Follow Up

Awhile ago I posted my thoughts on a great song by Blackalicious. Though the song is pretty great, I pointed out the despair in the lyrics. I found this video the other night. It's quite good. It combines to very awesome things (the lyrics to the Blackalicious song really come out behind Kurt's tunes).

John Piper writes

You just want people to like you. If people would just like being around you, you'd be satisfied. Or ifyou could just have a good job with a good wife, or husband, and a couple of good kids and a nice car and long weekends and a few good friends, a fun retirement, and a quick and easy death, and no hell--if you could have all htat (even without God)--you would be satisfied. That is a tragedy in the making. A wasted life.

I was just reminded of the lyrics to "Make You Feel That Way" when I read that section from Piper.

Find a hundred dollar bill wow man that's great
Get promoted at your job up to management
Plot a long time finally a plan has made it
Time I feel I wanna shout, man its real that way
Wanna think of things that make you feel that way

Anyways, the video is cool.

Self Indulgent

It really has been a while since I posted last. It has been so long that my Mozilla browser didn't even recognize when I typed in the first three letters of blogger.com into it. Anyways, this is probably the most self indulgent my blog has ever been or ever will be. I've just been notified that blogger "now saves your drafts automatically!" Cool! I am so out of date. I've been working like crazy at Enterprise rent-a-car and helping my father finish shingling our roof. I spend about 5 minutes on my computer per day. After spending hundreds of hours writing papers last semester, it was pretty good to take a break.
For the past month or so, I've been reading and re-reading Nehemiah with Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill as Mark preaches through the book (the vodcast rocks). It has been really convicting and challenging. I have learned a lot about the need for and the relationship between prayer and planning. Huge and uber-hard. Also, along the lines of spirituality but sorta not, I'm reading C.S. Lewis' book Until We Have Faces. I am only 1/5 of the way, but I am pretty much really into it. I'm also reading Don't Waste Your Life by You Know Who with some guys from church. Loving it. I just finished reading American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I bought and read the book because the movie (featuring Christian Bale), though it is violent and immoral (I definitely don't recommend it), had a very interesting main point. Anyways, 70% of the book is readable and pretty fascinating and awesome. The other 30% made it not worth touching. Anyways...I'm also reading a non-fiction book that Lowonthego let me borrow called Black Like Me. I recently read this odd book called A Tour of the Calculus. Now, if you know me at all, you know I suck at and hate Maths. The somewhat bizaar book is a history of Maths and specifically, "The" Calculus. The prose is kinda exasperating after awhile though.
I am also apparently amoung the few obscure people who actually like the new Rihanna song Umbrella. The only slightly-recent movie that I have seen in the past two months is 300. Wicked. I would see it at least 3 more times. I love that the main guy is played by the same dude who played the Phantom in the 2004 Phantom of the Opera (Gerard Butler).
I am actually really tired right now. I have absolutely nothing profound or useful to say. Actually, the reason that I am even typing this is because I neither have to work nor go to church tomorrow. I am taking advantage of being up past 10 PM.
I don't even know how to end a post like this, so I'll end it now....

A blind date with the latter day saints

I jumped on a bus up at Silverstone and Martingrove and sat down beside two well-dressed men. "We're missionaries," the one closest to me said. "From Utah." Things progessed. I jumped off the bus at Dixon Road with a blind date set up for the following Tuesday night. At around 5 or 6 minutes past 8PM, the kettle was on and a plate of cookies sat on the coffee table, two young men stepped out of a late evening shower into the front hallway. "Nice place you've got here," Said the one who quite resembled Matt Damon. "Do you live here alone?"

"No," I said. "I live with my folks."
"That's great," He said.

We opened in prayer and began. We talked of our background, our families, our faith journies. Matt Damon pulled out a crisp KJV and explained that they believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. The first topic was that of the apostles. We discussed their purpose at the time of Christ and early Church and also their importance to the Church today. Ephesians 2:20 was mentioned and also 4:12. On this we agreed. I think they are intentionally vauge on the first meeting.

"We believe that God ordained that there would always be 12 apostles. " Matt Damon said. "But what happens when you take away the foundation of a house?" He paused. "It collapses."
"Indeed." I said.

He went on to say the when the apostles died, the Church's strength and unity gradually declined and eventually fell apart. He kept refering to the "perfect Church" that Christ had intended. It is this broken and scattered Church that Joseph Smith was called to reform in 1820. This includes updated scriptures, The Book of Morman, and 12 new apostles.
It was all sounding so lovely.

Though there are many dubious elements of the Morman theology, it was the very premise on which they build the entire thing that really didn't jive with me. This is, that the church is supposed to be perfect and completely unified on this earth. Now, we do have a perfect righteousness in the eyes of God and this through Jesus Christ. In this, the true church is unified (by "true" I mean someone who can say AMEN to every chapter of Romans). If the church was ever meant to be unified on every secondary matter, Romans 14 would have no need to exist. But, it does.
In true blind date fashion, once we had finished our meeting, Matt Damon asked, "So, would you like to meet again?"
"Sure," I said. We exchanged phone numbers and gave eachother some homework for next time.

Here is a little thing from Mark Driscoll on this matter.

Get your worship on

The Challies and I had some really good times singing at the Resolved Conference. Tim, mourning the acousticness of the music at Grace, was pretty pumped about rocking out for Jesus. I even heard him muttering "get your worship on" a few times. I think we all need to "get our worship on." Lets talk about funky praise.

Can you feel that praise?

The End of Means

I was standing with my guitar the other day at Grace, listening to the Reformed Baptist pray . I thought, Man, this guy is uber eloquent. Then I looked and saw that he was reading from the Valley of Vision. Ah, I thought. I picked up my VoV tonight and fliped to a few pages from the back. I read this:

O My Lord,
May I arrive where means of grace cease
and I need no more to fast, pray, weep,
watch, be tempted, attend preaching and sacrament...

Heaven is so incomprehensible because all we know are his Means of Grace (some of which are listed in the passage above). These means point us to him. They reveal and represent parts of him and his glory. All of it will necessarily pass away when nothing stands between us and our eternal Father.