I’ve just finished my last final exam of the term. Shew. Hope I passed. I’ll be leaving tomorrow for a short term mission trip to Asia for a few weeks. No updates after tonight.

Not sure about progress on getting the comments fixed, I do have a few ideas to try. Later, will work on them latter.

For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind,
and declares to man what is his thought,
who makes the morning darkness,
and treads on the heights of the earth?
the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name! – Amos 4:13 (ESV)

Alice Cooper is indeed a Christian. I’ve heard he golfs with RC Sproul too. Go figure. I guess his album “Alice Cooper Goes to Hell” is now a misnomer. BTW, he is not Fred Rogers’ son, his birth name was Vince Furnier before he changed it to Alice Cooper.

I recently bought the Master & Commander soundtrack. Now I have the music stuck in my head. I’m listening to it so much I’m afraid I’m wearing grooves in my iPod or something. I can’t wait till this passes.

Since I first started using Microsoft Office on the Mac (after years of using it on the PC) I have said a number of times that the Mac version is better. Well now none other than Time Magazine agrees! Here’s the heart of it:

My verdict: Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac is clearly superior to its PC counterpart for most users.

Last fall Microsoft put out a bloated update of Office for Windows that focused more on collaborating with other users than on making it easier for you to get your own work done. The streamlined Office for Mac puts individuals first. Developers, developers, developers indeed!

Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain offering and a drink offering
for the LORD your God? – Joel 2:14

It is good to read this stated so clearly. I tend to think that the things I offer to God are gifts to him from me. I give him 10% of my money (aren’t I generous?) and I give him my future career plans (provided he handles them the way I want) and I give him… You get the idea.

In Joel, the terrible “day of the Lord” is threatened and yet God makes this promise. Though his army will march across the earth and leave destruction in its dreadful wake (2:1-11), yet he calls for repentance and faith even in light of the brimming destruction and wrath (2:12-17).

So why is it that I don’t get that? Why is it that when I consider my life I feel like I’ve made a terrible decision in coming to seminary? Why is it that I demand that God tell me why I’m doing this? I’m like Job, “I will say to God, Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me.” (Job 10:2). My underlying assumption is that God owes me an explanation. He has to tell my why he has called me to this and what he wants me to do with it or I cannot obey in the doing.

When will I remember (and act like it) that anything I have to give to God is only what he has already given me? Am I offering to God my life which he didn’t already own? Do I control my future so that I can direct it to God or away from him? Just who do I think I am? God may yet leave me days which I can give back to him as a grain offering and life that I may pour it out as a drink offering. Either way, if he does or doesn’t I’m not giving to him anything which he didn’t already own.

This whole “living sacrifice” thing is difficult. It sure is hard to stay on the altar. Sometimes I wish what critics of Calvinism say were true, I wish I was a robot.

In Jeremiah 31 there is an interesting proverb about fathers eating bitter grapes and children’s teeth being on edge. It seems significant to me (see my paper on paedobaptism) but I haven’t heard others make much of it. Dr. Carson today expressed my thoughts on the subject better than I have. He pointed out that the proverb demonstrates that the Old Covenant was tribal and representative. If a father sinned, his family came under judgment (see Joshua 7 and be honest, it only talks about the father’s guilt not his family’s yet they were all stoned), when David sinned the nation was punished, and so on. But the contrast is that in the New Covenant it won’t be like that. “Everyone will die for his own sin” (Jer 31:30). The nature of the New Covenant is that it is no longer tribal and representative.

In the discussion about infant baptism, those who hold a baptistic view are often challenged to produce a verse that commands the end of automatic infant inclusion in the covenant. Of course one cannot be found or we would not have a debate. What has happened is not that it simply ceased, but the very nature of the covenant has changed. Jeremiah 31:29-30 shows that and then the rest of the chapter goes on to restate it in the repeated refrain “from the least to the greatest.” This business about no one teaching his neighbor “know the Lord” (verse 34) is not abrogating teaching in the New Covenant (see 1Co 12:28-19 and Eph 4:11, Heb 5:12) but it is abrogating a representative teaching office where one person has the “inside track” to God and the other doesn’t. We all have the Spirit in the New Covenant (1 Jn 2:27).

A while ago Palm announced that it would not support the Macintosh in its next version of software. That and my run in with their customer support had to thinking about switching to a Pocket PC. Palm has sort of a connection to Apple. Some of the team that developed the Newton at Apple went on to start Palm. They left Palm and started Handspring because they felt Palm was heading in the wrong direction. Last year Handspring was bought out by Palm so I guess they were wrong. Anyway, from the beginning of Palm they have supported the Mac.

Fortunately, Palm reevaluated this decision and decided to stick with the Mac. Thank you Palm!

How do you know the North Korean government is lying? When they claim that people rushed in to burning buildings to save portraits of Kim-Jong Il it is a pretty sure thing! Isn’t it possible that they might have gone into burning buildings to save people? That is the thing about despots, their egos are so big they probably believe junk like this and expect others to also.

When it comes to the charismatic gifts of the Spirit, I am not a cessationist. I just don’t see any good exegetical grounds for it. There are some philosophical reasons, but none that come from the Bible itself.

At the same time, I am not a Charismatic either. A lot of what is passed off as “spiritual” is nonsense and self-centered. But not all of it. Some people express the “spiritual gifts” in quite biblical ways. I have seen some things while on short-term missions trips that I cannot simply pass off as “enthusiasm” either.

The name for this position has been “open but cautious”; open to the possibility of miraculous gifts, but cautious about what we see going on. But that name, while accurate, is somewhat clumsy. Charismatics and cessationists get nice, one word names for their positions. Well, I think I’ve come across one for my position: non-normative. The gifts still function today but they are not the normal experience.

The big problem with coining a name like that is getting it publicized so that other people actually have a clue as to what it means. We “non-normativists” need a big name to write a paper on it or something.

Freedom isn’t free. Nor is it dumb.