Yesterday at work I walked past a TV in the cafe and saw the show “The View” was on. It occurred to me to blog a thought on it but I let the thought pass. I was going to say that such a show is a bad idea. It is supposed to be friends having interesting discussions. But how often do you have interesting discussions with your friends? If you’re like me, we hit a good one once a week or so. Not every day. So “The View” means that these people have to work really hard at having an interesting discussion every stinking day.

The result is not brilliant and witty dialogue, it is something that passes for that because the network wants us to think it is brilliant and witty. It is fake. It is a pretense of friendship and intimacy but it isn’t.

So what prompted me to blog on this show after all? Well, you’ve read the title so you know what’s coming. Rosie O’Donnell has once again inserted her foot into her overly large mouth in a public arena. I’ve commented on her previous foibles here. This time she said “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have a separation of church and state.”

Read On…

A few websites have recently undergone updates. One is immediately visible, the other is not and one is now functioning as promised.

Ligioner Ministries’ website update is dramatic and beautiful. The site is now the Ligioner Ministries Media Center. Now you can listen to RC Sproul teach, as you could before, but now video is available as well. Many years ago, when I was first getting turned on to Reformed theology, I used to hang out at this website’s message boards. They are no longer available but they were challenging and edifying. Now the Ligionier site looks crisp and professional with pleanty of good content. Great stuff and well done.

John Piper’s ministry, Desiring God, did a recent update of their website but you wouldn’t notice it from the home page that much. I didn’t notice the change. But they have added more content and tried to make navigation easier. Adding more of John Piper’s work and making it available on the web is a good thing in my book.

Free Derek Webb is now up and running. You can go there and get a free download of Derek’s album Mockingbird. I bought it when it first came out but now you can get the whole thing for free. Sweet deal. A New Law really hit me.

The video I linked to where Darth Vader messes with his underlings got taken down from YouTube for “terms of use violations.” Too bad, that one cracked me up. I’d check it out when I needed a good laugh.Not nearly as funny but a good one none the less is this parody of failed Star Wars screen tests.UPDATE: I found another copy of the video I originally mentioned and update the link on that entry. Enjoy.

I saw a bumper sticker this morning that read “Minds are like parachutes, they only work when they’re OPEN”. The back of the SUV had some tie-dyed peace symbol magnets so you know what that meant. As I thought about it I wondered how accurate that synthetic simile might be. It occured to me that a parachute only “works” when it is opened and filled with wind. If the parachute is opened and yet has such a large hole it can’t be filled with air, it is useless.

Biblically, the Holy Spirit is compared to wind. In John chapter 3, Jesus says that the wind blows where it may and those born of the Spirit are like that. The word for ‘spirit’ (??????) can mean spirit, wind or breath. So, if we import that Biblical understanding to that bumper sticker then they are correct. Minds are indeed like parachutes, they work, they keep you safe and alive, only when they’re opened and filled with the Spirit.

I can think of a couple of sections of tollway (not to mention toll booths) I’d like to blow up. This has got to be the luckiest motorist in the country!

About a year or so ago I discovered the Metra. The train runs from near our home to right next to where I work. When gas first hit $3/gal I decided to give it a shot. It was so great to take 3/4 of my travel time and turn it into productive reading time. When school started back up, I had to drive on school days but I took the train otherwise. When my son got a job at my store, he mostly took the train.

I have to get to the Libertyville train station about 25 minutes before my train in order to get a parking spot. I didn’t mind, that was 25 minutes in the Caribou Coffee to do some reading and I got an americano to boot. Well, the other day I was sitting there waiting for my train when I see a bus pull up in front of the coffee shop. I quickly wrote down the route number in my Franklin and forgot about it. When I remembered to look it up, it turns out that the bus route runs fairly close to my home and gets me to the train station just before my train comes. What’s not to love?

So Friday I drove up the street to a bus stop on the route map and waited for the bus. I had to leave earlier and the price of the bus ride each way is the same price as parking. Beginning to sound like a wash, except that I was almost a day behind in my reading schedule. ¹I figure out what I have to have read by when, then I count out ‘reading day’ which are non-Sundays and days when I don’t have an evening class. So I found a seat on the bus and started reading. By the time I got to the train station I was fairly caught up. I got a coffee and got on the train. By the time I got to Deerfield, I was almost done. That afternoon on the way home, I finished all the reading of all the books I had with me. Plus got started on a course pack that I got too late to fit into the schedule but one that is due by Thursday. That left a book at home to finish.

Boring post, but the point is a good one. If you are a seminary student and you’re overwhelmed with your reading schedule, public transportation may help you out.

Quentin Schultze has a short but interesting article on the misuse of technology in worship at byFath.com.

Go read but let me just add my 2¢ worth. Technology is neutral. It is not inherently good or bad, but it can be used in ways that are helpful or not. When the technology supports the worship, it is good. Sort of like using illustrations in a sermon. If they support the point of the text, they are good. When they so overshadow the Bible, they are bad. Air conditioning is a good use of technology unless it is too loud or too cold.

Same thing with PowerPoint. If it supports the preaching of the word and the worship of God (I’m not sure PowerPoint has any place in the administration of the sacraments) then it is good. If the technology moves to center stage it is not. When a PowerPoint presentation is so busy and cluttered, or filled with so many beautiful pictures that the presentation is what the people are talking about in the narthex (or lobby or coffee corner or whatever) then it is a bad thing.

The point is that we need to be on guard against distractions in worship. Where possible, we should eliminate the distractions. That isn’t to say that you can’t worship with distractions, you can. In a creative access Asian context we worshipped in the city park with people milling around. We were also keeping an eye out for the police. And yet, it was a God-honoring worship service. But when we’re in settings where we have more control over the environment, we need to take care. PowerPoint for the sake of PowerPoint is not good. A video because “everyone has video these days” is probably not constructive.

At the same time, it must be added that if a video illustrates a point and is well done, (and is SHORT) it might be helpful in preaching. I have noticed that when a quote is put upon the projector while being read, I tend to remember it better.

Let’s just make sure we’re intentional in worship and not too casual or ‘hip’.

First day (night, actually) of school is today. I have The Prophetic and Poetic Books with Dr. VanGemeren. I am really, really looking forward to this class.

What is really cool is that I am on top of the reading so far. We had two books assigned to be read before the final and I did them over the summer and knocked them out. After that, I have to have certain pages read by class dates. So I count the pages and divide them amongst “reading days”. Reading days omit Sunday and the day of the class since it is an evening class and I work all day. Then I grab the Franklin and write down a page range for each day and then scratch them out as I complete them. So far I’m ahead. This cannot last. By mid-term I am usually hopelessly behind. But I’m going to try to stay on top of it.

So now we’re back in that head-down, plowing ahead posture as I enter the homestretch of my seminary time. Last year. Three classes this term and one with an internship next term.

Thursday we dropped our son off at college. I have a child in college. I am old enough to have a child in college. Of course, I’m proud as punch that he’s there. He’s starting his first year as a chemistry major at Wheaton College. About an hour away.

It hasn’t hit us yet that he’s gone. So far it just feels like he’s away for the weekend or something. I think it will really hit us when he’s been gone a few weeks. His youngest sister, Gillian, missed him right away. As we were moving him in to his new dorm room, she called weeping. Bernadette, however, was busy clearing out his old room and moving in her new “distressed” shabby chic stuff.

We all drove down to Wheaton this AM and took him out to church and lunch and bought him a few more things for the dorm. We met his roommate, a fine, cultured Southern gentleman who is studying archeology.

And I have a son in college.