Siegbert Becker quote

“There is no room here for guesswork or experimentation.  A preacher of the Gospel must know what he is doing and that what he is doing is right.  I would want no part of the ministry, the cure of souls, if I did not have the conviction that in this book we have the very words of God.  It is this conviction that enables us to be spokesmen for the living God without apology.  And if we draw our preaching from this book and if we ground all that we say in the pulpit upon this impregnable rock, then we, too, can stand before the world and say, ‘Thus saith the Lord.'”

– Siegbert Becker, essay in “This Steadfast Word”.

Editorial

A letter to the editor – found in the ELCA’s Canadian sister synod’s (ELCIC) publication, Canada Lutheran:

“Isaiah has no other intrepretations”

The letter about Bible interpretation by Post contributor Carl Sorensen (March) prompted me to read the article “In Isaiah’s Words” by Rev. Dr. Alan Lai (Oct/Nov 2009).  It is true that some things may be open to interpretation.  However, it is new and different scriptural interpretations that have led to dispute, a revisionist theology, and the loss of members and congregations, plus the drop in contributions to the ELCIC.  We need to adhere to the confessions of faith and not just pay lip service to them.

One of the first rules of Bible interpretation is to let Scripture interpret Scripture.  Jesus himself interprets Isaiah 61 as referring to himself and fulfilling that Scripture.

Passages such as Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 9:2-7, and Isaiah 53 can have no other interpretation than that they refer to Christ.  No one else can possibly fit the description of Immanuel (Isaiah 7;14), Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).  No one but Jesus could bear the sins of many (Isaiah 53:12), and no one else can match the suffering and abuse described in Isaiah 53.  These, and similar Old Testament passages, are not open to more than one interpretation!

Another passage that isn’t open to interpretation is when Jesus was asked about divorce.  Jesus replied: Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? (Matthew 19:4-5 NAS.)  Jesus was referring to Genesis 1:27 and quoted Genesis 2:24.  It is clear from this passage that marriage is only for a man and a woman, not two persons of the same sex.

– Rev. Ivar Moen, Saskatoon, Saskatchawan

Wow.  Cool.  If only there were more in the ELCIC who took such a high view of Scripture.

(Canada Lutheran – Vol. 25 No. 6 September 2010.)

Sermonizing

The result of later-than-usual sermonizing?  Well, here’s my theme:

AMOS TAKES AIM AND PROCLAIMS GOD’S NAME

Part 1: Amos takes aim

Part 2: Proclaims God’s name

We’ll see if that makes it past Professor’s revisions.

yay

Hey!  The blog works!

Updates:

I’m engaged.  More later.

Packers lost.  Boo.  Stupid penalties, et cetera.  We earned it.

Writing a sermon for Sunday.  Hopefully get it done yet tonight.

Posting

Why have I not been posting as much? A couple reasons:
1. When I type, my words are in white ink, on a white background. I can’t read what I type unless I highlight it. Frustrating. Time-consuming.
2. I’m busy with other stuff.
School is going well. Lots to do, lots to read, lots to write. Plus – work! Woo-0hoo!
Anyway. Here’s an interesting excerpt:

In today’s excerpt – Gaius Appuleius Diocles, the highest paid athlete in history:

“Last fall, Forbes magazine was all atwitter as Tiger Woods closed in on becoming ‘the first athlete to earn over $1 billion’ in the course of his career. Presumably his fortunes will now start to droop, but Forbes missed the mark-taking the long view, Tiger was never all that well paid to begin with when compared with the charioteers of ancient Rome.

“The modern sporting spectacles we manage to stage – and on occasion be appalled by – pale by comparison to the common entertainments of Rome. The Circus Maximus, the beating heart at the center of the empire, accommodated a quarter million people for weekly chariot races. These outdrew stage plays (to the deep chagrin of the playwrights), the disemboweling of slaves and exotic carnivores in the gladiatorial combats of the Coliseum, and even the naval battles emperors staged within the city limits – real war ships with casts of thousands – on acres of man-made lakes they had dug out and drained the Tiber to fill.

“For the races, spectators arrived the evening before to stake out good seats. They ate and drank to excess, and fights were common under the influence of furor circensis, the Romans’ name for the mass hysteria the spectacles induced. Ovid recommended the reserve seating as a good place to pick up aristocratic women, and he advised letting your hand linger as you fluff her seat cushion.

“Drivers were drawn from the lower orders of society.They affiliated with teams supported by large businesses that invested heavily in training and upkeep of the horses and equipment. The colors of the team jerseys provided them with names, and fans would often hurl violent enthusiasms, as well as lead curse amulets punctured with nails, at the Reds, Blues, Whites, and Greens.

“The equipment consisted of a leather helmet, shin guards, chest protector, a jersey, whip, and a curved knife-handy for cutting opponents who got too close or to cut themselves loose from entangling reins in case of a fall. They adopted a Greek style of long curly hair protruding from under their helmets and festooned their horses’ manes with ribbons and jewels. Races started when the emperor dropped his napkin and a hapless referee would try to keep order from horseback. After seven savage laps, those who managed not to be upended or killed and finish in the top three took home prizes.

“The best drivers were made legends by poets who sung their exploits and graffiti artists who scrawled crude renderings of their faces on walls around the Mediterranean. They could also be made extraordinarily wealthy.

“The very best paid of these – in fact, the best paid athlete of all time – was a Lusitanian Spaniard named Gaius Appuleius Diocles, who had short stints with the Whites and Greens, before settling in for a long career with the Reds. Twenty-four years of winnings brought Diocles – likely an illiterate man whose signature move was the strong final dash – the staggering sum of 35,863,120 sesterces in prize money. The figure is recorded in a monumental inscription erected in Rome by his fellow charioteers and admirers in 146, which hails him fulsomely on his retirement at the age of ’42 years, 7 months, and 23 days’ as ‘champion of all charioteers.’

“His total take home amounted to five times the earnings of the highest paid provincial governors over a similar period-enough to provide grain for the entire city of Rome for one year, or to pay all the ordinary soldiers of the Roman Army at the height of its imperial reach for a fifth of a year. By today’s standards that last figure, assuming the apt comparison is what it takes to pay the wages of the American armed forces for the same period, would cash out to about $15 billion. Even without his dalliances, it is doubtful Tiger could have matched it.”

[Editor’s note: Comparisons of monetary value over significant spans of time are notoriously difficult, and other methodologies would yield different results than that shown above.]

Authors: Peter Struck
Title: “Greatest of All Time”
Publisher: Lapham’s Quarterly Roundtable Blog
Date: August 2, 2010

Hmm.

http://www.intrepidlutherans.com/2010/09/whats-missing-in-groeschels-sermons.html

In favour of classic(al?) literature

When speaking about Moby Dick – an oft-misunderstood book occasionally trashed as “boring” and “snooze-ifying”, my roommate Jon pointed out the key: “Moby dick is a great book – as long as you read it at the speed a whaling voyage.” It’s a masterpiece, written as a journal along the way to go kill the great white whale. Apparently. I haven’t read it.

Yet.

Well then.

Another QUOTATION. (Thanks, Krieger.)

Many cures of the past have started with action plans, goals, and objectives. Many church leaders have said to one another, when trying to adopt a secular fad, “How can we baptize this concept and use it in the church?” only to wonder years later why the newest trend failed them so utterly…
By placing our faith in the Word and sacraments, knowing that “God gives the growth,” our self-confidence diminishes and our confidence in God grows. No one can reject us, so how can we fail to
take the message of the gospel everywhere? People will hear the gospel, and the Word will open their hearts, just as it opened the heart of Lydia: “And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.” (Acts 16:14 KJV). If they reject the Word, they are rejecting Christ, not us.
Knowing that the strength of the church comes from the means of grace, we need not be ashamed of the pure doctrine of Scripture, or catholic worship using the historic liturgy, or the sacraments.

From: Liberalism: Its Cause & Cure
NPH
(p.s. “Catholic” in its true sense, meaning “universal.” The RC church has hijacked the term.)

delanceyplace.com excerpt from July

In today’s excerpt – the curse of abundant oil resources in developing countries – in this example, Venezuela. Developing countries with oil grow only one-fourth as fast as those without, and are far more likely to be militarized and devolve into civil war. In fact, oil and mineral-exporting countries have a 23 percent likelihood of civil war within five years, compared to less than 1 percent for nondependent countries.:

“[With its oil wealth], Venezuela began to import more and more and produce less, a typical symptom of Dutch disease, where resource-rich countries see other parts of their economics wither. (Venezuela actually had Dutch disease before the Dutch, but that term wouldn’t be invented until the natural gas boom in the Netherlands in the 1960s torpedoed the country’s economy. The condition should be called the Caracas cramp.)

“[After the discovery of oil in Venezuela in 1921], nobody paid taxes. If you’re an oil state, it’s far more efficient to ask oil buyers for more money than to collect taxes from your population, which requires a vast network of tax collectors, a bureaucracy, laws that are fair, and a justice system to administer them. Collecting oil money, by contrast, requires a small cadre of intellectuals to set policy and diplomats to make it happen. … The political, economic, and psychological ramifications of this … are profound.

” ‘Systematically the government went after oil money rather than raising taxes,’ says economist Francisco Monaldi. ‘There is no taxation and therefore no representation here. The state here is extremely autonomous.’ Whether it’s a dictatorship, a democracy, or something in between, the state’s only patron is the oil industry, and all of its attention is focused outward. What’s more, the state owes nothing more than promises to the people of Venezuela, because they have so little leverage on the state’s income.

“When a state develops the ability to collect taxes, the bureaucracy and mechanisms it creates are expensive. They perpetuate their existence by diligently collecting as much money as possible and encouraging the growth of a private economy to collect taxes from. A strong private economy, so the thinking goes, creates a strong civil society, fostering other centers of power that keep the state in check. Like other intellectuals I talk with in other oil states, Monaldi finds taxes more interesting and more useful than abstract ideas about democracy and ballot boxes. Taxes aren’t democracy, but they seem to connect taxpayers and government in a way that has democratizing effects. Studies by Michael L. Ross at UCLA found that taxes alone don’t foster accountability, but the relationship of taxes to government services creates a struggle for value between the state and citizens, which is some kind of accountability. …

“Abdoulaye Djonouma, president of Chad’s Chamber of Commerce, says oil brought about economic and agricultural collapse in Nigeria and Gabon. For Chad, which has fewer resources, he fears worse: militarization. He ticks off all the former French colonies that have become militarized. Virtually all. (One study found that oil-exporting countries spend between two and ten times more on their militaries than other developing countries.) …

“At Stanford, Terry Lynn Karl’s analysis of Venezuela’s economy during the 1970s and ’80s shows that countries whose economy is dominated by oil exports tend to experience shrinking standards of living – something that Chad can hardly afford. Oil has opportunity costs: A study by Jeffrey Sachs and Andres Warner showed that of ninety-seven developing countries, those without oil grew four times as much as those with oil. At UCLA, Michael L. Ross did regression studies showing that governments that export oil tend to become less democratic over time. At Oxford, Paul Collier’s regression studies show that oil, and mineral-exporting countries have a 23 percent likelihood of civil war within five years, compared to less than 1 percent for nondependent countries.”

Author: Lisa Margonelli
Title: Oil on the Brain
Publisher: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
Date: Copyright 2007 by Lisa Margonelli
Pages: 146-147, 174-176

Link

http://www.wlsessays.net/files/BrugAgreement.pdf

It’s good to be back in school.  Lots to do, assignments to complete, tuition to pay…the whole nine yards.  And – I don’t have to make my own meals any more.