Immunize Yourself Against the Great Global Warming Swindle

This is the UK documentary that's upsetting all the worshipers of the Earth Mother. Most interesting to me (since I already don't buy the "science" of global warming) was learning of Margaret Thatcher's role in getting the whole man-made global warming movement going. Thatcher wanted to make the UK energy-independent through nuclear power – she didn’t like her country’s reliance on coal, which politically empowered the coal miner unions, or oil, which empowered Middle Eastern states. So Thatcher latched onto the notion that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide warmed the planet in a harmful way, thereby providing the perfect political cover for advancing her nuclear power agenda without having to fight coal miner unions or Arab oil states. She empowered the U.K. Meteorological Office to begin global climate change research. And of course, any government bureaucracy is going to find exactly what it was created to find, whether it exists or not. Her move eventually led to the 1988 creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations’ group that has come to be the “official” international agency for global warming alarmism. Now you know.

Watch this film (which is a far more "documented" documentary than the winner of the Emmy for the best so-called "documentary"). Don't be swindled.

Atlas Shrugged – 50 Years Later

There is much to commend, and much to condemn, in "Atlas Shrugged." Its object – to restore man to his rightful place in a free society – is wholesome. But its ethical basis – an inversion of the Christian values that predicate authentic capitalism – poisons its teachings.

I agree. This is why I'm not a libertarian (at least not of the Randian sort). Read more of Mark Skousen's opinion, with which I pretty much concur, here.

March Madness Live On Your Computer

If you don't like the game you're stuck watching in the Big Dance, you may watch any of the other games (live or played earlier) on your computer without paying a penny. You have to register, but it's no biggie--just opt out of all the "Send me third party e-mails" offers. Try it by clicking here, and Go Jackets!

Chapter 1-The Final Sacrifice: Hebrews (Part II)

Continuing with N.T. Wright's Following Jesus . . .

Secondly, Hebrews gives us a new reading of the Old Testament. Even where the Old Testament is more familiar to us, how the writer of Hebrews is reading it can at first seem odd. The point to grasp here is that Hebrews presents the Old Testament as an unfinished story in need of a final chapter. It requires Jesus and his sacrifice, with which he brings in the new covenant, as its final chapter. The Old Testament continually points beyond itself to a reality, a final dealing with sin, that it itself does not contain. This new reading unfolds in five steps.

First (chapter 1), the Old Testament speaks of angels serving someone greater than themselves. This can only be the Messiah, the Son of God. Second (chapter 2), the Old Testament says the entire creation is subject to human rule, which can only be true in the enthronement of the man Jesus. Third (chapters 3-4), the Old Testament speaks of a time of rest which occurs long after the Jews already dwell in Canaan; there must be a more permanent rest to come. Fourth (chapters of 5-7), the Old Testament speaks of a king who is also a priest. In Jewish categories this is an impossibility; yet, it is true of Jesus. And lastly (chapters 8-10), the Old Testament speaks of a new covenant which, unlike the system of animal sacrifice, will once and for all deal with sin. In each case, only Jesus is the fulfillment. This should show us that what God did in Jesus Christ was not an odd, isolated invasion into the world, but rather the climax of his long plan. Our faith rests upon the rock-solid plan of the Lord of history.

Third and last, Hebrews tells us of Jesus the Final Sacrifice. There is deep seated within human awareness the understanding of guilt and the need for atonement. Things which are wrong must be put right somehow. But the blood of bulls and goats, as Hebrews says, can't take away sins; those sacrifices pointed forward to the one sacrifice of Jesus himself that can and does purify us and make atonement. Look at what the Bible tells us about priests and the need for Jesus' sacrifice becomes clear: God created man to be the priests of all his creation, offering creation's worship and bringing order to it. Man sinned, so God chose Israel as a priestly nation to offer up worship and bring a solution to the problem of human sin. But Israel herself was sinful, so God chose a family of priests (Aaron's sons) for the sinful nation of priests. But these priests, too, were sinful; so God sent his own Son to be the sinless Priest and Sacrifice. Jesus' sacrifice is the point when humanity, in the person of a single man, offers itself fully to the creator. At last consciences can be truly washed clean, and human life is truly possible.

Next time: The Battle Won: Colossians


Technorati Tags: NT Wright, Hebrews

“It’s a big book, full of big stories with big characters. They have big ideas (not least about themselves) and make big mistakes. It’s about God and greed and grace; about life, lust, laughter, and loneliness. It’s about birth, beginnings, and betrayal; about siblings, squabbles, and sex; about power and prayer and prison and passion. And that’s only Genesis.”–N.T. Wright

Chapter 1-The Final Sacrifice: Hebrews (Part I)

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."-Hebrews 4:15-16

Hebrews is a difficult book. One way of looking at it, Wright says, would summarize it this way: a complex discussion of angels, followed by a treatment of what Psalm 95 means by 'entering God's rest,' moving on to Melchizedek and a listing of the tabernacle furniture, and ending with an exhortation to 'go outside the camp.' Hmmm. Sure there are a few high points along the way, like the great chapter on faith, but then there's all that stuff about sacrifice which we don't understand very well and are just glad we don't have to do!

Wright suggests there is a better way to approach Hebrews that does help us understand the life of following Jesus. First, it offers a compelling portrait of Jesus, the human high priest, and his cross. The opening passage above needs to be set within the sweep of Hebrews. Here it goes. In chapter 1, Jesus is not merely a special sort of angel. He is in fact superior to them; he is the Son of God. But before you start to get the wrong idea, chapter 2 emphasizes that he is also totally and truly human. This is very important. Jesus has not 'gone back to being just God again.' No, the same Jesus who lived our life and died our death has been exalted and glorified precisely as a human being. In chapter 3 and 4 Jesus is the true Joshua. In fact these are the same name; Joshua is Hebrew and Jesus is Greek. The point is that Jesus is the true Joshua who leads his people into their true promised land. In chapters 5, 6, and 7, Jesus is the true high priest. He is not a temporary priest from the house of Levi, but a priest forever, as Psalm 110 says, of the order of Melchizedek, whose call does not depend upon ancestry, but upon the call of God alone. Chapters 8-10 speak of Jesus' sacrifice and the new covenant. We will return to this theme in the final section.

Chapter 11, the well-known faith chapter, is significant because the important position in such Jewish listings is at the end. And who occupies that position? Jesus, of course. (My comment: The listing doesn't conclude until chapter 12, when Jesus is mentioned. Yet another reason to ignore chapter and verse divisions!) He is the ultimate hero of faith:

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted."-Hebrews 12:1-3

At this point I simply have to quote Wright, because he is summarizing, and I can't summarize his summary any better than he!

"The themes we have already looked at come to a head in this passage. Take them in reverse order: Jesus, the high priest, coming at the end of the great list of heroes. Jesus, the one who leads us into our promised land, the pioneer, the one who goes ahead to blaze the trail. Jesus, the truly human being, who has travelled the road of human suffering ahead of us. Jesus, now enthroned as Son of God. Jesus, therefore-as the final chapter 13 puts it-the same yesterday, today, and forever; Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, the one brought again from the dead. That is the picture of Jesus which Hebrews offers us; it is the Jesus who will guide us through life, the Jesus who meets us today as we feast at his table, the Jesus who summons us gently but clearly to follow him. And at the heart of this picture, we find the cross: the cross which Jesus endured on our behalf, which was the climax of his life of suffering and rejection, which was, as we shall see, the final sacrifice."

Technorati Tags: NT Wright, Hebrews

Alternative Browser Alliance

I think I can explain how I got on this bandwagon . . . I finally got the boys' computer an adapter so they can access our wireless internet at home. Their computer is running Windows Millenium Edition (ME) which is still a piece of garbage after all these years. Rather than use Internet Explorer (which is full of it's own problems) I installed Mozilla Firefox, which I have used myself for over a year now. Well, it had problems running on ME, and I couldn't get them solved. I also tried a flash-based browser for kids, but it REALLY bogged down their computer.

I checked around for some other browsers and found Opera as I told you last week. I loved it. It worked great on the boys' computer; it worked great on my laptop. Then I found this Alternative Browsers Alliance site and saw all the choices available and decided to start trying different ones. I now have K-meleon on the boys' computer (which I am using to post this), and I have settled on Opera for myself. I was also intrigued with Flock because it has some interesting blogging features, but I didn't like it overall.

So, what difference does all of this make? I think the boys over at the ABA are right when they say:

Competition keeps innovation going. If several products have to fight for market share, they have to continually one-up each other. End result: all browsers improve, everyone wins.

It hardly seems a coincidence that Microsoft stopped developing Internet Explorer when they trounced Netscape, then started again as soon as Firefox started making gains.

Security may be easier to manage when you only have one place to look, but it's also easier for the bad guys to crack. Right now, they can get 90% of the web just by targeting Internet Explorer on Windows. Now imagine that 90% spread out among IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari on Windows, PowerPC Macs, Intel Macs, and Linux. They'd have to settle for 10% or try to crack every combination they could. Web developers, on the other hand, designing for the common language of the web, would have no more trouble than they do today.

And who knows? You just might find yourself liking another browser better than you thought!

That's what happened to me!

Week in Review

• The State Department has belatedly learned that there are a large number of Muslims in Europe, and they have a plan.  Joseph Farah has a better plan.  (This is a MUST read, folks.)

• A Massachusetts Democrat and Michigan Republican led the charge for our early daylight savings that starts tonight.  They predict the change "will save consumers $4.4 billion and eliminate the need for three coal plants by the year 2020."  That really sounds made up!  But I have to say I love the change.  I wish we stayed on daylight savings year round!
  

• The idea of anarchists organizing themselves is always funny to me.

• A great mystery solved and clearly explained.  (It's visual; you have to click on it.)
  

• Ignorant media? Impossible.  We know they are all geniuses.
  

• Don't let yourself be ignorant.  Read "75 New Reasons to Reconsider the Alleged Need for Stem Cell Research that Destroys Human Embryos."  The document is only about half again as long as the title!
  

• This is two years old, but it is new to me and I'm sure it will be new to most of you.  It's an amazing song of regret.  Cry if necessary.
  

"Read the Scriptures, not as an attorney may read a will, merely to know the sense, but as the heir reads it, as a description and proof of his interest."
-John Newton

FJ-Preface

Well, Wright says some good stuff in his preface so I feel the need to mention that before we get to Hebrews in chapter 1. He begins with a call for us to look at the real Jesus, the one who challenges us and bids us do something about the plight of the world. FJ is about the So What? that follows from looking at the real, historical Jesus. We aren't to simply admire from a distance or, worse, to  tame him so he is easier handle.  He calls us to take action and follow him; what does that mean in today's world?

Wright argues that reading whole books (or at least large chunks) of the Bible at a time ought to be our primary activity rather than daily reading plans which fail to give one the "full flavor and thrust" of Scripture. For example, (here's a challenge to you) he says that Colossians can be read through in about 12 minutes and Hebrews in about an hour. This is how they were originally received, and reading them in such a way really is an aid to understanding what they say.  It is in this expostion of whole books that Wright really excels, as you will see in the first 6 chapters of Following Jesus.  Next up, The Final Sacrifice: Hebrews.

Following Jesus

I intend over the next two weeks to provide a summary of N.T. Wright's Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship. It is a compilation of twelve sermons in which Wright outlines the essential message of six New Testament books (Hebrews, Colossians, Matthew, John, Mark, and Revelation) looking in particular at their portrayal of Jesus and what he accomplished in his sacrificial death, and then he takes six key New Testament themes (resurrection, rebirth, temptation, hell, heaven, and new life) and considers their significance for the lives of present-day disciples. If you think that sounds dry, then you've never heard or read Wright's sermons before! He is the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England and is an outstanding bible scholar, defender of Christianity, writer, and speaker. I have read Following Jesus before, but I want to take a de novo look at it for myself and so that others might be spurred to read and profit from it. We'll look at a chapter each day, so be sure to come back. You'll be able to click on the "Following Jesus" link under the "By Subject" heading in the left column to read all the entries.

Dueling Caption Contests

Contestant #1

Contestant #2

For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.
-Doug Larson

Catching Up

These are some things I've meant to mention, but haven't because things are always so busy!

• Odd News--PETA's gonna be peeved. And is there a sudden bathroom shortage in the world? Apparently so in Cedar Rapids and a small German town. And I hope the Taiwanese have something better than this to defend themselves from China.
  

• Much Ado About Nothing--Ann Coulter makes her point again, just like she did with her "Jersey girls" comment, and the media intentionally misreport it while some conservatives are too stupid/prudish/intimidated to get it. Oh well. Don't give up Ann!
  

• Much More Ado About Even Less--Scooter Libby. Convicted of nothing so some D.C. liberals can feel like they got the Bush Administration. May he receive justice on appeal.
  

• This is good news, but beware--The BBC is going to show a documentary debunking the man-made global warming neo-communist lie. While this is good, even great, news watch out! The real warming is under left-wing collars.
  

New Browser

New Blog

I want to let you know about a new blog I'm doing to keep folks abreast of our homeschool happenings.  This is a recent post from it.  You can get to the blog by clicking here.

Lately Marian and the boys have especially enjoyed several books by Geraldine McCaughrean (pronounced "Ma - cork - run"). She is a British author whose specialties are mythology and children's literature. Her retellings of classic stories are excellent. They have read Hercules, Pilgrim's Progress, Moby Dick, and several of Shakespeare's plays. Additionally she has some excellent adaptations of Bible stories.  The Jesse Tree is one such title they enjoyed.  A Jesse tree is a depiction of Jesus' family tree in wood, stone, or stained glass so that the unlettered might learn.  She writes in her introduction:

A priest could point to the figures or symbols an tell the stories of those Old Testament kings, prophets, heroines, warriors.  And the tree itself served to show how the New Testament grew out of the Old Testament; how, for Christians, the birth of Jesus was not just a beginning, but a completion.  He was the flowering of a tree planted long before, by God's own design.  By tracing his earthly ancestry back to King David and beyond, it was easy to see Jesus as a real historical figure.

I even appreciate how she laments the "Puritan vandals" of the seventeenth century who attempted to destroy these Jesse trees in their attempt to eradicate all "graven images." Someone needed to say it.
The book is the wonderful interplay of a young boy who comes upon an old man who is making a Jesse tree at a church. The boy is full of questions for which the old man hasn't the time; but he begins to tell the boy the stories behind the symbols on the tree.   We look forward to reading many more of McCaughrean's books.  There is a link at the bottom of the right sidebar to many of her books on Amazon.  Take a look!

In the beginning?

The scene: Jacob is pulled over for speeding in the hallway.

Me: "Jacob!"

Jacob, nervously: "Yes, sir?"

Me: "Jacob, can you ever remember a time when there wasn't a rule against running in the house?"

Jacob: "Nooooooo."

Me: "How long has that been a rule?"

Jacob: "Ever since when the world was created!"

And in my head I could hear Adam having this same conversation with Cain and Abel.

Night

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."

~Elie Wiesel

I recently finished Night by Elie Wiesel. It is a short book, so it will fit into a busy schedule. It is Wiesel's account of the concentration camps of World War II. A teenager at the time, Wiesel and his family were taken from Romania in 1945 and shipped, literally, to Auschwitz. I don't want to tell you what happens; I simply want you to read the book. Try to get the new, 2006 edition. Ignore the fact that it will likely have "Oprah's Book Club" on it; this book mattered long before Oprah made it required reading. The new edition is translated by Wiesel's wife and represents a better conveyance of Wiesel's story. As he says, "She knows my voice." Night is both horrifying and irresistible at the same time.

Wiesel's struggles are not only with Nazi's, but also with God. In fact the original text of Night starts this way:

In the beginning there was faith—which is childish; trust—which is vain; and illusion—which is dangerous.We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark from the Shekhinah’s flame; that every one of us carries in his eyes and in his soul a reflection of God’s image.That was the source if not the cause of all our ordeals.

Throughout the book Wiesel speaks of no longer believing in this God. This theme reaches a climax with the hanging of another teenage boy. All of the prisoners are forced to watch the hanging. A man asks, "Where is God now?" And Wiesel answers within himself, "Where is He? Here He is. He is hanging here on this gallows..."

One of the most remarkable things about the book is Francois Mauriac's original introduction to it. It is a Christian introduction to a very Jewish book, and it is very profound in its statements about the Holocaust and the Crucifixion. I am amazed it has survived to be included in the new edition. Mauriac writes of his first meeting with Wiesel and the horrific story he told to him:

And I, who believe that God is love, what answer could I give my young questioner, whose dark eyes still held the reflection of that angelic sadness which had appeared one day upon the face of the hanged child? What did I say to him? Did I speak of that other Jew, his brother, who may have resembled him - the Crucified, whose Cross has conquered the world? Did I affirm that the stumbling block to his faith was the cornerstone of mine, and that the conformity between the Cross and the suffering of men was in my eyes the key to that impenetrable mystery whereon the faith of his childhood had perished? Zion, however, has risen up again from the crematories and the charnel houses. The Jewish nation has been resurrected from among its thousands of dead. It is through them that it lives again. We do not know the worth of one single drop of blood, one single tear. All is grace. If the Eternal is the Eternal, the last word for each one of us belongs to Him. This is what I should have told this Jewish child. But l could only embrace him, weeping.

You will do the same. Read Night.

Official State Sandwich?

Today I had what should surely be the official sandwich of the state of Georgia--peanut butter and peach preserves. Not a bad combo at all. (My blog posts are becoming foodie. Hmmmm. Time for a new blog?)

I might need a doggy bag

I'm a little ashamed since I just made mini pizza burgers (Krystal-sized patties on rolls with mozzarella and pizza sauce) for dinner last night. Meanwhile, Denny's Beer Barrel Pub of Clearfield County, PA made a record 123 pound burger! And it looks good, too! The only drawback is that it costs $379. It's supposed to feed 100 people, but I'm not so sure that I would share. They also have 2, 3, 6, and 15-pound burgers on the menu, so get your own burger!