That's no moon

It's a moonbat!

h/t Tim from GairneyBridge

Reason #28 that Obama is Not the Messiah

The real Messiah actually knew how to build a cabinet and make sure that his appointees paid their taxes.

Teh Interweb Makes Us Weird

Can I get an AMEN?

Whether it's the depraved erotic fetishes out there or the bizarro religious nuts, the internet has normalized elements of cultural malignancy. Want proof? I'll say this: I had an unnerving revelation after I gave a communion meditation concerning Euodia & Synteche gathering around one bread and one cup.

Thanks, Wondermark!

Enough XP Points to get to Level Up?

I guess it depends on who you ask...

Archaeological Affirmations

Since turnabout is fair play, here's an interesting archaeological tidbit.

It seems the seal of one of the enemies of Jeremiah has been unearthed. The Paleo-Hebrew script reads Gedalyahu ben Pashur, who served as minister to King Zedekiah (597-586 BC).

Gedaliah (as we know him in the English transliteration) petitioned King Zedekiah to shut Jeremiah up. They won their case and threw the prophet into a cistern.

What's the takeaway?

1) Just because you occupy a place of influence with people who have power does not mean you are with people who have authority. Zedekiah and his advisors had all kinds of power...but because they refused to listen to the one man who had God's authority to speak, we hold them in no esteem. Indeed, we'd scarcely know or care about them except that they have a part to play in the life of the man who spoke with authority - the man who spoke God's words.

2) If you want to be part of a faith tradition that makes a real difference in the world, make sure your faith tradition has actually interacted with the world. All kinds of New Agers and non-realists in religion insist that faith is an entirely subjective experience. The only "objective" element is what happens when you act like a better person or some such.

Well, while I can't disagree that changing us changes the world, I would say that it's difficult to see the difference between that sort of religion and a philosophy of life.

There is a God...someone out there, who also chooses to make a dwelling place with humankind. If you know that you can't make it on your own, then you just might need something more than your own inner reserves. And if you're going to trust in that something, you'd better make sure that something can act.

Christianity affirms that God acts in history, pointing to the incarnation of Jesus Christ as proof that God does indeed choose to be with us and for us, rather than against us or apathetic towards us. And we have the Scriptures which detail how God has stepped into historical events and changed their course or guided the people.

If your faith can't make that claim and have it backed up by rational evidence, may I have the privilege of pointing you from the shifting sands of life to a faith built on bedrock? A faith that consists of loving relationship with the Rock himself?

Creativity an essential to religion

CAVEAT: I'm not PCUSA anymore, so this is tongue-in-cheek. (I don't have the class that Will Spotts shows in just staying out of it.) But it's my blog, so I can vent like that. This post was written before I was tidily swept out of the ordination process. However, with the recent GAPJC ruling, I think it's relevant. The real mess isn't about THE GAY, but about THE GOSPEL. Disobedience to evangelical truth lies at the root of the rot - across the mainlines sidelines.

At the bidding of Clifton Kirkpatrick, I was reflecting on what is essential to Christian faith. Since the only folks who will determine if I've met those essentials (and CPE) are in Holston Presbytery, I decided it best to visit the teaching ministry of our most Reformed blogger, who - unlike me - is able to hold ordained ministerial status. I found there an essential of creativity. With that in hand, I thought about the general impulse of the blog and decided I'd better get about the task of finding a politicized church where creativity was an essential (rather than all those essentials of the Christian faith he has trouble accepting or understanding, like the full deity of Christ and his second advent, the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the Triune personhood of God).

I think I finally found one. It essentializes creativity, looks for logical / scientific / evolutionary answers to the world's problems, holds that Christian history is full of human horrors caused by supernaturalistic dogma, forbids thought of an afterlife, thinks that religion is best occupied by political action rather than doctrinal issues, and is all about taking care of the environment. They even emphasize women clergy! (That's one better than those NWACko winos!)

MITHras BUSTERS

This is me being dorky in the British Museum. I saw this Mithraic tauroctony and had an idea that could only make punsters grimace, my Latin and NT teachers grin, and my apologist friends clap.



(Full size here.)

Somebody should tell the bull to watch out for his gonads.

And yes...that is a poorly Photoshopped Irish crozier I'm using for the attack! Watch out, or I just might turn into a mitred smiter!