Gadfly's Muse

"Does the hawk fly by YOUR wisdom????" - a meditation

(Hawk on Roof, 2008, JAVanDevender)

Job 39:26-27   26 "Does the hawk fly by your wisdom, And spread its wings toward the south?  27 Does the eagle mount up at your command, And make its nest on high?

(The bird authority in my house, my 24 year old son, proclaims it a Northern Harrier Hawk, more info HERE)

OK, I know.   It's not that great a photograph.  The day was actually cloudy and overcast and the contrast was pretty much zero.  It took a fair amount of work to get it this far.  But watching that majestic bird preening, cleaning itself, ruffling its feathers and sorting out the rain drops, even as it scanned the surrounding fields for a mouse that might be foolish enough to leave its hole, I could not help but be impressed.  What a creature!

Officially listed as an abomination, at least as far as dietary considerations go in Lev. 11 and Deut. 14, yet God reminds Job that the elegance and swiftness of the hawk is an expression if His wisdom, a wisdom that mere mortals, even those as righteous as Job, fall far short of attaining.  Here is a bird which can sail with effortless grace on the currents of the air, and yet, folding his wings, plummet like a comet toward the prey his incredibly sharp eyesight reveals is running through the grass.  Beauty and deadly grace combine to balance the scales of nature, keeping the prolific mice and rats from devastating the available food supply.  Though a terror to the individual yet a blessing to the community.  Checks and balances... beauty and completeness... perfection and necessity - How marvelous are Your works, O God.

Somewhere along the way there is a lesson here for us.  The question of "why" does not arise (presumably) in the mind of the mouse' wider family as a hawk takes away one of their own to feed those of his own.  The accepting nature of the necessity of life and death is implicit in the creatures.  "Because God has so deemed it wise to do it this way" is sufficient for the hills and mountains to dance with joy.  "It is done, it is good, it is God" satisfies the creature whose strength is the Lord.

The hawk as well as the mouse reveal God's wisdom to man.  In our struggles and our sin perhaps we should see in the hawk, with its terrible beauty, the balance and purity of God's perfection - and, along with Job, recognize how far His ways are above ours and beyond our reach to attain.  Sometimes we are the hawk, sometimes we are the mouse... praise be to God.

The Jihad Germ: No Tom Clancy But A Good Read

The Jihad Germ: T. N. Rivers, Pirate Island Press, $12.95 on Amazon.com

See all my reviews on Amazon.com

FOUR STARS (of a possible five)

Rivers' book is a page turner. The fast paced action keeps the story moving but is also that which makes it the least realistic. The reader is very aware that what he is reading bears as much resemblance to how a full scale bio-terrorism attack would be handled as an Indiana Jones movie bears to actual archeology. Which is not to say that Rivers' primary thesis and the events/responses which are depicted are out of the question. They are not. It is just that the attack, if it was actually mounted, would have been far more devastating because the government response could never rise to the efficiency River's recounts.

The best aspect of the book is the detailed account of how the attack was formulated and executed. The degree of detail given was indeed scary and, since I am not qualified to speak to the technical details of the biological/genetic possibilities, I assume it is feasible. Rivers' descriptions and identification of the various organizations which would be involved in combating such an attempt were also helpful

Where Rivers' needs to grow as an author is in making his characters less stiff and robotic. When Dr. Ron Raines loses his live in girl friend, for whom he presumably had great affection, he accepts it with what seems to be no more than a passing thought - "I should have been with her when she died." That's about it. All of the other characters are sketched at about the same level. All it takes for the bad guy terrorist scientist to suddenly change his mind about the Great Satan Americans is for Dr. Raines to show him a little love. That's a bit of a stretch.

So... five stars for technical background and plot outline, three stars for character development averages out to four.

Good summer beach read. It'll take you 3-4 hours straight through.

Christian Morality vs The Gospel???? Pondering Jacques Ellul

Ellul is not your everyday theologian/philosopher.  To say that he is a free thinker is pretty much to say that he is French.  His understanding of the Trinity smacks a great deal of Dynamic Modalism, an early heresy.  He was much influenced by Marx in his early days and I am not so certain that the influence has been sufficiently overcome. 

All that said... he is an engaging writer who needs to be sympathetically but carefully read.  Like Nehemiah's instruction to the workers on the wall - build the wall with one hand but keep a sword in the other.  That is how I recommend reading Ellul.

One sharp point he makes in this book which really got me thinking, was how "Christian Morality", as a philosophical system, is indeed "subversive" to the Gospel.

Drawing on the circumstances in Post-Constantine Rome, Ellul paints a pretty clear picture of the sharp contrasts and challenges facing the newly accepted and institutionalized Christian Church.  On the one hand there was the continued rampant and flagrant immorality which characterized the decadent pagan society that was officially on the decline.  Simply because the emperor decrees that pagan practices cease doesn't mean that they really do.  They changed their name, they became part of the prevailing "civil" moral code, they continued in the private practices of the general population.  When a person converted to Christianity, whether it was a real conversion or only one of convenience, they brought with them attitudes, habits of practice and thought, and general outlook, which was radically different than the Scriptures require. 

The Church, because of its newly ascendent political influence, was expanding rapidly.  The leadership was not numerically sufficient, or in most cases, spiritually equipped to deal with people as individuals.  Rather there was the equivalent of "mass conversions" or "catechisms".  Often these were based on pretty simplistic theological formulations and then follow-up and elder oversight was minimal.  Where Jesus had walked 3 years with a close group of 12 men (and one of them a devil) and a somewhat larger group of more tenuous relation, the leaders of the Church did not or thought they could not, really ground the new converts in a spiritual transformation.

The result, as is so often the case, the Church resorted to an imposed "Christian morality" which was required of its members, so as to distinguish the Church from the pagan culture as well as provide the test by which a person was "holding to the faith handed down."  Though this morality was that which was required of the texts in the Gospels, Paul, James and the other New Testament writers, it was divorced from the heart change from which this morality was supposed to flow.  In Ellul's analysis the Church put its members right back under the Law, only this time they substituted the words of Christ for the words of Moses.

That bears thinking about.  Ellul is of the opinion that true Christian morality is a fruit born out of Christian Freedom, a point which I with some caveats agree.  He is adamantly of the opinion that the Church cannot be large... that it must consist in small communities where diligent spiritual nurturing is present.  He decries the worldliness of mass Christianity for that reason. 

I do believe that the Law of Christ & the Law of Moses are not to be confused but neither are they to be considered antithetical.  There is a Christian ethic and it does have its purposes even apart from the heart change which is the only way it becomes acceptable to God.  For one thing a Christian ethic works to restrain evil and to demonstrate to unregenerate man his need for a Savior (the first two uses of the Law).  But Ellul is accurate when he says that an over-emphasis, or an uncritical acceptance of Christian morality as evidence of a true and lively faith is indeed counter to the Gospel and serves to subvert it. 

It is something to ponder in our own lives and in the oversight of those given into our care.

Meditation on Calvin's Institutes, Bk I.4.2

(The Triumph of Death Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1562, currently  hanging  Museo Del Prado,  Madrid)

> BOOK I  CHAPTER 4  SECTION 2
> CONSCIOUS TURNING AWAY FROM GOD
>
> >>>>>Nothing being less accordant with the nature of God than to cast off the government of the world, leaving it to chance, and so to wink at the crimes of men that they may wanton with impunity in evil courses; it follows, that every man who indulges in security, after extinguishing all fear of divine judgment, virtually denies that there is a God.<<<<

Yet it seems that nothing is so quickly denied as that God has cast off the government of the world.  We see evil, we do evil, we have rotten politicians, we reel under the perverse practices of fellow citizens which then become validated as rights by a legals system adrift in epistemological relativism, and we say that God has "cast off government of the world."  Christians cannot believe that God would bring on a people a culture which is awash in abominations, murder, conceit, greed and idolatry, and so we believe God is far removed from it.  We cannot understand it in terms of God giving us over to our sin, as a prelude to judgment, as the release of enough rope so as to prove that we will only hang ourselves with it.

We read the witness of Revelation 9:20-21 and we tremble at the thought that man could be so imbecilic, as to not turn away from their murders, sorceries and the like in the face of the terrible nature of God's wrath, and then we rise from our pleasant little devotion, step out of our doors into the virtual blackness of night, and spend our days proclaiming "peace" when there is no peace.

I once heard O. Palmer Robertson preach to our Presbytery - and he roundly challenged us with our comfort... he questioned our "wartime" mentality... he wondered if we trembled and repaired to our place on the wall at the notion of God's wrath as did Habakkuk.  I think it is easy to pass off Calvin's words as being directed to "those other guys"... the Deists, the Dead-In-Their-Sins, the Never-Knew-Him lost ones.  I think the Church of Jesus Christ ought to be more concerned to recognize the prevailing state of the world in terms of their own failures, of their own lack of zeal, of their own complacency, of their own distractedness in the face of worldly comforts...    Perhaps the Church ought to recognize that it is too often willing to tolerate the culture of men who persist with "wanton impunity in their evil courses."  How often are we, the Church, virtually denying "that there is a God!" in our preaching, witnessing, and conduct?

It's enough to give me pause.

I Hate Flies, ... Mosquitoes.... Buzzing Bothers... But.....

(Fly On Deck, 2008 JAVanDevender)

Let's suppose, say, that I am sitting on a deck, pondering the mysteries of life, gathering insights from the Word, deeply engaged in the primary business that God has designed for man to be about - thinking deep thoughts - and the flies attack... or the mosquitoes... or some other pesky, irritating, interrupting bothersome thing.  It might be a telephone call, especially if it is one of those automated telemarketers... man does that make me mad.

In such instances I am prone to be a bit irrational... a solemn and edifying contemplation of Gen. 3, the curse on Adam, the whole idea of "thorns and thistles... toil" and "the sweat of your brow" doesn't seem to fill my mind at the moment.  What I want is for the "bothers" to go away and let me get on about my business... the business of living MY life the way I WANT to live it, with MY priorities being firmly adhered to... etc. etc. etc.

In other words... I don't do a great deal of thinking about God's Sovereignty.

C. S. Lewis once said - "The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own' or 'real' life.  The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one's 'real life' is a phantom of one's own imagination.  this at leas is what I see at moments of insight: but it's hard to remember it all the time." (The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, 20 Dec 1943, p. 499)

Man that stings!  It stings even more because it is so clearly true.  If I can just get my head around the idea that God sets my priorities for what I have to deal with, and that it is in the interruptions of my life that He intends for me to conform to those priorities, and that my obligation is to respond to His sovereignty with diligence and zeal, then perhaps, just perhaps, I might begin to advance His Kingdom according to His intentions and not my own.  There are times when God wants me to stop thinking and start swatting flies.

He wouldn't have raised them up, buzzing bothers that they are, if such was not the case.  Amen, brother Lewis, but I agree... It's hard to remember it all the time.

I Prefer THIS View!

(BuzzardsView, 2008 JAVanDevender)
Proverbs 23:5  Will you set your eyes on that which is not?

I am not pressing this analogy very far at all.  Christians do not have all that much in common with Turkey Buzzards sitting out a dreary rainy morning on the roof of an old tobacco barn.  Now that we have that straight, the guy on the far left, as you will see if you click for a larger image, is the only bird looking this way - toward the church - all the rest are gazing away.

I thought it was humorous that even among the feathered flocks, there are those individuals who just "gotta" be different.  I suppose at one level that analogy works also.  But then, I reflected that it is also the case that Christians intentionally see the world differently than their non-Christian peers.  We stand at the same vantage point, we are subject to the same pressures, we inherit and inhabit and indwell together with non-Christians, and they are by far the majority, yet we see the world differently.  We turn our back on their view and intentionally look upon the Kingdom of God.

There is an element of choice as well as an element of capacity here.  Spiritual blindness is real blindness.  There is the problem that apart from the Holy Spirit we cannot see God's hand at work.  But there is also the element of choice - we want to see God's hand... we desire the Kingdom and its righteousness ... we long to be free of the shackles which grip our passions and hold them in chains to lust and greed and power and fame and self-esteem and pride and laziness and.... the list goes on and on.  That which sounds like silliness and foolishness to the "Gentiles" is the most beloved thing in the world to us... "I am not ashamed of the Gospel" Paul said ... nor is any Christian who knows what it means to be set free from the law of sin and death.

I imagine the guy on the end of the roof looking over at his companions and asking the question of Proverbs 23:5 - "Will you always continue to look on that which is not?"  Will you always prefer the deception, the lie, the facade that is the texture of the world before your eyes?  Or will you turn from darkness to light, and gaze upon the world through the lens of our Sovereign God as revealed through His Son Jesus Christ.

Turn your head and see...  the view is much better on this side.

There's A Sermon Illustration In Here Somewhere!

Finishes 4th in the Marathon at the 1904 Summer Olympics after stopping along the way to eat green apples and relieve the stomach discomfort that arose from the same.

This is a neat story... read it HERE.

"I Want My Stuff"

(Photo- Sunset In New York, 2008, JAVanDevender)

"I believe one of the main ways that we grow in favor is by declaring it. It’s not enough to just read it it’s not enough to just believe it. You’ve got to speak it out. Your words have creative power. And one of the primary ways we release our faith is through our words. And there is a divine connection between you declaring God’s favor and you seeing God’s favor manifest in your life…You’ve got to give life to your faith by speaking it out."
Joel O'Steen, quoted here.

Read THIS (Sugar Daddy God, by Bill Bonner) for background to this post.

Job 35:13-16 Surely God will not listen to empty talk, Nor will the Almighty regard it.  Although you say you do not see Him, Yet justice is before Him, and you must wait for Him.  And now, because He has not punished in His anger, Nor taken much notice of folly,  Therefore Job opens his mouth in vain; He multiplies words without knowledge."

What I don’t understand, truly, is why the people in the pews show up.  First of all, even to a person with no Christian background at all, it just doesn’t have the ring of truth.  It requires a complete setting aside of the entire range of history.  “I want my stuff” would not have worked during the Great Depression.  Shoot, it wouldn’t have worked during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 with the British sacking Washington,DC, the War Between the States with hundreds of thousands of men dying or otherwise crippled, WWI and the parallel devastation of the Flu epidemic, etc. etc. etc.

If there is anything that common sense tells you it is that “wanting stuff” does not mean that you deserve it, are going to get it even if you do deserve it, or anything else.  It is just a statement of your present disposition.. “I want it”.  Usually it is followed by a temper tantrum when you don’t get “it.”

What Bonner is noticing is the “entitlement” attitude.  I am “entitled” to stuff simply because I exist.  There seems to be a significant portion of Biblical history devoted to God saying “NO, YOU DON’T!”  Christians do not hold “these truths (the ones in the Declaration of Independence) to be self-evident” at all.  Yes,  all men are created, or born, equally – they are born sinners deserving Hell  - they are not endowed by their Creator with any inalienable rights – the are sometimes shown the grace of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but these are always unmerited blessings from a Just God who has determined to withhold His wrath so that men may have the opportunity to repent.  Every day we should ask “give us this day our daily bread” – as a recognition that all good things, unmerited, come from God, even our daily bread.  He may require of us our life, our health, our prosperity, our relationships, our peace of mind, at any time – and yet, it would still be our duty to praise Him, to call Him good because He is good.

Job’s duty was to bow before God and call Him good.  Jeremiah’s duty was to proclaim God good in the face of Babylonian captivity.  Peter’s responsibility was to proclaim God good at Caesarea Philippi even when it meant that his Lord was to go to Jerusalemand be crucified.  “Get thee behind Me Satan” is just as much Jesus’ statement to those preaching a prosperity gospel today as it was 2000 years ago.

Yet they come, sit in the pews, wave their envelopes, and worship Mammon.   Sometimes I wonder if we still even have 7000 who have not bowed their knee to Baal.

Hey, you got nothing better to do...

Why not go HERE and vote for the three people you think have been the most influential Americans in history.
Tell me who you voted for and I will tell you the ones I did.  Tell me why you voted for them.

The Largest Re-enlistment in History (?) - Even if not, it is impressive

So much for those who argue for the demoralized state of our troops.  Maybe we ought to be asking why you don't hear about these kind of events in our national media.

The ceremony was held July 4, 2008 at Al Faw Palace, Baghdad, Iraq. General Petraeus officiated. A pizzeria in Chicago donated 2000 pizzas that were made last weekend, shipped on Sunday, arrived in Baghdad Wednesday and were fed to the enlistees on the 4th. Oh, by the way, the media did report on the 2000 pizzas...just not what they were for.