I gotta have my orange juice.

I think of my job often as being a translator between executives, managers, architects, developers, testers, customers, writers, etc. My favorite work projects have been those we conducted war-room style or in an open landscape, yet now it is almost two years since I’ve been in the office. We’ve filled in the gap a little bit with some team outings. Today I went in to the office to collect my belongings, before my vaxx-leper status kicks in and my physical access is deactivated. This is such a stark contrast with my experience at church where we worked hard to find some way to meet, at times even with our fussy government’s disapproval. What a joy and encouragement that fellowship was, and what a missed opportunity these two years have been for camaraderie at so many anxious companies and churches!

Gary North has interesting thoughts on intellectual property. Nassim Taleb has a compelling argument that the long-term value of Bitcoin is zero. The same, I think, is true in spades for NFTs. If North is right, his insights serve as a secondary confirmation of Taleb’s position: in the long run, there is no solid foundation for digital property or title to it.

John Barach writes:

Our children should never wonder if—let alone doubt that—they really belong to God, if Jesus really died for them, if they’re really Christians at all. And we, as parents or pastors or teachers, shouldn’t teach them that these things may or may not be true. Assurance of salvation is not meant to be something we arrive at eventually in the Christian life, perhaps after quite some struggle to get there. Rather, assurance is the foundation on which our children ought to build with confidence from the very outset of their lives.

I’ve reflected in the past that Girardian scapegoating is to be resisted forcefully. But there is also a sort of garden-variety human nature to justifying ourselves in little ways by discounting others’ experience. These can be only very little transgressions, and it is a glory to overlook them.

I found this article fascinating. HT: Aaron Renn.

To the Word has us in Isaiah. Advent is such a fitting time to read Isaiah!

Woe to the multitude of many people
​​Who make a noise like the roar of the seas,​​
And to the rushing of nations
​​That make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!
​​The nations will rush like the rushing of many waters;
​​But God will rebuke them and they will flee far away,
​​And be chased like the chaff of the mountains before the wind,
​​Like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
​​Then behold, at eventide, trouble!
​​And before the morning, he is no more.
​​This is the portion of those who plunder us,
​​And the lot of those who rob us. (Isaiah 17:12–14, NKJV)

And in this mountain​​
Yahweh of hosts will make for all people
​​A feast of choice pieces,
​​A feast of wines on the lees,
​​Of fat things full of marrow,
​​Of well-refined wines on the lees.
​​And He will destroy on this mountain​​
The surface of the covering cast over all people,
​​And the veil that is spread over all nations.
​​He will swallow up death forever,
​​And the Lord Yahweh will wipe away tears from all faces;
​​The rebuke of His people
​​He will take away from all the earth;
​​For Yahweh has spoken.
​​And it will be said in that day:
​​“Behold, this is our God;
​​We have waited for Him, and He will save us.
​​This is Yahweh;
​​We have waited for Him;
​​We will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.” (Isaiah 25:6–9, NKJV adapted)

I have five different tunes for While Shepherds Watched in my music library. It’s hard to pick a favorite, especially now that I have one more to pick from:

Every social theory is a theology in disguise. (C. R. Wiley, “Culture and Worldview“)

Have you ever wondered what set the ladies dancing and the lords a–leaping? Well, it was the pipers’ piping:

The law of entropy began to be overturned in AD 30 with the fuller intrusion of the Spirit into creation. Children are an especially potent way to multiply the Spirit’s influence in the world.

I discussed epistemology with an unbelieving friend recently. He’s right that it is not sufficient to simply say that the Bible is the basis of Christian epistemology, since we receive the Bible in the context of other things like language and history and embodied existence. For this I like Rosenstock-Huessy’s alternative to cogito, ergo sum. Rosenstock-Huessy says: respondeo, etsi mutabor; I respond, although I will be changed.

Everything is a gift: existence, embodied existence, relationships, language, the Bible. Our proper response to all of these is first to receive them as pure gift, with gratitude to the Giver, and then allow ourselves to be shaped and changed by that. Thus, in a way, our epistemology is founded on the Giver rather than only on his Word.

A friend introduced me to Psallos recently and I have their albums on repeat right now.

Earlier I shared Rosenstock-Huessy’s summary of a few modern revolutions. I am still stuck in the middle of his book, but I wonder what the next era will bring. I pray that it will be every-man-a-fig-and-vine-dresser.

The laces on my running shoes come untied at least once a day, and almost always once per run, even with a double knot. A week ago I started using Ian’s Secure Shoelace Knot, and they haven’t come untied by themselves yet.

Studies show the new variant is caused by climate conferences and includes myocarditis among its unprecedented symptoms. Scientists have decided to name it the “COP26 variant.”

A friend points out that Delilah is paid some multiple of 1,100 pieces of silver (Judges 16), and in the very next chapter Micah steals 1,100 pieces of silver from his mother. At a minimum there is a thematic link here, but it is interesting to consider whether Micah’s mother is actually Delilah. Micah is not the only son gone bad in this story; Jonathan the Levite is likely the grandson of Moses (Judges 18:30). It seems the tribe of Dan is wandering as well, certainly spiritually. At least it is ambiguous that they are conquering a city outside of their borders (Joshua 19) and which might not even be Canaanite.

Another friend points out that there are times when God will discipline his church for obeying the magistrate:

So [Moses and Aaron] said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please, let us go three days’ journey into the desert and sacrifice to Yahweh our God, lest He fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.” (Exodus 5:3)

This was interesting:

Amen:

It is good to belong to Jesus.

To emphasize the pro-noun is to perpetuate systemic injustice against other parts of speech like verbs and prepositions. I have learned to be an ally and thus in this moment I prefer to share my preferred pro-verbs.

The only trouble is, it’s difficult to choose.

The evil will bow before the good,​​
And the wicked at the gates of the righteous. (Proverbs 14:19, NKJV)

They say that a mandate is not discriminatory if it applies to everyone. Ha, good one!

“So, all the months with ‘ber’ at the end, does that mean it’s cold?” (Amos Moonen)

You should read Mark Horne’s reflections on difficulties: legendary mode; training versus hero battle.

I have until now not paid close attention to the ritual symbolism of faces, thinking it was legitimate but a light and mostly extra–Biblical consideration in things that have taken place over the last two years. But this week I stumbled across this word. I am struck by both the tremendous breadth of this, and also how our translations have left it off the face of the text (so to speak), hiding it from our faces (as it were). One book—Esther—takes pains to show how seeing and seeking the face of the king is crucial, and how hiding or having your face hidden from the king is both the cause and the result of the king’s judgment that you are forever banished from his own face. Ritually speaking, then, a ruler who masks his people is laying judgment and humiliation on them; and a worshipper who masks himself is hiding from his king.

But there’s also this:

Other than Bach, I’ve experienced the most musical delight playing versions of La Folía. So I enjoyed this collection:

Reflecting on That Hideous Strength, I’ve often wondered what it would look like for Merlin to show up. But now, absent any Merlin and simply relying on judicial confusion sent by God, it’s amazing just how incoherent the raging of the nations is all by itself, and how the simplest and most obvious truths now send it into a tizzy.

“Do you validate?” With millions of man-hours being invested in real-time digital systems of validation and badging, increasingly the answer is, “Yes, we insist!”

Praise God that, at the moment, some of these systems are programmed to (tediously) validate by reason of obedience to God rather than man. I’m thankful for the validation but reject the idolatry that lies beneath it; and what an interesting judgment it is to see all those man-hours wasted on raging. See also The Abolition of Man for some reasons why it really is idolatry and raging.

Jason has harbored them, and these are all acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying there is another king—Jesus. (Acts 17:7, NKJV)

The NKJV has a wonderful “we” in Joshua 5:1:

“So it was, when all the kings of the Amorites who were on the west side of the Jordan, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard that the LORD had dried up the waters of the Jordan from before the children of Israel until we had crossed over, that their heart melted; and there was no spirit in them any longer because of the children of Israel.”

This is our history. We have been grafted into a tree (Romans 11), adopted into a family (Romans 4).

This is excellent: I Survived (Because of) Bible Belt Religion.

It’s November. I used to wait until Thanksgiving to stoke the festivity but I have no such scruples anymore.

If we believe in the sonship-kingship of all believers, that we are all vice-regents (that is, vice-gerents), should we not be doing something like this?

Also it shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book, from the one before the priests, the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted above his brethren, that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, and that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children in the midst of Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:18-20, NKJV)

If Saul had done that, then he had absolutely no excuse when it came to Agag:

Therefore it shall be, when the LORD your God has given you rest from your enemies all around, in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, that you will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. You shall not forget. (Deuteronomy 25:19, NKJV)

I usually think of the levirate brother as a type of the pastor tending the bride for Jesus’s sake. But there is a way in which all of us are raising our households for Jesus’s sake. Thus shall it be done to the man who does not build up Jesus’s house:

But if the man does not want to take his brother’s wife, then let his brother’s wife go up to the gate to the elders, and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to raise up a name to his brother in Israel; he will not perform the duty of my husband’s brother.’ Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him. But if he stands firm and says, ‘I do not want to take her,’ then his brother’s wife shall come to him in the presence of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, spit in his face, and answer and say, ‘So shall it be done to the man who will not build up his brother’s house.’ And his name shall be called in Israel, ‘The house of him who had his sandal removed.’ (Deuteronomy 25:7-10, NKJV)

God commissions families to bring new worshippers into the world (Malachi 2:15), and commissions us to bring them to him:

In ways both explicit and implicit, scripture says that there is a faithful relationship between Christian-infants and God. We are called on to confess this before God, and we are called to teach it to our children. And we can relax theologically in the rest of knowing that recumbency (lying back in the arms) is the picture God gives to portray faith in the womb.

In fact, it is in the very nature of a covenant that it binds generations yet unborn:

I make this covenant and this oath, not with you alone, but with him who stands here with us today before the LORD our God, as well as with him who is not here with us today . . . so that there may not be among you man or woman or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations, and that there may not be among you a root bearing bitterness or wormwood; and so it may not happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall have peace, even though I follow the dictates of my heart’—as though the drunkard could be included with the sober. . . The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29:14-29, NKJV)

All covenants are evangelical; this is from the book that urges circumcision of the heart (Deuteronomy 10, 30), and urges faithfulness to the covenant, “you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 30).

James Madison overstates his case when he says, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Better to say that the governor’s sword would go unused except as a glorious display. There will always be a need to decide whether and where to build the king’s highway, what time we will assemble to pray, etc.; and these decisions need not be purely democratic. In fact, as Chesterton points out, they must not.

Camping and hiking in the Pisgah!

I have this idea for a Superman serum. I need you to take it and then I will become Superman.

We have seen that there are several ways in which we can speak of the day of the Lord. We have also seen that to participate in the Lord’s weekly service, especially the Lord’s supper, is to be taken up into the heavens, to be taken out of space and time. Psalm 73 links these two ideas together:

When I thought how to understand this,
It was too painful for me—
​​Until I went into the sanctuary of God;
​​Then I understood their end.

There is a kind of telescoping of the days of the Lord going on in worship. When we come to worship, we participate in a foretaste of the marriage supper. But we also participate in a prophetic foretaste of the end of the wicked, of their utter exclusion.

James Jordan writes:

The Church has always limped in history, and it always will. People look at the manifest weaknesses of God’s Bride, and they spit on her. Yet, while God avenges His saints, He still keeps them limping.

God told Satan in the beginning that the righteous One, Jesus Christ, would crush his head, but that in the process, the heel of the Lord would be bruised (Genesis 3:15). Thus, Jacob, the father of Israel’s twelve tribes, wrestled with God and prevailed, but limped ever after (Genesis 32:31). The limp was a sign of his victory in righteousness! The apostle Paul, father of the gentile Church, was given a thorn in his flesh (and since thorns grow on the ground, it was symbolically in his foot), which kept him limping in the eyes of men (2 Corinthians 12:7). Thus, in union with her Lord Jesus Christ, the Church limps through history, in apparent weakness, so that it is “with a scornful wonder, men see her sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” Yet her victory is assured. How can that be? Because her enemies have had their heads crushed, and thus their resistance is short-lived.

Peter Leithart writes in a recent In Medias Res newsletter:

When “despicable” men rule (Daniel 11:21), the saints get mowed down—not for their sins but for their faithfulness. There are times when the saints’ hope isn’t rescue but resurrection.

For hundreds of millions of Christians, that time is now. Some estimate that two-thirds of all martyrs in the history of the church have been killed since 1900. Every day, brothers and sisters around the world face harassment, violence, and the real possibility of death.

Ask our Father to hear their cries and avenge the blood spilled in North Korea, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Iran, and that faithful U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia. Ask Him to shake the world until the despicable are thrown from their thrones.

Asher’s been perfecting his cribbage board technique:

The NKJV has a clause in Ephesians 3 that is missing from the Alexandrian texts:

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. (Ephesians 3:14-15 NKJV)

This made me wonder about the referent of “whom.” But “family” is patria, so clearly it is the Father. Family is fatherdom.

On the Continent, the ship of State did not move on a sea of troubles such as faced the Englishman when he sailed the five oceans of the world. The object of the recurrent and never-ceasing care for a territorial ruler in Central Europe was the forest. After a thousand years of chopping and cutting, 27 per cent of the area of Germany is still covered by forests. More than one quarter of a country where every square inch has been “cultivated,” furrowed, turned, is covered by trees even today. Forestry was a national concern for the German rulers. The notorious word “Kultur” carries, to begin with, the notion of Landeskultur, cultivation of the soil. A German thinks of planting trees whenever he hears the word “Kultur.” Trees take a long time to grow. It is this long period of cultivation that constitutes the outstanding privileges of a government’s economic policy as against that of the individual. The far-sightedness of a paternal government has protected the German woods. “Paternal” means being unmoved by immediate profits; “paternal” stands for patience and indifference to the incentives of the day. Sports, movies, radio, newspapers, take advantage of our childishness. The German individual State was rigid and austere, its people unswayed by the demagogue; it was paternal because it took thought for a long future. It restored the chief wealth of the soil: its trees. For a poor, sandy, rainy and foggy land, it is the greatest of all services to foresee and discount the results of any waste far in advance. In a rich country waste is less disastrous. In a poor district, where tomorrow is as poor as today, any encroachment of today upon tomorrow leads to destruction. . . .

The likeness of man in all his dignity to a tree in the forest is an everlasting German concept. (Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Out of Revolution, 423-424)

The forest is an eternal task, never a garden, never a desert. It bears fruit, but never for the man who plants it. Always it asks for patience and thrift, and prays to be spared from greed, haste, or carelessness. (Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Out of Revolution, 426)

In Numbers 2 it is significant that God’s people constitute an army arrayed around him. But it is also significant that this army is constituted of households. The church is central, the one family that will endure forever; but the earthly family is part of what serves to guard it.

If everyone is special, then no one is special. That’s because to be special is a competitive thing, often fleshly. It isn’t nothing. But spiritual things are not zero-sum. If all God’s people are holy, then so they are.

Man is Adam, earth, dirt. I was listening to some old DC Talk this week and it struck me that the range of skin color and earth color is roughly the same.

Trust me, you should buy yourself every Jamie Soles album:

Evangelicals taught this trick to the world by our obsession with introspection and sincerity and humility. But salvation is by faith in king Jesus and not faith in our own sincerity; navel gazing is a fool’s errand: