Wha-oh

Here

And do read most of his posts.

"Hearts on Fire" contest/engagement story in the mix, here's an excerpt from my FINAL Hebrew paper...

In response to the sixth commandment, mankind naturally fails in keeping it. He fails accidentally, as a manslayer, because he lives in a rebellious world ruined by sin. He actively fails in his premeditation, proving the filthy, wretchedness of his own heart. God communicates the warning “You shall not murder,” because he knows what is in all men. Men will kill because they are murderers. Jesus Christ beautifully developed this command in Matthew 5:21 – 26 by attributing hate of one another as equal to murder. Later in Matthew, in response to the rich young ruler’s response to have kept the Ten Commandments, Jesus’ reply points out that the young man was still not righteous (Matthew 19:18-22). Jesus would state that most important command is to love the Lord with all you heart and love your neighbor as yourself. The command against killing is not meant to provide humans with an ethical checklist in the sense of creating their own righteousness. As murder is equal to hate, the point of the command is to drive man in-ward, into his own soul, to arrive at the conclusion that he cannot keep this law, or any law that God demands, perfectly. What is then communicated in the law is the separation of the character of man from the character of God, and this leaves man helpless. Glory be to God, that Jesus Christ comes in flesh and fulfills the entire law, including “you shall not murder” and offers the gift of salvation from bondage of sin to those who would become children of God.

Great Stott!

Man, I've read The Cross of Christ three times now, and it still so good.

On the Last Supper, and the need to appropriate the death of Christ personally:

"Again He took and blessed the cup, but then he explained its meaning as he gave it to them to drink. Thus they were not just spectators of this drama of the cross; they were participants in it. They can hardly have failed to get the message. Just as it was not enough for the bread to be broken and the wine to be poured out, but they had to eat and drink, so it was not enough for him to die, but they had to appropriate the benefits of his death personally. The eating and drinking were, as still are, a vivid acted parable of receiving Christ as our crucified Saviour and of feeding on him in our hearts by faith." (cf. Jn. 6:53-55)

pg.70

Whew

Concerning the parallels of Adam and Christ in Romans:

We may not try to trace parallels in every detail; in the operation of redemptive grace there are factors which far transcend the operations of judgment in our relation to Adam's sin, as Paul observes in Rom 5:12-19. But a parallel to this extent is surely not without warrant, that as representative solidarity with Christ in his obedience unto death and in his resurrection secures and insures subjective renewal in regeneration, so representative solidarity with Adam in his sin involved for posterity their subjective depravity as well as the forensic judgment of their being "constituted sinners."

From Murray's The Imputation of Adam's Sin

"Dogmatics in Outline" insights:

"Christian dogmatics will always be a thinking, an investigation and an exposition which are relative and liable to error…as a science [it] takes about the content of the proclamation in the Christian Church."

(i.e. Thinking through the whole of Scripture, understanding it to be Christ, and the labor of laying down principles as incontrovertibly true THAT the proclamation of Christ would be more pure and more powerful. This is me talking.)

“If we look past [Christ], we must not be surprised if we fail to find God and experience errors and disillusionments, if the world seems dark to us. When we believe, we must believe in spite of God’s hiddenness. This hiddenness of God necessarily reminds us of our human limitation. We do not believe out of our personal reason and power. Anyone who really believes knows that. The greatest hindrance to faith is again and again just the pride and anxiety of our human hearts. We would rather not live by grace. Something within us energetically rebels against it. We do not wish to receive grace; at best we prefer to give ourselves grace. This swing to and fro between pride and anxiety is man’s life. Faith bursts through them both. Of his own strength a man cannot do it. We cannot deliver ourselves from pride and anxiety about life; but there will always be a movement of defiance, not last against ourselves."

"Wisdom is the knowledge by which we may actually and practically live; it is empiricism and it is the theory which is powerful in being directly practical, in being the knowledge which dominates our life, which is really a light upon our path. Not a light to wonder at and to observe, not a light to kindle all manner of fireworks at – not even the profoundest philosophical speculations – but the light on our road which may stand above our action and above our talk, the light on our healthy and on our sick days, in our poverty and in our wealth, the light which does not only lighten when we suppose ourselves to have moments of insight, but which accompanies us even into our folly, which is not quenched when all is quenched, when the goal of our life becomes visible in death. To live by this light, by this truth, is the meaning of Christian knowledge."

And finally,

"Where there is faith, man in his complete limitation and helplessness, in his utter abandonment and folly, possesses the freedom, the freedom royal in all humility, to let the light shine of the doxa, of the gloria, of the glory of God. More is not required of us but that is required of us. This public responsibility of our trust in God’s Word and of our knowledge of the truth of Jesus Christ is the general concept for what in the Christian sense is called confessing and confession."

And breathe...

Step 1 of 6 this Summer

May 2

1. A video with Mike Rowe from dirty jobs. (also check out TED.com)
2. Here's a website about the new epidemic: doihaveswineflu.org

Canes Win!

Normally I wouldn't write about a hockey game. But this one was sweet.

Canes 4 Devils 3

Rachel's friend had 10 extra tickets to tonight's game. Carolina Hurricanes vs. New Jersey Devils. Playoffs. The seats were on the first level, right behind the Devil's net, so we got to see a couple goals scored up close. Thrilling. The idea of hockey is not laughable to me, but somewhat, mystifying I guess. Put big men in even bigger pads, strap knives to their feet and try to smack a rubber disc at a net. I guess I'm not cold blooded enough to grasp it inherently. But I did appreciate the game tonight.

Experiencing this game made me feel like my life was a little more complete. The loud cheering, the boisterous atmosphere, the high stakes, the last second goal and the final eruption, all that made me feel a little more human. Loud speakers, and being surrounded by many more die-hard fans sort of helped. Odd. I feel like I have one more trick in my arsenal of personal experiences. One more story to tell.

I know what you're thinking. If you were not a State fan, you would have this high much more often. Well. You're probably right.

Ark the Chinese Builders Bring

Making Noah proud in Hong Kong. Brought to you by Breaking Christian News.

Web and the Extreme Pro-Lifers

I had a couple more hot seconds today. Which is great. Little boring but great.
Yesterday I worked a looong morning shift, crammed for a Hebrew exam for 2 hours, then took the exam. Then hung out with Rachel a bit - she's slammed with lab reports, 3 papers on cultural events, one on bone fusion, and heaven knows what else. All that with leading a bible study, working in a lab, playing club ultimate for State - pretty busy all the time. Which leads me to my next point.

I frequent a few news sites when I first start up my MBP. Wired.com is always first. Today they had a column with their resident Mr.Know-it-all, an Ann-Flanders-type deal. That story led me to Clark Wolf's homepage at Iowa State. Then I looked into a syllabus of his for a bioethics class he taught last year sometime. Scrolled down and found a reading assignment on the Ashley Treatment. What? How did I miss this last year?

This girl's parents decided to keep their little girl, well, little. She had severe mental disabilities and in order to spare her more pain, they basically extracted her womanhood. You can read more about it here. They also cemented her bones with estrogen therapy so she would stay the size of a 10 year old.

As far as blogs go, this certainly is not a current events update. But man that is twisted. What do you think?

I went through a "Frasier" phase for a while...

Here are some vocab words from the show:


Hothouse flower – someone who needs pampering or special conditions
Charlatan - a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill; a fraud
Flop sweat – nervous perspiration caused by a fear or failure before an audience
Busman’s Holiday – vacation during which one engages in activity that is similar to one’s usual work
Asinine - extremely stupid or foolish
Rapscallion - one who is playfully mischievous or a scoundrel
The Eleventh Hour - the latest possible moment
In Flagranti Delicto – caught in the act
Anon – soon, shortly

And now I will recount one of my favorite memories of Theology so far...

Dr. Hogg just finished an explanation of the location of inspiration in Scripture, and a guy raises his hand. I can't remember his question exactly, but it was something rambling like,

Guy: "Uh Dr. Hogg, with what you just stated concerning the revelation as found in, ah, the Old Testament, or was it the...(checks his computer), or maybe it was the New Testament, in Galatians, then how...where are we to find a correspondence or, or evidence of the new work that, that the Holy Spirit is actually present or if the Father is in the Spirit present?" (Something like that)

(A good four second pause)

Dr. Hogg, looking up: "I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention to what you were saying, what was the question again? I was watching an episode of Frasier in my head, and Niles was trying to put out a fire in the kitchen while Frasier was entertaining guests..."

Hot Second

Finally got one of those lazy, sunny days on our hands. Though pollen is caked on my car and circulating through my nasal cavities, it's still very nice to be alive. I'm sitting here with Rachel at Caribou, with not much to work on, thought it was time to update.

Mom is getting "better." The docs' found a trace of cancerous cells in her brain, so they're attending to that at the moment. I have no percentages of how bad it is, so we still wait and pray.

Did music for Jim and Meghan's wedding yesterday. Beautiful ceremony. I played piano for the first time in front of a crowd - pretty stressful. Before the ceremony started, when they were seating people, the wedding planner asked me to play some background music for 35 mins. Then I played How Great is Our God, then Take My Life on keys. My fingers are still a bit sore from that.

I'm still working at Caribou, still in school, still dating the same beautiful girl.
Trying to figure out what to do this summer...

New Bike - 1978 Dawes Echelon

"New" Dawes road bike. Here's the message boards where I found out the make and model.

I can't figure out if he is acting...

Joaquin Phoenix's new career: