Sam Storms Interview

I got to sit in (and photograph!) an interview with Sam Storms that DG did this morning. I have no idea when the interview will be available but you can least see some photos :)

Minneapolis This Week

Kuyper on Calvinism and Art

I Found a gorgeous quote in some of Abraham Kuyper's lectures.

"That artistic ability, that art capacity, as such, can have room in human nature, we owe to our creation after the image of God. In the real world, God is the creator of everything; the power of really producing new things is His alone and therefore he always continues to be the Creative Artist. As God, He alone is the original One, we are only the bearers of His image. Our capacity to create after Him and after what He created, can only consist in the unreal creations of art. So we, in our fashion, may imitate God's handiwork. We create a kind of cosmos, in our architectural monument; to embellish nature's forms, in sculpture; to reproduce life, animated by lines and tints, in our painting; to transfuse the mystical spheres in our music and poetry. And all this because the beautiful is not the product of our own fantasy, nor of our subjective perception, but has an objective existence, being itself the expression of a Divine perfection."

I love the part about "In the real world, God is the creator of everything." That is important because, historically, Kuyper was dealing with a hardcore Modernism that believed in the real world but totally divorced God from it and believed only in the real world. They divorced art, relationship, sex, and everything else that is so important to life, from God and from the supernatural. Thus, for Kuyper to say, "In the real world, God is the creator of everything," and then connect art to God was unthinkable in a Modernist mindset. This is why I like Kuyper so much, he genuinely believed that, in the words of Francis Schaeffer, "Christianity is truth for all of life," and refused to foolishly divorce Christianity from the surrounding culture, understanding that art is a gift of God and real engagement with the real problems and questions of the culture was necessary and must not be shirked. In fact, after reading about Kuyper and hearing some of what he has said, I am near convinced that Schaeffer didn't say anything new and "borrowed" everything he learned and said from Kuyper. I have always thought he was a prophet with a fresh message but most of what he said I have found in Kuyper. Interesting really...there is nothing new under the sun.

Soli Deo Gloria

R. D. Thompson

How To Build a Library

This weekend our library reached 1,000 books. This is fairly surprising since I used to hate books and avoided them at all costs. Since the spiritual revival in my life in 2005 I have been on a Bible and book reading/buying tear and have seen this massive growth from one baby bookshelf of around 30 volumes. Truthfully I probably haven’t spent over $3,000. Also, I have finally given in and allowed myself to be coined a collector. However, this is not like a stamp collector or a coin collector. I am collecting a reference library for the spiritual benefit of myself and those around me. It’s a collection that is meant to be used and battered not protected under glass. That said, if you want to borrow a book, send me a line and see if I have it and if I do I’ll loan it to you. My library is meant to be used :)

Now, let me just give some brief advice on how to build a library.

1. Get friendly with your local librarian (probably at your local seminary bookstore, bible college, or just plain library). By this I mean, make friends. A real librarian already has all the connections you could possibly ever want to make and having them as a friend means you have immediate access to a wealth of knowledge you don’t have and a person who knows how to get books inexpensively and easily.

   
   
2. Try out www.paperbackswap.com. This hasn’t been of much use to me because you get out of it what you put into it and I haven’t put much into it. However, Graeme Pitman has raked books in this way and they haven’t just been measly paperbacks. $2 a book sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
   

3. Check www.half.com and www.abebooks.com. Sometimes, on a good day, you can find exactly what you’re looking for incredibly cheap. Shipping is fairly expensive though and doesn’t make some books worth it.

   
   
4. Find your local used bookstores and all used bookstores within a hundred miles. Now, there are a few kinds of these. The ideal is a bookstore that doesn’t believe the books they have are pure gold. I hate these kind. I mean, these books are USED not brand new. That means: avoid a bookstore that has the word “rare” in it’s description of itself. Also, look in the major metropolis near you. Inevitably, someone has a used bookstore and usually, especially in the downtown areas, they are very good.

   
   
5. Find the book sales in your area (or really anywhere in the continental states) and figure out how you can get to them. Colleges are pure gold if you can figure out when they have their sales. Garage sales are sometimes pretty good too. Check your classifieds to see if any sales specifically mention books and go there.

   
   
6. Go to Goodwill or any other local donation facility. I know, you think, “Wait, those dumps have books?” Yes. They often have very, very good books for the cost of a gum ball. I have been astounded at what people virtually throw away at these places. Recently I pulled Josephus’, “Jewish War,” and Roland Bainton’s “Here I Stand: Martin Luther,” for a quarter and a dollar respectively in excellent condition. There is gold in those places and that’s no joke. Sure, you have to touch each and every book in that mess title for title but it’s worth it in the end since you pay $15 for a load of books that would have cost $200 brand new.

   
   
7. Have fun and don’t get snobby. Josephus’ “Jewish War” may not be in rare hardcover form with no markings in it but it’s still Josephus’ “Jewish War.”


Have fun searching and if you have any advice for me, please give it. I’m always looking for cheap books!

R. D. Thompson

The Song of Hiawatha

I read Evangeline this month and fell immediately in love with Longfellow. He is dramatically overlooked. Frost gets too much credit as the premier American author. No one, no one I have ever read, conveys the spirit and sense of the American idyllic landscape like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I would not know or care about poetry if it were not for this man.

This is a spiritual blog right? So why am I talking about poetry? Christians need to reclaim good poetry and song-writing. We, of all people, should know and have the deepest and most dramatic feelings for the things God has made. We should love the creation and be fluent in praising God for it, because it was His idea. Good verse, for some reason I don't understand yet, communicates the beautiful and the terrible stronger even than does good prose.

This said, I just finished The Song of Hiawatha. It is a poem I heartily recommend. It is a beautiful and intricate introduction into the idolatrous workings of the American Indians and, in a way, communicates the tragedy of our having destroyed them. It is also a masterpiece of idyllic writing taking place next to Lake Superior (Gitche Gumee) and basically throughout America. Passages like this are what made me fall in love with poetry,

"By the shore of Gitche Gummee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.
All the air was full of freshness,
All the earth was bright and joyous,
And before him, through the sunshine,
Westward toward the neighboring forest,
Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,
Passed the bees, the honey-makers,
Burning, singing, in the sunshine.
Bright above him shone the heavens,
Level spread the lake before him;
From its bosom leaped the sturgeon,
Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine;
On its margin the great forest
Stood reflected in the water,
Every tree top had its shadow,
Motionless beneath the water."

Incredible. This reflects every sense and every emotion I have ever felt in the wilderness of the Great Lakes and pushes down into my deepest thoughts with its beautiful meter and rythmic explanations. I have seen the fish glisten in sunshine, the bees buzz through the forest, and felt the summer morning fresh in its new dawning. We ought to re-embrace poetry of this sort and claim it for the glory of God. We ought to write poetry that makes people say, "I've been there," and long to be there again.

Soli Deo Gloria,

R. D. Thompson

One Reason School Can Be Bad

One reason school can be bad is because you cram loads of information into your head which you have no intention of ever remembering.

The greatest of all my triumphs in school has been passing the dreaded biology with an A. How I did it I will never know. The funny thing is...I remember nothing. I was just going through my old quizzes and found an answer I recorded on a quiz from memory. Just listen to this,

"The T&T complex serves to cover the actin filament inhibiting the myosin head from attaching and contracting. When a nerve impulse hits the synapse on a muscle, Acetycholine distributes over the plasma membrane which causes an action potential that spreads through the T-tubles. When the T-tbules depolarize Ca is released by the sarcoplasmic reticulum into the cytoplasm. Ca attaches to the troponin complex and displaces tropomyosin allowing the myosin head to attach to actin and contract."

Um...excuse me?

I pray to God I remember my theology better than that answer which I have utterly forgotten!

What is an actin filament?

Soli Deo Gloria,

R. D. Thompson

My Year In Photos

Thank God for Al Mohler

Hope you read Mohler today. If you didn't you must. He speaks on the topic of how more and more evangelicals are stepping out of evangelical bounds and proclaiming that there are many paths to heaven. He gives such a coherent reason for this dangerous universalism,

"The disappearance of doctrinal understanding and evangelical demonstration can be traced directly to the decline in expository preaching and doctrinal instruction. A loss of evangelistic and missionary commitment can be fully expected as a direct result of this confusion or repudiation of the Gospel."

Yeah that's just about it! Love it.

Also, go check out his interview with Lisa Miller on NPR in debate over her incredibly controversial Newsweek cover story on what the Bible "really says" about homosexuality. Note well what she says about the Bible and how coherent Mohler sounds next to this woman. Note also that the only conservative Christian caller who made any sense totally rocked Lisa Miller when he said she may as well say the Bible is legitimizing polygamy! She had no words...none. She couldn't speak! Mohler said, "Well his line of reasoning sounds fantastic."

Mohler is great. Give him your ears.

R. D. Thompson

Ask My Mom Sometime...

William Saletan - Embryo Freezing is Immoral!

I recently discovered William Saletan of Slate.com via R. Albert Mohler Jr. I recommend reading some of his articles, they're brilliant and a much needed voice in the world of popular liberal thought.

While cultural commentary is not particularly my forte, today's article bears mentioning.

Speaking of IVF and the "problem" couple's face when it comes to allowing it to be adopted, or really when it comes to do SOMETHING with it, Saletan shows that the reason the couple has a "crisis" is because they never thought through what to do with the embryo afterward.

This shows a massive disdain, a serious overlooking of the consequences of creating a human life.

"The patients and doctors are preoccupied with making a baby. If you get one, congratulations. Anything extra is an afterthought."

Of course, as Christians we know this attitude is corrupt (I know nothing of the status of Saletan's soul so I refer primarily to myself and the main readership of this blog).

Brilliantly,

"We treat the leftovers as raw material, available to be used or thrown away. But they aren't raw material. Eggs and sperm are raw material. Embryos are what we make with that material. They're us."

It is disgusting to me that this argument even has to be made over and over again. Of course this is the way life works but no one even thinks about it anymore. On the side with abortion you have women (and men!) who want to have sex and never be held responsible for anything and then here you have people who are obssessed with simply making a baby but care little what happens once it's made, or at least don't think about what to do once it's made. They refuse to be held responsible.

The article is stimulating no doubt. Give it a good look.

Loving the unborn to the glory of God,

R. D. Thompson