Always Reforming

This post is an adaptation of my sermon notes from 12/23. One of life's most fundamental questions, one that we must all ask ourselves is, “Who is Jesus?”   This question has received many answers, and many of them are correct, if incomplete.   Jesus is God.   He is a man.   He is a teacher and a shepherd and our Savior.    The Reformed tradition has long thought it best to view Christ through the lens of His three offices: Prophet, Priest, and King.   Of these three, people like to emphasize His Kingship the least as it is the most repulsive to our human nature (see the Garden of Eden).   Liberal Christianity likes to speak of Christ as our Prophet, Evangelical Christianity likes to speak of Christ as our Priest, but it seems nobody wants to speak of Christ as our King!   The New Testament, however, strongly emphasizes the Kingship of Christ.   In fact, o f the three offices He occupies, His Kingship is perhaps emphasized the mo...

As the Spencer family was driving along one day, a P!NK song came across the radio.  I, being a moderate fan, and it being one of her songs that is kid-friendly, allowed it to continue playing.  When the chorus began, I heard the sound of our eldest, Genesis, singing along from the back row.  I turned to her and said, "You know this song?"  She just sort of shrugged her shoulders and nodded. That was one of the most surreal moments in my life.  A few realizations descended upon me.  First of all, I was amazed that I'm old enough to have a kid that is old enough to sing along intelligently to songs that she hears.  It's one thing to hear your kids mimic the sounds that they hear, but it is an altogether different feeling when they actually begin to sing the lyrics of a song to the actual tune (sort of) of that song.  That's something that sneaks up on you! Secondly, I was reminded just how powerful our influence as parents really is.  ...

Millennials.  We're the worst, aren't we? People are always ragging on us.  We're lazy.  We're stupid.  We're spoiled.  We're the scum of the earth and everything that ever happens is our fault. While we can laugh off many of these complaints as the bitter ravings of old people who don't know where else to aim their vitriol, it would do us well to consider their criticism and examine our hearts. One area that is a major weakness for our generation is our obsession with entertainment.  This is certainly not a universal issue, nor is it one upon which our generation has a monopoly.  We are our parents' children. Generally speaking though, we live for entertainment. We worship entertainment.  Even when we worship, we want entertainment. We have more free time than most people in the history of the world, so we exhaust it by entertaining ourselves. We have more money than most people in the history of the world, so we finance multibillion ...

History contains many noteworthy happenings.  Some catch the eye, some the mind, and some the heart, but others, a select few, grip the soul and refuse to relinquish their hold.  The tale that I am about to relate resides decidedly in the final category. Our story occurred in June of 1946.  Our protagonist, Brookes Whitmore, had finally returned to his home state of West Virginia after participating in Hitler's war.  A young man of 25 when Pearl Harbor was bombed, he was not lucky enough to avoid the draft.  He was, however, lucky enough to come home in one piece.  He had yet to find consistent employment, instead taking odd jobs here and there.  That is where our story gets interesting, or, shall we say, odd. Brookes sat at the bar in the only diner in Philippi, WV, sipping on a cup of below-average joe.  It was still early.  He knew it was sometime between 8 and 10 because Uncle Ed (he was nobody's uncle in particular) was in the corne...

The midterm election cycle of 2018 was one of the more tumultuous in recent memory, which is saying something!  In the end there was only a moderate amount of upheaval as some new faces and new ideals replaced old ones and the House went to the Democrats.  One of these new faces, one that has been both news-worthy and meme-worthy, is that of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  As has been the case with her face, her name and faux pas have basically been unavoidable for the last few months. Ocasio-Cortez's election is significant because her victory represents more than just the triumph of a particular political campaign in New York's 14th congressional district; her victory signals a new political epoch.  She represents the rise of a generation fully willing to embrace political and economic ideals that directly contradict the principles upon which this country was founded. There is much that is compelling about Ocasio-Cortez, both to Millennials and previous generat...

A legendary director has passed.  Many average film watchers may not know the name  Bernardo Bertolucci , but his extensive career was full of accolades and his work continues to be influential.  As news of his passing spread across the web, the crying emojis and RIPs spread like ripples in a pond.  Film critics and self-proclaimed movie buffs everywhere are mourning the passing of our one the great filmmakers of cinematic history.  I, too, mourn his passing, but not for the same reasons.  I mourn his passing the way that I mourn the death of any unrepentant sinner.  I mourn because I know that he is not resting in peace.  I am happy to say that I have never seen a Bertolucci film, so I cannot speak to his talent as a director, but regarding the content of his films, I will admit that Bertolucci was ahead of his time, but not in a good way.  You see, Bernardo Bertolucci was basically a glorified pornographer.  He pushed the bounda...

We find Oliver (Oly to his friends) travelling down 77 South, nonplussed and road-raging. He was having one of those days.  He had felt exhausted as soon as he had torn himself from his pillow and he had already had a long day before the Eastern Time Zone reached 9:00 A.M. He was annoyed with the sun in his eyes.  He was annoyed with the inane radio show hosts.  He was, above all, annoyed with his fellow motorists crawling down the expressway.  Obscenities and fossil fuels filled the air as impatient drivers fought bumper-to-bumper traffic in a doomed attempt to make it to work by 9. "Just my luck," he thought aloud. Oly dreamt of having a job to which he could be late, and, accordingly, was en route to a job interview at an IT start-up.  It was not the most prestigious job opportunity in the world, but it was significantly more prestigious than the burger-flipping he had been doing for the decade since his high school graduation. As he checked the cl...