Today I was mocked for posting about my lack of shaving.

I haven’t shaved since June 27th.

Once again, good readers, you have the opportunity to hear good music for free.

http://www.freederekwebb.com/

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter – bitter”, he answered,
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

Doug Wilson, today, writes about whether or not the Lord’s Supper is a converting ordinance. In the midst of his post, he says the following,

But we are not supposed to take the sacraments of God and try to use them as though they were techniques of ours. These have no handles on them, we cannot manipulate them. Whenever we try, all we get are vain superstitions.

And I just think, ‘my, how glorious’. Can’t you just picture it? Doesn’t it just make so much good sense?

God works through the sacraments, but we can’t use them to our own ends. We can’t baptize a person and infallibly declare him to be a true believer, glory bound. We can’t use the sacraments to determine such things. We do what God says for us to do, and He does what He pleases.

Yesterday Megan had an appointment. Actually, I should back up… a few weeks ago, I got rid of my work car. So we’ve only got one vehicle now. And so, yesterday Megan had an appointment for the baby, and needed the car. I left early, came back later in the morning, and then she dropped me back off at work, where I stayed for the rest of the day. So, for lunch, I headed down to ‘The College Grill’. It’s a fun little family owned business on campus.

I looked over the menu, and decided I was going to get the Barbecue Sandwich. The lady that cooks things up was in the back, doing something, so I had to wait a little while before I put my order in. When she asked what I wanted… “chicken sandwich” came out of my mouth. I don’t really know why, except that there was a very small debate between the chicken and barbecue sandwiches when I was deciding. But, after I said it, I decided it would look rather foolish to say, “oh. Actually, I want the barbecue sandwich”. So I just had the chicken. It was good, though.

Later on, after Megan picked me up, we stopped at Kroger to get some bread to go with dinner. I ran in to get it. As I was going in, a few guys came with some sort of floor cleaning device, that was rather large. I let them roll it on in in front of me. And then another guy grabbed a cart and went in after them. And then I went in. And all this time, there was this lady waiting with the groceries she had just bought, huffing and puffing, rolling her eyes and sighing as loud as she could because people were coming in the store, and she wanted to get out. So, when I passed by her, I said to her, “Oh! Isn’t just so hard to wait?!” She scuried away, though, without looking back.

I saw the following comment posted by Joel Garver on Barb’s blog (here) and thought it would be worth posting again.

One should keep in mind also, that, often a “contradiction” in this kind of context isn’t any sort of straightforward contradiction. That’s to say, it’s not as if folks generally go around affirming A and not-A at the same time.

Instead, what one sees is a person affirming A and also affirming B and someone interprets B as entailing not-A, thus implying a contradiction.

But even that entailment (e.g., B, therefore not-A) is not often so straightforward, but requires the introduction of additional premises and entailments. If, however, the person affirming A doesn’t accept those additional premises or entailments, then he or she isn’t going to accept that there’s a contradiction.

In that case, one shouldn’t be discussing so much whether or not the person affirms not-A as well as A, but what sorts of assumptions might make one suppose that B entails not-A and whether those assumptions are correct.

For instance, if I were to affirm that one receives remission of sins by faith alone, but also affirmed that one receives remission of sins in baptism when rightly received, then someone might suggest there is a contradiction there. But demonstrating such a contradiction would require assuming and then showing that baptism and faith are both here filling the same office in my theology in relation to remission of sins, which would seem to undermine faith’s exclusive role.

If I replied that, no, faith alone receives remission of sins, but that the remission of sins is promised and held out to us in Christ in baptism as much as it is in the ministry of the word or in the Lord’s Supper and is to be received only by faith in all those places, then the seeming contradiction would dissolve.

I’m just attempting here to suggest that there’s been a lack of clarity (often on various sides) in how items such as purported “contradiction” have functioned in these discussions.

Q: What’s the deal with the Federal Vision?
A: It is a big hub bub about a new insurance plan that the US wants to put in to place for eyecare. Under this plan, all citizens of the US would have access to free vision care through Federal Vision. The PCA rejects it because they hate Canada.

with due credit to Travis, who made it up.

So I was mowing the lawn this afternoon, listening to some Eric Peters on my iPod. I listened to his song The Ending, and then-whether it be something in the water or air I cannot say- I thought, ‘man… that’s very NT Wrightish!” What say ye?

Don’t miss Indie River… a Bittorrent site dedicated to lossless audio files of Square Peg artists.

A downpour started about fifteen minutes ago. When it began, G and A asked if they could go play in it. I, of course, allowed them to do so. They just came in, not quite thoroughly soaked, but pretty dang close.

Geneva, commenting on how wet she is, said, “I’m soaked with death!”

I think what she was going for was ‘to death’, which still would be kind of awkward phrasing, but not nearly as funny.