28 July 2004

A double-bill of confessions A friend and I were talking yesterday about strange and crazy things we did when we were kids. One time, when I was a wee lad in the Methodist Church, our minister sent his teenage son round to our house to teach me how to play chess. At the end of our little tutorial, he gave me a couple of books about the game to borrow. A wee while later I was going through my bookshelves, and I decided I'd label all my books to make it like a library, so I wrote my name in all my books -- including the ones the minister's son had lent me. I have no idea why, because I don't remember being a particularly naughty boy or prone to stealing, but for some reason, maybe for the sake of continuity and consistency, I wrote my name in these books that belonged to someone else. The saga didn't end there, however, for some time later I felt terribly guilty about the whole business, and to destroy the evidence of this awful crime, I ripped the books apart and threw them out. The minister's son never asked for them back, and no one ever breathed a word about it until I confessed my guilty secret yesterday. When I was quite young, every fifth of November the family would pile round to my uncle's house for a bonfire and fireworks. One year I had a broom and was sweeping up around the yard when I noticed my cousin's balaclava sitting there a foot or two away from the blazing fire. I'm not sure what possessed me, but I decided it would be a good idea to sweep it into the fire. So I did. Ten minutes later the entire family -- uncles, aunts, cousins -- were combing the yard in the dark trying to find "our Kevvy's balaclava". And I just kinda stood there with my broom watching this mammoth search go on until eventually one of my uncles picked up the remains of the balaclava from the embers around the edge of the bonfire and announced exasperatedly, "'Ey up, our Kevvy, 'ere it is in the fire. 'Ow did that 'appen?" Cue cousin Dave standing there clinging desperately to the broom for security, glaring down at the floor until the awkward moment had passed. Isn't it bizarre the things we'd do when we were kids? Dave 10:16:23 AM    Join the conversation [] Spoiled for choice? I found this post by Tom Hinkle over at Boar's Head Tavern quite thought-provoking: Here's something I've been thinking about lately--and it's speculation, to be sure, because we're in a much different situation than the early church. But we in modern (or postmodern) America have this "privilege" of picking the church in which we choose to worship. But what if we didn't? What if there was only the one church where you lived, and that was it? What if you were in Corinth, and you knew there were major problems. Paul's letter hadn't arrived yet. But you had your brothers in Christ misusing the gifts of God, babbling in tongues without interpretation, fighting with each other, bragging about the freedom you have to the point where someone's shacking up with his mother-in-law and people are not the least bit scandalized--except for you and a small minority. And you just flat don't have anywhere else to go, unless you pack up and move to Ephesus or Phillipi [sic]. Do you really think maybe, in a sense, we are spoiled? Is it such a good thing that we can find a church fairly easily that agrees with US at least 75% of the time? Is it such a good thing that we can cut and run when things go sour, instead of being forced to hang in there, as unhealthy as we think sometimes things can get? There's no doubt that our American culture of being able to church-shop was totally unknown in the New Testament. But how is it supposed to be? I mean, now there's no turning back, there won't be "The Church in Tulsa" (thank God because it would be run by the health-and-wealth crowd). Are we privileged, or are we spoiled? Dave 9:58:09 AM    Join the conversation []

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