save the date
Just so you know, the rapture of believers will take place on May 21, 2011 and God will destroy the world on October 21, 2011. I know this because I read it on the internet at wecanknow.com, not to mention that it’s also on a bench at a bus stop in Colorado Springs. We can have confidence in this prediction, since we can apparently also know that the world was created in 11,013 B.C.
Or not. Although Jesus himself said he didn’t know the hour, he was holding out on us since he knew the date. Either that or he was bad at math, unlike the people over at The-Latter-Rain ministries, who, by the way do not request, nor accept, donations.
No need, I suppose. According to the countdown calendar there are only 295 days left. They count the hours and minutes based on sunset in Jerusalem, if you need to set your watch.
naked and not ashamed
“And the man and his wife were both naked and they were not ashamed.” Genesis 2:25
In his brief book, This Momentary Marriage
Their lack of shame was not because they had perfect bodies, Piper says. There are lots of things to make us self-conscious, despite our perfect nose. Even my perfect in-step, clearly the subject of another conversation, fails to offset my many flaws.
But being ashamed requires having someone to shame us, even if it’s ourselves. Not being ashamed is a consequence of the leaving, cleaving and holding which the previous verse says causes us to be “one flesh.” This is much more than merely a physical union. (Paul refers to a union that is merely physical as prostitution in 1 Corinthians 6.)
No, Piper argues, it is our covenant commitment that creates the context for a shame-free marriage, not our physical beauty or acts. Thankfully.
why we do what we do
In 1969 a psychologist named Edward Deci conducted an experiment with a puzzle involving wooden blocks. A group of college students was paid a dollar for each puzzle they completed. Another group was not.
The experiment was really about what happened when the researcher left the room, supposedly to get a survey for the students to complete. The ones who were paid to do the puzzles were distracted, looking at magazines and other items in the room. Those who were not being paid, however, continued to try and solve the puzzles.
In his book Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation
I’m inclined to agree, especially since such motivators reinforce external rather than internal motivation. If you control your kids by offering them rewards for everything they do, you don’t get good kids—you get greedy ones.
a room of my own
In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. — John 14:2
When I was born my parents lived in a little apartment in North Naples, Florida, but when they were evicted we moved to Augusta, Georgia. My dad got a job as a used car salesman and we lived in a little flat over a drug store.
Mom’s dad gave them a piece of land, so we moved back to Naples where we lived in a small RV, then a two room cottage, and then what became the family home, a decent two bedroom house, all on the same lot near the bay. I had a room of my own, and my dad, a sign painter at the time, painted life-size Pogo characters on the wall.
Then Dad decided to go to Bible college. We moved to a small rental house on S. Kelly in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and then, after a year or so, to an apartment on Missionary Ridge, where I kissed the landlord’s daughter in a cherry tree. I was seven.
cremating the cat
Frisky died Sunday night. He was 23 years old, which is pretty old for a cat. Our son Pilgrim, a junior in college, has never lived in a world without Frisky.
This was an insistently affectionate cat that thought he was a dog. He would follow you around or wake you up about five in the morning wanting to be petted.
Technically the cat belonged to our oldest son, Christian, who disputes his brother Michael’s claim that the cat was only 21. But as every parent knows, no pet ever really belongs to the kids. Whatever they learned about loyalty and responsibility by owning an animal they take with them when they leave home and get married, but not the animal itself.
Over 30 years of parenting I’ve buried lots of animals, but Katie and I decided to cremate the cat. We’ve had pets dug up by various creatures around the farm, and the burial sites are all forgotten and unvisited.
looking for love in all the wrong places
“but speak the truth in love, that you might grow up…” Eph 4:15
Apparently there’s a new way for college guys to meet a girl. Or another guy, for that matter.
Goodcrush.com will let you find out if she (or he) likes you without all the embarrassing trauma of asking. They can let you know without letting you know, too. Finally hope for shy lovers everywhere.
It works two ways. Crushfinder lets you put in five names of people you like and if any of them put in your name too then you get an email. Congratulations! You’re a winner, even if you are a loser.
You can also use the Missed Connections feature to send anonymous, photo-less messages back and forth until you figure out who the other person is and agree to meet. Like this: saw you on your computer by astor place wearing a princeton t shirt on thurs.
And so the game begins. It’s You Got Mail for social media, a cross between Facebook and Match.com.
it’s still a sin to kill a mocking bird
It’s the fiftieth anniversary of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Allen Bara says the book may be a lot of things, but it’s not a classic. That’s probably OK with Lee who, even though she has made a lot of money and never wrote another book, says she didn’t expect it to succeed at all. It’s success was “as frightening as the quick, merciful death I’d expected,” she said in a rare interview in 1964.
Bara says the book is not a classic because the characters are not original and the dialogue is artifical. He says Scout’s father Atticus is based on Lee’s father and the character of Thomas More in a play on stage at the time, “the only saint in a courtroom full of the weak, the foolish and the wicked” who is full of “a repository of cracker-barrel epigrams.”
Wow, that’s harsh.
why I believe in unicorns
It’s possible that we can derive more pleasure from what we imagine than from what we experience. This novel idea, or this idea about novels, is explored by Yale professor Paul Bloom in his new book, How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like
In a chapter reprinted last month in the Chronicle of Higher Education, he says fiction is difficult to separate completely from reality because the pleasure we experience in both is essentially the same. Perhaps a little less intense, but the emotions it trigger are just as real.
When I growl and chase my granddaughter, she never thinks I’m a real lion. But she enjoys imagining that I am, safe in the understanding that I am not. All kids pretend.
a grandfather’s manifesto
Our granddaughters, Tabby and Sarina, were here this last weekend. It was delightful.
And it reminded me again of how I want to love them. I want to love them by loving their parents.
Yes, they will all get the attention they need from me. I will read them books and buy them toys. I’ll even buy them some savings bonds, although it would be nice if there were safer investments. They call me Santa, after all.
hold the mayo and pass the monogamy
with one comment
Over at CNN guest columnist Christopher Ryan goes to great lengths to assure us we are not naturally monogamous, but that primitive man (and woman) lived in egalitarian tribes of hunter-gathers who shared everything.
No one thought about private possessions until they started raising crops and claiming land. Then a wife became just a thing, he says, citing the 10th commandment as evidence for his conclusion: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that [is] thy neighbor’s.”
Monogamy is an agricultural accident, he claims:
That’s a lot of research. And it’s also a lot of nonsense.
Sexuality is still gregarious. Infidelity is still the norm. And I’m not sure a shared woman was better off than a monogamous one, since the real problem has always been the self-serving heart. A nonpossessive sexuality is not a human one. There has never been a man who couldn’t turn a woman into a thing, regardless of how many were available to him.
Monogamy has never been “natural” anyway; it’s just been necessary. It’s a discipline that keeps our demons at bay. But marriage is more than that. It is an office, not an instinct, an office that represents God’s covenant keeping love for his people.
When Jesus was questioned about divorce he points back to creation itself:
Ryan comes to a different, and much less satisfying conclusion:
A divine ordinance vs. a bacon cheese burger? It’s a choice between lasting significance and short-term satisfaction.
It’s a choice with consequences.
Written by wally metts
July 30, 2010 at 10:28 am
Posted in commentary, marriage
Tagged with infidelity, sexuality