Toyah

when God spoke to His chosen people He had them engrain one idea into their heads. the LORD is One. the new testament did not change this. you all believe that there weren't multiple gods already. but i don't think there were multiple persons of God, either. we don't ascribe person status to any of the manifestations of God from the old testament. the burning bush. the figure in the fiery furnace. the pillar of cloud and fire. the still small voice. the glorious smoke at the temple. God has shown Himself to His people in a variety of ways to meet the variety of needs throughout time. mary conceived and bore a child of the Holy Ghost. (cocky oneness apologists will ask, then, who is the "Father" of Jesus) i cannot believe that there are 3 co-equal, co-eternal persons of God. even granting that there could be 3 omniscient persons, or 3 omnipresent persons, there cannot be 3 omnipotent persons. there would be at least 2 persons than which the "omnipotent" was not more powerful. in fact, only Jesus is omnipotent (matt 28:18) and the commission that Jesus gave in the following verse was carried out by peter (holder of keys to the kingdom matt 16:19) in acts 2:38 and baptism continued to be in the name of Jesus for the next 2 centuries, because the early church recognized that there is no other name (acts 4:12) paul was a super-jew. his dedication to preserving that faith led him to persecute the early church. but when he realized that Jesus was LORD (acts 9:5) his devotion to preaching the message of Christ was just as fervent. the God of israel is one LORD. Jesus is LORD. that isn't a multiple person statement. that is an encarnation statement. isaiah told who the everlasting Father was. he said a child would be born who would be Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Jesus is the Father. Jesus ascended and said He would come again to be our comfort, because Jesus is the Holy Spirit. the trinity is very poetic in conception, but it isn't right. the roman influence on the church has been the greatest deception since the garden of eden. luckily for us the grace of God is not mine to bestow or withhold, and Jesus is on the throne, perfect in every way. His perfection in earthly life securing our redemption, His perfection in righteous judgement taking that awful responsibility far from our shoulders.

Even for Christians who believe in the Trinity, it's a hard concept to wrap the mind around. The American Thinker has an excellent treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity, especially as compared to Islam's claim of the Oneness of God.

Keith Brumley reviews The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged:

"First and foremost is her portrayal of 'mystics,' by which she means people of faith. Ms. Rand is an ardent atheist and she lampoons anyone who believes in God as mindless and easily led. She also portrays all people of faith as being collectivists. While some of this may be true of some believers, it is certainly not true of all. As one reads Rand it becomes painfully obvious that her exposure to the Bible, genuine Christianity, and Christians is very limited. Writing from this limited perspective she tends to stereotype people of faith in unflattering and often mischaracterized ways."

Painful though it is, I must admit I haven't yet read the works of Ayn Rand and therefore have no more than a superficial familiarity with her works and philosophy, though I know she is something like a patron saint to the libertarian "faith." Give Keith's review a read and see if you agree or disagree.

friday i got off work early to go to work...our church's home missions department does a project called "church-in-a-day" where a small church gets a new building starting friday...ready for service sunday morning. our church is full of men who work with dry wall as their occupation, and as such, our church became the drywall crew for the new church project this weekend. i got to the job site early in the afternoon and we were drywalling fiends until 9:30 the next morning. needless to say we were all very tired, but i didn't go to bed. i got a shower and met anthony and debbie for lunch. i didn't see any hen tracks when i looked at anthony, so i think it's working out. i then got about 14 hrs of sleep, so i am sufficiently caught up. sunday evening another church came and was part of our service instead of having its own. it made for a very large crowd by our sunday night standards, and a very nice night. i played drums for service (gotta love instruments in the sanctuary), which is always a good time.

the heat move on, and the other 3 series are tied at 2...i didn't expect such good series in this round of the nba playoffs.

I’ve been in churches all my life: a total of four, so far. I’ve been an active part of three (the other one we moved away from when I was 8, so that doesn’t really count). In every church, there has always been a lot of emphasis on personal evangelism.

This emphasis usually takes the form of the preacher going on a kick for a month or two about how every one of us should be out there evangelizing those around us, talking to people at work or school about God, looking for opportunities to witness, etc etc. Sometimes the preachers tell us things like, “If everyone in this building converted just one person this year, we’d double the congregation in a year!”

The net result of all of this, in my observation, is that people feel guilty about not evangelizing enough and hope that the preacher moves on to something else soon. Some people (generally those who were doing something already) do more, at least for a while, and in sum, not much changes. That is, even though I’ve heard this sort of preaching from time to time, for years, I’ve never seen it be effective at actually bringing more people into the church, which is the whole point.

It seems to me that this effort to get the whole church to evangelize is a mistake. I think it’s true that, for any one talent, only a few people will possess it. For example, most people don’t have a talent for singing, though they may be able to sing. Likewise, I think that most Christians don’t have a talent for evangelizing, though they may be able to. Thus, haranguing the whole congregation to evangelize ends up trying to force square pegs into round holes.

I do understand that pushing people’s comfort zones is necessary, and that people can develop a skill for evangelizing. My concern, however, is that efforts to get all Christians to evangelize is ineffective. It seems to me that a better plan would be to try to identify those talents and/or skills that a given Christian naturally has, and place them somewhere in a “work flow” cycle that allows them to use those skills and talents. Thus, some in a church would be the evangelists, who get people to come in the door. These people don’t necessarily have to be deep spiritual thinkers; all they have to do is use their enthusiasm to get people interested. They would hand the interested people over to other Christians, who might not be great at evangelism but would be good at teaching and explaining the tenets of Christianity. Assuming then that some of the interested people then became Christians, there could be a third group in the work flow cycle who would then work to instruct the new Christians further, and help these new Christians find their place in the cycle.

This way, the plan works with people, instead of against them. Everyone ends up doing what he or she would naturally do. I don’t know if this would work or not, and I don’t know how to begin implementing it. I do know that a) most efforts to attract new people to Christ, that I have witnessed, are not especially effective, and b) efforts to get more people involved with a) are even more ineffective and therefore c) new plans are required. Not a new doctrine or a new faith, just a new plan.

You may be completely unaware of this, but the U.S. is set to get a national ID card in three years. There's a REAL ID Act attached to a funding bill for Iraq, which is set to be approved by the Senate today. The funding bill must pass, which means the REAL ID Act will pass too. I've attempted to keep an open mind about the question of a national ID card, and not be merely a knee-jerk libertarian who opposes every new idea from the government. Nevertheless, I fail to see any significant advantage from the plan, and much to be skeptical about.

Summary here: Schneier on Security: REAL ID:

"The United States is getting a national ID card. The REAL ID Act (text of the bill and the Congressional Research Services analysis of the bill) establishes uniform standards for state driver's licenses, effectively creating a national ID card. It's a bad idea, and is going to make us all less safe. It's also very expensive. And it's all happening without any serious debate in Congress."

With three years before it is implemented, I'm guessing (hoping?) that the courts will strike this down. But that will only happen if there are good constitutional grounds to argue that this is unconstitutional, something that is outside of the jurisdiction of Congress. Or, possibly, voters can pressure their representatives to repeal this law before it is enacted. What do Toyah readers think about the constitutionality of the REAL ID Act?

if you've ever faced a curveball as a novice hitter, or expecting a different ptich, you know what kind of knee-buckle reaction one gets...man that feels weird.

A friend sent me this link for some mid-finals laughs: White Boy Dancing.
(I can easily picture J-Roc or Tooles in this clip)

Heck, while you’re at it, check this one out, too: Bonfire.
(this one’s me or Scott Hill)

[Disclaimer: the links themselves are clean, but the sites may not be suitable for children]

My Dad, a Major in the Army Reserves, sent me a link to this article by Oli North on the continued refusal of several "elite" undergraduate and law schools' to allow ROTC or the military to recruit on their campuses (there is a case pending before SCOTUS that will decide if the schools must give up fed $ if they continue to deny recruiters access to their campuses).

I'm not sure, but I think my dad is trying to drop a career hint . . .

This just reminded me of something I've been meaning to post about--Why doesn't Hillsdale College have an ROTC program? Seems to me there would be plenty of retired army generals who would love to retire to Hillsdale and teach classes on warfare, and probably enough students who would be willing to take them. I might have, if they had been offered. Of course, the post-9/11 Army is such that there might be less interest than there would have been otherwise. And, the presence of a ROTC corps might throw off the independence from federal money that Hillsdale so jealously protects.

Interesting analysis of the apparently-recently-released NCTC (National Counter Terrorism Council) report here.

More than 45% of the world's terrorist attacks happened in India, while Iraq accounted for not quite 31%. Afghanistan had 18 attacks, or 2.8%, and there were 15 attacks in Israel, plus 40 in Palestine (2.3% + 6.1% = 8.3%).

Not quite sure what to conclude from this, but it must be significant that there have been more terrorist attacks in India than anywhere else in the world, yet only terror attacks in Iraq/Israel/Palestine make the news.