Days of Noah

To What Kingdom Does That Belong?

I don’t watch TV or movies. Not even on my computer via the Internet. But I could. And I could become addicted to both. I know. (I even could become addicted to blogging, Facebook, and other social media.)

Maybe you don’t watch TV or movies either.

But we read. (Well, some.)

This applies to our reading as well as our viewing:

We went to Blockbuster and rented one season’s worth of episodes.

[…]

I overlooked it and kept watching for the laughs. […] The feeling lingered and I went to bed feeling oddly soiled. I prayed. I sought God’s perspective on the TV show. I made two lists […]

Here were the reasons in my second list for not continuing to watch the TV series:

  1. The dirty feeling afterward.
  2. We are told to “walk as Jesus walked” (1 John 2:6), and I can’t picture Jesus sitting on a couch, passively taking in the sights I took in.
  3. Scripture says, “Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves” (Romans 14:22). I am not at all sure that I would not judge myself someday for approving of watching that show.
  4. God commands us to love Him with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. I don’t believe that finding enjoyment or interest in that TV show meets that bar.

Then I fell asleep. In the middle of the night I woke up with a single word in my mind, a word that is not part of my working vocabulary: “abomination.”

What would that list do to our (you know, my and your) viewing and reading?

What would these do?

“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Ephesians 5:11).

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14).

“Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you” (2 Corinthians 6:17).

Oh, and please read the full version of the article above: Andrée Seu’s piece at World Magazine, Abomination.

Why Not Be Cruel?

Philosopher Richard Rorty allegedly admits that the secular liberal has no answer for that.

But now I’m ahead of myself.

David Brooks titled his September 12 New York Times column thus: If It Feels Right…

And here you have the first and third sentences of his piece:

During the summer of 2008, the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith led a research team that conducted in-depth interviews with 230 young adults from across America. […] Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.

OK. So it’s only 230 young folks out of million? But even that few people in the 18-23 age range ought to know better. (Surely they didn’t pull a Kinsey and survey Gutter Dwellers.) Read it all

Is Secularism Imaginary?

Which do you see as the greater threat to Jesus Christ’s Church: Islam or secularism?

Which do you fear more?

Evangelicals, according to survey research conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, view secularism as a greater threat to Christianity than Islam. It seems, on the surface, like a great question for the cultural curmudgeon, at least from this relatively uncultured curmudgeon’s point of view. Will Christianity rot from the inside, or instead be overrun by the heathen hordes?

[…]

Or maybe what respondents meant, the 71 percent of them who chose “secularism” as the major threat to Christianity, is that what they fear most is a falling away, a slow boiling of the frog. Maybe it’s the gradual relaxation of standards that frightens them, the willingness of more and more self-professed Christians to pick and choose which doctrines they believe, if they care to countenance doctrines at all.

Wouldn’t it be something if the reason for this creeping secularism, if it exists, is the very notion of secularism itself?

[…]

In other words, maybe the greatest threat to Christianity is not that people abandon it for other things, but rather our own tendency—or mine, at least—to imagine that it has a limited domain, that there are the things of Christ and then there is all the rest of it. It’s not that a man goes to pornographic sites, it’s that he forgets every woman he sees is crafted in the image and likeness of God. It’s not that a woman goes cold in the marriage bed, it’s that she believes a Christian union is only a spiritual one. It’s not that our children go to where Christ is not, it’s that they imagine there is such a place.

How often I have imagined myself going to a “Christless corner,” some place in real life where God isn’t.

Such foolishness to attempt so impossible a task!

Let’s banish from our heads and from our living the dangerous notion that life has separate Christian and secular dimensions.

May God’s people be revived to such a degree that every dimension of our experience and environment becomes a living reality of acknowledging God in all our ways.

“In all thy ways acknowledge him.”
Proverbs 3:6

Well, please read Tony Woodlief’s full article over at World magazine: Christless corners.

We Spoil Them Instead

“You don’t spank children today.”
—Judge Jose Longoria

Longer ago, someone much wiser than Judge Longoria wrote:

“Whoever spares the rod hates his son,
but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.”
–Proverbs 13:24

Mr. Longoria, today we need to return to that wisdom from long ago, that wisdom from above.

I recommend for your online reading: Five Pointers for Disciplining Children

And here are some books for your consideration:

Woe to the parent who abuses a child under the guise of discipline!

USA v. Timothy David Miller

Is Timo Miller on the right side?

What’s the deal with Timothy David Miller’s alleged involvement in Lisa Miller‘s alleged international parental kidnapping of her own biological daughter (a minor of whom she had legal custody)?

I don’t know, even though I’ve read plenty of news accounts and other online commentary.

Is Timo guilty as accused?

I don’t know that either. After reading a document purporting to be the official Read it all

Above all, love God!