A couple of bits of my weird sense of humor

Please feel free to disregard this post. This is entirely for my own sake. There were a couple of passages I came across last week that struck me in a way that they hadn't before.

For one, Don quoted from I Corinthians 9:27 where Paul says he "buffets" his body (ASV). I got to thinking that I also like to buffet my body. Particularly at Cici's Pizza and at the New China Buffet.





With the teens, I studied from Luke 15, which has 3 parables about something being lost, then found again. First a sheep, then a coin, then the prodigal son. What if the first and third were more closely connected? When the son comes home, the master orders the servants to kill and prepare the fatted calf. What if he had ordered them to prepare a fatted sheep instead, which also happened to be the sheep that had originally been lost? It would be a bummer for the sheep.

Use Your Allusion #5: Newspeak

If you haven't read George Orwell's 1984, it's a fascinating book. Of course, it didn't happen exactly as he predicted it would, writing in 1949.

It is a story about ultimate government control of everything in a person's life. One of the ways that government maintained control was by getting people to use "newspeak". This was a reduced, simplified version of English designed to simplify and ultimately cripple people's minds.

Instead of saying something is "good", "great", or "fantastic", you would have only the adjective "good". Something could be "good" or "doubleplusgood".

So when you refer to something as "newspeak", you're saying that someone is feeding you bad, oversimplified information with bad pretenses.

On a personal note, I often lament how dumbed down our language is actually becoming. I'm convinced hip hop music must have something to do with it, but pop culture at large is certainly a culprit.

Moving

Monday, Carolina and I closed on a house, and we are in the process of moving/shopping/painting/etc. We've spent enough at Lowe's to feed a small army. I think it's going to be a good home for us. I've determined not to slack off on my job or my grad school, so it looks like it's my blogging that will have to be cut back for a few weeks. It's going to be a crazy few days ahead! Keep us in your prayers!

As soon as my life starts resembling a routine again, I'll start posting more routinely. Thanks for reading!

My Beautiful Hometown

There's a gentleman here at Old Hickory that I go to church with who is an excellent photographer. Actually, there are a couple of them! But this man, named Richard, is retired and manages to take quite a few photographs. He often has his camera with him, and is always looking for new shots to snap. He's been a good friend to me since I got to Old Hickory. He always volunteers when we need help around the office. He's always piddling with something interesting, and always has something to talk about. He's a very gentle soul.

He sent me several pictures of downtown Nashville that he took last week. This one is my favorite. It was such a nice day outside that he made zero adjustments to the picture...it really was this nice. He makes a few bookmarks using his pictures that he sells on the side. He really has a gift for taking pictures. I may well end up framing this one. I remember how good it felt as we were making the drive over to Nashville from Arkansas with all our remaining stuff in our cars. Seeing this beautiful skyline gave me a warm feeling. It's good to be home.

Use Your Allusion #4: Cleaning the Augean Stables

The fifth labor of Hercules was to cleanse the stables of King Augeas. Augeas of Elis had an immense heard of oxen whose stables had not been cleaned in thirty years. To complicate the matter, his fields were so large that many other animals were brought to live and graze in them.

Hercules was challenged to completely clean the stables in only one day. He accomplished this by tearing a hole in one side of the stables, then in the other side. He diverted the waters of the Alpheus River through the stable to clean out all the mess left by the many large oxen.

When someone has to clean up a giant mess, it can be referred to as "cleaning the Augean stables". This is sometimes used to describe the work of a new government trying to come in and clean up the work of a preceding corrupt government.

From our trip to Memphis

The other weekend, Carolina and I drove over to Memphis to see some friends and family. Actually, for a 1 night ordeal, we did an incredible amount of visiting. We began by seeing my grandparents in Henderson, TN. It had been a long time since Carolina had been there especially. We ate at a favorite local restaurant near Freed called Bell's. I had an amazing double cheeseburger! The next morning we ate with them, and saw our friends Luke and Erica, whom we hadn't seen in quite a while. They did visit one day a month ago, but Carolina was in Mexico. It was good to see them and their handsome young son Mayz. We then went on to Memphis.

I started having feelings of deja vu. "Hey, Robert and Angela have a grocery store like this near their apartment! Hey! They also have a Lenny's!" I finally realized that we had driven a back road way to Memphis, which led us directly to our friends' apartment. So instead of waiting until later, we stopped sooner to see them for a while.

Then, we drove down to the very edge of the Tennessee/Mississippi line in Memphis, where our friends Poncho and Vyaney live by a beautiful golf course. They just had their first child: a wonderful son (Alfonso--same as his dad), and we wanted to make this trip especially to see them. We're very happy for them.

It's weird how just a little over 3 years ago, I was engaged to Carolina, but was living in an apartment with Poncho in Searcy. I had just begun preaching at Rose Bud. He was a good roommate. He has a great sense of humor, and is always in a good mood. It's weird to think that not quite four years later, we would both be married, both living in different cities, and he now has a son. Life moves awfully quick.

S-E-A-R-C-Y

For some reason, rap seems to be the music of choice in describing Searcy, Arkansas. The lyrics in this video aren't as funny as Kodak and D'Lee, but I still find it entertaining.

When you can walk to work, sometimes your cat follows you to the office.

Carolina and I came over to the office tonight. Having my Great-Grandmother's funeral this week has caused me to get severely behind on both work and grad school stuff. I'm going to be really pushing it to get both sermons done tomorrow.

Though she doesn't do it all the time, Nacho has always enjoyed following us when we go on walks. When we had Dora, we always walked as a family of four; two humans, a dog, and a cat. Tonight she followed us over to the office, and after closing off all the doors besides my personal office room, we let her join us in here. As you can tell, she made herself right at home. I continue to be fascinated by my cat.

Use Your Allusion #3: Hubris

Hubris is a term for excessive pride and arrogance. Traditionally, this is the sort of insolence which leads a person to violate the moral code of the gods, and even to challenge them directly. Capaneus
is a classical example of hubris. He was supposedly an enormous, strong man with great wealth and power. In some literature, there's a story that he temporarily saved himself from death by clinging to a protruding rock on a cliff during a raging storm. Still hanging high over the waters, he proceeded to taunt Zeus with his skill and fortune. Upon the moment of his boasting, the rock suddenly broke off, and he fell to his death.

Proverbs 16:18 - "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."

Martin Luther on the Importance of Sexuality

I'm in Dr. Richard Oster's class on the Corinthian letters this semester. Frankly, trying to balance it with everything else I have going on has been rough. Even so, I'm learning all kinds of new things. He has an excellent commentary on I Corinthians that we're reading for the class.

This week, we've been studying I Corinthians 7, which has a lot of instructions about sexuality, marriage, divorce, and some about slavery. He included a quote from Martin Luther that I found rather fascinating. Sexuality in our culture is way overemphasized in some regards, but is under emphasized in others. It carries with it a bit of taboo, and it is often portrayed as a puerile sort of thing. Guys are portrayed as thinking about nothing besides sex, and it's fairly expected that people will do little to restrain their passions. Hence, in condemning the bad behavior it is easy for Christians to take it a step further and condemn sexuality itself.

I knew of a preacher near Rose Bud who actually got fired several years ago because he used the word "sex" in the pulpit! Paul places a high level of importance on married couples being united in this way, and he even seems to present one's libido as a perfectly viable reason for choosing to marry (though that is certainly not the central point of marriage). You won't find anything in Paul's writing that suggests one having sexual desires is to be equated with spiritual immaturity.

Even if you don't agree with Luther's conclusions--I personally don't, I think he understood how seriously Paul viewed the role of sexuality in the life of a Christian:

One spouse may rob and withdraw himself or herself from the other and refuse to grant the conjugal due or to associate with the other. One may find a woman so stubborn and thick-headed that it means nothing to her though her husband fall into unchasteness ten times. Then it is time for the man to say: If you are not willing, another woman is; if the wife is not willing, bring on the maid. But this only after the husband has told his wife once or twice, warned her, and let it be known to other people that her stubborn refusal may be publicly known and rebuked before the congregation. If she still does not want to comply, then dismiss her; let an Esther be given you and allow Vashti to go, as did King Ahasuerus (Esther 2:17).

(Quoted from Ewald M. Plass, ed., What Luther Says: A Practical In-Home Anthology for Active Christians (St. Louis: Concordia, 1991), paragraph 2811)

Had you ever thought about bringing up what is happening (or not happening) in the bedroom before the congregation for church discipline? Yikes! It seems that he is viewing sexual deprivation on the same level that most Christians commonly view adultery.

Thoughts anyone?