Eight Random Things

I’ve been tagged by Kevin Sorenson in the eight random things meme, wherein I am obliged to list eight random things about myself. Here we go; let’s see what I can come up with.

1. This is the first day there has been no snow in my back yard. Tomorrow, I’m going get out there and scoop a winter’s worth of dog doo. Right now there’s a robin hopping around in the garden.
   
2. I was born in Tennesee, in a doctor’s office/hospital in an apartment up above a store.
   
3. I have four children. My longest labour was 6 1/2 hours, and that wasn’t my first child. My shortest? 45 minutes. I yelled at my husband during my first labour because he wanted to stop and have breakfast on the way to the hospital. He’d learned in the prenatal class about how long first labours take, so he wanted to fortify himself with bacon, eggs, toast and hashbrowns. Let’s just say that it’s a good thing he didn’t stop to eat.
   
4. I took a speed reading class and did very well, reading at breakneck speed with 80-90% comprehension. As soon as the class was over, I went back to reading very slowly, because 80-90% comprehension isn’t good enough.
5. I really like liver and onions. Head cheese, too. And I’m probably one of the few people who is saddened by the fact that it’s no longer considered safe to fry up calf’s brains for breakfast.
6. On the other hand, I’m not a big fan of cheese cake or potato chips. I suppose that’s not really random, because it’s connected to the item before, but tough cookies. (I do like cookies.)
7. If you peeked under my bed right now, you would find a whole lot of dust bunnies and a few socks without mates. Cleaning under my bed is on my list, right after poop scooping in the backyard.
   
8. What am I reading for fun right now? The Chicago Manual of Style. The only problem is that it’s a little heavy to carry around in my purse.

Woo-hoo! I came up with eight things. All I can say is that it’s a good thing it wasn’t the 100 things meme. Nobody needs to know what’s under my fridge.

Never Say Never

My youngest child is about to graduate from high school, which means that pretty soon I’ll have four semi-adult kids. My kids have taught me lots of things, and many of those lessons might be more important than this one, but this is the one I feel like writing about today. So what is it I’ve learned? I’ve learned that that it’s usually best never to say “That would never happen in this family!”

This is advice that I don’t always follow. Just last week I found myself wondering out loud about what kind of a home grows a child of a certain age who still thinks that a certain childish tactic will get them what they want. Of course, behind my remark was the assumption that this sort of thing would never happen in my home. And, you know, I’m pretty sure I never did have a child try that particular trick, probably because they knew by that age that it wouldn’t work for them. Nevertheless, it was exactly the sort of thing that an honest parent could never be completely sure that at least one of their own child would never try, so I really should have kept my mouth shut on the grounds that my remark assumed things I couldn’t be sure of, never mind that it was just plain mean-spirited and gossipy.  But most of all, my remark showed a fair bit of pride. Ironic, wasn’t it?  If rearing four children to adulthood can teach me anything, it ought to be humility.

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On Preparing for Suffering and Evil from D. A. Carson

You still have some tedious spring chores begging for your attention, don’t you? See, I knew it, and that’s why I’m providing notes for yet another of Don Carson’s lectures. These notes are for the first half of his two-lecture series On Being Prepared for Suffering and Evil. Download it to your iPod and away you go! Listen as you work, and before you know it you will be a little wiser and your house or yard will be a little tidier. It’s a win-win deal, right?

 

If you’ve been reading here long, you know how important I think developing your theology of suffering and evil is. Why? So that when tragedy strikes you—and it will—you don’t suffer a crisis of faith along with all your other suffering. You don’t want your first bit of deep suffering to cause you to develop a suborthodox view of God or give up on God altogether, do you? [I’ve written a little more on why having a theology of suffering is important here: Getting Your Theology on Track.]

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If you live long enough, you will suffer. How do we think about these things?

Questions about suffering and evil are asked by the Bible itself. It’s important not to enter this topic thinking we have all the tough questions and the Bible is simplistic. Examples of tough questions about suffering and evil in the Bible: Habakkuk, Job, Psalms, Elijah, etc.

There are five pillars from Biblical theology on which any serious Christian thinking in this domain must be built. 

1. Insights from the beginning of the Bible’s story line: Creation and fall.
   
   This is God’s world, and when he made it he made the world good. Everything evil, dark, repulsive in it comes from Genesis 3. The Fall is revolt against the God who made us, sustains us, and who will be our judge. It is important to think through the significance of this.  
   
   The sin most offensive to God is idolatry—the degodding of God, the vertical dimension of sin. All the horizontal dimensions of sin come from the anarchy that results from the degodding of God—from us wanting to be God.
   
   In the Bible, in all sin, God is always the most offended party. For example, when David sinned, he confessed, “Against thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in your sight.” What makes sin so vile is that it is against God.
   
   All the entailments of disaster, suffering, etc., spring from God’s pronouncement, “Thus far shall you go, and no more.” Unless you see this, you have not even begun to think in a Christian way about suffering and evil. When we face death, from a Christian perspective, it is the inevitable result of our rebellion. We are all under the sentence of perishing; we are all guilty.
   
   Summary: It’s a damned world, and justly so.
   

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