Prince Caspian in the queue

May 16 is the day the second installment of the Chronicles of Narnia makes its way into American movie theaters.

This deserves a couple thoughts:

First, I did have a lively discussion regarding first movie after I saw it in the theaters twice. This can be found here and here.

Second, some of my views are a bit mitigated since then. Not to a huge degree, mind you, but there's a certain degree of nuisance I have moved past


In addition, it appears that they are going heavy on the special effects and making it pretty dramatic. This can be good or bad or just not true. We just don't know. I'll be watching it. How can I not.

See you there.

Little Big Town coming to Lynden

Little Big Town is coming to the Northwest Washington Fair for a Wednesday evening concert! This is one of my favorite bands.

I'm excited. You should be too! Who cares if they are doing a monster truck show. Who cares of they are going to have "a Christian band" (as usual). Who cares if they are going to have Randy Travis (ok, that IS pretty cool).

But Little Big Town. THAT really hits the spot! I'm there!

Exciting news

UPDATE: they were giving the cards out for one day. I have an extra card. How much will you pay me?
***
Starbucks is giving away coffee! They have a deal for Wednesday to promote Pike Place Roast. They are giving out cards which are good for a free 12 oz every Wednesday through May. Good times!

NOTE: I AM NOT A PAID ADVERTISEMENT.

The Church: invisible

This is one of a few topical notes I'm creating by means of several conversations I am engaging on some points of Reformed doctrine.

The invisible church:

The word church is used to denote those "called out" of the world, as Berkhof notes in his Summery of Christian Doctrine. This can mean both those in the physical, local church or it can refer to the church in its essence -- those who throughout all ages are the spiritual body of Christ, in which there is no unbeliever, hypocrite or false confessor.

It is important to mention that we cannot say these are two different churches. That would be one way of confusing the terms. The only point of the word "invisible" is to recognize the fact that as a sin-tainted institution the visible body or local church is not perfectly able to reveal all of those written in the Lamb's book of life.

From what I can see, some of the reasons many bristle at this is because of its misuses. For instance, if someone is struggling with assurance, it is not helpful for them to ponder whether they are "one of the elect" or "part of the invisible church." These are questions that belong to the secret will of God and not helpful to our faith and practice. The facts and promises of God's REVEALED will (scripture) are enough to give us the boldness to come before the throne of grace, knowing full well that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleans us.

Am I elect? Kind of a pointless question, just like asking if I am a part of the invisible church.

This doesn't make the term "invisible church" an erroneous term. It simply recognizes that God effectually calls out of all eternity an elect people which we as fallible men cannot know.

The Westminster Confession is one of the sources that uses this term. Here is how it reads: "The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all." (CHAPTER 25, section 1)

Personally, I don't see why this should be problematic. People can misuse any doctrine. People can overlook the reality of the covenant just as easy as they can overlook the doctrine of election. Just because there is an apparent need in reformed churches to understand the covenant, doesn't give reason for us to cast aside other historically reformed doctrines. The fact is, one of the reasons the visible/invisible distinction is made is because the Roman Catholic Church denies any difference. For them, the visible is all who are saved. Period. You get baptized and come to mass, you're good to go. They literally claim the authority to decide who is saved. The invisible church is invisible simply because we do not have eyes for what is secret.

A note on a bottle

Mind a couple words in the script.

Rulings from the press box

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia expects too much of journalists. They may think they know how to read a court opinion, but not without a political, class struggle lens.

Scalia took the NY Times to task for some of their recent coverage:

Scalia said news organizations often fail to focus on the text of the laws the court interprets, citing accounts of last month's 8-1 decision that made it harder for consumers to sue makers of federally approved medical devices.

He singled out for criticism a New York Times editorial on the case headlined "No Recourse for the Injured."

The media often make it appear as though the court is reaching policy judgments on its own rather than basing its decisions on the text of the law at issue in a case, Scalia said.

That headline made me choke. And I've seen a few stupid ones.

Top secret dumpster

I guess no one is surprised that Canada would throw away their plans for a counter-terror unit. But, somehow those plans ended up in an Ottawa gutter. A passing citizen apparently found them sufficiently clear to identify their origin and pass them on to a newspaper.

The plans -- which the passer-by handed to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper -- contain detailed drawings of the building's floor plan, electrical grid and the storage bay for robots designed to detect chemical and biological agents.

Canadian robots? I thought they trained beavers for that role.

The Third Reich and the church

I ran into some interesting reading today in some TIME Magazine archives -- in particular, an old cover on Paul Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi "Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment." Although the article is a bit long and hard to read because of some formatting issues, I was unable to tear myself away -- considering the article was written in 1933, it provides a very interesting look at something that was very current. Perhaps it still should be.

I was especially interested in how the German churches responded -- since the article touched a bit on that. So little is generally known about the rise of Hitler and how the average Christian in Germany responded. An interesting figure to study is a man named Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, a man who eventually became known for his insistence on the church's autonomy from the Nazi state.


Claremont McKenna College has an interesting study on the details of German evangelical church of that day. I noticed an interesting fact: the Nazi-supporting "German Christians" tended to be worse persecutors of Protestantism than the government.

By the middle of 1934, Protestant opposition to Hitler was well organized, and the German Christian Church became fraught with internal division. Without support from the government, the German Christians and Muller became totally ineffective.

This did not stop Jager from brutally oppressing pastors in Wurttemberg (although the strength of the resistance in Prussia handicapped Jager's ability to interfere with church operations), and continuing to spread propaganda denouncing the Protestant opposition. A Protestant Kulturkampf ("culture struggle" -- my note) was instituted, and throughout Germany, with the exception of Westphalia, opposition was brutally repressed. Pastors were fired, arrested, and jailed.

In October of 1934 Jager was dismissed by Hitler, and all measures against dissenting bishops were annulled. Opposition leaders were summoned to Berlin, and Frick assured them that neutrality was now the official government policy towards the German Evangelical Church.