The Way God Is

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"As we have argued, Christian ethics arise out of the very specific tradition of Jesus of Nazareth and the church formed in faithfulness to his way. As believers, we are called to act right, not simply because an act can be demonstrated to be universally right. but because it is an act God commands. We are called to base our lives and actions on something which, to Kant, seemed woefully contingent--a Jew from Nazareth. Our claim is not that this tradition will make sense to anyone or will enable the world to run more smoothly. Our claim is that it just happens to be true. This really is the way God is. This really is the way God's world is."

("Resident Aliens"; Hauerwas & Willimon; (Abingdon Press, 1989) pg. 101)

Neo-Barbarianism

"Barbarians are people without historical memory. Barbarianism is the real meaning of radical contemporaneity. Released from all authoritative pasts, we progress towards barbarianism, not away from it."

Philip Rieff as quoted by Rod Dreher in The Benedict Option"; pg. 154

The Theater of the Absurd

“The campus revolt in America is not unlike the French theater of the absurd: actors on the stage, moving about in crazy quilt patterns without discernible purpose, speaking their lines without listening for a response Everyday engaged in private conversation or in dialogues that make no sense. Nobody communicating. Just people on a stage, confined to their own little worlds, talking past one another.”

“The Test”; Walter Adams; (Macmillan Co,; 1971) pg 9

Not much has changed in the last almost 50 years since this was written.

Currently Reading...

"God is Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theology of Divine Emotion", Rob Lister, (Crossway, 2013)

I was first made aware of Lister's work by a dismissive passing comment on a blog that will remain unnamed here. The nature of the comment was such that one wondered if the blog writer had ever read Lister's book, but was merely dismissively reacting to the title. I also found that this book was recommended by my friend Dr. Ardel Caneday, a man whose theological judgement I respect. I have heard in recent days the impassibility of God has become such an issue in some quarters that one loose association of churches has actually split over the issue. This is not light reading. There are a plethora of footnotes included with the text. I am now halfway through this work, and so far am satisfied Lister's thoughts on the matter are headed in a direction I would be in general agreement with. I have my thoughts on the whole matter, but prefer to finish Lister's work before attempting an articulation of those thoughts.

"With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology", Stanley Hauerwas, (Brazos Press,2001)

This publication is the wriitten form of the lectures Hauerwas delivered at the 2000-2001 Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews. In those lectures as presented in this book form, Hauerwas gives an interpretation of American intellectual history with focus on William James, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Carl Barth. It is this philosophical and theological history that I find of interest and value. I am about a quarter or so into this one.

Propaganda and the Death of Truth

In an age of 143 character quips and 10 second sound bites, the one yelling loudest and longest supposedly "wins". But what do they win? Has anyone ever really changed their opinion on an issue on the basis of tweets and sound bites? Look at who the social media blurbs are addressed to. "Liberals are really going to be mad when they see this!" "Conservatives just don't understand x, y, and z." Ninety nine percent of such social media sound bites are preaching to the choir. Liberals will not be mad, because they will not see the blurb, and if they did, they will not care. Conservatives will not be reading your brilliantly contrived propaganda sophistry, and if they did they will pick it apart in other blurbs you will probably not see, let alone read. Watching all of this going on in social media is like watching a comedy, but sadly, as with much comedy, the roots of that comedy are found in tragedy.. Welcome to the post-modern world. Behold the fruit of your post-modernity...

So this week, once again as they have done so many times before, the propaganda machines from all sides of the political fence are generating "drama" out of some issue or other; said drama calculated to advance the specific agendas, goals, and world views of the groups behind those propaganda machines. Emotions are appealed to on both sides and critical scrutiny and careful dispassionate rational thought and discussion is the casualty of the sophistry and "new speak" used to bend popular political and cultural will and thought into channels that feed the never ending lust for power and control of said groups. ...and all under the rubric of "news"... Of course "propaganda" is a word little used or understood. We can't talk about the nature of propaganda lest we expose the house of lies and deceit the propaganda machines have created. May God Almighty have mercy on us and deliver us from this scourge...

Aliens and Strangers in this World

I voted in the Michigan Presidential Primary today.

I knew I would not be voting for Scooby-Doo. There was a part of me that wanted to vote for Bullwinkle, but in the end it was Mickey Mouse that got my vote. It is not like I have a lot of enthusiasm or expectations for this one. This is just another election cycle that is proving once again that we live in a culture that is incapable of producing real leadership... We are seeing the fruit of over a century of the influence of secular materialistic thought.

I was thinking today about the contrast of a capitalistic economic system working in a culture still dominated by a Judeo-Christian ethic, versus a capitalistic economy working in a culture dominated by a secular materialistic ethic. The contemplation of that should give us pause regarding blanket uncritical support for such secular materialistic capitalism.

The dirty little "secret" about secular materialism is that it provides no constraint upon the pursuit of a Darwinian survival of the fittest. In fact it feeds and idolizes the survival of the fittest. Forget the Humanist Manifesto! Or any and all altruistic concepts of the greater good.

Like the Jack London character of Wolf Larson, it becomes one's purpose, even duty, to live and squeeze every juicy marrow one can out of one's own life and any who happen to get in the way of that be damned. In the London story, Humphrey Van Weyden's altruistic liberalism paled and wilted in face of the onslaught of Wolf's inexorable unrelenting materialistic hedonistic logic.

This is the world we face. This is the world we as Christians have been called to bear witness to the truth that God is, and He is not silent. A world that loves the darkness because it hides their evil deeds. A world that will not have this Man to rule over them.

That thought should drive us to our knees in earnest prayer. Come quickly Lord Jesus!

~ The Billy Goat ~

‎"Answers are easy. It's asking the right questions which is hard."

(The Fourth Doctor, Dr. Who, "The Face of Evil", 1977)

Are you and I asking the right questions?

"Then you are an individualist, a materialist, and, logically, a hedonist."

"I wouldn't stand for that," he replied. "Couldn't see the necessity for it, nor the common sense. I cut out the race and the children. I would sacrifice nothing for them. It's just so much slush and sentiment, and you must see it yourself, at least for one who does not believe in eternal life. With immortality before me, altruism would be a paying business proposition. I might elevate my soul to all kinds of altitudes. But with nothing eternal before me but death, given for a brief spell this yeasty crawling and squirming which is called life, why, it would be immoral for me to perform any act that was a sacrifice. Any sacrifice that makes me lose one crawl or squirm is foolish, —and not only foolish, for it is a wrong against myself and a wicked thing. I must not lose one crawl or squirm if I am to get the most out of the ferment. Nor will the eternal movelessness that is coming to me be made easier or harder by the sacrifices or selfishnesses of the time when I was yeasty and acrawl."

"Then you are an individualist, a materialist, and, logically,
a hedonist."

"Big words," he smiled. "But what is a hedonist?"

He nodded agreement when I had given the definition.

"And you are also," I continued. "a man one could not trust in the least thing where it was possible for a selfish interest to intervene?"

"Now you're beginning to understand," he said, brightening.

"You are a man utterly without what the world calls morals?"

"That's it."

"A man of whom to be always afraid —"

"That's the way to put it."

"As one is afraid of a snake, or a tiger, or a shark?"

"Now you know me," he said. "And you know me as I am generally known. Other men call me 'Wolf.'"

(The Sea Wolf by Jack London, Chapter 8)

"MANY clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?"

~GK Chesterton: The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Intellectual Integrity Wins!

Have you ever observed people being accused of resisting someones ideas because of fear? Someone writes a controversial book and reviewers critique the book and take exception to the writer's propositions as expressed in the book. Then the author responds that his critics are reacting out of fear.

Oh really? The author knows this for sure? All the criticism of his book is based on fear? Fear is the primary driving motive of the criticism?

But what if it is not? What if the criticism was based on the reviewer's properly critical rational examination of the author's own words and arguments as presented in the book? What if the criticism is based on an objective scholarly analysis of the author's own words and assertions?

What if the criticism comes from a basis of intellectual integrity, and the reviewer in his or her analysis detects that the author has not been entirely intellectually honest with the data; that critical points of context and other relevant information and data have been ignored or overlooked?

And why is the author responding to his critics with an ad hominem argument? Were the critics suppose to leave their brains at the door of their office before sitting down and reviewing the author's book? Are all critical rational thinking facilities to be laid aside when it comes to examining this writers assertions and claims?

And why use such emotional words such as "fear" or "afraid" in labeling one's critics? After all, does the author want dialogue or monologue?

What if in the end it is not fear that drives the criticism, but on the contrary it is application of the rigor of intellectual integrity?

In that case intellectual integrity and honesty wins.

Of This and That

• The Michigan State Spartans make it to the NCAA dance once again. Life is good.
  
  
• Winter keeps dragging on here in our part of Michigan. We are really ready to be done with it all.
  
  
• Civil War redux: The picture of the Civil War in popular culture is one of a southern slave state unity in a "Confederate Solidarity". The truth is that image of Confederate solidarity is a myth. Here are some blogs I follow that expose that myth for what it is: Renegade South, Southern Unionist Chronicles, and Cenantua's Blog.
  
  
• To The Post-Modernity Child: Even as the gods of your fathers betrayed your fathers and you, so shall the new gods you have replaced them with end up betraying you, and your children, and your children's children. You sow to the wind. You will reap the whirlwind. Sadly, you are becoming the same thing you were trying to avoid.
  
  

• Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, "Be strong: fear not! Behold your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God He will come and save you." (Isaiah 35:3-4)
  

  
  There are a lot of precious nuggets in Isaiah...
  
  
• Here is a link to Tim Challies's review of Rob Bell's "Love Wins".
  
  
• Internet Wonders: A young friend of ours is on the swim team at a nearby NCAA Division II school. This past week she and some of her teammates were at the National NCAA Div. II Swim & Dive Championships in San Antonio, TX. Through the wonder of a NCAA WWW live stream, we were able to watch some of the events she was in. That was pretty neat... Our young friend is a solid commited Christian, and it was a joy to see her swim her heart out; leaving it all in the pool; swimming to the glory of her Lord and God.

Creator & Creation: What Has Man Wrought?

This past week I got to see Tron Legacy at the local Imax.

Amidst the outstanding graphics is a story that touches on fundamental questions of being and existence, creator and creation, love & sacrifice. Though Tron Legacy was not intended to necessarily be philosophical, I found it pretty profound.

This is not at all to say Tron Legacy is "Christian". Any religious allusions are more along the line of an Eastern pantheistic mysticism. But that said, any story dealing with the human condition in whatever setting, fiction, science fiction, or etc, will deal with those fundamental questions of being and existence that cut across all cultural and religious lines.

I could go on at length about the theological implications of the issues and questions inherent in the story this movie tells, but I will leave that for the readers of this short piece to work out when they have seen Tron Legacy for themselves.

For myself, Tron Legacy is a serious contender for my "Best Top Ten Movies of All Time" list.

~ The Billy Goat ~

Perspective on a Starry Night

“In some far universal Deep
Did He tred Space
And visit worlds beyond our blood-warm dreaming?”
(Christus Apollo)

It was one of those cold, crisp nights. The night sky was clear with the stars shining sharp and bright. The waning moon would not make its brief appearance for another hour or so. The open field was far from the glowing night light of cities and towns.

They stood together looking up into the night sky.

“Sure is beautiful…”

“That it is. I love nights like this…”

They scanned the star studded dome of the night sky. There were the familiar constellations, the pointer stars, those few planets that could be seen with the naked eye, all in the glory of their nightly dance across the darkened sky.

“It is so vast…”

“Yes it is and we don’t see a tenth of it, if even that much… Here… Take the binoculars…”

The father handed his binoculars to his young teenage son. The young man held them up to the night sky, and aiming them toward a familiar constellation, he peered through the lens, twisting a knob to bring the subject in focus.

“Wow…”

He pulled the binoculars away, looked at the same spot in the night sky, and then again took another look with the binoculars.

“There is so much more up there then we see with the naked eye.” He remarked.

“True…” replied the father. “Here… Look for a spot in the sky where you don’t see any stars, then look at that same spot with the binoculars.”

The son quickly scanned the night sky and observed a dark area with very few stars about 25 degrees above the horizon to the north. He looked at that area through the binoculars.

Where he had seen nothing with the unaided eye, he now saw a plethora of points of light shining and twinkling.

“It’s so vast…” he said. “We’re just a spot of dust in comparison…”

The father replied, “The stars we see are light years away, and beyond the ones we see are more stars even further away. The light we see originated from the star or galaxy years ago. By the time we see that light here on our planet, it is ancient history, and for many of those stars, an ancient history far more ancient then the known history of this world.”

“Where did it all come from? The universe that is… How did it all get to be what it is?”

“Well, you basically have two choices. The universe came about by random happenstance, or there was a guiding hand and direction behind it.”

“You mean… like… God?”

“Yes, though that begs the question of what we mean by “God”…”

A long “Hum…” was all that came from the young man as he pondered the implications of the thought.

In his mind he remembered some lines memorized in his 3rd year liturgy class when he was a much younger lad. “The starry host of night declares the wonder and awesomeness of God. The vast deep of space declares His handwork and glory.”

Looking towards his father he said soberly, “But look at our world… We circle the sun at an orbital distance that maintains conditions on this planet that makes life here possible, and that all in conjunction with the tilt of our planet’s axis and rotational direction and speed. If any one of those things differed much at all, we couldn’t live here. Can you really say it all happened by accident?”

The father nodded. “You did learn something in that science class after all.” He said teasingly. The young man gave a sheepish “Oh dad” shake of his head.

He proceeded to look up at one of the seasonal constellations that were only visible in that part of the year. This particular constellation would be seen in the lower southern sky for about half the year, and then as the seasons changed, would be hidden once again below the horizon.

Continuing his gaze at the night sky, he asked his father, “Do you think there could be life on other planets someplace?”

“Well… Since we’ve never been to any other planets, we can’t say with certainty either way. We do know that none of the other planets in our own system are able to sustain life… at least life as we know it… But when you look at the sheer size and magnitude of the whole universe, the probability of something being out there is within the realm of some degree of possibility… What’s more improbable though is the chance of our ever finding them, or they finding us… I guess my response to your question has to be one of reverent agnosticism…”

“Hum…” The young man again scanned the great starry host over head. He held up the binoculars and focused it on one of the points of light that he knew to be a planet. He could almost see a slight haze of a ring around the small ball in his lens. Maybe someday he could have a real telescope. It would also be neat to take pictures of the night sky through a telescope. Oh well… So many things to do in life, and so little time and money, he thought.

It was time to go. Morning would come early, and the next day would be plenty filled with school and all the other demands of life.

The young lad thought to himself as they turned to go, “I am a spec of dust on a spec of dust. Here we are on Yrdnes, the fourth planet from the star Cyrstias on the fringe of the Deodratia Galaxy, a mere spec of dust in an obscure corner of the great vastness of the universe.”

He shook his head in vague bewilderment at the magnitude and implication of the thought.

Pausing, he looked once more at that patch of apparently vacant darkness in the north part of the sky. Lifting the binoculars, his peered again at the points of light the naked eye could not see. He focused for a few seconds on one of those points of light, then lowering the binoculars; he turned away to head on to home and bed.

That last point of light he had paused to look at, that faint point of light so many hundreds of light years away in another obscure corner of the universe remained etched in the memory of his mind. And on that far point of light known by its inhabitants as the Milky Way Galaxy, on the outer edge of that galaxy, on the planet Earth, third planet from the star Sol, another young man gazed through his binoculars at a faint point of light in the north part of the night sky, that far away faint point of light known by its inhabitants as the Deodratia Galaxy…


(Copyright © October, 2010. All rights reserved.)

A New Kind of Christianity or an Old Kind of Heresey?

(Reviews of Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity.)

Dr. Mike Wittmer did an extended critical review of Brian McClaren's A New Kind of Christianity. Here are links to those posts:

• A New Kind of Christianity, Introduction
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 1
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 2
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Interlude
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 3
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 4
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 5, Part 1
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 5, Part 2
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 6
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 7
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Questions 8-9
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 10
  
  

A New Kind of Christianity: Review by Tim Challies

Why Brian McLaren’s New Book is Good for the Emerging Church
by Trevin Wax

Kevin DeYoung's two part review:
Christianity and McLarenism (1)
Christianity and McLarenism (2)

Review: Brian McLaren's 'A New Kind of Christianity'
Scot McKnight at Christianity Today

~ The Billy Goat ~

Ramblings

A few short days and it will be Christmas. One more day of work and I get some time off. Work has been a little hectic lately.

I am finishing Chesterton's Orthodoxy. It was written a hundred years ago, but reads like it was written just last year. I highly recommend it. Yes, I know Chesterton was Roman Catholic. Just read it anyways, and have the audacity to appreciate it.

The so called "Health care Bill: There is nothing healthy or caring about it. The real goal is not health, but power and control. We are being betrayed in the name of "health care" and "compassion" and all the other baloney that politicians use to disguise their true intentions.

We have some really neat young people in our church. You can not help but love them. You can not help but pray for them. I am well aware they are not "perfect", but many of them have their heart in the right place, and that is such an encouragement to see.

How do you pray for a fellow Christian believer who in some shape, fashion, or form, is going through some rough waters? Lately I find myself thinking that if I really love you, I want what God wants for you in your current stress. As such, I find myself being more careful not to pray that the trial be taken away, but that you would be given grace to go through the trial, and come out on the other side more conformed to the image of Christ. If we really love one another, that is what we want for each other; to be conformed to the image of Christ.

For to us a child is born,
  to us a son is given,
  and the government will be on his shoulders.
  And he will be called
  Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
  Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace
  there will be no end.
  He will reign on David's throne
  and over his kingdom,
  establishing and upholding it
  with justice and righteousness
  from that time on and forever.
  The zeal of the LORD Almighty
  will accomplish this.

(Isaiah 9:6-7)

Peace....

~ The Billy Goat ~

When They Came...

When they came for the Orthodox I said nothing because I was not Orthodox. When they came for the Catholics I said nothing because I was not Catholic. When they came for the Lutherans I said nothing because I was not Lutheran. Then they came for the Evangelicals and when I spoke up in protest, there was no one left to hear....

The statement above is my response to the controversy in the Reformed and Evangelical camp over The Manhattan Declaration.

~ The Billy Goat ~

The Emergent Failure

“God seems to tolerate pretty much all sins…”

The above quote is from a comment made to a posting on another blog. What follows is my response to that comment.

I don’t know what “bible” you are reading. The Bible I read, the one containing the 66 books recognized from ancient times by the whole church. (Catholic and Protestant alike) clearly teaches that God does NOT tolerate ANY sin. It is the lack of tolerance on God’s part towards sin that made a Saviour necessary; which makes the Gospel necessary (I Corinthians 15). The love of God never over rides God’s intolerance for any and all sin. That’s what the Gospel is; God expressing His love, yet in a way that that maintains and affirms His intolerance of all sin. It only takes one sin to go to hell (James 2:10).

God’s providential dealing with us and our sins while we are yet alive in this world is one thing. How He will deal with those sins in the day of judgement is another. Sin will be dealt with; either at the cross of Christ, or before the judgement seat of God in that last day. Of course if you don’t believe sin is “sin”, you can delude yourself that you are off the hook and all is OK…

There is a lot about Biblical Christianity that an unbelieving world finds “odd”. That’s nothing new. On Mars Hill unbelieving Greeks scoffed at the idea of a resurrection from the dead. We’re not here to make the “odd” “not odd” for an unbelieving world. We are here to bear witness to what God has said in time and space, ie- history, in His objective word. If your post-modern mind rebels at the use of the word “objective”, that is nothing more then an example of your post-modern rebellion against the God who created you. Modernity rebelled against that God too. What you have done in your embrace of Post-modern epistemology applied to Christianity and Scripture is to fail to bear witness against the baals of post-modernity in the same way the old liberalism failed to bear witness against the baals of modernity. To embrace the epistemology of either modernity or post-modernity is a failure of Biblical witness and a compromising with the baals of the age. For me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Modernity has its sophistry against which we rightly protest. Post-modernity has just as much sophistry as modernity. The failure of the emergent movement is the failure to protest that sophistry too. In that failure is the failure of the emergent movement to bear authentic Christian witness, and in some cases to put ones self outside of the Christian religion all together.

Kyrie Eleison!

If I Could Dance With You Once Again

It was in another lifetime in another world.

You, the girl, would come up to me, the guy, and ask me to ask you to dance. I remember the look in your eyes as you stood there making your request.

Pain. Frustration. A cry for recognition and attention; for validation as a human being with a place of value among the other human beings of the world; for affirmation that you were a woman, and at least one guy in the world valued you as a woman.

It did not bother me to oblige you. My acquiescence was not coerced or given grudgingly, but was willingly and freely given. If I agreed to ask you to dance with me it was because I wanted to; because as I look back, I enjoyed doing so.

And it may be in my acquiescence I also was looking for validation and affirmation.

Then we went our separate ways.

You found love and companionship. Then your whole world fell apart; shattered by bullets in a far off land on the other side of the world.

A year after he was killed you came to me, just as you had done at the high school dances a few short years before. I still see the pain and grief written all over your countenance. You were still deeply mourning. You told me how you had gone to church and had prayed for him, and then he was gone. The implied question being, "Where was God in all of that?"

I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do. I look back at that time as a time of failure; a time when I let you down. You may have expected more from me then what was reasonable given my inexperience with life and youthful immaturity. I couldn't help you, and the burden of that failure has stayed with me over the lifetime that has since intervened.

If I could dance with you once again, just one more time, this is what I would say.

"You are a human being. You have worth and value as a human being created in the image of the God you may or may not believe in. Your life has a purpose. That purpose is found in bringing glory to this God who made you."

There is much more that would need to be said to more fully explain this brief summery. And how much help such conversation would be to you as we dance across the floor I do not pretend to know.

It could be that at the end of the dance, once more you would walk away feeling and thinking it was no help at all, just words containing no relevance to what you believe is the reality of your life.

But then again, just maybe possibly, you would find Him, and in finding Him you truly would indeed "live happily ever after".

For you see, over all the lifetime that has gone by since those days in another lifetime in another world, that has been my prayer for you; that you would truly indeed live "happily ever after".

Thank you for the dance...

Peace...

Of This and That

• Of Matches and Autumn Fires: I'm losing my touch. Tonight I went to light a fire in our portable outdoor fireplace and it took me about 6 or plus matches to get the fire going. That's a little humbling to me because I've taken pride in being able to start such fires with just one match. The kindling would not cooperate. That was my fault for not being more careful about the material I was using for kindling. I finally got a steady flame going, and in the end it was a really nice fire. It was a beautiful crisp Fall night for having a fire. I enjoyed just sitting out on the patio and watching the flames dancing and flickering.
  
  
• Revisiting Hemingway: Back at the first of this year I picked up and read Hemingway's For Whom The Bells Toll. In my mind, Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, and For Whom The Bells Toll constitute a Hemingway trilogy of sorts. It is the two war novels that give the setting and context for understanding the rampant anomie found in the story being told in The Sun Also Rises. The generation that fought in WW-I (Farewell To Arms) is the "lost generation" of The Sun Also Rises. And if that was not enough, we then have the disillusionment that came out of the horrors and atrocities of the Spanish Civil War (For Whom The Bells Toll). Someday I want to develop this perspective into a full blown essay with the premise that these three Hemingway novels taken together, give us a picture of the birth and development of post-modernity in the early 20th Century.
  
  
• I love "the Church". Yes, the church that is represented by institutions known as local congregations. It is because of the church, universal and institutional, that I have the Bible in my own language. It was this church that supported the college and university Gospel outreach that a Sovereign God used to bring me to Himself. (Rest in peace Mr. Bill Bright.) It has been the "Doctors" of this church that honed and worked out from that Bible the theology that helps me understand and make sense of what the Christian life is about. It is the Pastors of that church that faithfully explain the Word of God and feed my soul. It is in the fellowship of that church where I find encouragement and friendship with those in whom I see the image of Christ being formed.
  
  I know this church is not perfect. I know it's not always as authentic as it should be. Yes, there have even been times when some in this church have let me down, or even betrayed me. I'm not perfect either.
  
  I love the church. I love the church because I love Jesus Christ. Because I love Him, I also love the bride He loves. The church is not perfect, but one day it will be. I am not perfect, but by the grace of God, one day I will be.
  
  I love the Church.
  

The Pending Death of Geocities.com

"GEOCITIES IS CLOSING ON OCTOBER 26, 2009.
New GeoCities accounts are no longer available."

Geocities was a free web-page hosting community absorbed into the Yahoo conglomerate a few years back. Yahoo is going to shut it down by the end of this month, and all the individual web-page accounts that have accumulated over the years will die with it. One of those accounts that will be terminating is mine.

For a fee I can move my Geocites site to a Yahoo web hosting site, but the bottom line is that the free pages are going to be history. I choose not to spend the money. I have salvaged from my Geocites site the stuff I want to save, and have found other homes on the net for those items; (homes that are still at no cost to myself).

What this pending demise of Geocities proves is that immortality will not be found on the Internet. I have from time to time pondered what would happen to all my different WWW page accounts if I was to die;(and someday, God knows when, I will).

I confess that at an early point in my Internet history, I had some vague notion that after I was gone, my WWW pages would just stay there into perpetuity; an on-going memorial to the fact I once existed in this world order; my thoughts and logic to endure and to inspire future generations ages after I'm gone.

Of course all of that is sheer poppycock and nonsense. The pending demise of Geocities underscores how illusionary that kind of thought is.

Immortality and meaning is not found in the idol of the Internet. The Internet will not bring in the Age of Aquarius or the millennium or utopia or any such thing.

God reserves that prerogative for Himself. He alone is the source for immortality and for meaning and purpose.

Someday Blogspot will die and "The Billy Goat Blog" will die with it. Facebook will die along with deviantArt and all the rest. This world order will pass away. A New Heavens and New Earth will come.

Then we will know true shalom. Come quickly Lord Jesus!

~ The Billy Goat ~