all dolled up

all dolled up
Originally uploaded by jnordmoe

Here are the girls all dolled up in their Easter attire. More photos are up on flickr.

the culture warriors

Yesterday I finally caught up with some excellent blogging over at The Scriptorium Daily - a blog created by faculty members at Biola University. They tackle all sorts of interesting topics from literature (a current feature on the Inklings: Lewis, Tolkein & Williams) to theology, art, philosophy, culture and politics.

This being political year, quite a few of their posts have followed the current political roller coaster. In particular, JP Moreland tackles Bill O'Reilly's book Culture Warrior and provides some thoughtful analysis on the underlying worldview of O'Reilly's "secular progressives".

Here’s my two cents worth on this question: Assumption one: God exists, secular progressives (and liberal religionists) spend a lot of energy suppressing the awareness of God to keep him out of mind. Most secularists were raised in a Judeo-Christian family with traditional values, and they feel much guilt and shame for abandoning God and their upbringing and for rejecting traditionalist authority figures from their childhood. Assumption two: Everyone wants to think of oneself and be perceived by others as a good person with solid values who makes a difference in the world. No one wants to be perceived as a self-absorbed narcissist. Assumption three: People would rather find a way to feel good about themselves as they are, whether or not they should feel that way, rather than learning to change. Why? Change is difficult and involves self-denial. And change requires admitting that one is wrong and needs to change.

Together, these assumptions imply the following: Secularists need a cause that makes them feel good about themselves, that allows them to continue to reject God, traditional values and their upbringing, and that doesn’t require them to change....

I encourage you to read the entire essay here, and then check out John Mark Reynolds' essay on Obama and the pitfalls of a Reform candidacy where he compares & contrasts Senator Obama's reform platform with that of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Senator Obama would be fortunate indeed if the sole measure of his candidacy became about the “color line.” If it were, many of us would vote for him. The vast majority of Americans will give Senator Obama a hearing. Race will not keep him from winning, but his ideology might....Senator Obama has promised change, but this word forces a voter to ask, “What kind of change?”

Ticket to Ride

One of the hottest board games in our house right now is Ticket to Ride by Days of Wonder. Its a train game where you collect "tracks" to complete routes between cities. The object is to complete as many "high point value" route tickets as possible before the tracks run out. This is a great "eurogame" that is easy to learn and loads of fun - yesterday we taught the game to three friends, one of whom managed to beat me in spite of my great Boston to LA via Miami route (the green player below).

Easter Sunrise

We got out of bed before the crack of dawn yesterday to attend a special sunrise service that featured three congregations. One church provided the outdoor venue (an outdoor stage located in a small natural ampitheatre), one church provided the music, and our pastor preached.

We had been looking forward to celebrating Easter in this manner for weeks. The music was great, Daniel preached a good sermon on the intentionality with which the events of Holy week unfolded, and the sun did rise, although veiled behind clouds..... And the temperature was in the mid-30's (not including the cold North wind). Brrr!

Fortunately, the service was fairly short, and we all shared a pancake breakfast and some inter-congregational fellowship afterward. It will certainly be one of the more memorable Easter services as well as the coldest.

We hope you celebrate Christ's ressurrection and experience the Hope of Easter everyday.

Baptism

Taylor was baptised on Palm Sunday! She had been asking questions about God for over a year and was ready to begin her journey of faith this past November. We are excited to see her mature as a little lady and a follower of Christ.

This first picture captures Taylor's enthusiasm in the moment. She is our emotive child.

Obama's preacher

Barak Obama's ties to pastor Jeremiah Wright are very troubling. And his response, thus far has been wishy-washy at best. Does Obama offer hope toward racial reconciliation or does he represent more of the politics of division that we have seen on both sides of the political spectrum. I discovered a blog that tackles this issue in a fairly even handed way. Check out Dirty Harry's Place for several posts on the subject.

Here's a taste:

Christians don’t ask, pray for, or gin up their congregation by asking God to damn anything. One of the tenets of our faith is forgiveness. One of the tenets of our faith is reconciliation. Reverend Wright isn’t praying that America be better, or even that America become more like his vision of her. Reverend Wright is asking God and his congregation to damn America — to damn an entire nation — to damn a people.

Steyn on History Education

Mark Steyn wrote a piece on Australia's former prime minister John Howard this past December in which he comments briefly on the problems with history curriculum in that country (and in Western Civilization).

.... At his 2006 education summit, Howard called for "a root and branch renewal of Australian history in our schools, with a restoration of narrative instead of what I labelled the 'fragmented stew of themes and issues"'.

As he explained at the Quadrant 50th anniversary celebration: "This is about ensuring children are actually taught their national inheritance." The absence of "narrative" and an "inheritance" is a big part of the reason that British subjects born and bred blow up the London Tube, why young Canadian Muslims with no memory of living in any other society plot to behead their own prime minister.

You can't assimilate immigrants and minorities unless you give them something to assimilate to. It's one thing to teach children their history "warts and all", quite another to obsess on the warts at the expense of all else. The West's demographic weakness is merely the physical embodiment of a broader loss of civilisational confidence. Australia should never have had a "department of immigration and multicultural affairs", but, given that it did, Howard was right to rename it the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Government should promote citizenship, not multiculturalism....

I encourage you to read the entire article in which he also tackles the threats of global jihadism and compares Howard to Blair & Bush.

As a historian, I do not shrink away from discussing the "warts" of history, but I agree with Steyn that we shouldn't lose sight of the grand narratives. We need to shift the balance away from the narratives of individual identity and re-emphasize broad national and cultural unifiers.

hat tip: Thanks for Noticing Me