God is invisible, but what about his car?

After putting Jonathan down for a nap, I had to go back in his room. He was screaming because of monsters (I still don't know if he's honestly scared, or if he's using the monster-scheme to get me in there. It could be either).

Either way, I comforted him, and told him that the monsters aren't real. Here was our short conversation:

"Who is real?" I asked.
Jonathan immediately replied, "God. Mommy and Daddy."
"Are monsters real?" I asked.
"No."
"Good, son."
"See God?"
I was ready for that one: "No, son, we cannot see God. He is invisible and infinite," I assured him. "But He watches over you, and he sent us Jesus so that we could better understand Him."

After about five seconds, during which I could tell he was really thinking about something, he asked, "See God's car?"

That kid loves cars. Since he thinks my 2000 Pontiac Grand Am is cool, I'm sure he was thinking, if God is that big, He must have a totally awesome ride.
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Over-spiritualizing is really unspiritual

I found this comic today, which made me have all kinds of funny and unfortunate memories:



Don't get me wrong - it's not that drinking coffee can't be spiritual. After all, the Apostle Paul tells us that whether we eat, or drink, or whatever we do, we should do it to the glory of God. So, drinking coffee with a friend, done to the glory of God, can be a spiritual act of eternal significance.

But, it's also ok to just like some good coffee. It's ok to just like a book because it awoke some deep emotion in you, and you really don't know why. It's ok to have a conversation about sports over the dinner table.

When I was at DBU, there was a group of students on campus that my friends and I dubbed the "psycho-Calvinists." We didn't call them this because they were Calvinists. After all, my friends and I were all either already Calvinists ourselves or were on our ways there. I found out later that there were lots more budding Calvinists on campus than I ever knew, but many were closet-Calvinists because they didn't want to be associated with the psycho-Calvinists.

We called them this, because no matter where we were or what we were doing, all these people wanted to talk about was Calvinistic theology (usually double predestination, the multiple meanings of the love of God, or some other Calvinesque topic). We couldn't just sit at the lunch table and talk about English class, or the weather, or our love for Arminius (that's what we call a boring theological joke). Their forcing us to overspiritualize every topic of conversation made life very annoying, tedious, and frankly, unspiritual. And last time I checked, those are not enjoyable or profitable adjectives.

This is no call for thoughtlessness, just an apologetic for being able to enjoy the life God has given us. And Christians of all people should learn how to do that.

A President's Note

Remember those times in your school years when you had to bring a doctor's note back to class to prove to your teacher that you weren't absent? Really annoying.

Well, Kennedy Corpus made it a much less annoying, much cooler experience: Here's her note:



In case you can't read it, it says:

To Kennedy's teacher:

Please excuse Kennedy's absence...She's with me.

Barack Obama


That's cool, and totally worth missing your last day of school in 4th grade.

What did you say?!

Almost every time Jonathan gets hurt, he comes up to me and says, "Daddy, kiss [insert hurt body part here] please," as he points to where he got hurt.

Yesterday, he tripped over something while walking backwards. After a short cry, he walked up to me, and with his sad little face said, "Daddy, kiss my booty please."

Proof that language is more about meaning than it is about the actual words.

Martin Luther and Literature

Just when I thought Martin Luther couldn't get any cooler (ok, I never really thought that), I find this quotation from a letter he wrote to a friend in 1523:

"I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure, just as heretofore, when letters [literature] have declined and lain prostrate, theology too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate; nay, I see that there has never been a great revelation of the Word of God unless he has first prepared the way by the rise and prosperity of languages and letters, as though they were John the Baptists. . . . Certainly it is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies, as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily."


Did you get that? Theology won't endure without literature, because it is through things like fiction that people begin to grasp deep truths which they otherwise might not pick up in systematic theology books.

If I knew how to insert a little heart, I would write I [heart] Martin Luther. But I can't, so I won't.

An Irony of the "Christian Nation" claim

I like this post I found. Sums up a good irony that I completely agree with:


James F. McGrath, Associate Professor of Religion at Butler University, Indianapolis, nails the problem with the "Christian Nation" thesis as articulated by David Barton and many others who like to proclaim that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and has, only of late, become secularist and against Christianity:


"It seems unlikely that at any point in the past the vast majority of inhabitants of the United States were devout Christians with a personal faith, as opposed to nominal Christians for whom their Christianity consisted largely of a "tribal identity" including churchgoing and assenting to some doctrinal beliefs and moral precepts.

Does it not seem ironic, then, that the notion of American having once been a "Christian nation", and nostalgia for that bygone golden age, is found largely among Evangelicals, those very Christians who emphasize the need for a personal faith, and the inadequacy of a Christianity that consists merely of church attendance, denominational affiliation, or even moral living?

Am I missing something? Why would the very Christians who deny the adequacy of such nominal Christianity today, depict its heyday as a sort of golden age for American Christianity?"


There never was a "golden age" in American History when the nation was somehow truly Christian. Maybe there was a lot more church attendance, and there was certainly a time in the not-too-distant past when more people lived more outwardly moral lives. But that doesn't mean the nation was more Christian. It just means that they went to church more, behaved better in the civic squre, and kept more of their personal sins in private for fear of public shame.

This nation has probably not ever been much more, or much less, genuinely Christian than it is now.

Birthday Coming Up!

Get the John Calvin birthday clock at Calvin 500

Lion and the Lamb...sort of

Here's a really great short video I ran across today. It really brings the Biblical idea of lions and lambs, someday, lying down together in peace. What I like about that image isn't just that the two animals aren't fighting (which is great), but that they will actually repose together in peace. As everyone knows, there's a HUGE difference between simply not fighting, on one hand, and being at peace.



I look forward to a day when this will be the same with humans, when we won't be so ridiculously prejudiced, unnecessarily segregated, and constantly suspicious; when we will repose in peace together.

Reason # 87 Francis Schaeffer was cool.

This is a cool story about Francis Schaeffer, one of the great minds, servants, and apologists of the faith in the 20th Century:

"In 1966 I joined Operation Mobilization for a year of ministry in France, but spent two years in India instead. While in London that summer, at the one-month OM orientation, I volunteered to work on a clean-up crew late one night.

Around 12:30am I was sweeping the front steps of the Conference Centre when an older gentleman approached and asked if this was the OM conference. I told him it was, but most everyone was in bed.

He had a small bag with him and was dressed very simply. He said he was attending the conference, so I said, "Let me see if I can find you a place to sleep." Since there were many different age groups at OM, I thought he was an older OM’er.

I took him to the room where I had been sleeping on the floor with about 50 others and, seeing that he had nothing to sleep on, laid some padding and a blanket on the floor and used a towel for a pillow. He said it would be fine and he appreciated it very much.

As he was preparing for bed, I asked him if he had eaten. He had not as he had been travelling all day. I took him to the dining room but it was locked. So after picking the lock I found cornflakes, milk, bread, butter and jam—all of which he appreciated very much.

As he ate, we began to fellowship. I asked where he was from. He said he and his wife had been working in Switzerland for several years in a ministry mainly to hippies and travellers. It was wonderful to talk with him and hear about his work and those who had come to Christ. When he finished eating, we turned in for the night.

However, the next day I was in trouble! The leaders of OM really "got on my case." "Don't you know who that man is on the floor next to you?" they asked. "It is Dr. Francis Schaeffer, the speaker for the conference!"

I did not know they were going to have a speaker, nor did I know who Francis Schaeffer was, nor did I know they had a special room prepared for him!

After Francis Schaeffer became well known because of his books, and I had read more about him, I thought about this occasion many times—this gracious, kind, humble man of God sleeping on the floor with OM recruits! This was the kind of man I wanted to be."

Incidentally, reason #86 he was cool is that he created the place that served as my vacation/road-trip home for a month in the Summer of 2004.

The Case of the Elusive Pillowcase

Eight months ago, my wife kindly made a new pillowcase for me. One of the pillows I sleep with is a four-foot body pillow, which is great for wrapping around and relieving some back pain. The problem: every year, when the winter comes, I really don't feel like wrapping around a cold pillow.

Janelle solved this dilemna for me by making me a flannel pillowcase. Very comfy. As winter came to a close in Bryan, TX (I think that was back in mid-January...), I began to look for my old pillowcase. After all, nobody wants to wrap around a flannel pillowcase when it's 80 degrees outside, with a humidity of 1 billion percent.

But I couldn't find my old pillowcase. I looked in the linen closet. I looked in drawers and the under-the-bed storage boxes. I started looking for it in weird places (maybe it got stuffed in the couch, or or behind the blender?).

Last night, I was getting ready for bed, once-again mourning over my lost pillowcase. The body pillow had gotten all bunched-up and out of place, so I picked it up to shake it and even it out. And as I picked it up, I felt a strange mass at the bottom of the pillowcase. No. I can't be. But I knew it was.

I found my long-lost pillowcase - in my pillowcase. For months, it had been hiding from me, thwarting my search attempts and preventing me from having temperature-comfortable sleep. But I vow that it shan't happen again!

Now, I wonder where I put my David Crowder cd...