day no. 17,168: unlovely presuppositions

Corinthians 12:31

Shew I unto you a more excellent way.

In discussing love, the Apostle Paul does not begin by explaining his presuppositions, but with addressing ours. He does not dwell on what love is, he camps on what it is not. His aim is to pick off any of the presuppositions we tracked in on the rug with us. Oh, you thought love what like that? Well, it's not.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;  Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

Love is long suffering and kind.

It is not a grabby grabfest of unrequited feelings. It is not insistent on being heard, seen, or catered to. It is not full of itself. It has standards and there are things it will not do. It is not a matter of following the heart wherever it leads, regardless of how dark or unseemly. It is not inherently self-interested. It is not a bully. It is not looking to be offended and inventing new ways to incite outrage. It does not simmer on sin. It does marinate in malice. It does not throw parades for perversion. It doe not celebrate sin.

1 John 4:7-10

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Love is not what most people think it is. Love is not God. God is love. Before you can understand love, you must understand God. If you do not know God, you do not know what love is. John here, like Paul in our previous example, is zealous to point out what love is NOT. When it comes to love, there is always a lot of mud on our shoes and the Bible invites us wipe our feet at the door so that we might come in and understand love.

All loves are not created equal. In that sense, love is not love, or more precisely, not everything that calls itself love or is called love by others is, in fact, Love or in keeping with the Law of Love.

day no. 17,167: corpses cannot quicken themselves

"Coming to Christ is nothing less than a resurrection from the dead, and the only thing you are allowed to contribute is the corpse." — Douglas Wilson, An Open Letter to President Trump About Heaven

The only thing you contribute to your salvation is the sin that made it necessary. 

Ezekiel 37:3

And he said unto me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" And I answered, "O Lord God, thou knowest."

A bag of bones cannot speak for itself, but neither can it hear anyone else. 

It cannot respond. 

It cannot do anything.

Ephesians 2:1

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;

We are dead in sin until we are raised again in Christ. 

Corpses cannot quicken themselves.

day no. 17,166: heaven and hell how to's

"Salvation and damnation are in no way symmetrical. Damnation is a paycheck, accurately calculated down to the last penny. Salvation is the gift of God. Death and life are certainly not the same thing, but we also need to remember that wages and gifts are not the same thing either. Hell is earned, and Heaven is given. Hell is only earned, and Heaven is only given." — Douglas Wilson, An Open Letter to President Trump About Heaven

Hell is where everyone gets what they deserve. Death is a paycheck. Damnation is getting what it is due.

Romans 6:23

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Heaven, however, is a gift. Life is a favor. Salvation is getting grace.

Hell is how God answers those who demand their due.

Heaven is how God answers those who beg for mercy.

Mercy is not getting something bad that you have earned.

Grace is getting something good that you did not earn.

Heaven is mercy and grace in one place. It is not sending you to Hell that you deserve and granting you access to Heaven that you don't.

John 1:16

And of his fulness have all we received, and grace upon grace.

day no. 17,165: solutions and trade-offs

“When you pass something like the Patriot Act, with much fanfare, in order to enable patriots to spy on the bad guys, what winds up happening is that the act is used to enable bad guys to spy on patriots.” — Douglas Wilson, Mere Christendom

You should never sign into law something you would not want your enemies to use against you. If you think a certain rule change would benefit you now, keep in mind it might not later and if you are the one who signed it into law, you are the one who made it possible for your enemies to thrive in the future when it benefits them more than it does you. Do not be so short-sighted as to profit off of a short-term rule change that long-term may tip the scales in the other direction.

Principles cannot change. Practices can. If you pass a law that gives you the right to practice something that ultimately goes against your core principles, you should not be shocked to discover that it is later used in practice to attack your principles.

"There are no solutions, only trade-offs." — Thomas Sowell

If you think like a liberal in terms of solutions, you will cause more trouble than you fix when you pass your conservative-approved bills, but if you think like a conservative, you will want to reduce the number of laws and legislative actions to a minimum in order to keep government small and limited so that all men may live in peace and quiet without having to deal with more state interference of any kind... even yours.

day no. 17,164: sovereigntish

“Most Christians salute the sovereignty of God but believe in the sovereignty of man.” — R. C. Sproul

The sovereignty of God, like the sufficiency of Scripture, is assented to by more than it is believed in. Many who know enough to say that "God is sovereign" out loud or on their statement of beliefs posted online live like man is ultimately the captain of his own soul. Many who say that the "Bible is the Word of God" treat it like the words of a man that can be taken or left (because again, man is the measure).

Psalm 115:3

Our God is in the heavens: 

He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased.

Sovereignty means that God gets to do what He wants. Not only that, but it means that the pottery does not get to clap back at the Potter and question His decisions. That is where sovereignty often gets diluted by many of its so-called devotees. They are ok with a God who is in charge as long as they get to be the kind of followers who can unsubscribe or refuse to like His posts when they come through their feed.

Is God sovereign or is He good? Yes. Too many assemble under a banner of God's sovereigntish in saying He is free to do as He chooses, while adding, under their breath, that He would never do things they personally find disagreeable.

day no. 17,163: boys to men

“If boys don’t learn, men won’t know.” — Douglas Wilson, Future Men

Manhood must be conveyed. You do not become a man by growing up or growing a beard, you only become a man when a man confirms your manhood. It is like being knighted or like apostolic succession. You cannot be knighted without a knight to convey the title to you. You cannot be an elder in the church of God without elders ahead and above you to confirm you. You cannot confirm your own arrival. You cannot be trusted to grade our own exam. Without another man, you cannot know that you are a man. 

Colossians 3:21

Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.

Fatherlessness is a void that cannot be easily filled. God must by adoption provide fathers where previous men failed or fell short. Boys need men in order to become men. Men must make the time to teach masculinity to boys or we will not have any men. When fathers fail, they provoke their progeny to agent. They leave a lot of boys discouraged and unable to validate themselves through the natural, normal channels that God has provided and so they find synthetic substitutes like gangs or video games.

day no. 17,162: christendom columbus

Blessed be the light of day 

and the holy cross we say 

and the Lord of verity

and the holy trinity. 

Blessed be the immortal soul 

and the Lord who keeps it whole. 

Blessed be the light of day

and he who sends the dark away.

— Christopher Columbus

(from George Grant's Christopher Columbus: The Last Crusader)

Christopher Columbus left his home in order to find (1) a source of gold in the unexplored West to help fund a crusade to take the holy back for Christendom, (2) an alternate route to flank the saracen, and (3) an opportunity to spread the Gospel to unexplored acres of God's creation and unreached peoples of God's handiwork.

The poem above is the prayer he offered to God upon making landfall after traversing the Atlantic. It is the dawn canticle of a man devoted to Christ and keeping the liturgical hours. Christopher Columbus was, as Dr. George Grant contends, the last crusader. He may not have been able to realize his desire to fund a crusade back to the holy land or find a route to outflank the hoardes of Mohammadan heathen, but he did pave a way for the Gospel to bridge the ocean.