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Hello all. Valerie has commissioned me to write a little review of what’s coming up in the next few months, because interesting times are on us, apparently all at once. Usually, I’m not allowed to write up the family news because I get stuck in the theory of it. It’s not my habit to say anything important without explaining it from the foundation up. I don’t intend to start that kind of thing now, so you’ll have to forgive me for long-windedness. However, even though it’s messy, in order to be kind, I’ll give you the scoop before the cone:
The bad news is that I am not announcing any new babies coming into our home. The good news is that we are laying a foundation for a life that is more condusive to baby-bringing. Two things are about to happen: We’re buying a house, and I’m joining the Army (reserves).
Believe me, they’re connected. The house part, I think, is easy to see as a universal good. How can owning a home be bad? Unfortunately, a universal good is not always uniformly good. For us, buying a house means that our total debt levels rise to the neighborhood of $255,000 – more than a quarter million – which is to say: a lot. And it’s not that we’re buying a mansion somewhere. About 2/3 of that will be school debt, which has been hanging like an anvil from my neck since we quit schooling. As best I can tell, there has been almost no direct financial benefit from all that educatin’. Valerie might have gotten her job as a result of her education, but the return has not been in proportion to the investment.
And this (partially) is where the Army thing comes in. I get a $20K bonus for joining. There is another potential $20K school debt waiver. That money could immediately reduce our payments in the neighborhood of $350 a month. Plus there is the pay during training, which will be greater than what I’m making at my job, and again in the event of active duty. And this is reserves, which means that, while I may be an absent father for a little while, my family stays rooted, which is important to us, particularly in the light of the house we’re about to buy.
For those who worry, my official enlistment in the Army looks to be this Friday, but basic training is likely not to begin before November, so there will be plenty of time to transition into a home before I have to leave for a time.
Now that was the bare bones report. Next comes my dreary reasoning. If all you needed was the facts, read no further; what follows is philosophy.
When Valerie and I first began to pursue a life together, from all appearances, she was the dedicated career woman, and I the hopeless drifter. Her unceasing ambition from childhood had been to become a doctor. She was enrolled in biology, pre-med. I was getting a degree in English, with the nascent idea of becoming a poet, or maybe a fantasy author. I had a memory of a desire to become a minister of some kind, if ever I got the theology figured out. Sappy romanticism was in my blood.
In fact, so romantic was I that the idea of a wife who was permanently chained to her career was ugly to me. So as we started talking about getting married, I started insisting that, if Valerie ever took it into her head to become a stay-at-home mom instead, I’d find a way to make it happen. Though I didn’t know what it meant, I meant it just the same.
Rush forward a few years. We have incurred a mountain of debt and Valerie has made a discovery: At least during the early years, raising children is the most demanding, rewarding, and absolutely vital role a woman could ever fill. (I say “during the early years” because, as children grow older, that responsibility shifts from the mother to the father. As they come into this world, the mother raises them, and the father helps. As they approach adulthood, it shifts to the father doing the raising and the mother who helps.) I ask a question: granted that it’s sometimes financially necessary and can’t be helped, is child-rearing the sort of thing that can be outsourced? Outsourcing is the process of taking relatively low-skilled work and assigning it to a secondary party that can perform it at a reduced cost, thereby freeing up time and resources that can be applied to more vital work. Is it appropriate to give over child-rearing for the greater part of the day to a secondary party so that a mother has the time and resources to pursue a career? Valerie’s answer is that child-rearing is more important for a mother to do than to pursue a career. The only time it’s right for a mom to put her kids in day care is if she has to in order to put food on the table.
That’s the sound of the gauntlet being thrown to the ground. The food on the table bit is my job. In my book, a wife should have the liberty to work because she wants to, not because she has to. Unfortunately, we have a quarter million dollars worth of ‘want to’ that have become ‘have to’ on the sly. And for the last year at least, the elimination of that impediment has been my highest, most consuming goal (save one – the reformation of my soul according to the image of Jesus Christ, the recovery of a deep devotional life. But in my mind, the two are linked considerably.)
I have got to find a way to make more money. But my options for doing so are limited. Now I need a career, and nothings coming to me. Poetry and theology aren’t exactly the big money makers. An MBA or accounting degree involve moving first in exactly the wrong direction. And lo, here is the military siting out with a solution: immediate debt reduction, supplemental pay, and the ability to acquire the sort of experience that can transition into a well-paying civilian career.
Still, joining the Army strikes a lot of people as a sort of drastic decision, especially if you drop it on them all at once. It demands long hours, takes you away from your family for extended periods of time, and then there’s the risk of physical harm. People in the Army can get shot!
It does, and they do, but Valerie and I have discussed these things for some time, and decided that the cause is worth the risk. It’s that important for her not to have to work until the kids are grown. The benefits of joining the military are high, but the diminish with time. The costs of joining are also high and they increase with time. Ten years ago, without a family, I could have joined as active duty with no constraints. Today, I may be to old to become an officer. Another ten years, and I would be too old to join at all.
Joining the army also isn’t only about income. There’s also the issue of patriotism, which I mention quietly, because it’s out of favor lately. Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have joined any branch for any amount of money. I loved my country, but not like that. I thought I could love the people and have no respect for their government. I’ve reversed that position now. I had a similar problem theologically: I thought you could love the church without loving churches.
But as I’ve been growing in my theology, I’ve come to the conclusion that God believes in government, because he desires order. He intended man to be the superintendent over all creation, to create networks and systems and economies. God established authority from the beginning, and expects us to submit to it and participate in it’s administration, rather than sliding out from under it through some anabaptist clause. Therefore I have a duty, not just to government in the idea, but to my government. This government to which I have a duty is the same government that is willing to give out generous gifts I really need, in order to fill its ranks with quality men. So it seems that the cause is doubly worth the risk.
I told Valerie that, in light of this line of thinking, I needed to either join the military or serve some time in local politics. Even though I understand politicking is more lucrative, she said she’d rather I joined army.
Please forgive my tone in the next few paragraphs. I’ve been reading Puritan preachers lately, and I think it’s garbled up my syntax a bit. Nevertheless:
It is always the business of the true Church to order the secular government around. It is never the business of the governor to order around the church. Both church and state are concerned with government, and their spheres overlap, but it’s the authority of the church that necessarily presides over the power of government, provided that the church is truly the church established by God according to the gospel (with Christ as it’s chief cornerstone, and apostles and prophets as its pillars).
The church has as her weapons (1) the truth, authenticated by the scriptures and by the Spirit of God who confirms truth by conviction in the hearts of men, and (2) the power of the church’s members, given by the Holy Spirit, to humble themselves in obedience to the truth even to the point of death. The government’s only weapon is the sword, which can coerce only those who fear death but do not fear “the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Men who fear God are not afraid of guns and prisons, and in a fight between church and state, the church will always win, unless that church has lost its faith in the truth of the gospel. The church that has lost its faith in the gospel is of course no true church at all, but a bad forgery.
The framers of the US Constitution were wise to ban Congress from attempting to establish a church. Only God can establish the true church, and the government that attempts to establish a false church may in fact disestablish itself when the true church begins to rise. But this is a very different thing from attempting to separate church and state, which is as much nonsense as trying to separate light and air.
It’s a sad indicator of how weak we are as Christians that the above might seem to be a new idea, and that it’s necessary to take the next step toward application and point out that the churches in the West today have almost no authority over the government. Politicians ignore pastors almost completely, and preachers abstain from pointing out which candidate is more Christian than another on pain of taxation. This could only be possible if the church’s understanding of the gospel were so thin as to be almost negligible, like non-alcoholic beer or tobacco-free cigarettes. Or else, we are all false churches, and there is no true church in the West at all.
Has God taken away our lampstand, or is it merely guttering?
Yeah, I know - Lent was last week. But with the way my new work schedule comes out, it looks like I have about 2½-3 discretionary hours every day, these hours coming first thing in the morning, since my evenings are really taken up with baby and wife. On the other hand, it’s been working out that reading through my blogs every day actually takes somewhere around an hour and a half. What with my tendency to pad my free time activities, there’s not much room for anything else, and it’s occurring to me that I have some things to do that might be more profitable during that time, such as perhaps jogging, Bible reading, prayer, and guitar.
“Cutting back” is not something that I do very well, and it’s especially so in the area of Internet use. I like to complete things, and Google Reader just lists every blog I read as it’s been updated. Once I start down the list, the urge is to go ahead and finish it. “Cutting back” meats cutting out some of the blogs, which I suppose may happen in time, but initially, it’s a huge time investment. Far easier just to cut out from the blog scene entirely for a while.
But who knows? Maybe more time in my Bible will result in more meaningful blogging, with fewer responses to other blogs.
I fear that Reformed Christians are often in danger of making the same mistake about the glory of God that most evangelicals tend to make about God’s love: Having managed somehow to distill the nature of God and all his plans and purposes under the unifying heading of a single word, we then proceed to demolish our own system by mis-characterizing that word according to human standards. Love degenerates into sentimental affection and glory into public acclaim, neither of which comes close to the true Biblical meaning of those terms.
The love of God is a frightening thing. The glory of God is often hidden.
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
–Col 2:13-15
It looks like my blogging is going to go way down for a while, since my new job doesn’t involve sitting much at a desk, where I might type up a few thoughts now and then as I work. However, I did have this little nugget to share:
As I was talking to one of my new coworkers, I noticed that he had a copy of Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God sitting on his shelf. I made some comment on it, since it was probably given to him by a Sovereign Gracer (which it had been - another coworker). But the guy had a strange response - he said he wasn’t very happy about it, and it sounded like the book brought down his opinion of CJ Mahaney (the book’s editor). The issue was the title: Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God. After a little discussion, I made out that his problem was related to the likelihood of dishonoring the glory of God by associating it with things like sex and romance. He understood, he said, that the goal of the books contributors was to explore how things like sex and romance could be related to the glory of God, but that Christians need to be aware of what a title like that might imply, namely that sex and romance could somehow be put on the same level as the glory of God.
I’m really not quite sure what to make of such a position.
And the search for employment comes to a close. At least for now. On Monday I will start work as a processing manager for KARM Thrift Stores, where every $2.00 of profit buys a meal at the Rescue Mission. Be sure and stop by - you can see me if you are making a donation. I will leave to the patient mind the thoughts of how it is I have been confined to the non-profit sector.
And now, links:
I don’t think this is really what Seth Godin was talking about.
Frankly, I’m all for a global currency. But I think it won’t happen until currency can be measured on a peer-to-peer sort of basis. Just get Visa, Master Card, and AmEx to use “grams of gold” as their account measurement.
If you’re going to include the culture in your bible study (and you should), be careful! This is really in the vein of my biggest beef with every amateur theologian (including me).
My meeting with the Mormon evangelists didn’t go all that great yesterday. I don’t mean that anything catastrophic happened, or that my objections were swatted out of the air like so many flies. I still think I have good objections, but my delivery was weak. I stumbled. Frankly, I think I was too conciliatory and put the ball too often in their court. I didn’t want to attack, but neither did I want to stand “as a man at a mark”. And of course, they had their own agenda they wanted to push through in the conversation. Doesn’t it bother you that there are so many different churches that claim to be right? Actually, no it doesn’t. But adding Mormonism to the mix doesn’t help your argument.
However, in conversation, I came across another Mormon distinctive that undermines their position where they expect to support it. The Mormon “gospel,” that is, the story that they’re announcing, is one of apostasy and restoration. The church lost the plot and God replaced it with the church of Latter Day Saints. Here Joe Smith is taking a page from John Nelson Darby’s Dispensational theology. The concept comes from the biblical concept of dispensations - different time periods in which God has set up different systems for relating to man. For instance you could talk about about five major dispensations: Before the fall, from the fall until Abraham, from Abraham til Moses, from Moses until Christ, and the Christian era.
I’m not a scholar of Darby’s dispensationalism, but I believe he had a system that allowed for seven dispensations before the new heaven and new earth were created. And my understanding is that a key aspect of Darbian dispensationalism is that, whatever system God set up for us, we voilated the terms of the covenant, and then God created another one. So you have this flow: God establishes a new dispensation, the covenant community thrives, the covenant community falls into apostasy, God establishes a new dispensation. It’s the book of Judges writ large.
Now at some level, the concept of dispensations, especially the King James phrase (from Ephesians 3:1) “dispensation of grace”, is completely biblical. But for the orthodox, you have to keep two key concepts in mind, otherwise dispensationalism can lead you straight to heresy.
I will leave to the patient mind the thoughts of how it is I have been confined to the non-profit sector.
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