Lookie here! Razormouth got a bit of a face lift! The website looks better but unfortunately the content is still the same old “we’re smarter than everyone else” routine. So why is it still in my list of links?

I just got a letter from the University president. He quoted a poem by U. A. Fanthorpe from Oxford University. Seemed worth passing along:

THE WICKED FAIRY AT THE MANGER
My gift for the child:

No wife, kids, home;
No money sense. Unemployable.
Friends, yes. But the wrong sort-
The workshy, women, wogs,
Petty infringers of the law, persons
With notifiable diseases,
Poll tax collectors, tarts;
The bottom rung.
His end?
I think we’ll make it
Public, prolonged, painful.

Right, said the baby. That was roughly
What we had in mind.

In Theology I, Dr. Vanhoozer is having us write a dialog paper and gave us two choices. I’m doing mine on God on Trial where we have to put God on trial for creating the world. Is there enough evidence to convict Him? What bugs me about this is that this sounds more like it should be in an apologetics course.

Still, as I get into the project more I’m beginning to see the wisdom. One of the books he recommended is When Science Meets Religion by Ian Barbour. Barbour is trying to make science and religion get along but he does so by making special revelation subject to general revelation. He’s got some strong neo-orthodox symphathies. To present Barbour’s position we have to understand it. Since his position touches on so many of the areas we’ve discussed in class, this may in the end be helpful.

What I plan on doing is pitting Barbour’s position against Augustine’s. To do that, I have to understand both of them. Barbour is no problem, I think I’ve already got him figured out. Augustine might be a bit harder since some of his writings on the subject of creation and the book of Genesis seem to be more scarce than, for example, Confessions of City of God. I’m hoping either the library or the internet come through.

There are these billboards I see everyday on my way to school for Dasani bottled water from Coke. They always bugged me because it is a picture of a woman looking up smiling with her mouth slightly opened and there’s a hand holding an empty bottle of water superimposed over it like she’s drinking. I always thought what bugged me was the amaturish construction of the image till I looked again. Along the side of the poorly constructed image are these words:

Treat
Yourself
Well.
Everyday.

Improper capitalization aside, they used “everyday” instead of “Every day.” (check it on their website here.) ‘Everyday’ is an adjective and while ‘Every day’ is not a complete sentance, it is what they meant. In the end I think both the bad grammar and the poor graphics are what bugged me. I know, it worked because I remembered the sign, however, it hasn’t made me want to drink their water so it didn’t really work!

By the way, they picked the name ‘Dasani’ because “Consumer testing showed that the name is relaxing and suggests pureness and replenishment.” I don’t find it relaxing nor does it suggest pureness or refreshment! Which consumers did they talk to?

Oh yeah, and one more thing…There are a lot of laptops here at school. Some of them sound like jet engines when the fans start up. Well, last night I thought I’d heard the fan start on my iBook and I couldn’t believe it, it’d never had to do that since I’ve owned it! As I bent close to listen, yup, it turned out to be the Dell on the other side of the table. Just one more reason RISC chips are a better approach. (PS, yes, I know that RISC stands for Reduced Instruction Set Chip and that I didn’t need to say chip again. Thank you for pointing that out.)

All registered for Spring 2003. Here’s the line up:

• New Testament Greek Exegesis II – Tu/Th 7:35-9:15 Quad A
• New Testament Greek Exegesis III – Tu/Th 7:35-9:15 Quad B
• Intro to Counseling Ministries – M/W 9:25-11:05 Quad A
• Issues in Counseling Ministry/Grief Counseling – M/W 9:25-11:05 Quad B
• Preaching from the New Testament – W 7:35 – 9:15 Quad B
• Theology and Methodology of Biblical Preaching – Tu/Th 12:55 – 2:10 Quad A, 9:30-10:30 Quad B
• Personal Assessment & Intro to Ministry – M 7:35 – 9:25 Quad B

Looks bad but it is only 10 hours total. Almost every class is either Quad A or B, only Theology and Methodology of Biblical Preaching goes the whole term (but it changes instructors midterm and as you can see, the time changes as well). Since they change at the half way point, my scedule gets jumbled quite a bit. Chaos ensues and then order emerges and an M.Div. wanders out from the mists.

I’m now using Chimera as my web browser almost full time. It renderes so much faster than IE does. Sometimes IE has to draw the page and then clear and redraw it and sometimes I have to “select all” to get it to display. Also, I don’t have the problems with Quartz font smoothing in Chimera that I had with IE.

One thing I will miss about IE that Chimera doesn’t have is the Scrapbook where I can save a webpage for later viewing. Other than that, I think I’m sold!

So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?”
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?”
But he was speaking about the temple of his body. – Jn 2:18-21 (ESV)

I thought of this passage this morning in worship when we sang this song:

How lovely is Your dwelling place, oh Lord Almighty
My soul longs and even faints for You
For here my heart is satisfied, within Your presence
I sing beneath the shadow of Your wings

Better is one day in Your courts
Better is one day in Your house
Better is one day in Your courts
Than thousands elsewhere

One thing I ask and I would seek, to see Your beauty
To find You in the place Your glory dwells
My heart and flesh cry out, for You the living God
Your spirit’s water for my soul, I’ve tasted and I’ve seen,
come once again to me, I will draw near to You
I will draw near to You

What does it mean for a New Covenant person to dwell in God’s courts? The temple was a shadow of Christ, the reality is Him. For Old Covenant believers, drawing near to the building in which God’s glory dwelt was what the psalmist had in mind (this song comes from Ps 84) but for us, it is a drawing near to Christ. It brought tears to my eyes as I sang about being satisfied in God and the image of dwelling in Christ for only a day being better than a thousand days elsewhere.

On top of that, the sermon began with our pastor quoting C. S. Lewis:

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

It snowed. Like, sticking to the ground snow. Like about 1/2 an inch of sticking to the ground snow. And the family is out of town this weekend! I’m sure they’ll get enough of it in short order. :)

I watched a Dharma & Greg rerun last night. The plot was about a young man having sex for the first time with a girl who admittedly didn’t love him but didn’t want to go to collage a virgin. Rife with comic possibilities, huh?

Anyway, it reminded me of something Dr. Vanhoozer said in Theology I the other day. It was under the heading “The Disappearance of God.” He said that from the Middle Ages you could track the disappearance of God from art, culture and media. He said that the last one, media, was the most dangerous. The reason is that there isn’t anything to argue against since they don’t acutally affirm anything, they simply depict life as if God didn’t exist. People just watch life paraded past them in 30 minute segments from a world where God doesn’t exist. That was Dharma & Greg last night. There were no ethical implications to extra-marital sex, use a condom was the only caution mentioned.

At least Nietzsche understood that life without God was meaningless and went insane (could have been the syphilis too). This kind of world view is sad to me. The idea that that is “freedom” is so backwards, true freedom is serving Christ.