Spurgeon's Cigar

If you're like me, you grew up hearing about five names significant to WWII: Hitler, Mussolini, FDR, Stalin, and a little Dutch Jewish girl named Anne Frank. While nobody reads Mein Kampf anymore (it's virtually unreadable, anyway), and FDR's fireside chats aren't widely, or even narrowly, read, Anne Frank's diary is required reading for school children all over the country, perhaps the world. Before young Anne was taken off to one of the many prisons within that wicked archipelago of concentration camps and gulags that dotted Europe in the 30's and 40's, she was secreted away by a few brave souls, one of whom was Miep Gies (pronounced "Meep Khees"). (Hiding people in WWII always reminds me of a joke about a diminutive Eastern European, the punchline of which is "can you cache a small Czech.") Miep died on Monday of this week, at the ripe old age of 100. The obituary is here . Some tidbits about Ms. Gies: She never read the diary prior t...

I’ve been absent from this space for sometime, and hope you’ll extend forgiveness on the off chance that you log on daily looking for my witty pixels to appear on screen. I’d like to offer a few thoughts on the current healthcare debate, and the bills current matriculating through Congress, possibly toward becoming law. The Senate Bill, as most of you know, is the one that is most likely to become law, and is considered the more “moderate.” I’m not exactly sure what a moderate healthcare bill is; it sounds like it would only provide a moderate amount healthcare, which doesn’t sound like a good selling point. Under that bill you and I will be required by law to purchase health insurance. There are a few exceptions. For instance, if a person is indigent you and I will be required to purchase his health insurance as well. If one is an illegal alien (that is, an undocumented member of a Democratic constituency) you and I will still be required to subsidize emergency room care for him as we...

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...