two places I would love to be...

OR

THAT WAS AMAZING!!!!

...magical night that could have lasted forever.

Speak with conviction, totally like whatever

Well that worked out well...

It is a principle that you can bank on. I mean if you're wondering about whether to call, or raise the bet, go 'all in' on this one. Tell people NOT to do something, even if the reasons are dangerously obvious, and that's what they do. Parents know this well. Policemen, politicians. In our litigious society however, one must follow due process and bring attention to what should be avoided. This is the slick and simple approach to 'covering one's ass.' Curious why we cannot, or will not accept the shared knowledge and insight, but rather live the experience (and all its consequences) for ourselves.
Strange, curious creatures we are. Overwhelmed by our inquisitiveness, sense of adventure, and invincibility...we experience some of the hardest lessons in life. The confusing thing about us, as Kierkegaard said, is that "we are simultaneously the Pharisee and the publican."

blithely

I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea of the power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flare; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may walk someday and take offense; or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.

Annie Dillard

A rew random pics

Welcome to History

Phelps does it (with a little help from his friends)

Just an amazing performance by all four members of the team and with it, Michael Phelps sets the record for most gold medals in one Olympics with a grand total of eight. Let's relive the moment....



"I've done all I wanted to do."

Amazing!!

History in the making. What a privilege to see someone so dedicated and at the top of their sport, who came from humble circumstances.

those were the days

paradigm shift

Jesus-sized entitlement

Jared over at the gospel-driven church has a great post about the current Osteen fracas:

Just in case you missed the news, Victoria Osteen, wife of Lakewood Church pastor Joel Osteen, has been taken to court by a flight attendant who claims Mrs. Osteen assaulted her during a dispute over a dirty airplane seat. For what it's worth, I think that even if the defendant did and said what the plaintiff is accusing her of, the requested damages are ridiculous. (10% of her net worth? For some harsh words and an elbow to the boobie? Come on.) And I have no idea if she's guilty or innocent -- let's presume innocence, like we're supposed to -- but the prosecutor is illuminating some things that are far more interesting to me than the accusations. Some samples:

Victoria Osteen said when she first told a flight attendant about the spill, she was handed some napkins. She said she responded, "'It's not my job.' I didn't say it in an ugly tone of voice."

Catch that? Given the opportunity to clean the mess, Victoria Osteen's response was "It's not my job." It doesn't matter if she said it sweetly or not; it doesn't even matter that she was technically right. If you're a follower of Jesus, wiping up people's crap is your job. And c'mon, we're talking about a spill here. A normal person would have just wiped it up with the napkins handed to them. But the Osteens do not believe they are normal people. They believe they are special, and peddling the glory of our own specialness is of course how they've come to afford first class tickets in the first place.

Reginald McKamie, Brown's attorney, asked Joel Osteen why he said in one of his religious messages that if it wasn't for him, his wife would be in prison.

Osteen said he meant it to be a comical statement about the differences between him and his wife, that he likes routine and considers himself boring while his wife is outgoing and likes to go to new restaurants and new places.

"You don't go to jail because you like different restaurants, do you?" McKamie asked, as the packed courtroom laughed.

"No sir," Joel Osteen said.

I don't have a point in sharing that excerpt. I just think it's hilarious. Here's another important one, though

McKamie also asked Osteen whether his family was used to getting special treatment, making reference to an anecdote in one of the pastor's books in which he wrote about being allowed to take an expensive television camera onboard a flight to India even though it was against the rules.

"You feel that you're entitled to the favor of God ... to do things other people can't do," McKamie said.

"All of God's children are," Osteen said.

And that's the money quote. That's how Osteen and his variety of prosperity gospelism position Christian identity -- to be better, higher, more favored by the world than anybody else. It is a position of entitlement. And it is the antithesis of grace. Because they believe they deserve special treatment. The camera incident cited there comes from an anecdote in Your Best Life Now, where Osteen describes being told by a clerk that he would have to check a camera with luggage, that it couldn't be carried on. He basically argued with her, got nowhere, and then the pilot, who overheard, tried to placate Osteen by offering to stow it in the cockpit. Osteen writes (p.36):

The woman behind the counter glared at me and shook her head, clearly aggravated. I just smiled and said, "Sorry, ma'am; it's the favor of God."

No sir. It's being an ass. And I imagine after that incident, that clerk didn't come away thinking, "Wow, God is awesome to favor a believer that way." She was likely thinking, "Wow, what a jerk your followers are, God." Osteen and his devotees believe they know their place. As children of God, they are entitled to money, health, good jobs, special treatment. They know nothing of the cross. And it makes me wonder if they've actually read any Jesus in the Gospels. We are not entitled to anything. We have graciously been made co-heirs with Jesus, and our response, out of gratitude and joy and love for God, should be humility and servanthood and sacrifice. Certainly we can wipe up a spill every now and then. As lovers of God and neighbor, it is our job.

John Piper: The Achilles Heel of the Next Generation

..this is called perspective,
and he's got it.

spider theme, don't ask why

Happy Anniversary Babe!

24 years,

...and I still can't keep my paws off of you!

cultural redemptive

From the beginning no serious Christian has been able to say ‘this is my culture, so I must adapt the gospel to fit within it’, just as no serious Christian has been able to say ‘this is my surrounding culture, so I must oppose it tooth and nail’. Christians are neither chameleons, changing colour to suit their surroundings, nor rhinoceroses, ready to charge at anything in sight. There is no straightforward transference between any item of ordinary culture and the gospel, since all has been distorted by evil; but likewise there is nothing so twisted that it cannot be redeemed, and nothing evil in itself. The Christian is thus committed, precisely as a careful reader of scripture, to a nuanced reading of culture and a nuanced understanding of the response of the gospel to different elements of culture. You can see this in Philippians, where Paul is clear that as a Christian you must live your public life in a manner worthy of the gospel, and that whatever is pure, lovely and of good report must be celebrated – but also that Jesus is Lord while Caesar isn’t, and that we are commanded to shine like lights in a dark world. There are no short cuts here, no easy answers. Prayer, scripture and complex negotiation are the order of the day.

-N.T. Wright