by C.R. Wiley
The title is provocative, and I am thankful for Wiley’s guided meditation on the significance of what it means to live in an ordered cosmos and also on the thickness of household (with its productive property and patriarchal) piety compared to the thin individualism causing our culture’s current foolish fruitlessness.
Should you read it? If you want to please your Father in heaven, then queue this one up.
by James Clear
This book was even better than I hoped. Plus, James Clear is from Ohio, and played baseball. Boom.
But also the content about starting good habits and stopping less good ones is clear and promotes action and iteration (without causing guilt to metastasize). If you’ve read The Slight Edge, which I highly recommend as well, then the idea of small but consistent changes will resonate.
Clear also doesn’t let the reader off the hook. We always do what we most want to do, and what we want to do comes from our own hearts and our identity, for which we are responsible. Any long term changes we make will necessarily require identity change. He also talks about personal limits very fruitfully, reminding us that we can’t be just whatever we wish we could be, but we can look for areas and ways to maximize who we are as God made us (emphasis mine).
Should you read this? Yes, you should start today.
by J. R. R. Tolkien
I listened to The Fellowship this time through, and found that Tolkien’s goal for the story rings true for me:
The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.
My review from 2013: Alright, alright, I actually enjoyed it. I even sorta, kinda appreciate Frodo as both reluctant but doughty hero who is strong because he is weak (at least so far).
I’m going to try something I haven’t done before, which some of you will not care to read, and some of you may not be able to read. Others of you may have nightmares harkening back to junior high English classes.
My favorite thing to do for Bible study is diagram the sentences, in the original language when possible. Here’s the first three verses of the next paragraph I’m preaching in Revelation, Christ’s message to the angel of the church in Philadelphia.
I enjoyed this imaginary epic trip through hell again following Dante following Virgil. I still don’t know much Italian history, making me thankful as in previous reads for the footnotes. While I wouldn’t call Inferno helpful for Christian doctrine, I definitely think it works for deepening Christian devotion.
Read again in December 2016 as part of reading the entire Divine Comedy in Omnibus V.
2014: Entertaining and frustrating. Entertaining, not in the sense of amusement, but in the sense of focusing attention on the many deserved punishments of sin, even if only imagined by the poet. Frustrating because I know so little history in order to fully appreciate all the allusions. Thankful for the many notes by Musa.
This is a meal of remembrance. We remember, and proclaim as we remember, the death of Jesus. Communion points us to the cross week after week.
It is also good to remember that Jesus remembers us. This truth could be used for selfish purposes, to puff up our esteem, as if God thought us important enough to get us on His side. But the good news is that He does choose us, and He does get us on His side, and He knows us by name.
Computing power and intelligent algorithms can collect and process a lot of data. The limits of digital databases are virtually non-existent, and columns can be matched, even with names. But it still isn’t personal.
The Father chose a people for His Son, and sent His Son as a Shepherd to lay down His life for His sheep. He calls them by name, and they recognize His voice (John 10:3-4). Their names are written in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain (Revelation 13:8). The names in the book, the names who are known by Jesus, are the names He took with Him to the cross.
Christian, you are not a number to God. You are a name. You will walk with Christ in white. Christ will confess Your name before our Father. Remember what you have received and been taught. Remember Jesus’ body and blood. Remember that He knows your name.
Some of us are reading Dante’s Inferno again, the first third of his epic poem, in which a poet leads a Christian pilgrim through hell. As Virgil and Dante enter and then prepare to cross the first river of the underworld, the Acheron, Dante sees thousands of the wicked packed along the shore waiting to cross the darkened waters.
“They were cursing God, cursing their own parents, the human race, the time, the place, the seed of their beginning, and their day of birth.” (Canto III, lines 101-103)
The souls are eager for their judgment, while also refusing to take responsibility for their souls. They rage against reality, against all the good gifts God gave them in family, in the fellowship of other men, of their very birth and breath and existence.
Mankind are rebels; sin is rebellion against the Maker of man. As rebels we prefer to imagine that we can reject what God gives and create life as we want it to be. Our current culture is willing to lie (in rage) about reality at insane levels. Mrs. Warren states that people will have jobs if we shut down sectors of business. Mr. Sanders (and his envious offspring) says that we can pay for everything and it will be free. Judges accept that boys are the best female athletes. It’s extreme, and extremely stupid.
But our job is not to point out the foolishness of others who lie if we still lie about less obvious things. Christians, in the grip of learning to obey all things Christ’ commanded, are still tempted to deny reality, to deny their own responsibility.
If we want Marysville to be a destination, with a reputation as those who love and honor Jesus as Lord, then we must continue to confess our own sins, whatever they are, as hard as that may seem, and not merely complain about the sins of others, as obvious and easy as that is. We must not become a destination for sin-pointers, sin-coverers, or sin-complainers. We must make repentance look good.