Echoes in Eternity

My wife and I caught a matinee yesterday afternoon, and she was gracious enough to let me pick the movie (in other words, no chick flicks). I'd been wanting to see Clint Eastwood's latest (and perhaps last) directorial and acting work, Gran Torino. So that's what we saw. It is AMAZING! I won't ruin any of the plot twists, but suffice it to say that Eastwood should have won a Best Actor AND Best Director Oscar for this story about a man coming to terms with past sins, overcoming racist disdain in a MEANINGFUL way (his salty words don't change, but the meaning behind them does drastically), and sacrificially loving one's neighbors. Large parts of the movie are vintage Eastwood, harkening back to his Josey Wales or Dirty Harry days. I only wish that there was even more of a reliance on faith in God than portrayed in the movie.


[Be aware that there is some violence and a SIGNIFICANT amount of harsh or obscene language.]

Obama intends to overturn Bush's "Conscience Rule." I suppose there are still a few people who claim that he's pro-choice, not pro-abortion. But it would seem that their numbers must be dwindling...

I thought it might be fun (at least, for a nerd like me) to start a Grammar Fundamentals Friday. For awhile, I have had a link on this blog to the left to a site which discusses almost all grammatical questions one might have. This "series" will take that one step further and actually highlight some of the more popular errors in the English language each week. If you have any suggested topics, feel free to share.

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"I can think of a myriad of reasons to do that."

One usually finds myriad in the above form, prefaced by a and followed by of. And due to the times in which we live with a significant lowering of standards in the English language, this is considered by some to be valid. However, if one looks at the original meaning of the word ("countless" or "ten thousand"), it becomes apparent that the proper use of the word is as one would use the word many. In other words, the above sentence should read "I can think of myriad reasons to do that." Unfortunately, I come across this correct use of the term infrequently at best, usually in more classical writers.

Thus ends the first lesson of How to Read and Write Good. I hope to do myriad more of these, hopefully on a weekly basis.

Gross.

This is sweet!

Bryan McInnis is doing a 5-part series of blog posts on Calvinism. So far, it's worth a read!

I am fully convinced of my own total depravity (i.e. that apart from God’s own initiation and empowering grace I am unable to do anything other than sin).
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Not only are our actions fallen and fickle, but our motives are as well. We are thoroughly wretched. Paul had a sense of this in Romans 7 when he proclaimed, “wretched man I am!” This, of course, isn’t to say that humanity (apart from Christ) is unable to do helpful things (I’ll deal with this in the “L” portion); however, I believe it is that case that we cannot do (apart from Christ) holy things. A woman donates the money necessary to construct a new wing for a hospital; that’s helpful. But what’s driving her donation? Paul states in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” In other words, any motive for doing anything (no matter how helpful) other than “for the glory of God” is selfish and sinful. How can one ascribe glory to a God he/she refuses to glorify as God? The intended trust of this proclamation and theological reality is not despair and depression; rather, this truth is to send sinners headlong into the unfailing love of Christ, who bore the penalty for our depravity.

The logical conclusion of Total Depravity is that not only are we unable to choose good, but we are equally unable to choose God. Our depravity is so horribly fallen that we cannot (or will not) seek the cross. We are too in love with sin, too in love with ourselves. This reality causes me to worship. I cannot (or will not) seek God, but He has sought me. This is why the incarnation is such a potent reality. Christ has come to us, claimed us and changed our hearts so that in Him, by His power, we can choose good, truth and beauty.

This is kinda cool.

British police are discussing the employment of unmanned planes to spy on their populace and gather intelligence. I'm sure Dalrymple will have something to say about this Orwellian development. The British are already the most photographed people in the world; the average Brit is recorded 300 times a day on video cameras throughout his country.

This advice regarding family devotions comes from Mark Driscoll:

Step 1. Eat dinner with your entire family regularly.

Step 2. Mom and Dad sit next to one another to lead the family discussion.

Step 3. Open the meal by asking if there is anyone or anything to pray for.

Step 4. Someone opens in prayer and covers any requests. This task should be rotated among family members so that different people take turns learning to pray aloud.

Step 5. Start eating and discuss how everyone’s day went.

Step 6. Have a Bible in front of the parents in a translation that is age-appropriate for the kids’ reading level. Have someone (parent or child) open the Bible, and assign a portion to read aloud while everyone is eating and listening.

Step 7. Parents should note key words and themes in the passage and explain them to the kids on an age-appropriate level.

Step 8. Ask questions about the passage. You may want to begin with having your children summarize what was read—retelling the story or passage outline. Then, ask the following questions: What does this passage teach us about God? What does it say about us or about how God sees us? What does it teach us about our relationships with others?

Step 9. Let the conversation happen naturally, listen carefully to the kids, let them answer the questions, and fill in whatever they miss or lovingly and gently correct whatever they get wrong so as to help them.

Step 10. If the Scriptures convict you of sin, repent as you need to your family, and share appropriately honest parts of your life story so the kids can see Jesus’ work in your life and your need for him too. This demonstrates gospel humility to them.

Step 11. At the end of dinner, ask the kids if they have any questions for you.

Step 12. If you miss a night, or if conversation gets off track, or if your family occasionally just wants to talk about something else, don’t stress—it’s inevitable.

My church is currently reading as a congregation (at least, 600 books were sold this past Sunday to them) Mark Driscoll's recent book, Death by Love. While I have only read a couple chapters thus far, I would strongly recommend it to every Christian who would like to better understand, in clear and accessible terms, how the Cross is meant to transform every area of our lives and annihilate our enslavement to sin.

This is a few months old, but it bears repeating since it is unlikely that many Americans know much about the situation and it helps us better understand what is going on over in Israel and the Middle East. Last summer, Samir Kuntar and four Hezbollah militants (along with a couple hundred bodies of dead Palestinian and Lebanese militants) were traded for the two dead bodies of the Israeli soldiers killed in the lead-up to the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War.

Mr. Kuntar had spent nearly 20 years in Israeli prison (where he earned a degree in Social Studies and married and divorced, so not exactly a Turkish prison) for four murders during a 1979 raid on the Israeli town of Nahariya. With several other men, he broke into the home of the Haran family. The mother and two-year-old daughter Yael hid in a crawlspace while Kuntar led the father and four-year-old daughter away at gunpoint. In her desperation to conceal herself, the mother suffocated her daughter while trying to keep her quiet. Kuntar took the man and his daughter to the beach, where he then executed the father in front of her and then literally bashed in her skull with his rifle. The picture above shows Kuntar's three victims.

Last November, Samir Kuntar met Syria's president, Bashar Assad, who awarded him Syria's highest medal, the Syrian Order of Merit. Sickening, huh?

Oh, and before I forget, former president (but current moral imbecile) Jimmy Carter met with President Assad a couple weeks AFTER Assad gave Kuntar the Order of Merit medal in supposed furtherance of human rights.

Next time you start wondering if Israel is the good guy or the bad guy, remember Einat Haran.

Psalm 28:4

Dalrymple has a brilliant piece this week on Frontpage.com regarding the subtle but inherent racism within much of the movement of multiculturalism (at least, of the kind practiced by many academics and politicians).

When I was a prison doctor, not a few prisoners would demand tranquillizers from me, claiming to be so agitated that they would soon kill someone if they were not calmed down.

This was the kind of blackmail to which some of the doctors, especially the younger ones, did give in; but I quickly learned that it was both morally wrong and inexpedient in practice to do so.
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No man did carry out his threat, however; and I knew from experience that if I gave in to their blackmail I would never hear the end of it.
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Let us now turn from the sublime (prison) to the ridiculous (the British government). In its wisdom, that august institution declared the Dutch member of parliament, Geert Wilders, ... a prohibited immigrant, and refused him entry into our green and pleasant land.

As everyone knows by now, Mr. Wilders made a short film called Fitna (Struggle), arguing in a powerful rhetorical way a causative connection between certain verses in the Koran and brutal acts of modern terrorism. The film is uncompromising, to put it mildly; and whether or not Mr. Wilders’ interpretation of the verses is correct, few could deny that at least some Moslems have taken it to be correct. They have differed from Mr. Wilders only in their moral evaluation of the injunctions that they have both found in them. He thinks cutting off the heads of unbelievers is a bad thing, they think it a good thing.

Those who argued for the exclusion of Mr. Wilders from our haven of peace and prosperity claimed that his presence would stir up trouble, perhaps even violence, and that (therefore) he and his film constituted an incitement to hatred.

This, of course, is ludicrous.
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It is obvious that if anyone were moved to violence by the presence of Mr. Wilders in the country, the responsibility would be the perpetrator’s and the perpetrator’s alone. In a free society, you are at liberty to be as indignant and offended as you choose, by whomever and whatever you choose; but you have to conform your conduct to the law. You have no right to consider your own indignation as evidence in itself of incitement. That way totalitarianism lies.

The contemptible moral cowardice of the British political class was perfectly illustrated by an article that appeared on the website of The Guardian newspaper by the prominent Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, Christopher Huhne. His utter pusillanimity is evident in the following: Fitna’s shocking images of violence and its emotional appeals to anti-Islamic feeling risk causing serious harm to others.
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Let me merely point out that an appeal to anti-Islamic emotions (based, incidentally, upon undeniable, if slanted, evidence) is not incitement to harm Moslems, any more than an appeal to anti-socialist or anti-conservative emotions is an appeal to harm socialists or conservatives. So it is not incitement.

Nor does Mr. Huhne specify which people will be harmed by the images and the feeling. One suspects very strongly that what Mr. Huhne really means is this: that a group of Moslems of undefined size would commit acts of violence if Mr Wilders were allowed in the country. If he had been a prison doctor, Mr. Huhne would have prescribed valium for all he was worth, for whoever demanded it.
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The most heartening thing about this article was the response, particularly by Moslems (or those with Moslem names, whom I assume to have been Moslems).

One said that Mr. Wilders was right and that the offending passages of the Koran should henceforth be removed (voluntarily, not by decree). Of course such tampering with a book that is supposed by the faithful to be the direct word of God presents some logical difficulties; but it so happens that I was speaking not long ago with an enlightened Moslem woman, who claimed to be religious, who told me (not in connection with Mr Wilders) that the Koran had to be interpreted in the light of the fact that it was written many centuries ago in a society very different from any existing now.

Two other Moslems wrote in to say that, while they disliked Mr. Wilders intensely, they felt that Moslems could deal with his argument by argumentation. In other words, they acknowledged that he had an argument, but thought it was mistaken and could be shown to be false.

By banning Mr. Wilders from entry into the country, then, the British government revealed that, at heart, it agrees with, or even went beyond, him: that Moslems are predominantly violent irrational bigots, incapable of holding their own in argument, and of whom it, the government, is physically afraid.

Americans should not be complacent. A few days before last Christmas, I went to one of the Indian restaurants in my small town in England, which is owned and run by Moslems. It was hung with Christmas decorations, and when I left the staff wished me a Merry Christmas and handed me a Christmas card. And then I thought of the Christmas cards I had received from America, with their snivelling, pusillanimous greeting of Happy Holidays, not one of them daring to mention Christmas.

In related news, Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder called America "a nation of cowards" for not properly beating to death the topic of racism by talking about it even more incessantly than we already do.

*Sigh* Multiculturalism and "tolerance" marches on...

[UPDATE] Heather McDonald of City Journal wrote an excellent response to Holder today. You can read it here.

[UPDATE II] Britain continues to put the "cult" into multiculturalism...

This horrible story reeks of "Religion of Peace" irony:

The estranged wife of a Muslim television executive [Muzzammil Hassan] feared for her life after filing for divorce last month from her abusive husband, her attorney said — and was found beheaded Thursday...
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Muzzammil Hassan, who founded Bridges TV in November 2004 to counter anti-Islam stereotypes, surrendered to police Thursday. Hassan touted the network as the "first-ever full-time home for American Muslims," according to a press release.

"Every day on television we are barraged by stories of a 'Muslim extremist, militant, terrorist, or insurgent,'" Hassan said in the 2004 release. "But the stories that are missing are the countless stories of Muslim tolerance, progress, diversity, service and excellence that Bridges TV hopes to tell."

Imagine if someone told you in 19th century America that he was not interested in giving slaves full citizenship, but merely reducing the number of people brought to this country to be slaves. But suppose another person told you that he too wanted to reduce the number of slaves, but proposed to do it by granting them the full citizenship to which they are entitled as a matter of natural justice. Which of the two is really “against slavery” in a full-orbed principled sense? The first wants to reduce the number of slaves, but only while retaining a regime of law that treats an entire class of human beings as subhuman property. The second believes that the juridical infrastructure should reflect the moral truth about enslaved people, namely, that they are in fact human beings made in the image of their Maker who by being held in bondage are denied their fundamental rights. - Francis Beckwith