Jesus can be a hardbutt

Shallow inspection of his character will never do. Time to examine the heart of Christ.

Jesus correcting opponents:

1. Often did it quite publicly and humiliatingly. (Matthew 15:1-20)
2. Straight-up calling false teachers wrong. (Luke 11:37-53)
3. Name-calling, sometimes semi-racistly. (Matthew 7:6, Matthew 7:15, Matthew 23:33, Luke 13:32)
4. Compared people. (Matthew 8:5-13)
5. Called BS on seemingly good excuses. (Matthew 8:18-22)
6. Had an outright physical tamper tantrum. (Matthew 21:12-13)

Jesus correcting his elect:

1. His authority was important to him and at times needed to let others know. He calls his gosh darn mom "woman." (John 2:3-5)
2. Compared people. (Luke 10:41-42, John 21:22)
3. Used people's deaths to preach his agenda. Dude's mad cold. (Luke 13:1-5)
4. Embarrassment and condescension. (Matthew 18:1-5)

So would these actions be necessarily applicable to us? Not to disappoint Word of Faith adherents, but I think "no."

Here is a holy God among sinners that all deserve to be teared limb-from-limb for their constant disobedience. But instead, he delivers relatively light rebukes. And take note at how customized each one is; our God is so loving and personal. In contrast, as laypeople, our duty is to expunge the huge planks in our eyes as we gently restore our fellow sinning kindred. LORD, we worship you for your faithful mercies and discipline!

"Willis, the friendly Christian hipster"

Curtis Lee along with cohorts Sam and Ernest have been giving me a run for my money as of late. Exhibit A and Exhibit B have instated both a record label and fan club among the trio, but they plan to go global by way of meme-ing it up:





Sigh.

Clockwise barrels and babymills

Learning maneuvers quite quickly..

Swipes, mills to headspin

We love God for what he says about himself

It is a great irony to me that Calvinists are stereotyped as logic-driven. For forty years my experience has been the opposite. The Calvinists I have known (English Puritans, Edwards, Newton, Spurgeon, Packer, Sproul) are not logic driven, but Bible-driven. It’s the challengers who bring their logic to the Bible and nullify text after text. Branches are lopped off by “logic,” not exegesis.

Who are the great enjoyers of paradox today? Who are the pastors and theologians who grab both horns of every biblical dilemma and swear to the God-Man: I will never let go of either.

Not the Calvinism-critics that I meet. They read of divine love, and say that predestination cannot be. They read of human choice and say the divine rule of all our steps cannot be. They read of human resistance, and say that irresistible grace cannot be. Who is logic-driven?

For forty years Calvinism has been, for me, a vision of life that embraces mystery more than any vision I know. It is not logic-driven. It is driven by a vision of the ineffable, galactic vastness of God’s Word.

— John Piper

A mark of sanctification

I am now deliberately searching for the radio edits of hiphop songs for my Grooveshark playlists.

What.

the heck.

is wrong with me..

Just had a dream within a dream

In the second level of dreaming, I’m watching CCTV4 cooking programming in my living room, but from my periphery I spot my ex-girlfriend with a katana. I am not fearful - for the LORD my God is with me - annddd my house apparently has an electric fence. I text her to say that the Zhang office is closed, it’s a federal holiday.

I wake up from that level, still in the living room, and realized I “subconsciously” texted her in this level so I’m kinda dealing with the subsequent (excrement)storm. Pretty difficult to explain but I think you get it.

I finally wake up to real life, passed out in my work clothes on the living room couch. Much laughter ensues :D