This is where voter apathy can lead. Let it serve as a warning.

Speaking of the Far West Region Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society at Talbot Seminary, there was an excellent parallel session give by Erik Thoennes of Talbot on the Impassibility of God. During the great presentation, he showed a long quote from the Wesylean hymn “Amazing Love”. At the end of the session, he displayed it again and had us all stand and sing then he closed in prayer. This is fantastic because it is where theology should lead: worship. If our theology doesn’t lead us to worship God better, it is a waste of time. Thank you Dr. Thoennes!

Hey, check it out, Tristan Immanuel has posted Part 3, “How do you know baptism replaces circumcision?” of his two part brief on baptism. This is not his response to my critique but it is a beginning of an answer. I like the way it starts:

In response to my latest series on infant baptism, one critic wrote, “In your articles you state that the New Testament doesn’t argue against infant baptism, so the practice of infant baptism hasn’t changed since Old Testament times. But you never cite a verse in the Old Testament that indicates that infant baptism was ever practiced. If it was never practiced, why should it be continued?”Cute. Very cute. But it misses the mark completely.

I think this is a hoot! Can’t wait to see where it all goes.

Friday I was at the Far West Region Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society at Talbot Seminary. The plenary speaker was Dr. Mark Seifrid, Professor of New Testament at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I really liked one thing he said:

We need to think of ourselves as ‘Reforming Christians’ first and only secondarily as Protestants. 

I think this is great since I really believe we need to get over the Reformation and press on. Rome chose her path and we’ve clung to the biblical truth. Let’s stop worrying about Rome and focus on the work of the Kingdom. We can deal with Rome when they get in the way but we don’t need to go pick fights. She doesn’t have the political power to burn Reformers at the stake any more.

It appears that the Mosaic dietary laws didn’t just disappear over night. I was reading Herman Witsius’ The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man on “the abrogation of the old testament” (I assume he means covenant). Witsius makes an interesting observation:

But this liberty was for some time not sufficiently known, even to the apostles themselves; till Peter was instructed therein by a heavenly vision, Acts x.11. 5thly. Then, by a solemn decree of a synod of the apostles, under presidence of the Holy Spirit, it was ordained, that a yoke was not to be put on the neck of the disciples besides those few things necessary for that time; namely, to abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled; to which was subjoined, though of a different kind, fornication, Acts xv. 10, 28, 29. 6thly afterwards Paul preached freedom from these things also, excepting fornication, that being contrary to the moral law, 1 Cor viii. 4, 8 and x. 25-29. 

Back then they used italics in strange places. I left them here. Oh well, back to studying for Sunday School. Next class is on the civil laws of the Mosaic Covenant.

By the way, I hate The Who. Roger Daultry’s voice drives me nuts.

Here’s one that’s bugged me for a while. There’s a CLARINEX commercial I’ve been hearing on the radio. It starts out with the Overture to Tommy playing and then some dude comes on and says something like:

Every day millions of people in the United States wake up to billions of allergens.Introducing CLARINEX brand of desloratadine tablets.One tiny blue pill.CLARINEX provides receptor protection to help block histamine. 

First, so what if people wake up to billions of allergens? Many of those millions in the US don’t have a problem fighting those allergens. Second, CLARINEX is one tiny blue pill. AND? I think where they’re going is to get you to think “one tiny blue pill will help you fight those allergens” without saying it. Finally, why would you want to block histamine? From their website here’s what histamine is supposed to do:

Histamine, in turn, makes your tissues secrete fluids and become irritated. The result is a runny nose, nasal congestion, sneezing, watery eyes, and itching of the nose, ears, and throat. Your body is trying to expel the pollen you breathed in. 

Ah, so since I wake to billions of allergens, I want to take one tiny blue pill to make my body stop producing histamine so that it can’t expel the pollen. So CLARINEX wants me to go to my doctor to get a perscription for a drug that will shut down my body’s natural defense against those allergens. Got it. I think I’ll pass.This kind of market-driven logic is one reason why my family practices homeopathy.

AMD knows what horse their wagon is hitched to.[Added at 10:13] And AMD responds like a good lap dog.

Global Music Sales Down Summary: Global music sales fell by 5% last yearComment: The music industry is blaming piracy, download services and copying (which I think they think are all the same thing.) The recording labels have even started putting copy protection on some CDs. That protection has gone so far as to crash computers and dork up CD-ROM drives. Fortunately for me, that protection so far has been limited to bands that make me gag like Celine Dion and ‘N Sync so it hasn’t hit home yet. Here’s a quote that leads me to my summary:

“We have the right to protect our exisitng business, and we have a moral duty to protect our artists and songwriters,” said Mr Jorgen Larsen, chief executive of Universal Music International.

Right. To translate that, technology is changing and they can’t keep up. Dinosaurs are facing extinction and they’re not happy. I like iTunes and wish I had an iPod. When cassettes and vinyl records were all we had, I used to love to mix tapes. That’s all I’m interested in and have a legal right to. Napster has been shut down for, what, two years now? I don’t think the music industry can point to copying and piracy as the problem alone. There has always been piracy and always will be. Perhaps, and I’m really going out on a limb here, perhaps $20 for a CD is just too much?

Sometimes art is just weird Summary: A painting of a black square was dropped from a Russian auction because it was “too precious to sell.”Comment: Avant garde is one thing but for goodness sake, this is a black square! How much vision does that take? My kids have created that before but we didn’t put it in a frame. Wow, I mean it was predicted the painting would sell for between $2 million and $10 million! For a black square! Reminds me of the old song by Dire Straits, In The Gallery from their self-titled first album:And then you get an artist says he doesn’t want to paint at allHe takes an empty canvas and sticks it on the wallThe birds of feather all the phonies and all of the fakesWhile the dealers they get togetherAnd they decide who gets the breaksAnd who’s going to be in the gallery