these are pretty cool. And weird.

I think Jon Barlow would like them.

EDIT: this is really, really weird. I had NOT seen jon’s blog when I posted this. He posted these same pictures this morning. I must really know that guy! It’s also weird that he also posted about Maundy Thursday.

As some of you know, I commute to work. I drive about 55 miles twice a day. It typically takes me an hour and a quarter each way. That time is not wasted… You’d be amazed at how many lectures and sermons and books I’ve listened to the past three years or so.

But… my car stereo died. It doesn’t even turn on. So, I use my headphones on my iPod. I know, I’m a bad person… so dangerous.

But, yesterday, for the first time, I had something of an encounter about it. I was driving down the road, excited to begin listening to Pastor Randy Booth’s series on childrearing.

Then I see the guy next to me yelling at me through his window. I smiled at him. He was motioning for me to take the headphones out of my ears. I smiled and nodded. He rolled down his window and was really yelling at me. He had his arm hanging out the window and was looking over at me screaming. He had a gold tooth. I laughed. I just had to. How could I contain it?

I mean… here was a guy that was, I assume, concerned about the safety issues of having headphones on while driving… and yet he’s got his arm and head hanging out his car, screaming at the guy next to him, all while driving 55-60mph on a some what busy interstate highway.

And then… he threw something at me. I don’t know what it was, but it hit my car. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about that. I mean… I drive a 1991 Dodge Dynasty with 207000 miles on it… I wasnt concerned about the car. But just the sanity of this man next to me.

And then I saw, as he sped ahead of me, that he had a child in a carseat in his car. What do you do??

He happened to take the same exit I did. And, as God ordained things, I happened to pull right up next to him at a stoplight. He glared at me. I looked at him. He looked tough at me. I waved to him. Then he looked away and went about his business.

I had to stop for gas, or else I might have had more episodes to share.

A question of church membership in the OPC (and, PCA if you know).

Is it an acceptable or normal practice to simply remove someone’s name from a church role? Without a transfer of membership? Just… release them into the void, without any accountability or leadership?

A friend on a messageboard asked what the biggest threats to the Reformed tradition are. What say ye?

That last car note, the visible/invisible one, came to me as I was listening to the 2003 AAPC. I was listening to Steve Wilkins’ initial response to Joey Pipa, and one comment in particular that he made stirred me. He said that Dr. Pipa believed that children were members of the covenant before they were baptized, and he disagreed with that point.

This is an issue that I have wrestled with for some time, as regular readers of this blog might recall. I wonder about the covenant status of the children of believing covenant members, before they are baptized. Are they included in the covenant by virtue of the parents’ covennat membership? Or is baptism the entrance into the covenant, and prior to that they are not covenant members?

The second option, to me, does not appear to be acceptable. I do not like that. However, I am convinced of Scripture’s teaching on the efficacy of baptism, and the covenantal union that is initiated at baptism. So, I am uncertain about the status of those unbaptized children of covenant members.

But, as I was listening to that lecture, and having recently heard Doug Wilson’s lecture and following discussion on the Visible/Invisible nature of the church, I wonder if it could be applied to this question of covenant status.

I would firt ask a question… The person that is not a member of a local congregation, has scarcely even shown his face in the church, and has not been baptized, and yet has true saving faith in Christ; is this person in any sense a member of the church, and if so, can you describe that membership.

I don’t want to deny the importance and reality of the one church, with visible and invisible aspects, but I also want to adequately deal with this anomally. I know it isn’t an ordinary situation, and one that should be quickly solved by the individual being baptized asap. And the same is said of infant children… they should be baptized at the first opportunity. I’m not saying we should have a bowl of water standing by to splash them as soon as the head pops out, but we want to have the children baptized relatively soon.

I also understand that this question may be asking more than we should be asking. Maybe it isn’t our place to know the precise workings of when and how a person is included in the covenant in any subjective/invisible way. Thus, the objective status is what we should be concerned with… that which has been revealed to us.

However, Matt Colvin once said,

My membership in the covenant is my objectively knowable relation to God. That is what our children have, and so I call it covenant membership. There is no point at which they do not have this relationship, and so I deny that there is a transition from outside the covenant to inside it. After a child’s baptism, this relationship is objectively knowable because of his baptism. Before his baptism, this relationship is no less objectively knowable because of who the child’s parents are. It is like human parent-child relationships: right now, the child inside my wife’s womb is objectively known to be a Colvin because of who his parents are; later, he will be born and we will name him. His membership in the Colvin family will then be objectively knowable because of his birth certificate.

If this is true, then our children do have an objective reality of covenant membership… their connection to us. Further, the Canons of Dordt, First Point, Article 17 says, “Since we must make judgments about God’s will from his Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature but by virtue of the gracious covenant in which they together with their parents are included, godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in infancy.” I don’t know what the Synod thought about baptism and covenant membership, but can parents that lose children before baptism be comforted by this? Or parents that lose their children before they are even born? If, as Steve Wilkins said, children of covenant members are not covenant members themselves until after their baptism, what assurance can we have of their salvation?

So it isn’t just a systematic, theological, speculative question. It isn’t a ‘how many angels fit on the head of a pin’ question. There appear to be real, practical implications of the question. We still might not be able to fully answer the question… but I think it is one worth working through.

Car Notes.

I have a tiny little blue notebook that I carry around with me, and jot down random thoughts I have. Here, for the first time ever, I will share a select few of those thoughts… unedited, straight from the pages of the notebook.

You know, it just occurred to me that I should put the date, and perhaps time, that I write these little things. Anyhow… onward and upward.

Covenantal Blessings.
God gives us things and we must be obedient for them to be blessings. Otherwise, they are curses. Children, baptism, Lord’s Supper…
>
God has spoken.
His word speaks to us - so does the world. Providence.
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The parables Jesus told were not literal, historical narrative. Those things did not actually happen. However, Jesus telling those parables did.
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God’s requirements are not so strict. There is leniency. This sounds liberal, but our error is hyper-conservativism. The correction is to pull the wheel to the center, in this case that’s to the left.
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Visible/Invisible.
Aspects of the church. Why not aspects of the covenant?
objective/subjective aspects of the covenant?

Today, inspired by Christo’s description of me, I am going to be wildly enlightening. We’re talking insight from the gods here. No holds barred. Get ready. I’m going to enchant you with my intellect.