Posts from — July 2003

Woo Hoo!

The Klink family website is down, and that’s where my comments are. So, for the time being, I’ve removed the coding for comments. Now the page should load a little faster, and not give some of you script error warnings.

And I’ll be checking other blogs that use blogout to see if comments ever come up again.

I’ve added an email address for any comments that you really want to share with me, or if you have an answer to some weird question I ask.

I also failed to update our Harry Potter reading. We did indeed finisht the book last Friday. It was good, but I’m not sure I really get everything. I mean… what was Dumbledore’s big plan? And how did not telling Harry about the prophecy screw it up?

Overall, I think the book was good. I don’t think it was the best, and I suppose it could be the worst (I’d have to look more into that…), but I don’t think I’d say I was disappointed by it. It seemed to be more a part of the series than an individual story, unlike the last two. The first two seemed to be more like individual stories than part of the series. I think book five had to give us a lot of information before things could get really exciting for the last two installments.

I hope they aren’t so far apart. It’d be nice if book six came out in a year, and then book seven a year or two after that.

Man… I’m gonna be an old man reading these books. I hope they’re all out before I turn 30. Not that it’s bad for adults to read Harry Potter… or anything….

A friend of mine was telling me about a recent lecture by Doug Wilson at a Classical Christian School conference about Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. He also, briefly, compared and contrasted HP with Tolkien, and from what my friend said, it looked like HP was frowned upon. Something about the magic being a means to gain power, whereas in Lord of the Rings, the magic is to get rid of power (the ring). My friend bought the tape, and said I could borrow it when it comes in. I’m looking forward to it.

I forget to give an update on our electrical stuff. The guy from the power company came out yesterday morning, and after looking at the situation, didn’t know why a ‘mid-line tap’ wasn’t possible. He called around and discovered that it was possible. He said the technician that came out might have refused to do it because he didn’t have the equipment in his truck to do a mid-line tap. They’re going to cut out a few branches of a tree the powerlines run through, and the electrician is going to run the cable a bit further along the side of our house, but they should be able to connect it. And I think we’ll paint the powerline so it won’t stand out so much on the side of the house.

Hopefully it will get done this week.

If you happened to pray about any of this, we thank you and appreciate it.

I don’t know what is up with the comments, but it’s enough to make me decide to get sensus plenior. However, the cashflow isn’t enough for me to make that decision, so I must simply be content.

If you really, really want to make a comment, check back every day or so to see if the comments are back up.

(and you thought the last one was bad)

The Bible talks about disciplining children, and it prescribes the method we are to use. We are, when appropriate, to physically strike them. I’m not sure Scripture could be much more clear…

He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.

Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.

Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.

The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.

Of course, it’s true that wisdom must be employed. Scripture doesn’t say to beat our children senseless. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. There are times to spank, and times not to spank. But it is without doubt that there are times to spank.

I should also note that there are unbiblical, sinful ways of spanking. Of course, anything that seriously harms the child is out of the question. A good spanking should sting for a few moments, maybe up to a minute, but that is it. And there should be no marks left on the child to see where the spanking was. If there are, you didn’t do it right. The Bible tells those that are spiritual to correct. If a parent is flying of the handle mad, they are in no position to discipline their child. This doesn’t accomplish the purpose spanking serves, but rather, the opposite. So keep in mind that I’m only endorsing spanking that is consistent with the teaching of Scripture.

So, what is discipline? Is spanking a child punitive in nature? Perhaps in some homes, but not in Godly ones. Spanking, which is a form of discipline, is not punitive, but corrective. It is not punishment. A child is spanked because they have sinned, but the spanking they should get as a result is not the punishment that sin deserves. Sin deserves eternal torment. That is the punishment for the sin. The spanking is the parent teaching the child to not sin. Discipline is to keep the child from sinning any more… to alter their behavior. And, in the wonderful world that God has made and graciously put us in, spanking works.

Geneva is not yet at the stage where she needs to go to the bathroom to have a meeting with the wooden spoon for each episode of discipline. I’m still able to get a good result by slapping her hand.

But lately, when I use that method, she runs away to Megan, crying for Mommy. I have been feeling bad about this, thinking that maybe I’m too rough on her, and she’s afraid of me. Maybe I don’t give her enough love and play time, and so she only knows me as the bad man that hits her…

But yesterday, I was listening to Schlissel, and he compared this very phenomena with Israel in Exosdus 20, pleading to Moses that God not speak to them again, that they would obey Him, but they would die if He spoke again. They had a fear of God, and it was a good thing. Moses, answering them, said for them not to be afraid, that God was testing them to keep them from sinning.

Then I thought about how when Geneva runs crying to Megan, she is always sent back to me. And she comes back, with her arms in the air, wanting nothing but for her world to come back together, to again be united with me in love and fellowship. She knows that, despite my discipline of her, the safest place she can be is in my arms again, only this time without any rift of sin between us. She knows that she has to come to me openly, wanting to please me.

Parenting, like marriage, teaches you so much about the Christian life, and about God. I am continually awe struck by the amazing ways that God has chosen to reveal Himself to us, to make known His ways to us. Of course, it is primarily through His Word, and everything else must be seen in light of that. But everything else really does teach us about God. And, again, I’m just fascinated that He has created the world so perfectly that us getting married or having kids are pictures of God’s relationship with His people.

Wednesday morning a technician from the power company is coming out to my house, and I’ve also arranged for the electrician to come out, and we’ll hopefully find out what can be done about this electricity situation. sigh

In other news, this morning I had a voicemail from an instructor requesting a TV/VCR in her classroom. Me, being the git that I am, was about 20 minutes late getting it to her. She was nice, and it was the first time I’d been face to face with her, so she introduced herself. Nice lady. So I gave her the TV stuff, and apologized for disturbing her class. She replied, “Oh, don’t worry… we are already disturbed.” That’s a good one, I’ll have to remember it.

You may want to keep this in mind for any future circumstances you may be in…

The new mouses that don’t have a ball in them, but use a light shining out of the bottom don’t work on glass. We have a large piece of glass on the top of a desk, and it must refract the light funny back into the mouse, because the pointer just squiggles along, not really moving.

Looks like we’ll need a mousepad for the nonmousepadneeding mouse.

Well, I was quite wrong about when we’ll finish Order of the Phoenix. Once we got into those last chapters, we started flying through! We’ll finish tonight, I’m sure. Two chapters left.

We were up until 11:30 last night reading it. That may not be late to some of you, but to us… it’s very late. I got up a five this morning for work. And, for some reason, the babe was having some problems last night. So that kept us up for a while. anyhow…

If you haven’t read it, you ought to. Of course, I’m sure everyone that’s already read the first four has already or is already planning to read this one. So I’m just wasting my breath.

I gotta find out about that lost prophecy!

Okay, now that I’ve got a bit of my senses back, let me try again.

The electrician we hired to get the work done has screwed up. Pretty bad, too.

He was working for several hours on Monday, putting in a new circuit breaker box, and putting a meter on the outside of our house… basically doing all the inside work to change our house from 60amp service to 200amp service. He did some finishing touches yesterday, and the power company was supposed to come out today to run a bigger powerline in from the street to the all new system just installed.

Well, the man from the power company did come today, but we still have 60amp service. Why? Because the electrician installed everything in such a way that the powerline would have to run across our neighbor’s property, and this is apparently not allowed. So, no go. The line has to come in from the other side of the house.

End result? We have a huge hole in the side of our house where the power line come through the wall to the circuit breaker box, holes through the wall of our house in the upstairs which were to support the powerline coming in from the street, and a series of screwholes in the siding all the way up the side of the house. Or, in other words, a very ugly sight. Oh, and we already paid the electrician, so I am hoping that he was sincere when he said he would stand by his work. I wish I hadn’t given him that check yesterday. It really bothers me that I hired him to do a job, and he didn’t bother to find out whether or not he was doing it right.

He said he was going to stop by the house this evening to pick up a few of the things he had temporarily installed. Hopefully he’ll be able to call me before then, but if not at least he’ll be there, and I can find out what he plans to do about all this.

I think I just want him to give me my money and go away. He’s done enough damage as it is. You could certainly pray for us in this situation if you happen to think of it. It would be appreciated.

We moved in. This is my first day back at work since Wednesday. We moved our furniture into our new house on Thursday, and have been arranging and assembling and storing and all that rot since then. We have attained ‘messy house’ status, which is pretty good. Much better than ‘hurricane came running through’ status that we were at Thursday evening.

Today we’re getting some electrical work finished up which means we will be able to run our AC full blast without blowing a fuse.

Today also marks the first time I’ve checked email, blogs, forums, and everything else computer related since Wednesday evening. It’s fun to have a full inbox.

We’re still plugging away at HP5. My initial estimation holds steady; we should finish it near the end of the month. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more talk of it around. I suppose, though, I’m just not looking in the right places. I guess I’ll snoop around after we finish.

So long for now.