Author: readerjohn

I am a retired lawyer and an Orthodox Christian, living in a collapsing civilization, the modern West. There are things I'll miss when it's gone. There are others I won't. I tend to write about both.

Self-narcotizing cant

From a Rod Dreher blog, quoting a Reformed Christian in Great Britain:

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I am extremely rare in being concerned about Christian education. Most evangelicals I know think it is selfish, and possible sinful, to take children out of state education because of the evangelistic opportunities one can have at the school gate. It is also argued that children can’t be kept out of the world indefinitely. None of this makes sense. There is a deep, deep naiveté amongst most Christians and when you consider what we are up against, we are going to be eaten for breakfast. I just find a deep seated objection to thinking the way you do in the Benedict Option but with no clear rationale as to why.

That said, there are a few Christian schools which have been set up in the UK in the last few years which are excellent, however most evangelicals I speak to are suspicious about them.

One often hears US Evangelicals claiming the same thing about public schools. My guess is that it’s far, far more likely that the Evangelicals kids are going to get “evangelized” by the popular culture than the other way around. I also wonder if some parents who could afford these schools for their kids aren’t simply rationalizing the fact that they would rather get the free education than make a sacrifice to pay for them.

Most Christians in the United States apparently feel the same.

Our professed concern for “the children” is self-narcotizing cant.

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Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Where I glean stuff.

Not just like worldly music

From my personal journal 4 – 1/2 years ago:

Should I ever be tempted to say that CCM is “just like worldly music,” I should resist. There’s a cheesy, oily sound to CCM vocals that marks it as “Christian” music within the first four vocal bars.

And then from 9/13/13:

Tough day. I looked at Syrian beheading photos and listened to CCM for 7 minutes. Ouch!

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Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Where I glean stuff.

Only wonder understands

About 51 months ago, I put a Father Stephen Freeman blog in my personal amber. Excerpt:

Everything is far more than it appears.

With the heart of a poet St. Gregory of Nyssa asserts, “Only wonder understands anything.” The role of wonder is (among other things) to slow us down, make us quiet, and help us pay attention. The “flat-landers” sail prosaically through life and miss most of what is true, drawing only the most obvious conclusions, even when what is obvious is incorrect. It is the things that are “out of place” that are easily ignored (they’re so bothersome!), while they are most often the clues that reveal the mystery.

The reduction of the world and its “history,” are the tools of those who lack the imagination and patience to find the truth.

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Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Where I glean stuff.

A Paradox

From my personal journal 4 – 1/2 years ago:

The fundamental difference between Orthodoxy and my former traditions of Evangelicalism and Calvinism is that Orthodoxy does not look to the Bible as the sole and final authority for Christian belief and life. I call that sola scriptura, though some magisterial Protestants might fault the description.

What people may “hear” when I say that is that “if you limit your search to the Bible, you cannot help but come to Protestant conclusions.” But that’s not what I mean, nor do I think it’s true. What I mean is that purported reliance on the Bible as the sole and final authority for Christian belief and life is what it means to be a Protestant historically. Ironically, the Biblical case for the church itself as an authority is stronger than the Biblical case for sola scriptura.

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Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Where I glean stuff.

Maybe my own

Thoughts recorded on a historic and dark day in America:

I dread this nightfall.
(Isn’t it dawn somewhere?)
How long will this night be?
(Do they speak English there?)

I don’t claim authorship of this, though when I journaled it almost five years ago, I gave no credits, which is unusual. The sentiments correspond to my own.

If I was confident I wrote it, I’d be pleased. I’m only the most occasional and untutored poet.

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Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Where I glean stuff.

Do you want to go away?

When I experience Church conflict and disappointment, John 6:67-69 mercifully comes to mind:

Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

(Those who “went away” were scandalized by Christ’s preceding teaching on the Eucharist, during which teaching whenever anyone objected, Christ upped the ante. Today we have huge swaths of denominations, independent congregations and “parachurch” ministries who have “gone away” but don’t know or admit it.)

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Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Where I glean stuff.

After the wake of a man-boy

More blogging on stuff I’ve been reminded of, again from something I wrote privately almost 5 years ago:

I attended a Wake Thursday, only we don’t call them that any more.

In the coffin was a 32-year-old man-boy. In line as one approached mother and step-father, were scrapbook pictures of his younger versions, beaming with delight at 4th of July sparklers and other such simple pleasures. He “enjoyed listening to music, watching movies, and sharing his contagious joy. He fought the good fight and is awaiting his crown of glory.”

In the coffin was a bearer of the image of God, knees pulled up, wrists permanently bent, teeth crooked, face oddly shaped. Oh, my! I’d forgotten in the years since I last saw him.

He was born on April Fools Day. His syndrome has a dozen sufferers, maybe, world-wide. I don’t know the name. I couldn’t look it up on Google if I did, probably. Who writes about a disease that afflicts only a dozen people or so in the world at a time?

If I want to know about it, we’d better take mom and step-dad to dinner; she’s the world expert. The life expectancy from birth is two years. Did I mention that the man-boy in the coffin was 32?

Step-dad married mom 20 years ago, eyes wide open. She’d have it no other way. Her first husband, her son’s father, headed for divorce court, then “for the hills,” about 31 years, 364 days ago. May God have mercy on him anyway.

Caring for her son was the dominant feature of their lives. Step-dad’s grieving with mom.

Mom’s a teacher. The Middle Schoolers from her school came and sang at the funeral. They returned to school shaken. Some of them had never been to a funeral. Many of them, probably, had never met teacher’s son. If the image of God, twisted and angular, shocked this jaded old curmudgeon, I reckon it was a real eye-opener for them.

Mom and step-dad can’t sleep. The house is too quiet. The life-supporting machinery is off. This respiratory infection, starting like all the others, ended quickly in death despite treatment.

God bless and comfort them. May they have, for their remaining lives and into eternity, all the blessings none of us deserve, but some of us don’t deserve a lot less than others.

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Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Where I glean stuff.

Equivocal Nominalism

I may be blogging a little extra for a while. I’ve generally been blogging much less because blogging had become a monster devouring chunks of life I now want to use otherwise. I didn’t notice until I retired and still had no time left.

But I’m now working on a project that reminds me of some things written privately in the past that may seem worth sharing. For instance, when I was trying to wrap my head around the “nominalism versus realism” distinction and its importance, I wrote this privately:

  • Evangelical nominalism: It’s not really heartfelt. He’s living in a garage saying that makes him a car. (You’re not a car until you really feel it in your heart.)
  • Philosophic nominalism: There is no dogness, only individual dogs; no human nature, just a bunch of homo sapien singularities.
  • Theological nominalism: God said it; I believe it; that settles it! Right and wrong have nothing to do with created reality; only with propositional divine commandments.
I’m convinced that a lot of “separation of Church and State” talk, including politicians who are “personally opposed” to something their Church opposes, is rooted in a sort of nominalism: that every moral prohibition of their Church is really just a cultic peculiarity, not something rooted in human nature.

Based on long observation, I’m convinced that my formerly inhoate, now explicit, theological Realism:

  1. Is in keeping with the weight of Christian opinion over two millennia;
  2. Makes me an oddball in our debased age; and
  3. Came I know not whence. Just lucky I guess.

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Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Where I glean stuff.