Part 2

He looked at the door.  Nothing.  The window:  also nothing.  No noise.  For the umpteenth time that night, he restarted normal breathing, lay back and looked at the ceiling.  Which wasn’t there.  What was there was dawn, breaking over a forest of pine trees gently dusted with frost.  His world shifted ninety degrees, as his prone position became  vertical, and the bedroom wall, with its walk-in cupboard, became now the horizontal axis of the world. Mind you, wall and cupboard were no longer visible beneath him, but rather a lot of nature instead.  The bed covers were gone, and he found himself stepping, not into the cupboard, but onto frosty ground.  He turned, but was already pretty sure of what was behind him:  more trees, no bed.  He gave a sigh.  It wasn’t as though he were a stranger to strange things – anyone with a reindeer which can hit 25,000mph without combusting  has seen a thing or two.  But this was magic out of his control, not at his beck and call which was the way he preferred life.  Plus it was on this most inconvenient of nights.  Most disturbingly, if this followed the traditional route, he was about to be confronted with something from his-

“Past!  Correct!” said an accented and abrupt  voice.

Twenty paces away at the edge of the nearest rank of pines stood a man swathed in dark robes with a floppy black beret affair on his head.  He was a little on the plump side, with slightly hooded eyes and an unshaven and...well, a bit of a knobbly face really, if Nick were honest.

“Are you...” Nick began, took a deep breath to cover his unease, and started again. “Are you the, ahem, Ghost of Christmas Past?”

“I don’t do ghosts.” Abrupt and forceful seemed to be his style.  “But this is the past.  Come on.” He turned on his heal and walked into the woods.  His accent was middle Europe somewhere, Germanic perhaps.

“Where are we?  When are we?”

“I have no idea what it’s called now.  It was Saxony once. Or later, rather.  Things change.”

They were crunching through the woods at a good pace, over frosted needles, the light staying bright and crisp even through the layers of branches.

“It’s very...Chrismassy here,” said Nick, hopefully.

“This is Christmas past.  You’re here to see the True Meaning Of Christmas, what it is when all the fripperies are removed”.

“Oh! Like I haven’t heard that before.”  Cynicism and the weariness of the season got the better of any fear. “That’s all I ever hear, why bring me here to hear it again?”  Frosty fronds were poking his face and leaving sparkles in his beard, none of which helped his mood.  “Hang on, it’s not one of those confounded school nativities, is it?  Done outdoors for realism and atmosphere?”  He waved his hands and wriggled his fingers dramatically as he stomped along, warming to his theme. “Same thing every year – half an hour of Christmas-is-nearly-here, dancing snowflakes, crackers singing about presents and damn stupid reindeer falling down chimneys.  Then ‘Ooh, but what’s the T-MOC?’ And wham! Suddenly we’ve time-travelled to Bethlehem via some idiot magic fairy, and “Ooh a kid in a trough, now we know the T-MOC! It’s not about presents after all! Now we can gorge ourselves on cholesterol and empty the industrial output of the Far East into our loungeswith a clear conscience!” And then back as quick as a flash to the dancing puddings.”

The man stopped, turned and fixed Nick with piercing eyes.  “I like nativities.” This was delivered as a statement of fact universally to be accepted, not a preference. “And no we are not visiting a nativity”.  He turned and continued walking.  Nick followed, more subdued. He knew he could obliterate this man with one well-aimed belly-flop, but instinct warned this would be a Bad Idea.  

Soon his attention was distracted from his mixed feelings of righteous indignation and impending doom. Through the trees he caught sight of some kind of building.  As they drew nearer it became apparent that a clearing had been formed in the woods, and on a small rise, a wooden structure had been erected.  Rough hewn wood formed a building big enough to provide stabling for maybe six of his own reindeer.  As they neared the fringe of the clearing it became apparent no reindeer were involved, but there were animals.

A crowd of people were forming – ordinary peasants by the look, but here and there someone grander. That is to say their robes were not so ragged, and the glint of gold adornment could be seen.  Nick was unsure on specifics, but he knew this Past was a long way back; he couldn’t remember seeing people quite like this, although his memory was patchier these days.   None of the people seemed to be able to see Nick or the Guide, but this was hardly unexpected under the circumstances.  A handful were bringing animals with them, a few sheep and goats, a pig over there, and maybe that was a donkey coming through the trees.  A wooden building, people gathering with a look of happiness (well some of them), sheep?  Nick knew what this was;  apparently spectral Guides were not compelled to be entirely honest.

Dalrymple: bad reasoning for making it legal

It is of course true, but only trivially so, that the present illegality of drugs is the cause of he criminality surrounding their distribution.  Likewise, it is the illegality of stealing cars that creates car thieves.  In fact the ultimate cause of all criminality is law.  As far as I am aware, no one has ever suggested that the law should therefore be abandoned.  Moreover, the impossibility of winning the "war" against theft, burglary, robbery, and fraud has never been used as an argument that these categories of crime should be abandoned.

Our Culture... p225

A Christmas Story, part 1

A year ago I wrote a short story in great haste, and really enjoyed the experience.  I've tidied it up a little bit since them, and will now inflict (in several episodes) it on the world (all 3 of you) for nostalgia's sake...


Nick's Carol

Nick sat on the edge of the bed, in the semi-darkness of his own special room.  The cushioning movement of the mattress was inviting but the creaking and sagging under his considerable weight was alarming, so he sat very still for a moment and just sighed.  This time of year he slept alone, and in all honesty on this particular night he was quite relieved at not having to talk.  He just wanted sleep, now and badly, and he could only afford a few hours before starting work again.

It was tricky pushing off first one boot and then the other using only his feet, but there was no way he was going to risk bending down, for both his sake and the bed’s.  He had hung his coat on the bedpost, but was there any point in taking anything else off?  Not really: he would hardly be asleep long enough, and he’d be wearing these trousers for the next forty eight hours anyway, so a few hours in bed would make little difference.  They’d be fine, he thought, as he pivoted round, raised his legs onto the bed and flopped backwards.  The bed made a sound suggesting that it had been holding its breath at the sight of the approaching mass but was now having its last breath squeezed out,  to the accompaniment of someone cutting taut piano wires.  Nick lay fearfully still for a moment, but the bed, the floor, gravity and Newton, all seemed to be holding a truce, so he relaxed, staring dreamily at the shifting shadows above him.  Outside, the moonlight was sparkling on the ice, and inside the ceiling looked like a monochrome reflection of a babbling stream.  He watched the shimmering light, moving his eyes across the ceiling and down the wall, until the strobing disappeared behind the dark hillock of his own belly.  He gave it a quick jiggle, just to make sure he could, and shut his eyes.  A thirty-six hour shift in the workshop had taken its toll and although his eyes ached with the strain, and the noise of the nightshift just reached the edges of his perception, he was soon asleep.

And then he was awake. Suddenly, and he didn’t know why.  A noise, somewhere, or a song or maybe a word.  Something...

There it was again!  But no song; instead a shuffling, a dragging, and with it a tinkling, a clanking, somewhere in the building.  It was drawing closer, along the corridor towards his door.  No one should be out there at this time of night, not on this night!  Nick’s sleepy mind was back online.  The proximity of the worrying sounds suggested that whatever produced them was now merely a few steps from his room. Where was security?  The Gate-Elves knew no one was allowed anywhere near this corridor, let alone his door.  But it transpired that the door was irrelevant, as first a hand, followed by its arm, a torso, and then the whole figure of a man passed through as though nothing physical stood in its way.  Given the relative transparency of the form now stood before him, eyes shining in the night, it appeared to be the man and not the door that had a loose relationship with physics.  Nick’s hand, which had been on its way towards the panic-button under his pillow (there had been time when ‘fans’ had come a little too close for comfort) slipped away as, at a subconscious level, he realised two things:

First, Security was probably useless in dealing with a man that can walk through walls.

Second, he recognised the figure before him.

By now, Nick was upright on the edge of his tortured bed, staring at the unnerving form before him – through whom he could still just make out the panelling of the door.  Although the details were necessarily hazy, he registered the long, brown, worn robe; the sandals protruding from its ragged hem; the balding dome, with incongruously well-kempt hair over the ears, flowing seamlessly into a long, grey, beard. Hanging low on his chest was a simple cross of grey metal, and in his left hand a small, bulging hessian sack, the source of the tinkling and clanking.

“Oh, really?” said Nick, fear momentarily suppressed by recognition and the long-practised habit of keeping the upper hand when dealing with trouble.  “The bag and everything?”

The spectre remained impassive, but his mouth opened and instead of the dry, dusty and distant voice Nick had been expecting (he’d read plenty of books, he knew how this ought to go) there came the same deep voice which Nick remembered and had comforted so many in years gone by.  Tonight, not so much.

“Are you really in any position to criticise the exploitation of the symbolism of legend?”

Uh oh, he could see which way this was going.

“Don’t start on me. We went through this over 1500 years ago.  It’s not going to change anything tonight.”

“It doesn’t even trouble you that I have returned from Beyond to visit you?”

“I live at the North Pole without freezing, in an invisible citadel, surrounded by magic elves and singing penguins.  Exactly how disoriented were you expecting me to be?”  This was all essentially true, but also masked a deep sense of unease that threatened to spill over into anxiety that something fundamental to his life was coming under threat.  “It’s hardly original, is it Nicholas?”, he continued in a tone that was meant to sound relaxed yet picky, “And where’s your bit of cloth to keep your jaw shut?  You missed it.”

“The trappings of death are unnecessary where I have come from.”  For a moment the gauzy shape held a rich glow, then faded.  This troubled Nick more than the previous few minutes.

Nicholas continued, “I know that the way things have developed were often beyond your control. But you have such resources, such power, such opportunity – and what do you do with it?  You’ve lost your way. You have hidden...you have forgotten.”

“Oh I see, we’re going to have some lessons in the T-MOC, like I haven’t heard them a thousand times before.”

“I’m not sure you would recognise the T-MOC anymore, not if it bit you.” Nicholas, paused and held Nick in his gaze, as if he were considering whether what he had to say next was too painful to verbalise.  “You will be visited tonight by three Guides...”

“You have got to be joking – “

“Three visitors, and they will deal with you.  Watch for the first at midnight.”

Nick opened his eyes.  He was lying in bed.  The ceiling was flickering as usual.  He looked at the door – no one there.   He realised he’d been holding his breath for some time, exhaled quietly, and started breathing regularly; the bed joined in on percussion.   Why tonight of all nights, on Eve’s Eve, would he dream of someone he hadn’t seen in centuries, dead and buried a hundred generations ago?  Well, when he said ‘dead’...technically anyway, to all intents and purposes.  He was part of the past, not the present, in more ways than one.  He had no right turning up in his dreams, not tonight.  Him, with his dogmatic commitment to ethereal hopes, to living forever, now fifteen hundred years six-feet under, dead, dead as a doorna-  no, don’t say that.  And the bag of gold, what was that about?   No academic believed the coins and chimney stuff.

Overwork and too much adrenalin.  Penguin coffee.  That was the problem.

A bell began to strike midnight.  Nick went rigid, eyes staring at the ceiling.  It was not simply that the dream gave the bell an ominous sound - he didn’t own a clock.  Clocks were a pretty vague concept in a place where the only regular event was annual;  the nearest was a quarter of a mile away, and it didn’t have a bell. It had a big flower (in the centre of a dial surrounded by animated carvings of gnomes) the petals of which unfolded once a month, when a clockwork fairy popped out and said “PoopPoop! It’s February!” or whatever.  There was no other clock.

But the bell of the clock that wasn’t there continued to toll.  Nine...ten...eleven...twelve...

Dalrymple: freedom

The idea that freedom is merely the ability to act  upon one's whims is surely very thin and hardly begins to capture the complexity of human existence; a man whose appetite is his law strikes us not as liberated but enslaved.  And when such a narrowly conceived freedom is made the touchstone of public policy, a dissolution of society is bound to follow.  No culture that makes publicly sanctioned self-indulgence its highest good can long survive; a radical egotism is bound to ensue, in which any limitations upon personal behaviour are experienced as infringements of basic rights. Distinctions between the important and the trivial, between the freedom to criticise received ideas and the freedom to take LSD, are precisely the standards that keep societies from barbarism.

Our Culture... p224.

Dalrymple: art is more

"It has always been the job of artists," writes Norman Rosenthal in his grossly disingenuous essay...it would be difficult to formulate  a less truthful, more wilfully distorted summary of art history, of which a small part - and by no means the most glorious - is mistaken for the whole, that the unjustifiable may be justified.

"Artists must continue the conquest of new territory and new taboos," Rosenthal continues, in prescriptive mood.  He admits no other purpose of art: to break taboos is thus not a possible function of art but its only function.  Small wonder, then, that if all art is the breaking of taboos, all breaking of taboos soon comes to be regarded as art.

Of course he doesn't really mean what he says;  but then for intellectuals like him, words are to express propositions or truth but to distinguish the writer socially from the common heard, too artistically unenlightened and unsophisticated to advocate the abandonment of all restraint and standards...

...a taboo exists only if it is a taboo for everyone: and what is broken symbolically in art will soon enough be broken in reality.

...when respect, hatred, love, loathing, and contempt all call forth the same artistic product, then our sensibility, our power of discrimination, has been eroded out of existence.

Our Culture..., p146-8

Paul Tripp - repentance

...I have often been struck with the reality that the man sitting in front of me lacked accurate knowledge of himself. And you can't grieve what you don't see, you can't confess what you haven't grieved, and you can't repent of what you haven't confessed.

Paul Tripp

Dalrymple: the good of humanity as motive

Almost every intellectual claims to have the welfare of humanity, and particularly the welfare of the poor, at heart;  but since no mass murder takes place without its perpetrators alleging that they are acting for the good of mankind, philanthropic sentiment can plainly take a multiplicity of forms.

Our Culture..., p77

Dalrymple: what new atheism misses

Just a link to a fascinating article by Dalrymple, himself an atheist, on what new atheism has obscured.

Dalrymple: cost and context of choice as king

Written in 2004, long before the economic crash, and of the riots of 2011:

The consequences to the children and to society do not enter into the matter:  for in any case it is the function of the state to ameliorate by redistributive taxation the material effects of individual irresponsibility, and to ameliorate the emotional, educational and spiritual effects by an army of social workers, psychologists, educators, counselors and the like, who have themselves come to form a powerful vested interest of dependence on the government.

So while my patients know in their hearts that what they are doing is wrong, they are encouraged nevertheless to do it by the strong belief that they have the right to do it, because everything is merely a matter of choice. Almost no one in Britain ever publicly challenges this belief....

...Ultimately the moral cowardice of the intellectual and political elites is responsible for the continuing social disaster that has overtaken Britain, a disaster whose full social and economic consequences have yet to be seen.  A sharp economic downturn would expose how far the policies of successive governments, all in the direction of libertinism, have atomised British society, so that all social solidarity within families and communities, so protective in times of hardship, has been destroyed.

Our Culture..., p.17&18

Differentiated Engagement

People often highlight the tension between Peter's calls to resist and submit.  But Peter, argues Volf, is giving 'an example of differentiated acceptance and rejection of the surrounding culture'.

That is, foreigners dwell respectfully in their host nation but participate in culture only to the extent that its values and customs coincide with their own that they wish to preserve. In this way the salutation of the letter introduces a concept of differentiated engagement with society...of neither full assimilation nor complete withdrawal.

Tim Keller summarises:

Unlike models that call for a transformation of culture or call for a Christendom-like alliance of church and state, Peter expects the gospel to be always highly offensive, never completely embraced or accepted by the world.  This is a caution to those evangelicals and mainline Christians who hope to bring about an essentially Christian culture.

And unlike models that call solely for evangelism and are highly pessimistic about influencing culture, both Peter in 1 Peter 2:12 and Jesus in Matthew 5:16 expect some aspects of Christian faith and practice ot be highly attractive in any pagan culture, influencing people to praise and glorify God.

Quoted in Everyday Church, Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, p60-61

The Books #8 - Amusing Ourselves to Death

Cor me and Dickie have really let this one go....

Anyway, not a Christian book or even a religious book this time, but I think one of the best books I have ever read with profound implications on how we live as humans, Christians, and Bible teachers.

Neil Postman's book was published in 1985, which means he misses the entire internet age.  But this study of media, entertainment, and the trade-off that new technology always produces, is so timeless it feels utterly relevant now (that's not to say I would not, if one appeared, immediately buy a study on the internet produced by Postman.  I would.)

Postman is a writer of clarity extraordinaire, and no words are wasted in this volume as he reveals how a shift in technology (primarily TV here) produces a shift in the way we think and live - but usually we don't notice and go blindly on. 

Prepare yourself for revelations galore about the way you view the world because of the technology you appropriate.  Sheer brilliance.

Luther: this is priceless!

The defects in a preacher are soon spied; let a preacher be endued with ten virtues, and but one fault, yet this one will eclipse and darken all his virtues and gifts, so evil is the world in these times. Dr. Justus Jonas has all the good virtues and qualities a man may have; yet merely because he hums and spits, the people cannot bear that good and honest man.

Tabletalk

Quick review: Our Culture...What's Left of it

A friend bought me this one and despite the alarming cover, it makes for an interesting read.

It's a collection of articles from the late 90s up to 2004 by a man who has travelled widely (he doesn't let much time pass without reminding us of this) but spent most of his years as a doctor in difficult situations (inner city, prisons etc) which has given him, in many ways, a view of life not dissimilar to that of traditional Christian morality, but developed from the hard knocks of real life rather than the Bible (an interesting point in itself!)

And that's what makes the book interesting:  he places himself in distinction from the liberal intelligentsia (they come in for a hammering) who pontificate from the security of their upper/middle class environs without bearing the true consequences of their philosophy; whereas he has been engaged in an almost futile struggle to help those at the bottom of the heap who end up playing out the true meaning of relativism in their damaged and disastrous lives.

The essays cover a lot of ground from why criminals get fatter in prison to the Lady Chatterly trial (lots of quotations of profanity here, just to warn you - but the essay puts the case in a completely different light from the popular conception).

So, powerful social comment from someone who has seen the dark-side; nicely and eloquently debunks much of what has passed for tolerant enlightened thinking.  But lacking in hope, because he honestly can't see how things will change (and one can understand why), underlined by his career decision which is revealed in the very first article.

NB. being a doctor in some very brutal situations, and having travelled to some very nasty places, there are descriptions and words here which don't make for pleasant reading (especially late at night - eg. his essay on Rosemary and Fred West).

700!

Cor that came round quick (Schaeffer's fault).  As always thanks to that great centenarian, Dickie Mint.

Dalrymple: the frivolity of evil

...the frivolity of evil: the elevation of passing pleasure for oneself over the long-term misery of others to whom one owes duty.  What better phrase than the frivolity of evil describes the conduct of a mother who turns her fourteen year old child out of doors because her latest boyfriend does not want him or her in the house?  And what better phrase describes the attitude of those intellectuals who see in this conduct nothing but an extension of human freedom and choice, another thread in life's rich tapestry?

Our Culture... p12

Luther: a good preacher

A good preacher should have these properties and virtues: first, to teach systematically; secondly, he should have a ready wit; thirdly, he should be eloquent; fourthly, he should have a good voice; fifthly, a good memory; sixthly, he should know when to make an end; seventhly, he should be sure of his doctrine; eightly, he should venture and engage body and blood, wealth and honor, in the Word; ninthly, he should suffer himself to be mocked and jeered of every one.

Tabletalk 400 (or 397 depending which one you look at!)

Dalrymple: medical happiness

There is something to be said here about the word "depression", which has almost entirely eliminated the word and even the concept of unhappiness from modern life.  Of the thousands of patients I have seen, only two or three have ever claimed to be unhappy:  all the rest have said they were depressed.  This semantic shift is deeply significant, for it implies that dissatisfaction with life is itself pathological, a medical condition, which it is the responsibility of the doctor to alleviate by medical means.  Everyone has a right to health;  depression is unhealthy; therefore everyone has a right to be happy (the opposite of being depressed).  This idea in turn implies that one's state of mind, or one's mood, is or should be independent of the way one lives one's life, a belief that must deprive human existence of all meaning, radically disconnecting reward from conduct.

Our Culture, What's Left of It, p9

Luther: don't torment them!

I would not have preachers torment their hearers, and detain them with long and tedious preaching, for the delight of hearing vanishes therewith, and the preachers hurt themselves.

Table Talk

Without eternity...

Just two points from Paul tripp's article on Eternity Amnesia:

3. Asking too much of people. When we fail to live with forever in view, we will unwittingly and consistently ask the people around us to provide the paradise that our hearts crave. The people around us do not have the ability to give us that constant inner peace and satisfaction that we will only ever experience in eternity. Asking the people in your church to give what they cannot give ends in disappointment, frustration, conflict, and division.
4. Being controlling or fearful. In ministry, why do we tend to swing from fear to control and back again? Because, in our eternity amnesia, we feel as if somehow, some way, life is passing us by. It's important to remember that our unfulfilled ministry longings do not so much announce to us that this world or our ministries have failed us, but that we were designed for another world. Peace in our present life and ministry is found only when we live with the coming world in view.

Caution, historians of Providence

A Christian has to affirm Providence, but a Christian historian should not assume to know the mind of God about most particular events. In fact, there are all sorts of bad examples in history where people have falsely made that assumption. In the modern world, there aren't too many examples of Christian historians who have employed particular examples of Providence well.

For most historians, I think it's wiser to affirm a general sort of Providence and yet not presume that you as an individual can know what God intended for any particular situation in the past.

Mark Noll