Spurgeon's Cigar

Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him. Heidelberg Catechism

Please forgive the new posting. This posting is actually intended as a comment to the posting below (entitled "The Law of Entropy"), but blogger would not allow the entire comment due to length...hence the new posting. JMB, Though I find your musings interesting, and want to address them, I think our disagreements are at such a foundational level that I doubt we can have productive discussion (about this) – but we can try. You really need to “take the red pill.” To start, it’s admirable that you acknowledge that you are “ferociously patriotic”. At least this is on the table and we can acknowledge that you are not dealing from a position of rationality; rather, you have embraced those mythologies which have been ubiquitously foisted upon you your entire life by the principalities and powers that surround you. You offer no defense of your idea that the modern expression of the United States of America is not a war-mongering, imperialist bully. To the contrary, you offer an ad ...

Outside of the Bible, the best depiction of the natural state of man that I have ever read comes from the French existentialist Albert Camus and his brilliant novel called The Fall . Through the main character of Jean-Baptiste, Camus explores the effect of guilt on man. “The idea that comes most naturally to man, as if from his very nature,” he writes, “is the idea of his own innocence.” The implication being that every man is guilty, while only seeking to continually convey a state of innocence. For a while, Jean-Baptiste “succeeds” in his life as most other men–being popular, learned, athletic and handsome. Until he fails to save a drowning girl one late night on the Seine, his life is “bursting with vanity” and “satisfied with nothing.“ Camus writes, “a single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.” After “the fall” on that late night, Jean-Baptiste is overcome by an irrepressible admission of gu...

The Fair Tish and I went on our annual Super Secret Road Trip ("SSRT"). This was SSRT #5: Lost in Austin. The SSRT occurs around the first week of July every year, and is basically comprised of me planning a weekend in a city, telling Tish to hop in the car, and then we go. Somewhere along the way, I tell her where we're going, and it's a great deal of fun. This custom began when we were dating, and would go someplace for the day (in other words, we wouldn't spend the night somewhere). Austin was a blast. We ate some great food, visited the Capitol, canoed, and toured the LBJ Presidential Library. We also stumbled upon a tea party, and hung out with about a thousand of our closest friends. If I could buy stock in the Gadsden Flag, I would go all in. The tea parties, if nothing else, are great stimuli for the flag business. Below I've composed ten observations about Austin. Feel free to contribute your own. 1. I didn't get bitten by a single mosquito, not o...

A couple days ago a friend of mine asked me, “What did Jesus mean when he said that he didn’t come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it?” I gave my initial thoughts, but decided to sit down and study this passage and related passages. The question began to gnaw at me some, and lead me to sit at my kitchen table, with two Bibles (easier to cross reference that way), Calvin, and Matthew Henry for seven hours. It was a great deal of fun. Tish, I think, was a bit worried about me. She had left the house around 5:30 and came home at 10:00 to find that I hadn’t moved. Below are some of my thoughts, and I welcome the comments of others. 1. First, we must define what Jesus meant by “the Law” and “the Prophets.” If you asked a Jew in the first century what he meant by the Law, I imagine the answer would include the moral, dietary, and ceremonial law, encompassing even the Temple economy. By the prophets, a contemporary of Jesus would understand that to mean essentially what we would understand...

But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. I Corinthians 11:28 I have known a few Pharisees who say, “I cannot take holy communion because I am not worthy.” What ignorance! What arrogance! The worthiness of communion derives not from the communicant, but from the One with Whom we commune; His flesh and blood, not ours, make us worthy of communion with a Holy God and the holy saints. He who abstains from communion denigrates the infinite efficiency and glorious efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice, and silently testifies that he clings to abiding sin. Paul allows no exception; he commands self-examination, not that we should abstain from communion, but that we should forthwith “eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.” Paul’s exhortation is no feeble suggestion but an apostolic imperative, the negligence of which grieves the Holy Ghost and thus sins against Christ and His church. Paul’s word for “examine” is dokimezato, a term applied to the exami...

What I am about to write will guarantee that I will never hold elective office. (That and the fact that such aspirations are mere velleities.) Have you considered the potential value of a dictatorship? I know, I know, self-government is the cornerstone to our system, and it's a sacred aspect of our government, but let me make a quick pitch. All governments are dictatorships, one just sometimes has trouble identifying precisely who the dictator is. In Nazi Germany the dictator was Hitler. In the nacent USSR it was Lenin, then Stalin, yet the Russian version of despotism differed. Hitler aspired for over a decade to ascend to ultimate power in Germany, believing that only he could save Germany from its republican government which gave away the store to France and England after WWI. Of course, revanchement and the abolition of all Jews were also important compenants of Hitler's rise to power. (The former being laudable, the latter pure evil.) Lenin, on the other hand, would have n...

I'm in Dallas for the next few days. I'm staying with a person who is my superior, and we have a witness in town. We ate dinner last night, and their conversation was full of rampant wickedness. What's my responsibility? If I'm at dinner hearing ribald humor, what do I do? Frankly, it's a perplexing situation for me. I didn't participate, but I didn't denounce either. Well, I did at one point in a passive-agressive way What am I supposed to do? Am I to just disengage, or am I to actively denounce, or something else?

The least understood aspect in the redemptive work of God is also the most important. It is this—the first cause and highest motivation of God’s redemptive work is for His own sake, or more specifically, for the sake of His own holiness. Contrary to the most popular “Christian” mantra of the day— Jesus Loves You and has a wonderful plan for your life , God’s chief concern is not the manifestation of His love towards men; rather, it is His own holiness. But what is holiness? “Holiness is self-affirming purity. In virtue of this attribute of his nature, God eternally wills and maintains his own moral excellence. In this definition are contained three elements: first, purity; secondly, purity willing; thirdly, purity willing itself “ (A.H. Strong). Wholly other is often how holy is described. Dorner writes, “that is holy which, undisturbed from without, is wholly like itself.” Most often we associate “self-affirming purity” to holiness and less often its equally important counterpart...

Some of you will recall that I wrote a piece in this space last year in the wake of the Heller case, where the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to keep and bear arms (as opposed to the right being limited to the need for a militia or the like) and in the process struck down a law passed by Washington D.C. However, as many of you know the Bill of Rights initially worked only to restrict the federal government. For instance, “Congress shall pass no law” really meant the U.S. Congress only. Following the War of Northern Aggression, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were ratified by the States. Jurisprudence interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment (which specifically limits the powers of the several States) gradually incorporated most of the Bill of Rights as being applicable to the States. So Texas can’t establish a religion, conduct unreasonable searches and seizures, or engage in cruel and unusual punishment. Only recently have ...

I normally try not to bore people with shop talk, but I thought I'd share a work story from today. Today I tried a case where the Plaintiff sued my client for breach of contract. The Plaintiff was a temp company---companies come to this temp service looking for individuals to hire on a short-term basis. My client signed a contract (which was prepared by Plaintiff's attorney) with Plaintiff, agreeing to pay a certain amount per hour for the temp. The contract also contained this provision (I'm just using Plaintiff and Defendant to identify the parties): "If Defendant hires an employee of Plaintiff within 90 days of the employee's last day on assignment, then Defendant will pay Plaintiff a conversion fee, which is calculated by . . . ." The temp that was assigned to my client worked for about six months, until one day my client was rather late on a bill it owed to the Plaintiff (no dispute about this). Plaintiff called the temp and told him, "walk off the j...

Since my wife died on February 11, almost every morning I have awakened with a hymn in my heart. I know that is because people are praying for me, and to all of you who read this, I say, "'Thank you' for your prayers. They work." This morning's hymn was this, penned by the blind hymnist Fannie Crosby in 1869: Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave; Weep o’er the erring one, lift up the fallen, Tell them of Jesus, the mighty to save. Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save. Though they are slighting Him, still He is waiting, Waiting the penitent child to receive; Plead with them earnestly, plead with them gently; He will forgive if they only believe. Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save. Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, Feelings lie buried that grace can restore; Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness, Chords that were ...

Does heresy bother you? Do heretical preachers irk you? Are you doubly perturbed by heretics who make a lot of money and who have large television audiences? Do the embers of anger burn within when a heretic becomes the face of American Christianity? I reckon some people don't care. In fact, I imagine that most Christians assume that "everyone" knows faith healers and prosperity preachers are nuts and don't worry about the deleterious effect they have on people's lives. I just can't do that; I can't avoid being genuinely angry at prosperity preachers because I've seen firsthand how they prey on the weak, poor, and desperate. I've also seen at least one great man of God drink the snake oil of a particularly evil prosperity preacher. Currently, I'm reading a book on the Word of Faith Movement, by Hank Hannegraaff, the famed "Bible Answer Man." (I like Hank---he's not a Calvinist, but he does good work, and he seeks a biblical answer...

I have been absent from this space for a while (absent in writing, not in reading), but I now make my return in a rather haphazard way. But you're accustomed to my haphazard ways, I'm sure. I just finished reading John Locke's Second Treatise on Government . Brilliance. Locke is one of those men we're taught to revere as a great thinker, but we're never challenged or encouraged to read his writings. It's been said that history affords all great men one sentence: Lincoln freed the slaves, Washington is the father of our country, and, if I may speculate, Obama is the first black president. In such a vein, Locke may be considered the father of liberal political thought. I cracked open his treatise ready to disagree with what I understood to be his basic premise: that all men are born free in the state of Nature (as opposed to under the law of a particular government). While Locke is an ardent defender of the basic tenet that men are equal and free, he does so on a ...

Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead? Acts 26:8 Thomas Kuhn famously used the terminology “paradigm shift” in his influential 1962 work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . The Kuhnian “paradigm shift” described a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science. Subsequently, the descriptive terminology which Kuhn so aptly applied to the scientific endeavor has been seized upon by many (in varied fields) to describe the change in thinking and/or outcomes when a new paradigm is adopted ( i.e., when the paradigm “shifts”). The facticity of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead requires an epistemic shift ( i.e., a “paradigm shift” in thinking) from His followers. For Christ’s followers, since His resurrection, death can no longer be considered “final.” Death , (loss of being) the existentialist’s “ultimate concern,” evaporates under the blistering light of the resurrection offered by the Son of God. Resurrection e...

In the wake of the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade I thought I’d take a moment and make some comments about this infamous and divisive legal opinion. What is below is an expression of a lawyer’s take on Justice Blackmun’s opinion, which this lawyer views as a pockmark on American jurisprudence, not just from a moral perspective but especially from a legal point of view. For those of you who have never read the opinion, I encourage you to do so, and also to peruse its sister case, Doe v. Bolton. Before I dive into the Roe v. Wade opinion, I think it’s important that the reader understand that Roe wasn’t only decided based on penumbras and emanations from the Bill of Rights. Instead, Roe should be viewed as the fourth corner of a series of legal decisions, the collection of which now forms the basis for the Supreme Court’s social-policy jurisprudence. The first corner of the foundation is the now-infamous Dred Scott Decision, for it was in the Court’s ruminations on that case where substa...