Is it Friday? It is. That means Takes.
One
Matt and I coincided in our blogging over at Stand Firm today. He wrote this about Critical Theory:
The scriptures say much about protecting and providing for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. Those with wealth and authority are to use their power to lift up the needy from the ash heap. Generosity is not optional. There is no place in the New Testament for ethnic hatred or partiality. Jesus’ death on the cross tore down the wall of division between Jew and Gentile. While ethnic and sex distinctions do not fade away or become meaningless, in Christ they enhance rather than inhibit the union he bled and died to establish. No one has ever come close to offending another man or woman to the extent that we have all offended God. And yet he has mercy, he forgives our debts, he bleeds for our iniquities.
Christians who embrace CT, however, take up the biblical language of the Gospel, calling for “repentance” and “reconciliation” while subtly replacing biblical definitions of sin and repentance and notions of justice with those borrowed from CT. This is often difficult to spot because CT is, itself, a counterfeit of the Christian worldview and it mirrors the biblical pattern of law, conviction, confession, repentance, and redemption.
And I wrote part two of my theybies screed:
You know what is hard? Life in general. If you expect life in general to be easy peasy, parenting will be hard for you. And if you think that you are the center of your own universe, parenting will be the apocalypse, because the clash between you and the baby will be epic.
Two
One unfortunate thing that happened to me this week is that I became the “on-demand” editor for literally everyone in the household. There seemed to be a fury of writing going on. Everything was due. Matt has feeling pressed. And so every few minutes my phone would buzz and someone would be shouting, “I’M SHARING MY DOC PLEASE LOOK AT IT NOW.” Maybe there weren’t all caps but it felt like it. I probably spent ten hours this week working over other people’s stuff instead of writing my own. And all for free, of course, because I can’t really charge my children. They just won’t do it if I try to extract money. So anyway, add that to the list of jobs I’m doing but don’t have time for.
Three
One of my New Year’s resolutions was going to be to totally rework my schedule, along the same insane belief that there is a system out there somewhere that will make it so that I don’t actually have to be good. I carefully wrote at the top of the paper “Reorganize Schedule,” and then tried it fifteen different ways and by the end of the second week I was back to what I have always been doing. So, count that as my first real failure of 2020. Seriously, this year is going to be epic.
Four
The second big concession I made to reality is that I cannot do four or a hundred writing projects at a time and that I cannot make my internal December deadline for editing Nailed It. What is that, you say? December was a long time ago? I know. I know. But I was trying to pretend that I was still in December and that time wasn’t passing at all. So anyway, still working, still not done.
Five
Have been listening to a lot of that music by that nice man who recently died. Really like this, and all the comments:
Six
In spite of being pressed to the wall with all the various kinds of work, we have managed to resume all gathering to listen to Matt read aloud in the evenings. We are in the middle of Barchester Towers and it is getting pretty stressful. Will Eleanor Bold really fall in love with Mr. Slope? While I was jotting down this clever line for myself, “Hitherto, people had little guessed how bitter Mrs. Grantly could be,” the children engaged in a volatile argument over the likeness between Mr. Slope and Kylo Ren. Trollop’s description of Mr. Slope’s appearance, “She had forgiven his pharisaical arrogance, and even his greasy face and oily vulgar manners. Having agreed to overlook such offenses as these, why should she not in time be taught to regard Mr. Slope as a suitor?” put them, for some reason, in mind of Kylo Ren. From thence to a lot of discussion about Princess Leia it was but a blink of the eye. Is this what an “integrated education” really looks like?
Seven
Have a lovely day and go check out more takes!
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