“When men feed on the word, it is turned into a principle of life, spiritual strength, and growth within; which a taste of it only will not give. As food, when it is digested, turns into flesh and blood and spirits, so doth the word, and Christ therein, unto the souls of men spiritually. Hence Christ becometh “our life,” and “liveth in us,” as the efficient cause of our spiritual life, Gal. 2:20; Col. 3:3; and we grow and increase by the word, 1 Pet. 2:2. A mere taste, though it may yield present refreshment, yet it communicates no abiding strength. Hence multitudes relish the word when it is preached, but never attain life, or strength, or growth by it.” (John Owen, The Works of John Owen vol. 7, 31)
Christianity,Sunday, February 17, 2008
In reading through Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, he made an observation about government and evil that I think is very important for people to recognize.
One of the primary means God uses to restrain evil in the world is human government. Human laws and police forces and judicial systems provide a powerful deterrent to evil actions, and these are necessary, for there is much evil in the world that is irrational and that can only be restrained by force, because it will not be deterred by reason or education.
First, we can be thankful that there is not more evil in the world than we currently have. R.C. Sproul had also commented on one of his sermons, that it is by the grace of God that we don’t have ten thousand guys with guns coming at us everyday. God does a work of restraining the conscience by writing his law on our hearts and by instituting government to restrain evil by force.
I’ve heard over and over again in the world, the philosophy that we could solve social evils by educating people. If people were simply smarter, there would be a lot less evil in the world. While it’s true that true wisdom and knowledge will lead to good, this overlooks the fact that ultimately, evil is irrational, and no amount of reasoning will cure this fact. If someone wants to persist in doing evil, they are simply deluded into following the course of actions which carry out their evil desires. Although evil deeds may be well planned and thought out and using impressive displays of intelligence, are ultimately irrational and does not cooperate with rational and wise thinking. It is not education, which will remedy the situation, it is government and human force that will put a stop to it.
While it is true that it often does not solve the irrational thinking, it provides a way to display the consequence of evil. When a person who steals is by force put in jail and forced to pay a fine, this is a real life judgment and consequence for the sin. Without such forceful measures, the person may benefit in their sin and their evil, irrational thinking will continue to entice them into further sin and perhaps more heinous sins. However when stopped by force, they are forced to pay consequence for their sin and if they are not totally hardened, there is the real possibility that they will in their hearts, turn from their sin. In this turning from sin, education is important to inform people of the right way to go and the right kind of thinking.
Within our borders, the police are meant to be the local restraint against evil. In the greater world, armies of nations are meant to be the global restraint against evil. Everyone would agree that the defeat of the Nazi’s were a successful display of forceful restraint. Our current conflict in Iraq is a little more difficult to judge. However, we should be careful in our judgment and recognize the dreadful consequences of sin and evil. It certainly causes death and destruction, and when the evil is on a large scale, the death and destruction are also on a large scale. Although none of us are truly innocent under the law of God, there are men and women who are innocent of any crime under the law of man, who will loose their lives as a result of the display of force that accompanies large scale war. And it is appropriate that none of us like it. But we must also remember, the solution is never going to be education. Our hope would be equally irrational and misguided to place our hope in educational as the savior from social evils.
We should take the time to be reminded of how evil, evil truly is. Our desire should be to turn to the one being in this universe who is the stable and perfect good. What was his solution to this problem? What is God’s remedy for evil? God sent his Son Jesus Christ to ultimately conquer evil once and for all. While he was being crucified and experiencing the consequence of our sins, onlookers didn’t think that he had obtained victory. However, later, he rose from the dead, displaying his power and victory over sin. He has ultimately overcome evil for all and making this victory commonly available to all who would believe and ultimately be saved from both the consequences of evil in this world and eternity.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:16-21, ESV)
Family,Saturday, February 16, 2008
During the Christmas season downtown San Jose has their Christmas in the Park. Jenn and I didn’t always go every year, but now that Matthew is at an age that he can enjoy it, we go every year. Last year he didn’t really care for the snow blowing machine, he way mainly trying to figure out how to get into the carnival rides. This time the snow blowing machine was his favorite. The snow comes from a machine that’s decoratively hidden between 2 flat wood animals (horses if I remember correctly), mounted on a park light pole. It projects a rotating snowflake onto the ground and the snow blows out periodically. The kids will often be coincidentally walking by when the snow blows and instinctively come running and crowding the area as the snow falls. When Matthew was younger, I think the chaos of the older kids jumping around him and overtaking him was a little too scary for him to enjoy it. Now, he seems to do much better.
We also took a few photos preparing them for the night. It was really funny to see Claire in the same outfit that Matthew once wore not too long ago.
You can see the whole gallery by clicking here
Family,Saturday, February 09, 2008
Well, it’s been months since we’ve been in Alabama and visited this pumpkin patch, but heck, it was fun and I still like looking at the picture. The pumpkin patch was actually a little overpriced considering we paid around $7 bucks each and only Matthew and I did anything there. Jenn sat around with Claire. Of course, Matthew really loved it. There were tricycles to ride, animals to see, kids to play with, a scary tractor ride, a pumpkin patch to pick a pumpkin, a pool of corn to dive into, a corn maze to get lost, and a school bus to look silly. Although we complain about the price, we don’t complain about the good memories. 
Family,Friday, February 08, 2008
It’s a reality of life that each one of us goes from young and energetic to old and dying. From a biblical perspective, we are never truly living until we are born again through Jesus Christ. But even though our spirits can be reborn and our bodies can be resurrected into glorified bodies, in the meantime, we are all experiencing the wages of sin on our bodies. None are immune to these effects, aging of our bodies that eventually leads to death.
For those of us who have parents who are still alive, this means that we will have parents who are aging in our very midst. The trend today is for parents to go to nursing homes and be cared for by strangers. In this technological society where children go off to work in cities or far away places, the children are not even living in the same vicinity of the parents and sometimes the parents don’t want to move closer to their children.
So what is the proper way for children to care for their aging parents? God thinks honor of father and mother is so critically important that he instituted severe punishment for those children that dishonor their father and mother. So what guidance does the Bible give for children who have aging parents? Should they simply pay for a nursing home, rearrange their life to care for the parents? Should it be seen as a burden, or a blessing? These are topics of utmost importance.
Dr. Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Seminary discuss this issue on the Albert Mohler radio program. I recommend everyone to listen to this show. Whether you are an aging parent, or a child of an aging parent, this radio show is definitely important for you to listen to.
Honoring our Fathers and Mothers in Old Age: Radio Show
Announcements,Wednesday, January 16, 2008
If you visit the new Smug Mug gallery you’ll notice there’s a section called “top 100 photo keywords”. Each photo I uploaded now has keywords tagged to each photo that tell things like who is in the photo and where it was taken. I recently started adding these keywords to each photo within Photoshop. Now, if you want to see all the photos of Claire, you can click on the keyword and all of them will be collected in a gallery for you to view. Also, notice that when you hover your mouse over the keyword, it shows how many photos exist for that keyword. The size and boldness of the keyword also is an indication of how many photos are collected under that keyword.
One other thing, the galleries are now organized into categories and there can also be subcategories. This is basically for organizational purposes to make it easier to navigate through many photos. For example, our families trip to Alabama has so many photos, that it would just be a bit too many for one gallery, so I created a category called Alabama 2007 which you can see from the front page. When you click on this, it will bring you to another page that shows you several galleries from our Alabama 2007 trip. Since there are so many photos, you may not see all of them in one sitting, so this organization of the photos into sub galleries not only makes it easier to go back to where you left off, it also makes it easier for browsing or returning to photos in the future if you want to grab a photo that you know is on there somewhere.
There’s some other cool features of Smug Mug, such as, featured galleries, and most popular photos, but since the Smug Mug interface is new to most of you, and there aren’t that many galleries in there to begin with, I decided to disable those features for now to simplify things.
