5 Things on Friday

Kelly is still enjoying her Advent rest but I’m still not holy enough to quit blogging, so maybe I will give myself a little break and only go up to five today instead of seven. A quick turn through the news, perhaps, with some twinkle lights thrown in.

One
Dr. Sproul died yesterday, as most everyone knows by now, and I’m rather hoping that Matt will do me up a lovely reflection–it was a Sproul radio sermon that finally pried open the coffin of his unbelief and raised him to eternal life.

What I liked best about Dr. Sproul, from hearing him whenever Matt had him on, was the comprehensive and cheerful articulation of God’s divine character. It’s not like God is impossible to consider and to understand–a patchwork of strange unrelated characteristics sewn together into some perverse and unknowable being who is as unpredictable as he is obscure, which is how I think God ends up for most of us. You have a sort of surface, lukewarm knowledge of the Bible, over which you interpose yourself and your cultural world view, and what you’re left with is a God who is mostly affirming of you, but who is occasionally so strange and wrathful and belligerent that you find yourself backing away, not remotely desirous of seeing who he is and what he is like.

RC was ever constantly making the character and personality of God known in a rational and comprehensible way. God has a personality, for one thing, in himself. He can be known because he is a being and has revealed his nature. And that revelation, the closer you examine it, illumines a being of holiness and perfection, but one who, ultimately, is nice and likes you, when you belong to him. But the way that you can know that he likes you and is nice is not by just feeling that way in yourself, imputing your feelings about yourself onto God, but rather through constant study of the Bible, by always and everywhere trying to get past yourself and into the text.

It’s hard to stay here, knowing that Dr. Sproul has gone on to glory. We’ll have to wait probably another generation to know someone of his depth and joy, who could communicate without making everything into more of a muddle.

Two
Didn’t even know what Net Neutrality was before this week, but did a little bit of reading, and ran abreast of some more of the deep darkness that I’d seen described some other times, about how much that particularly tragic ‘industry’ that seems to be the mainstay of most people’s online experience, but that shouldn’t be, makes it so that it doesn’t matter what rules we have about the internet. (Boy it takes up a lot of words to avoid using one word.) Without net neutrality I guess the people who produce ‘that stuff’ will be able to enrich themselves ever more because all the people that want to see it are going to have to pay for it now. But on the other hand, people will have to pay for it now, which might help some to get over what might be, and probably is, a debilitating addiction.

In other words, it’s not that everyone is desperately trying to read more religious news and access more and better devotional content, to meditate ever more on the mystery and holiness of God, it’s that they’re trying to do the opposite. And because that’s so, I don’t think it matters really one way or another. We want to corrupt ourselves and the Internet is the best way, right now, to do it.

This internet commentary has been brought to you by a quick reading of…the internet. You’re welcome.

Three
Would love to be congratulated for managing to stay away from politics all week, even with a major election carrying on right in the middle of it. As usual, it’s the political machinations that fascinate me, not the morals or beliefs of any one particular candidate or party.

Nevertheless, count me in as one of the severely disillusioned, unwilling to particularly demonize anyone because I’m pretty sure they’re all bad. I mean, Roy Moore didn’t strike me as more than usually resembling Satan. His membership in Congress wouldn’t exactly have lowered the tone. The tone is already subterranean. On the other hand, his loss isn’t exactly the apocalypse either. I don’t think more babies are going to lose their lives just because he lost, which is always the promise. I think it’s a wretched situation either way, and I’m tired of the constant cry that the sky is falling, when really, the sky fell several thousand years ago when Adam and Eve chomped down on that Apple or whatever it was. I think we should save the apocalypse for when it really happens.

Four
Incidentally, I wish all the infants who have been slaughtered on the altar of free unfettered sex could hashtag me too.

When you take a gander at the abuse of women, the riptide of porn (there, I said it), the fact that planned parenthood hasn’t been socially reviled for the horror that it is, and the ziggurat of famous men who have, at the very least, behaved appallingly, if not actually abused their fellow creatures, it’s a wonder we haven’t had the apocalypse yet. The patient kindness of God who, in mercy, is giving so much time, should amaze us a lot more than it does.

Five
Next week I’m going to try to keep staying away from politics. Hopefully it will be all baby Jesus and Christmas cookies, minus the Christmas cookies because I don’t do that kind of thing. I mean, I’m happy to eat them, but there’s no way I’ll be making them. Rather, I’m going to be yelling at my kids to finish up their school work and clean up their rooms. It’s going to be fantastic. But don’t worry, I’ll be blogging too, because that’s the dysfunctional way I roll. Happy Friday!