this is one of those pesky areas that must be judged on a case-by-case basis.  To pick apart literature and reduce it to a list of naughty or provocative bullet points is to diminish and cheapen it and totally misses the point, but hey, it’s easier than true critical thinking.

And Josh S, I don’t know if you were trying to be snarky when you suggested I think that the age for access to sexually explicit material should be 14, and perhaps implied that stances like mine are related to increased sexual activity among middle-schoolers—but you needn’t be, if you were.  I make no such arguments and find them distinctly red herring-ish.  And silly.  I have a daughter less than a year from middle school, so I am keenly aware of the issues facing middle schoolers—more aware, I would suggest, than you.  Yet I feel no compelling urge to make sweeping, blind judgments about what her teachers assign for reading materials, as some favor.  I am very involved in what she does at school, including reading the books she reads so we can discuss them.  Which is what a parent should do, rather than wasting time wringing their hands about what might be happening between the hours of 8 am and 3 pm.  If I read a book with her and I think she can’t handle it, I’ll intervene, whether that means working through the issues with her or going to her teacher to discuss the appropriateness of the assignment.

But then, that is acting distinctly parent-ish, and takes much more time and effort than railing and flailing the arms about, screaming, ”What are they making our kids read??” (By the way, I am not saying YOU are doing that, but some are (see, it’s not so hard to make it clear that you understand what a person is and is not arguing)).  And once we start asking parents to do their job, where will that lead us?