Grace and Providence

Almighty King! whose wond'rous hand
Supports the weight of sea and land;
Whose grace is such a boundless store,
No heart shall break that sighs for more;

Thy Providence supplies my food,
And 'tis thy blessing makes it good;
My soul is nourish'd by thy word,
Let soul and body praise the LORD.

My streams of outward comfort came
From him, who built this earthly frame;
Whate'er I want his bounty gives,
By whom my soul for ever lives.

Either his hand preserves from pain,
Or, if I feel it, heals again;
From Satan's malice shields my breast,
Or overrules it for the best.

Forgive the song that falls so low
Beneath the gratitude I owe!
It means thy praise, however poor,
An angel's song can do no more.

--- William Cowper

To Autumn

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stain'd
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.

The spirits of the air live in the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees."
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,
Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

--- William Blake

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

--- John Keats

Here's something you may (or may not) want to know about.

I report; you decide.

I would have mentioned this closer to Christmastime, but I didn't want to soil and spoil your December.

Some of you may remember Jamie Arpin-Ricci. He's that most dedicated religious fellow who ties knots in strings as a spiritual discipline. He's also purchasing a baby. And if you go to his blog, you'll find a link through which you can give him money; I hope lots and lots of people give him lots and lots of money so he can buy a large baby, or maybe a small baby and a nice stroller.

Anyway, Jamie is concerned about the meaning of Christmas. As opposed to acquiring babies, he's concerned that Christmas is too commercialized. He poses some trenchant questions here which you might choose to mull over.

Again, that's entirely up to you.

But he also links to some YouTube propaganda. Some crazy bat is offering us a cartoon version of the global economy which contains much that is false and humorous, and some that is false and dangerous. She believes "It's the government's job to watch out for us; to take care of us. That's their [sic] job."

This is perhaps something you can read about in the Federalist Papers.

But that part is not the Christmassy bit. The Christmassy bit has to do with the "Golden Arrow of Consumption". And this is bad.

Most especially at Christmas.

One of Jamie's commenters pointed out that the facts being offered were not what a good man would consider plausible let alone accurate, and this is what Jamie said:

As for the video, of course the stats are exaggerated, but I wouldn't necessarily call it dishonesty. Stats, like theology, are very subjective in respect to interpretation. Everyone comes with a bias, but most often they are convinced it is the truth. So dishonesty might be too strong a claim here.

Perhaps I am just too post-modern, but I listen to ALL stats and ideas with inherent skepticism (as do most emerging generations). Therefore, the exaggerations are not misleading, as we already expect them to be there. I hope you will watch the whole video.

"Stats, like theology, are very subjective in respect to interpretation...exaggerations are not misleading, as we already expect them to be there."

All this makes one nostalgic for the time Christmas was about Scrooge, Rudolph and the Mouse King, does it not?

November is a very busy month here at Remonstrans. It's probably our busiest.

Thousands and thousands of readers are asking what Christmas gifts they might send us; we've even had to set up tents on the lawn for our staff to go through piles and piles of catalogs: Cabellas, Herrington, Chef's Catalog, Hammacher Schlemmer, Smith & Wesson, L. L. Bean, Majesty Music Shoppe, Williams-Sonoma.... And on top of that thousands and thousands of readers are asking us about the latest updates for definitions of fundamentalism, evangelicalism, emergence and missional. These are truly hectic days.

We yearn for the peace, quiet and restful ambience of Santa's Workshop circa December 17-24.

So in order to accommodate your holiday curiosity we have found something both informative and amusing. This is Al and Ed; I think of him as Special Ed.

We hope these tutorials shed some small light in what is becoming a darker and darker season with each passing year.

There's this guy, Mike Wittmer, whom I hardly know. Michael E. Wittmer, B.A., M.Div., Th.M., Ph.D., associate professor of historical and philosophical theology, to be precise. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I'm trying to think of reasons you should not hold that against him, but I got nothin'. He attended Cedarville and he teaches at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. That, of course, is damning evidence in every state of the union. And I ask you, dear reader, is not the name Mike Wittmer itself more than a little sinister? Whisper that name in a dark place and just see if you don't shiver.

Anyway, he's got this boatload of his own books in the car with him, he's "assessing his motives", and he starts wondering if they will raise his profile. I'm guessing they will if he stands on them.

All of the books are apparently called Don't Stop Believing, and every one purports to offer a third way through the postmodern culture wars. That right there is suspicious; then I recall that he lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and things become somewhat clearer.

His book was not actually reviewed on emergentvillage.com, but it was commented upon by the (and please don't laugh) "Kingdom Journalist", Steve Knight:

"While I love the title of the book for it's cleverness and 1980s nostalgia factor, I question it's overall premise."

I don't know if I personally question it's [sic] overall premise or not; I'm just wondering who should send Steve Knight, Kingdom Journalist, a copy of The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual, or at least a photocopy of the entry labeled "it's, its".

(So congrats on the title, Dr. Wittmer, if not on the overall premise.)

But he, Wittmer, asks "what do you like about emergent?"

I like to think of myself as the most positive person my wife ever married, so I'm going to take a stab at some answers.

Here's what I like about emergent:

1. I like that the emergent movement contains amitcher flossfers, aspiring journalists and storytellers: our sermons will not lack for humorous illustrations.

2. I like that emergents had the foresight to enlist Trucker Frank as an example: I can think of no other Christian sect which sought credibility by featuring a member of the trucking community.

3. I like that emergents are not theologians: theologians have enough to answer for.

4. I like that emergents are heretical: they will contrast nicely with orthodoxy.

5. I like that emergents believe they are artistic: they will blend seamlessly with the fundagelical crowd.

6. I like that emergents take such an accommodating stand on deviant sexuality: they can provide a transition ministry for men like Ted Haggard and Ray Boltz.

7. I like that emergents don't believe in Hell: this will make for a nice surprise.

These are just a few of the things I like.

And the man who told me that story also related a conversation between friends.

First Friend: Alice is a nice girl.

Second Friend: Alice smokes cigars.

First Friend: Well, that's true enough, but she is still a nice girl.

Second Friend: I don't see how you can possibly say with any hope of consensus that Alice is a nice girl; Alice smokes cigars!

First Friend: Look, while it is true that the sight of a woman smoking a cigar is not the image we conjure when contemplating one who might some day before shuffling off her mortal coil launch a thousand ships, that fact does not gainsay the truth. Alice is a nice girl.

Second Friend: Alice smokes cigars.

What these two chaps cannot resolve is whether nice girls can smoke cigars.

T. S. Eliot spoke of a 1945 draft constitution for UNESCO.

"I am not at the moment concerned to extract a meaning from these sentences: I only quote them to call attention to the word culture, and to suggest that before acting on such resolutions we should try to find out what this one word means. This is only one of innumerable instances which might be cited, of the use of a word which nobody bothers to examine."

Words which nobody bothers to examine (like nice and culture) are dangerous things, and the inability to examine our own prejudice is just comical. Evangelicalism has danced around the meaning and use of "culture" for long enough. Evangelicalism since, say, 1860 has not produced any cultural tradition worthy of the name. What it has produced for decades under the name of worship has been bought out by secular businesses who consider it a product.

Emergence has no culture, and if we were to pretend it has, we would be forced to conclude that culture is tattoos, piercings, a love of profanity, a fascination with pornography and a devotion to ignorance. What used to be condemned as moral shortcoming is now vaunted as some sort of twisted lifestyle evangelism.

"Look, I've poked holes in my skin and stuck bits of metal in there! Now will you believe me when I tell you about God's Kingdom?"

And just last Saturday I read this from a Fundamentalist:

"If culture is a purely human activity and if those humans are profoundly sinful, how is it possible that much/most of what humans do outside the influence of God is not likewise profoundly sinful in its orientation?"

Please read that statement over to yourself as many times as is necessary. Does it make any sense to you? If it does make any sense to you, I should like the answers to a few questions.

What about the culture of Israel? Was the writing of the Tanakh a purely human activity? Does it have cultural value? Is Israel's history purely a human activity? Are the perceptions drawn from that experience purely human activity? Were the Psalms written by men who were profoundly sinful? How about Psalm 51?

Is your God any less active and sovereign in our history and thought than he was in Israel's? Do we perhaps worship different Gods? Has God withdrawn his grace from human experience and human culture in some way we might have explained to us?

Does not sin also affect the way we worship? Does not sin affect the way we preach? Does not sin affect the way we sanctify ourselves in the world? Does not sin affect how we love our wives and children? Shall we despise these things as well?

Why this prejudice against culture?

Who exactly lives outside the influence of God? What unexamined prejudices are in play when we conclude that an undefined "culture" is any more susceptible to the noetic effects of sin than any other aspect of our lives and thoughts?

__________

I do not believe this is the end, but I do think that on a clear day we could climb a small tree and see it from here.

There once was a man with a long white beard, and one day a little girl came up to him and asked if he slept with his beard inside the covers or outside the covers. He thought about it for a bit and told her he really didn't know, and for the next two nights he couldn't get a wink of sleep for thinking about whether he should tuck his beard under the covers with him or leave it outside.

I used to think this was just a funny story, but the last two nights, while not entirely sleepless, my sleep has been what historians and biographers might do well to call fitful. Doug Pagitt came by Remonstrans and asked if I "feel good going to bed at night that [I] have really contributed good things to the world".

As all of you competent philosophers out there will immediately perceive, this is a very important question. I don't say it is the most important question I will ever have to answer, but it ranks right up there with "Who wants to win a million dollars?" in this respect: it's one of those questions you don't want to rush into without doing proper research.

I recognized that Doug has a reputation for having done some amitcher flossfy, so I asked him how he defined "good".

Doug hasn't gotten back to me yet. I don't know if he got tied up in a yoga class or if he's eating the Halloween candy we sent him or if he's looking for a crayon to record his thoughts with. But while we wait for an answer from Doug, I went ahead and did some preliminary, tentative work on the problem.

This is what I've got so far:

Of all the good things I might contribute to the world, it seemed to me after some well-focused reflection that the very best contribution would be one the world needs most. Proceeding from that insight it was the work of a moment to deduce that the best contribution I could make to the world would be to help it understand its need of a redeemer; I have heard nothing good about Hell except that heretics and false teachers go there.

It follows, though I wasn't asked this question, that one of the worst contributions I might make to the world would be to allow someone to pervert the good news of a redeemer without challenging him—or them, as in the case of emergents. Making every effort to preserve the truth of the gospel is not only something we read about in the New Testament, it's purely logical.

(I don't know this for certain because the word has taken on so many new and comical meanings, but it might even be Platonic.)

And after having these thoughts it occurred to me that another significant contribution I might make to the world would be to call someone with a butterfly net to go get Doug Pagitt. The world does not need more pagittwitter. It seems clear from the evidence to date that the world is not flocking to read or discuss pagittwitter, but I like to be on the safe side and warn people about it just in case.

And so to make a long story short, that is how I feel when I go to bed at night.

As many of you have recently learned, this is the 21^st Century. Plato has died. Aristotle has died. St. Augustine has died. Our ideas have changed and truth no longer exists in any useful sense, so we must re-think, re-imagine, re-guess and re-suppose a lot of fairly important things.

This should be done, if at all possible, on couches in a building that used to be a church. If you don't have a couch or a church or if you are a wizard of (post)modern technology, you do it on the internet. Here is a little piece of this great work in progress. This is Doug, Sven and ChumChum doing theology with the tools of pre-industrial society, the pick and shovel.

(Bear with the "conversation". This is only the sixth week of Doug's ACWB book club and some of the technical problems need to be ironed out. The philosophical problems seem to be, how shall we say, somewhat intractable.)

ChumChum:

"Ok, so here's what I'm proposing: the idea of God being in us, God being with us, God being involved intimately with the creation sustaining it does not exclude for him to be outside of the creation at the same time...here's the thing, here's how I look at it; I think the biblical view from the creation, from the story of Eden, we have a God that is here involved, you know, with us, not removed. And I think what happened is that somehow we came up with this idea of a God that is out there because from a philosophical perspective we cannot make sense that you know God can create the universe, create all this thing if he is part of it in the sense that of being intimately involved. So for me it is very clear that this is something we came up with on I don't know coming to grips with something that I don't know God is the creator. In other words I think this is just our own way of making sense of the idea that God is the one that created everything and this and that.

"So but that's an addition, it's a later kind of a thought that comes to the equation. But the reality is that throughout the Bible, the first thing that comes to mind is the fact that God is here very, very intimately involved with the creation, with you know with creation as far as human beings so what I am saying is for us to accept this idea that it is a must, that it is an idea of a God that is transcendent and then so forth. It's more of a philosophical category, not so much of a biblical theology that comes from just what how we know God through the Bible."

Pagitt:

"Yah, I think you've really hit it there."

He's no doubt hit something; my first guess is that it was a gas main.

It seems there may be some grounds for the fear that theology cannot be understood by the present generation.

The session ended with the appropriate seasonal wishes, and it was upon hearing "Happy Halloween" that it struck me that this was all a Halloween prank. This discussion was a way to soap the Reformers' windows, as it were. I also think Doug and Sven and ChumChum wanted some candy.

If you would like to send some candy to the ACWB Book Club, please address all parcels to:

ACWB Book Club
c/o Solomon's Porch
100 W. 46th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55419