If you want to read about a family heading from Rhode Island to Wales on a small (homemade) sailboat, you could follow my brother’s blog. That’s the kind of stuff you want to do if you’re into sailing and want to give your kids an adventurous upbringing.

If you want to read the history, you could buy his book.

Forgive me for impinging as it really is none of my business. but the recent stuff on Northland-the-mother-of-my-soul and what has now been designated as RAM and, of course, the Bix, has at least for me managed to put the fun back into fundamentalism. So the main high editor (I think) of the internet roach motel has put out an editorial calling for debate. Which brings up a really good and intriguing question: Who are they going to get to argue intelligently for the non RAM side? Will they actually come out with someone coherent? Will somebody who can actually think his way out of a wet paper bag this time stand forth and make arguments, take on the arguments made, consider with reason and clarity the opposite side and advance the conversation?

I think the RAMs would be delighted, actually.

I don’t know if you have, but I have come across believers who seem to think that the imperatives “be fruitful and multiply” in Genesis are commands. They draw the conclusion from this that it is the duty of humans everywhere, and especially of Christians, to be busy reproducing themselves. This belief sometimes even afflicts persons who have studied grammar in general and Hebrew grammar in particular and do not manage to draw the conclusion that imperatives are used for a range of syntactical functions. They assume that if the mode is imperative, the intent is a command.

But an imperative is not always used to command. When we plead we use the imperative mode, but we do not use it to command. When we persuade, we may resort to the imperative mode, but we do not therefore command. God, of course, is the being best suited to command. And how God commands! But there is something else God is eminently suited to do which requires the imperative mode but does not exactly function as a direct command: God blesses. It can be viewed as a command if it is taken as the same command made to plants and trees. Let’s assume they are commanded to be fruitful and multiply after their kind. Fine, and there is a sense in which it is a command they cannot resist. But it is worth pointing out that plants don’t really have a choice. The whole point of making the blessing of fertility a command is to drive people to a choice, isn’t it? If we make it a command we expect obedience or disobedience.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be a command, but it should make us think about how exactly we are to take the imperative. That is is a blessing means that nothing can stop the fructification and multiplication of these things, and that that is what God intended. Think about it: after the brutality and carnage of the last century, in spite of the war on the unborn and everything else the human race is doing there are more humans than ever before. Why? Because nobody can revoke God’s blessing. That is the imperative power of that mode of speech. It isn’t because God needs us to be diligently reproductive or we’ll somehow also fail in that area.

Which brings me to the so-called Cultural Mandate–an irritating term. Is it a command? You subdue the earth? Christians, engage the world! Christians use it as something to be obeyed or disobeyed. But is it? Or does it work like a blessing, meaning that the world will become what we human beings want? I think the latter, and I think what it works out to is that it gives us the power to make the world what we want. I read about WWI and I think: we made the world what we wanted. I think of the old fear of running out of oil and now see that we now have more than ever before: we make the world what we want it to be. The danger of this blessing is that we make of the world what we want it to be. I don’t mean individuals arbitrarily, but all of us in concert as in the tower of Babel. Now in the more fragmentary way after being divided, but we still manage largish chunks. Think of the tyrannizing image Richard Weaver speaks about. We believe what we want so we can do what we want and we make the world what we want it to be. That is the power of a dream, a metaphysical dream of the world.

I had not washed the car since buying it back in September, having meant to for a long time without meaning to enough to actually do so. Lured by the easy convenience of the gas station where I stop every Thursday morning regardless of the state of the tank, at last I found no other excuses to put the thing off.

So a car wash happened.

It turns out the passenger-side mirror had been previously semidetached and subsequently pasted on. It came out wet and dangling from the wires which (still) give me the luxury of adjusting the mirrors without great effort while driving. Note to self: we are not in Minnesota where the average car wash is touch-free.

Now I’m in the market for some good strong glue.

I don’t think anybody is too worked up nowadays about prayer in public schools. People were worked up for a while, weren’t they? But what happened is that people pulled out of the public school system and there was a growth of alternatives. Was it all bad? Of course in a way this is shortsighted of me. I’m not looking far enough back. On the other hand, I think we Christians have operated on the idea that this world is properly ours and amenable to our purposes. In many ways it is: we have to live here for a while. But the remotest West has long been moved clean out of middle earth where all dwelling places however fair are doomed.

Now we have the redefinition of marriage. It has come to a whole lot of the rest of the world and now seems upon us hard. The question is, what difference does it make? Will it increase the number of persons practicing sexual perversions because it is socially accepted now? I think it might, but I don’t think it will that much. I think pornography is more to blame there, and if you don’t think pornography is already socially acceptable, where have you been living? I do think this redefinition of marriage is another thoughtless step toward barbarity, but is it not the kind of step that comes on a downhill course at what is practically a run? It is hard to prevent, given all that went before. And we can argue all we want that it is really about redefining marriage–because it is–and we can even get our notions about marriage straight and clear, but is the whole thing really about reasoned arguments and civilized consideration?

I don’t think it is, not in the wider context at least. I don’t know if this redefinition of marriage can or can’t be stopped, but I doubt very much at this point that reasoned consideration is what will take place at large. And I am not all that interested in the outcome of all this moment, whatever it may be. I do think it is good for us who are forced seriously to consider it so that we get our ideas straight. Some of us will value marriage for what it truly is a whole lot more because of this present step in a prolonged debauch of the idea. (We have reached the point at which they can attack the very word, and it is instructive to think why that is.) This clarity and the considerations we are forced to make may be too late to address the wider situation; so was Edwards’ Religious Affections.

No doubt it is bad for language–there’s where the lie takes place and where terms are debauched and perverted, and that is a great loss. We know the word ‘gay’ has taken a turn for the worse, but it was a silly word to begin with and lent itself to it. We also have received into our vocabulary the amorphous word ‘homophobia’, a duplicitous weasel word. But that does not mean these words cannot be used, cannot be seized upon and refined with irony, and maybe irony can be forged and wrought and cast. They will never be the same, but they need not remain what they are. I don’t know about the word ‘marriage’ though, and that is an important word.

The problem is our grip on truth. But doesn’t our grip on truth grow even in such moments of diminished grasp? Doesn’t marriage now have to retreat? Marriage in Western Civilization has come out of the church, and as a result we are seeing what we see. Our civilization has come out of the church and leaving those foundations, those columns and buttresses, what has it got to hold up windows with, or roofs? Marriage has to retreat back into the church, doesn’t it? So I wonder if the evil we are facing is entirely bad.

Do you know what I heard this Sunday? A strong call to God’s people to come out of the world, that harlot Babylon, long after I had given up on hearing anything stronger than assurance in the OPC. Not wild or imaginative, but a sober, strong warning to come out from the world’s degenerate pleasures. The world is looking more drunk and promiscuous, and for so many of us who are not persuaded by reasons, whom arguments can no longer move, the inevitability of the choice and the inevitability of seriousness just for the sake of survival is going to be a very good thing. We live so much as if the course and policies of this world are the most important thing. We act as if the worst thing that could happen is that the church be persecuted. But the worst thing that can happen to God’s people is not persecution, it is apostasy, and we have more than enough of that. Perhaps I am ridiculous to think so, but the degeneration of our civilization and this new barbarity in a way is welcome because it allows us to draw clear lines.

Of course the question is, will we? Or perhaps it is, can we? We have retreated and now begin to suspect ourselves under siege. I guess I’m glad that we seem to be coming to a point where we can no longer retreat. The lines have to show up as we throw up defenses.  Something has to make us serious, and obviously reasons and arguments have not. Perhaps grim days are ahead for us, even uncomfortable days. But perhaps also a better Christian life, however diminished.

I don’t know if you’ve glanced through St. Andrew of Crete’s great canon. There is a lot of repentance in there. It was Christianity in another age, when they seriously worried about being seduced to such an extent that some ruined their health with their fastings and vigils. I was glad to sing the hymn Andrew had a part in recently: the pastor calling us out of Babylon picked it.

Christian, dost thou hear them, how they speak thee fair?
“Always fast and vigil? Always watch and prayer?”
Christian, answer boldly: “While I breathe I pray!”
Peace shall follow battle, night shall end in day.

In our church, he is the young and what he is doing somehow seems in contrast with the old–it is new and fresh-feeling, as if we had somehow stopped retreating. I hope it is a symbol. I know some people no longer hope and they think it will only just get worse. But I’m an amilennialist and no premilennialist, so I no longer suffocate that way.* And let it get worse if it must, but let some stand and fight. We must if there is to be any church, and so we know some will, however few.

Out of the fall of Rome came The City of God–an articulation of a vision of a City no longer in this world, the clarity of which and greatness might not be altogether obvious to some, even if the historical consciousness it shapes helps clarify our dim apprehension of the situation we face. Things have been better, but I think things have also been worse. After Rome fell, there gradually came a Christian culture, not before. What will come a thousand years from now of the fall of Christendom? If these are not times to live for, maybe those are. What we have lost did not come without effort.

____________
*Postmilennialism: it is getting better. Premilennialism: it is getting worse. Amilennialism: it is getting on.

One of the things about these new light ‘bulbs’ is that we’re still stuck in the old patterns of making them–kind of like when cars were still like coaches. One can’t help feeling that will change–the clumsy, screw-in parts and the connections. When will they get simple tubes that slide and snap into place? Connections nowadays ought to be more streamlined.

And then there will be a whole world of new lamp shapes to be had, it seems to me.

I observe because we got an apartment with some of them in it–in the kitchen. One of them has reached the end of its not quite so long life and apparently it is full of deadly mercury. How long before that is turned against? Probably not long, as my heart is no longer so cold toward some of these new glowing tubes.

I’m kind of busy rewritting the story of Tobias. It’s going well.

I thought of it while walking, the other day, and I wrote the first draft of it at Caribou under the influence of a medium something–not whatever Colombian stuff they had because, like Ethiopian, it tends to be earthy and I don’t like that much.

-So two things to remark there: (1) that I do Caribou whenever I can here. Starbucks has become a huge squatting ubiquitous giant in a way Caribou is not that I’m more inclined to feel sorry for Caribou now. It doesn’t even seem as trendy as once it did–though I’m sure it still is. Besides, there’s no room inside the Starbucks around here–not genially designed. (2) We are studying the intertestamental period with our highly knowledgeable Sunday school teacher and he had us read Tobias. It is an engaging story most easy to read and sheds all kinds of light. I’d read it formerly, but not to so much advantage as recently. This Sunday school teacher–have I mentioned this before?–teaches Semitic languages at OSU and is awfully decent.-

Now I’m typing my story up and it is going very, very well. I think it will be one of the best things I’ve ever written.

Or borrowed. Which, I understand, is what Shakespeare did, and look how well it worked for him. I mean, he obviously had loads of talent and yet there he is scrounging around recycling plots and stuff. How much more then should not I? And isn’t that what Lewis did with Till We Have Faces? Yes, a myth retold. Maybe I should read the original there to learn more tips. So now not only can I read with an eye to tips, but with an eye to borrowing. And Tokien lifted plots, for example Kullervo from the Kalevala for the Narn i Hîn Húrin. In fact, there is every reason to do it if one wants to become respectable, and I think the apocrypha is in the public domain by now.

It just feels weird.

Maybe it is all this unanticipated respectability I feel about to rush on me all at once. It should give my works the magisterial resonance of tradition, I reckon. I’ll probably be famous. Save the culture and what not. I want to do it a lot.

Did you know the (T)GC is now manifesting itself in a Spanish equivalent? CpeE is, I suppose, the abbrev. I’m keeping my eye on it (I haven’t ever followed the English version) for very particular reasons: from time to time I’ll be featured.

See how famous I can get. I am not sure why exactly the Lord awarded me a piece of the action, but I intend to enjoy it while it lasts. Nobody has asked me about my convictions and nobody has asked me whether I even believe in what we’re doing–which is kind of a relief. I don’t intend to say.

Isn’t everybody for the Gospel, after all? Of course, of course we are, so that settles that.

We have to crank out one thing a month and not exceed 2000 words–which I don’t expect I shall. So of course it probably has to be innocuous and arguably edifying and not too penetrating. The best coalitional let’s-all-get-along bland which is the reason most of us don’t read TGC blogs in the first place. I send it over to some chaps who volunteer (I was going to qualify that with ‘also’ but I am more volunteered than volunteering–not that I have scruples about it, let me hasten to add), and they kind of work over the expression and grammar. I don’t know if they reshape my statements because I don’t re-read it before approving it, but I doubt they do. And if they make me famous, so be it, you know? I can hire them as ghostwriters at that point.

I’m not sure why they didn’t pick somebody with a bit more glib charisma though. Of all my preposterous family I’m the least personable and friendly. I don’t make friends easily and I don’t really like to talk unless it is an interesting conversation. As for small talk, it isn’t something I’ve gone in for or am even sure I understand. When people do all the dumb jokes they do in society, the best I can usually manage is a wan smile. How am I supposed to deal with the inevitable notoriety? With rubbing shoulders with the great conference speakers? If you blog along, and some famous guy is booked, they’re liable to ask you to fill in at a conference, aren’t they?

Well, maybe not.

I am interested in my profile when it comes up, if ever: what they’ve done to airbrush it. A pastor-in-training (not ongoing) who now does customer service living in Columbus (of all places) OH and blogging in Spanish (because how boring would it be to have natives), JZ is a Baptist member (in process) of an OPC congregation. His greatest aspiration is to write Science Fiction (though that hasn’t worked out so far, but this is closer than expected!).

The problem for those who operate on the basis of prejudice as if these were principles and who count opinions as if they were convictions (which is all of us, some of the time, but should be as we mature increasingly less) is that whether they suspect their own principles and convictions or not, they have every reason to be suspicious of everybody else’s because they simply don’t behave the way they themselves do. Sometimes, I suppose, you will have enough people with similar enough prejudices to all agree and confirm each other. But then prejudices being what they are, forming large consensuses of prejudices would require machinery on the scale of Hollywood . . .

Of course you can criticize those prevailing prejudices on the basis of your own private prejudices. And if you don’t have principles, prejudices are all you have to go on. You will end up uneasy if you just operate on prejudice, because prejudice does not lend itself to understanding. At least it seems to me that that is the difference between a prejudice and a principle–a principle comes with understanding, some basis of certainty and intelligibility whereas a prejudice is largely unexamined. What you need is something better than prejudices. You need to be freed more and more from operating on the basis of prejudice even if you start out with a pretty good set of guiding prejudices.

So there are two questions you need to answer.

1 Where do you get principles?
2 How do you put them to good use?

Those are basic and important questions. They are the kinds of questions Socrates, Plato and Aristotle would ask; good questions. There are long implications in the answers we provide for each.

Christians of all sorts will readily answer that (some/most/all, and it does vary) principles come from the Bible, and they are correct. God reveals certainties in Scripture. He shines precious certainties out of the realm of eternity, things that are permanent and can be counted on, things that are true: principles upon which we can operate.

What this brings us to is the importance of hermeneutics. How do you handle the Scripture? How are these principles harvested out of a book written by men in the realm of time–change–impermanence?

Do you read it like any other book or not like any other book? And the answer to that is not as straightforward as it seems, mostly because the question is wrongly put. It is not a matter of one or the other, you see. The Bible is ordinary human writing and never is it less, but it is certainly more. It is kind of like the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ is not extraordinary divine blood that has magical qualities. It is thoroughly human, with its own type, cell count, etc. If you matched the type you could have gotten a transfusion (and still could) without any added benefits than those of anybody else’s blood of the same type. But only the blood of Christ can save his people and not only (but certainly also) because it is innocent blood; the blood of Christ can save because it is the blood of the God-man, though this metaphysical value (who it belongs to) in no way changes the physical blood. The glory of Scripture lies not in magical qualities that remove this book from the category of human literature anymore than the blood of Christ must be removed from the category of human blood. But Scripture while remaining human literature, is more. There is no book like this book, nor is there any other blood that can save mankind. Put that answer in the question at the beginning of this paragraph and you’ll see the ambivalent response you get.

And this highlights the importance of asking the right questions, which is the whole point of hermeneutics. What questions are we supposed to ask the text?

Reverent questions, is one answer to that. Not irreverent questions, obviously. And now you find yourself–if you’re following along–wondering how you determine that, right?

So it goes and so it deepens out under us in what seems an infinity of inquiry. But so it must be. Consider, in the light of these considerations above, this passage:

The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel;

A wise man will hear, and will increase learning [always? in other words, infinitely?]; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels [you see how understanding is a beginning of something deeper here]:

To understand a proverb [ah, not so easy to grasp, are they?], and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge [that great intangible, reverence]: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

It does not sound to me like he is saying it is simple–simplicity is not subtle and the dark saying of the wise are not at first glance clear–but he is saying it is possible. Which returns us to the two questions above: where do you get them and how do you use them. And I think those are questions the wisdom literature of Scripture sets out to answer. Which, if I’m right, ought to wrest from us some prejudices, and transform others, and put us on the road to deliverance from them.