What Were Your School Mascots?

I’m on the hunt for the strangest school mascot. The ones I had growing up were pretty normal: the Rockets, the Braves, and the Yellow Jackets. I will say, however, that there was a middle school in my district called Possum Middle School. Their mascot was an eagle. Possum Eagles. Go figure.

What were your mascots?

Tattoos and the Hunger for Permanence

Given our recent discussion of Christians and tattoos, I was interested in this post by R.R. Reno at First Things. He observes the contemporary erosion of binding realities like marriage, family, loyalty, and patriotism, and then draws the connection between that decay and the accompanying hunger in our culture for signs of permanence on our bodies. I think his argument is compelling. He writes:

So we are free, freer than any people have ever been in the history of humanity. The old bonds of commitment hang loosely about us. How this came about would require telling the complex history of modern western culture, but the current consequences are not hard to identify. A free soul is a slave of desires for success, desires for social acceptance, desires for all the goodies that our wealthy economy so efficiently provides, to say nothing of our primitive passions. Increasingly uncommitted—free from the limits of marriage, children, faith, devotion, and loyalty—we are more purely and more entirely defined by our social roles as productive workers and eager consumers, and by our passing desires for satisfaction and pleasure. Again, I ask myself, is it surprising that in an age with so few binding commitments postmodern men and women seek symbols of permanence etched into their bodies?

Mark Dever on Pastoral Longevity

C.J. Mahaney offers a penetrating analysis of Mark Dever’s second-story home office.

But after that, he includes an excerpt of an interview he did with Mark back on June 6, 2007. The excerpt focuses mainly on the value of a pastor choosing a flock and growing old with it:

C.J. Mahaney: Do you plan on staying at Capitol Hill Baptist Church?

Mark Dever: Lord willing.

CJM: Lord willing what?

MD: The rest of my life.

CJM: As a member of the pulpit committee, Matt Schmucker remembers a particular statement you made in that regard. You said to Connie, “The next place we go, we’re buying…

MD: …cemetery plots.” Because we had been moving around and wherever we lived my heart got entangled with the people. I just hated moving and it was just horrendous for me. I had been studying the Puritans and realized that the basic model was to just stay someplace—like a marriage to a congregation. It is not exactly the same, it is not sin to leave it necessarily, but you don’t assume churches are a career ladder you are climbing. You are at one church for two years to work on some skills and when you run out of your bag of tricks you move to another church for three years, they hear all six of your sermons and then you move someplace else. No, I would like to know their children and their grandchildren. So I made clear when we were talking to the pulpit search committee that if I came I was intending, Lord willing, to stay. I had no further plans and actually planned to have no further plans.…

I remember, during a Wednesday night church potluck very early during my time here, I got my food and sat down. An older woman (probably in her mid-70s, late 70s at the time) who had been at the church for decades gets her meal and sits down right next to me. She looks at me and says, “I don’t like young preachers.”

CJM: And you are probably 33 years old?

MD: Thirty-two or 33. And I just looked at her. I said, “Really?” She said, “Yep. Of course I’ll make an exception in your case.”

CJM: Did you ask for an explanation why?

MD: I just started eating my food and then I said, “I guess you expect to outlast him at the church, don’t you?” She said, “Yep. Always have.”

And then I took some more food and then said, “Well, I think you may have met your match.”

CJM: Oh, outstanding.…Thank you for the compelling example you provide of a commitment to this church, and provoking other pastors to follow that similar attitude and approach. You introduced me to the description of Puritan pastors, that they were “looking for a place to settle.”

MD: A great example of that is when John Cotton, I think it was when John Cotton died, their church needed a pastor and began negotiating with the First Congregational Church up in Ipswich. Both churches entered a season of prayer for their pastor, John Norton, coming down to Boston. So it was not at all a kind of cloak-and-dagger secret committee goes and attends, tries to scout out the talent, and then steals them away. It’s two families, two congregations, praying about where would this brother be best used—which is a great way to approach it.

CJM: What are the unique joys of pastoring?

MD: Well, for me, that would include that specific decision to stay here. It was a great opportunity to destroy the “god of options,” which I think young men and women who are successful in our culture tend to be addicted to.

I watch young people in this church when they are 25 and they don’t want to do anything that closes any options. At 27, 31, 33, the same thing. At some point life begins forcing itself on you and you have a wife and kids and some options just close. But I think the young folks in our culture who are doing OK by the world’s standards are enslaved to worshiping at the altar of this god of options.

So by saying I wasn’t interested in going anyplace else, I meant to send out a wide signal to say, “Please don’t tempt me by asking me about other options, because this is going to be slow, hard work and it’s worthy of a life.”

My Pleated Pants Revolution

This may sound a bit trivial, but it is significant for me. I’ll explain:

If you were to ask Crystal one of the reasons she didn’t date me in high school, she would tell you it was because I wore pleated pants.

Thankfully, God helped her overcome that folded obstacle and marry me. However, this issue has continued to be a source of no little tension (albeit playful) in our relationship. I still own a pair of pleated Dockers khaki slacks which about make her gag.

The tension came to a head on Saturday when we were getting ready to go to a wedding. She had asked my advice on an outfit she should wear, and I gave it while wearing the aforementioned pleated wonders. She then gave me her unsolicited council about what I should do with my pants…like, throw them in the trash or something.

This comment spurred a string of playful banter on the inherent goodness and evil of pleated pants. The highlight of the exchange was a dueling parody of “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid (“Flippin’ your pleats you won’t get too far…”)

I wore the pants to the wedding, and we brought up the issue with a couple we sat next to. I pointed out that the husband was himself wearing pleated pants. Little did I know that I was about to embark into uncharted territory….

For the majority of my adult years (and perhaps longer), I thought pleated pants were pants that had a crease down the middle. Oh no. According to Wikipedia, a pleat is “a type of fold formed by doubling fabric back upon itself and securing it in place. It is commonly used in clothing and upholstery to gather a wide piece of fabric to a narrower circumference.”

All this time, I thought Crystal’s problem with my nerdy wardrobe was the crease down the middle of my pants. This could not have been further from the truth. Her problem was and is the bunched up and folded fabric around my waistline.

The effects of this revelation have been almost Copernican for me.

But it still doesn’t settle the issue entirely for me. I’m not convinced that pleats are altogether bad in a pair of dress pants. Crystal is sure almost all women disdain them.

So here is the question: Ladies, do you prefer pleated or flat-front in men’s fashion? Fellas, do you have anything to say in my defense?

Could a Christian Have Written “The Dark Knight”?

Saturday night Crystal and I got together with some friends to watch an episode of Francis Schaeffer’s video series “How Shall We Then Live?” The series surveys significant eras of Western History, including the Roman Age, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and others. The episode we watched was on the Reformation. It was helpful and its quality was only augmented by Schaeffer’s very blatant pair of knickers (that’s actually him on the front cover of the DVD if you click on the link above).

Amazingly, the Reformation churned out some very great art. This raised the question for us of what the church’s role in art should be today. Should we see Christians being some of the world’s preeminent artists?

In a similar vein, we talked about what Christian art should look like. Take the movie industry, for example. Must a Christian script an expressly evangelistic film for his work to have redemptive value? Or is it possible to view all of the world as belonging to the Lord (Ps. 24:1) and craft a movie out of that framework?

And where do you draw the line? Crystal asked us if a Christian could have written and directed “The Dark Knight.”

What do you think?

Hallmark Produces Same-Sex Marriage Card

Al Mohler has the details:

The greeting card features two male torsos in tuxedos.  The message is clear — Hallmark is ready to join the celebration of same-sex marriage.

According to the Associated Press, America’s most prominent greeting card producer decided to roll out a line of same-sex greetings after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May.  The company had released a line of “coming out” cards last year.

The AP article Mohler cites reports:

The nation’s largest greeting card company is rolling out same-sex wedding cards — featuring two tuxedos, overlapping hearts or intertwined flowers, with best wishes inside. “Two hearts. One promise,” one says.

Hallmark added the cards after California joined Massachusetts as the only U.S. states with legal gay marriage. A handful of other states have recognized same-sex civil unions.

The language inside the cards is neutral, with no mention of wedding or marriage, making them also suitable for a commitment ceremony. Hallmark says the move is a response to consumer demand, not any political pressure.

“It’s our goal to be as relevant as possible to as many people as we can,” Hallmark spokeswoman Sarah Gronberg Kolell said.

Mohler interprets the significance of this move by saying:

…the decision to market the same-sex marriage celebration cards reveals some tipping point in the culture.  The normalization of homosexuality and homosexual unions is significantly enhanced when a company like Hallmark joins the revolution.

10 Situations Where “Better Late Than Never” Won’t Work

1. An organ transplant
2. Arriving at your gate after the plane took off
3. Turning in an application after the deadline
4. CPR
5. An anniversary card
6. Running out of gas and then thinking about re-feuling
7. A high-competition job interview
8. Doing the speed limit after being clocked at 20 over
9. Drinking expired milk
10. Depositing money after bouncing a check

In each of these situations, it seems, “better late than never” won’t work because late is never.

Can you think of any others?

Should Children Be Spanked in School?

To be honest, I thought corporal punishment was a thing of the past. However, CNN reports today that more than 200,000 children have been spanked or paddled in U.S. schools during the past year, according to human rights groups.

Apparently this form of discipline is still legal in 21 states. 13 practice it regularly.

Alice Farmer is among those who oppose the practice altogether:

“Every public school needs effective methods of discipline, but beating kids teaches violence, and it doesn’t stop bad behavior,” wrote Alice Farmer, the author of a joint report from Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. “Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehavior and at times even provokes it.”

James Dobson, however, isn’t so comprehensive in his denunciation. He believes spanking can be effective with younger students:

“Corporal punishment is not effective at the junior and senior high school levels, and I do not recommend its application,” Dobson said on the organization’s Web site.

“It can be useful for elementary students, especially with amateur clowns (as opposed to hard-core troublemakers). For this reason, I am opposed to abolishing spanking in elementary schools because we have systematically eliminated the tools with which teachers have traditionally backed up their word. We’re now down to a precious few. Let’s not go any further in that direction.”

What do you think? Is spanking an effective means of discipline in school, or should physical punishment be left to the parents’ discretion? Were any of you — I mean, were any of your friends — ever spanked at school?

Even TV Watchers Know What Hedonistic Suffering Is Like

Did anybody catch the brief segment on NBC last night about those who are losing sleep because of the late (or early) viewing hours for the Olympics? I was fascinated by one of the men NBC interviewed who testified to the effect that his loss of sleep wasn’t a sacrifice because he was getting to watch the Olympics.

Sounds a lot like David Livingstone’s address to students at Cambridge University in 1857:

For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice. (Quoted in John Piper, Desiring God, 243. Italics author’s.)

A Doubt is a Sprout

Sometimes when I hear an objection to Christianity, I feel like the burden of proof is on me to demonstrate the validity of my belief in the face of that objection. This is true, but it is not the whole story. The truth of the matter is that the objection itself is the expression of another set of beliefs, which must likewise be validated for there to be any meaningful dialogue. An objection always springs up out of the ground of prior convictions. Or, to say it another way, a doubt is a sprout.

Here is how Tim Keller explains it in “The Reason for God“:

But even as believers should learn to look for reasons behind their faith, skeptics must learn to look for a type of faith hidden within their reasoning. All doubts, however skeptical and cynical they may seem, are really a set of alternate beliefs. You cannot doubt Belief A except from a position of faith in Belief B. For example, if you doubt Christianity because “There can’t be just one true religion,” you must recognize that this statement is itself an act of faith. No one can prove it empirically, and it is not a universal truth that everyone accepts. If you went to the Middle East and said, “There can’t be just one true religion,” nearly everyone would say, “Why not?” The reason you doubt Christianity’s Belief A is because you hold unprovable Belief B. Every doubt, therefore, is based on a leap of faith. (xvii)