Dead Man Blogging

Here’s an article worth reading:
http://www.newswithviews.com/McGinley/kelly2.htm

Note the gender of the author.

I succesfully made the trip to and from Louisiana and now my wife and kids are back at home, where they belong. They had a great time visiting my in-laws, but seriously, you should have seen my boys’ faces when we got home. It was 10:00 at night but they were bouncing off the walls in happiness. I’m glad to be done driving; 11 hours in the car is just a bit too much for me. And I don’t like being away from my family, not one little bit.

I listened to some good sermons on the drive(s) to and from Louisiana. I had a set from Tommy Nelson, then I downloaded some by AW Tozer, and an audio book by AW Pink “Refuting Dispensationalism”. I loved Tommy Nelson and AW Tozer, but I hated Pink’s book. I didn’t like the quality of the recording, or the tone in which the book was written, although the material was interesting. I’m going to have to listen to Tommy Nelson and AW Tozer again; I had lots of thoughts but obviously I can’t take notes while driving. Tozer just rocks.

Speaking of the drive, my most brilliant move in my whole life was to set my laptop up to play DVDs for my boys to watch while we drove. It made the trip SO much nicer.

Granddad is doing well. His heart is doing fine now. He still has lung cancer which they will treat with chemotherapy, but I don’t think it’s too big of a problem. He’s up and about and says he feels much better, although he does tire out kind of quickly. I think that’s probably to be expected.

Teaching reprobation in a class entitled “Theology _101_” might not be the best idea. My class is now down to 8-10 people. I think some babes choked on some meat; oops. I’m no longer teaching soteriology, but have moved on to ecclesiology. The class is scheduled to end in about 8 weeks, and I’m ready for a break. I’m planning on reworking the class a bit, probably dividing it into 2-3 distinct classes, expanding some material, and so on. Many people need a more basic set of theology to start with. OTOH, one woman last Sunday was trying to get me to explain covenants vs. dispensationalism and the difference between physical and spiritual Israel and all that. I pretty much said “Beats me; I’ll try to learn something over the summer” although I affirmed that our church is dispensational.

I’ve been in Louisiana for my wife’s brother’s wedding, which was Saturday. We planned to stay through Tuesday and return home on Wednesday.

Monday, Mom called to let me know that the doctors were going to do angioplasty and put in stents in Granddad, and that there was about a 10% chance he wouldn’t make it. The “procedure” (such an innocuous name for a scary thing) was scheduled for Tuesday.

I couldn’t really cut everyone’s trip short since my mother-in-law had already taken vacation days and we’d make plans, but I wanted to be there for the procedure. So I jumped in my car and came home, leaving my wife and kids with my in-laws.

They put in two stents yesterday. I guess they have to put in some kind of radioactive dye so they can see what’s going on, and Granddad’s kidneys were not doing a good job of filtering that out. So they had to stop before taking care of the third artery, to give his kidneys time to catch up.

Due to some miscommunication, we didn’t find out until 7:30 this morning that he was first on the list today. By the time I got there, he was already done and everything is fine. “Fine” is a relative term; he still has the beginnings of lung cancer which they’ll treat with chemotherapy, but the doctors say there is only 1 small tumor and it shouldn’t be too bad.

Meanwhile, I’m about to go nuts being away from my wife and kids. I’m going to head down and get them on Friday and come back on Saturday. I’ve got a good sermon series by Tommy Nelson that helped pass the time, and I guess I’ll download some John Piper for the 10 hour return trip. I’m staying with my Mom and Dad until then, because I’ll get lonely. It’s funny, this is the _perfect_ opportunity for me to catch up on reading and movies, and I have absolutely no desire to do that. I’m pathetic.

I read A New Kind of Christian on the car trip down here to New Orleans. Since it was in the car, I didn’t really have an opportunity to take notes and all, and I did kind of read it fast. I plan to read it again, slower, as time permits.

I thought the book was fascinating.

That’s not to say I agreed with it. I loved 2/3rds of it, hated 2/3rds of it, and didn’t even understand 2/3rds of it. There was a lot of overlap. Some parts I loved and hated at the same time.

The book did address two things that I’ve wondered about for a while:

First, why is the New Testament written as it is? Why didn’t the Holy Spirit inspire anyone write a comprehensive theological treatise or creed for inclusion in the canon? The way it’s written, it takes a lot of work to put together our doctrines and beliefs, they are subject to plenty of misunderstanding and being taken out of context, and some parts sound contradictory. I’ve never understood why this is, and have wondered about it often.

Secondly, I wonder if we make a false distinction between method and message. Prevailing wisdom is that it’s OK to vary your methods to pretty much any extent in order to make the message “relevant to the culture”. But it’s not OK to change the message at all. And that makes sense, but what parts of the Bible are “message” and which are “method”?

For instance, church structure and leadership is discussed in scripture. How can we know if that was a cultural adaptation of the timeless message, or actually part of the message?

What about baptism? It had tremendous significance to the Jewish culture in the first century. Ditto for communion. Were those cultural adaptations or manifestations of the redemptive message? Or are they essential pieces of it? Can we replace baptism and communion - at least in their traditional forms - with more culturally relevant ceremonies?

What about the very idea of sin as a transgression of God’s law, of Christ’s death as a penal / substitutionary act, of justification, and redemption? All those were very relevant in a culture with a strong understanding of law, harsh penalties for transgressions, and slavery. Contrast that with our culture, which celebrates a “chaotic good” character (to use an AD&D term), where crimes are often not punished very severely, and where slavery is non-existent. How well do the ideas of law, sin, eternal punishment, redemption, and slavery communicate the eternal gospel of Christ? Would it be OK to ditch that language entirely in favor of something more relevant to the people in our culture? Doesn’t the parable of the prodigal son do a better job of expressing Christ’s work to our culture? Would it be OK to drop the whole idea of sin and justice and wrath and punishment and atonement, and replace it with different terms? Are those ideas simply manifestations to a particular culture of the eternal truth of God’s redemption of man? Is it method, or message?

I suspect the answer there is “no, not at all, of to the stake with you, heretic”. But I’m not entirely sure why.

I’m currently reading “A New Kind of Christian”, graciously loaned to me by a good friend.

This quote from the back cover really got my goat: “McLaren’s _A New Kind of Christian_ is a street-level, lived excursion into this present millennium - a world where ministry by control, condescension, and smug certainty gives way to incarnational faith.”

Regardless, I’m actually trying to read it with a very open mind. Can you imagine me as a postmodernist?

Turns out Granddad _also_ has lung cancer. The doctors say it’s very fortunate that they caught it now, because it wasn’t there two weeks ago. It’s still very small and isolated. Originally they thought they could remove it when they did the heart surger, but now they don’t want to go that route and will use radiation instead. (But, I think, _not_ chemo).

Granddad’s surgery is scheduled for tomorrow. His doctor said his prognosis is very good.

Updated: Surgery has been postponed. The doctors say they aren’t sure Granddad is strong enough yet, and want to let him recover more fully from his back surgery. It would probably help if he’d eat something. Preferably _not_ fried potatoes.

My grandfather, who is in his early 70s, went to have back surgery last Thursday or Friday. He had slipped a disc, which was pinching one of his nerves and making him unable to walk.

After the surgery, the doctors noticed that his EKG looked weird. At first they thought he’d had a heart attack during the surgery. Then they noticed that his pre-operation EKG _also_ looked weird. So they took him in for a heart cath.

We got a call this afternoon around 2:00.

Every artery to his heart is about 95% blocked. I guess 50 years of smoking, plus eating fried potatoes once or twice a day (seriously) isn’t the healthiest lifestyle known to man.

Given his age, the doctors are a bit nervous about doing another surgery so soon. Given his heart condition, they are a bit nervous about any delay at all. They won’t let him go home from the hospital, although he’s not recovered enough from his back surgery to go home anyway.

To top it off, they think he’s coming down with pneumonia. I don’t have to tell you what that could mean.

We put a new roof on granddad’s house not too long ago after a hailstorm tore up the old one. My uncle decided to put a metal roof on. Granddad told me “This roof comes with a 30 year waranty. Not that I really care!” It was funny at the time, but I was expecting he had a good 15 years left anyway. Now we’re all pretty worried.

On a brighter note, my sister will have her baby by C-section on Friday. So I’ll get to be an uncle.
Right around the time both of my sons were born, my dad has had heart problems. I guess he swapped with granddad when it was my sister’s turn. I really wish they’d cut this out.

Update (2/4/03): Granddad is _not_ coming down with pneumonia. It appears that someone in the family misunderstood something the nurses or doctors said. So that’s good news. Now he’s just waiting for the doctors to decide he’s recovered enough for surgery.