What a perfect text for Quinquagesima:
Chorale from BWV 22:
Ertöt uns durch dein Güte, (Kill us through your kindness,)
Erweck uns durch dein Gnad; (awaken us through your grace;)
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Did you know that our Lord Jesus Christ assumed that His disciples would fast, just as He assumed they would pray? Jesus commended fasting as a private act of humility and devotion to God (see Matthew 6:16-18). Note particularly that he says, “When you fast…” not “If you fast…” Take a look at Matthew 9:14-15. The first Christians fasted (Acts 13:2-3; 14:23). Why shouldn’t a twenty-first century Christian do likewise? Why?
Because we are, as a culture and society, gluttons. After all, we are a “consumer” society. We consume, consume and consume some more. We eat to the point that our bellies are too large, we weigh too much, and we inflict chronic illness on ourselves brought on by poor diet and exercise habits. I’m as guilty as anyone in this regard. We do not fast to earn brownie points with God, but that fact has become our excuse for not fasting, for not attending to self-disipline and self-mortification. We excuse our laziness and gluttony by appealing to our freedom in Christ as forgiven children. We let ourselves off the hook all the while comforting ourselves that we are free not to get caught up in “legalistic” requirements such as fasting. We look at the required fasts in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy and rightly criticize the imposition of such rules as contrary to the Gospel freedom we have, but then we again use this an excuse not to fast. We’ll show those legalists, as we continue stuffing our faces and filling our bellies with the food that perishes.
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Hilarious. From the always funny Sacred Sandwich:
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Everyone knows we live on an overpopulated planet. Too many people (carbon footprints) harm our environment, causing global climate change, a threat to us all. In addition, increasing population means more poverty and starvation. Responsible adults must limit their family size.
What I just wrote is nonsense, of course, but is religion to environmentalists and accepted by many if not most Americans. In spite of such bleak pronouncements, abundant space remains in and on this world for more people. The sun controls our weather more than we thought. Carbon dioxide helps plants grow. Denmark and Japan, two densely populated countries, experience remarkable prosperity in spite of (because of?) their many citizens. Dishonesty, graft, greed, and corruption seem to contribute more to poverty and starvation in developing countries than anything else.
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File this in the “DUH” category.
Lifestyle Changes: Which Is Best?
The researchers defined the three healthy routines as eating the evening meal as a family more than five times per week, getting at least 10.5 hours of sleep nightly, and watching less than two hours of TV on weekdays.
The researchers say adopting just one of the practices could lower a child’s risk of becoming obese. Each routine was linked with 23%-25% lower odds of obesity.
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The ID movement has also rubbed a very raw wound in the relation between science and religion. For decades scientists have had to fend off the attempts by Young Earth creationists to promote their ideas as a valid alternative science. The scientific world’s exasperation with creationists is understandable. Imagine yourself a serious historian in a country where half the population believed in Afrocentric history, say, or a serious political scientist in a country where half the people believed that the world is run by the Bilderberg Group or the Rockefellers. It would get to you after a while, especially if there were constant attempts to insert these alternative theories into textbooks. So, when the ID movement came along and suggested that its ideas be taught in science classrooms, it touched a nerve. This is one reason that the New Atheists attracted such a huge audience.
None of this is to say that the conclusions the ID movement draws about how life came to be and how it evolves are intrinsically unreasonable or necessarily wrong. Nor is it to deny that the ID movement has been treated atrociously and that it has been lied about by many scientists. The question I am raising is whether this quixotic attempt by a small and lightly armed band to overthrow “Darwinism” and bring about a new scientific revolution has accomplished anything good. It has had no effect on scientific thought. Its main consequence has been to strengthen the general perception that science and religion are at war.
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Thesis: While the defense of the Christian faith may serve to remove common objections, it cannot create faith, properly the work of the Spirit through the Word.
Any objection to faith is overcome by the Spirit through his chosen instruments, Word and water.
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