Book of the Month February 2024: Full-Time

 

Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life by David Bahnsen is written by a Christian to Christians, and we desperately need to pay attention to every bit of what he has to say. This book has a pretty simple thesis: everything pop culture has told you about work has probably been wrong.

Overview

"I think we are all familiar with the cliched Hollywood setup of a man 'married to his career' who over the course of the movie slowly realizes that he is missing out on the 'important' things in life and eventually picks an alternative (a romance, his kids, more frequent walks through a garden, mentoring a troubled high school youth) over the 'evils' of careerism and personal ambition." (17)

Now, Bahnsen stresses (over and over again) that there is nothing wrong with these 'important' things. Rather, the problem is in making work and these things enemies. Can you have both work and a healthy life, without downgrading work or the life? Why are we always told we have to choose between them? Shouldn't it be possible to do both?

Deliver Me, O Lord, From Mine Enemies

 

Hear me speedily, O LORD: my spirit faileth: hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit. Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto thee.--Ps. 143

 

Lord, we live in a world covered in enemies and foes. Some are out in the open, seeking to use their own power or even the power of others to crush us and our works. Some hide near us and whisper slanders and shame. Our own flesh shrieks rebellion, the very ground we work delivers thistles in return our toil. So deliver us, Lord, from all these enemies—we flee to you to hide from them. Thank you that when we flee we do not have far to go.

Be with Logos School members in their trials, and with the elders and deacons of Christ Church and King’s Cross as we attempt to build for the future here in our little corner. We pray also for the rest of your Temple: for the persecuted saints in India, for the Christian members of our legislative assemblies, for all those unsure of how to handle our troubled times. We ask that you grant them knowledge and teach them to do all Your will; for You are God: Your spirit is good; and you have promised to lead us into the land of uprightness out of a dark pit, or even a grave. For You even know the way out of one of those.

Let this comfort all here who feel the shadow of their grave fall on them: the sick and suffering. Particularly, be with those having operations, those with permanent sickness, and the rest of our saints whose names we bring before you every Sunday. Bring them to fullness of life, Lord, for your name’s sake, and for your righteousness’s sake (since we have none) bring them out of trouble. We have more suffering than we can name, but you have more righteousness than we could ever comprehend. And you promised it to us, in your own beloved Son.

So in thy mercy cut off our enemies, and destroy all them that afflict our souls: for this congregation is your servant.

Petitions King's Cross Feb. 18, A.D. 2024

Book of the Month January 2024: Did America Have a Christian Founding?

 

The short answer? Yes.

But if you want to start getting into more depth than that, Mark David Hall's Did America Have a Christian Founding: Separating Modern Myth from Historical Truth (2019) is a great place to start.

"Scholars and popular authors routinely assert that America's founders were deists who desired the strict separation of church and state...Even prominent Christian college professors such as Richard T. Hughes argue that "most of the American founders embraced some form of Deism, not historically orthodox Christianity." Examples of authors who make such statements may be multiplied almost indefinitely. These claims are patently and unequivocally false. This book demonstrates why." (xv) 

Why Should You Read This Book?

If you live in America today, you probably have been raised to believe one of two views of the United States' early relationship to religion:

Kuyper on Obergefell and Drag Queen Story Hour

“We observe [the impossibility of neutrality in government] perhaps most clearly in the question of marriage and the status of women. Here, too, opinions completely diverge. In one perspective, man and woman are only two names for what we commonly call human being, and because there must not be inequality between one person and another, no distinction between the two is warranted. Conceptually, then, marriage is something that cannot be permitted to persist. Or, if we still want to call it marriage, it is in fact nothing other than a contractual agreement between two equal individuals that in no case may be binding any longer than they themselves want it to be. Nor may such contractual living together be considered more honorable than living together without contract. In this way, “free divorce” and “free love” stand on the same level as marriage. With this the foundation of the family collapses, and the care for the children falls to the state. Diametrically opposed to this new—or, in fact, warmed-over pagan--thinking stands the other view, which acknowledges an essential difference between man and woman, sees marriage as arising from this essential difference, permits divorce only in very specific cases, and places—thanks to the permanent character of marriage—the children under the care not of the state but of the parents. How is government to remain neutral in this? And is it not clear that “neutrality” would in fact mean being partial to the first perspective? If the government is not involved with marriage and does not regulate its permanence and its consequences, then the men and women who advocate “free love” get what they want. Their will and desire become the law of the state, and marriage acquires the character of a private pastime. Here then a choice must be made and is always made. Government, if it is responsible in its choice, must know why it chooses the first over against the second approach.”--pg. 207

"The same must be said of the matter of public decency. To a greater or lesser degree, everyone still expects that the government will maintain a measure of decency in the public realm. Order and safety are not enough. Human honor must govern the public realm, and it is simply contrary to any notion of the role of government for it to allow human beings to live like animals. But, of course, in order to maintain “decency,” government must have a conception of what is honorable and what is not. Here, too, “neutrality” would be nothing but surrendering all decency, and the most shameless individual would attempt to have his base instincts become the law of the land." pg. 209, Common Grace Vol. III

 

A 2023 Reader's Digest

 Well, I didn't quite manage to publish twelve "Book of the Month" posts. I shall have to attempt to be more consistent in 2024. 

In order to console all five readers of this blog for missing so many of my sparkling recommendations, here is a brief list of twenty of my favorite reads of 2023. When strangers ask me what I do with my free time, the answer will probably involve some of these. They are in no particular order. Some of them appeared as a Book of the Month, some didn't--but I think they are all worth your time. I've added a few flyaway thoughts to each. If you want further musings on any of them, feel free to ask. There are few things I like talking about more than what I'm reading.

Happy New Year to you all, and let's see what this next one brings. (Hopefully, a lot more books!)

• Wordsmithy by Douglas Wilson. Always great, particularly if you have anything to do with crafting thoughts into words--which is most of us.

Commonplaces--Nov/Dec 2023

 

“This is what defines the peculiarity of Augustine’s pilgrim city in this world: its members…refer these concerns to the enjoyment of eternal peace. Thus when a Christian, from such an eschatological perspective, affirms some secular value, some human enterprise or achievement, his affirmation will not be an simple self-identification. His peculiar posture to the world precludes identifying himself with its values without some reservation. The fullest endorsement of a secular value is tinged with criticism. What others may affirm simply as good the Christian has to subject to a more exacting standard. His good must survive the more deeply penetrating questioning from an eschatological perspective.”—R.A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine

“It is necessary in this age for the citizens of the kingdom of heaven, surrounded as they are by the lost and the impious, to be vested by temptations, so that they can be trained and tested like gold in a furnace. We ought not therefore to wish to live only with the holy and the just before the time is right; so that we might deserve to be granted it at the proper time.”—Augustine, Augustine’s Political Writings Letter 189

From Plato's Republic (Jowett translation)

“Neither ought our guardians to be given to laughter. For a fit of laughter which has been indulged to excess almost always produces a violent reaction.”—III.388

“Then if any one at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good.”—III.389

“Here, then, is a discovery of new evils, I said, against which the guardians will have to watch, or they will creep into the city unobserved. What evils? Wealth, I said, and poverty; the one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.”—IV.422

Thanksgiving A.D. 2023

 

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!

Another Thanksgiving is upon us—another riot of food and relatives and small children and mashed potatoes and singing and noise and joy and pie. What shall we do with it all?

We cannot hold onto it. Our minds are not big enough. No brain is spacious and tenacious enough. Try to recall every detail of last year’s Thanksgiving and see how far you get. One fleeting detail—perhaps two—and you’re done. We are locked in time and no matter how often we rattle the cage of memory, no one has a key. All our grasping and clutching for one produces only rage and empty wind.

The Book with the Curl in the Middle of Its Forehead

 

Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization is one of those really frustrating books whose overall value fluctuates depending on what chapter you're currently in. It's rather like that old Longfellow rhyme:

There was a little girl,
    Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
    When she was good, 
    She was very good indeed.
But when she was bad she was horrid.

Commonplaces--Sep/Oct 2023

“What is really lost when a civilization wearies and grows small is confidence, a confidence built on the order and balance that leisure makes possible.”—Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization

“There is a kind of pedantry common to all the crafts which derives from the exaggeration and intemperance of those who practice them, making those affected by it seem extravagant and ridiculous. We smile with indulgence upon those drudges of the "republic of letters" who bury themselves in the learned dust of antiquity for the good of knowledge, bestow the light from this darkness upon the human

race, and commune with the dead (whom they know intimately) for the benefit of the living, whom they scarcely know. This pedantry, which is excusable somehow in scholars of the first order (prevented by their profession from circulating in the civilized world) is entirely unbearable in military men for just the opposite reason. A soldier is pedantic when he is too meticulous, when he blusters, or when he plays the Don Quixote. These faults render him as ridiculous in his profession as a musty appearance and Latin affectations do a scholar.”—Frederick the Great, Anti-Machiavel 

"You must not think that these priests were idle, or occupied only with sacrifices. An altogether greater responsibility and a greater burden

The Things At Hand

 

The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Lord, we keep many things near at hand. Some of them are good things: blessings, honors, every kind and every sort of stuff. Some of them are not as good: fears, sins, even sheer indifference. But you call us here to remember that you are truly the God who is near, and so we bring our petitions to you with renewed awareness.