THE CHRISTIAN BLOGOSPHERE CONVENTION (GodBlogCon 2005)

I don't know yet if the family and I will make GodBlogCon this year (Arizona is very far away), but I would suggest that everyone who is interested in a Christian blogging conference should consider attending.

The passing of a legend

LaserQuest's first American franchise was here in Lexington, KY., and my friends and I were among the players who payed way too much of our paychecks the first year it was open. Later, Number 1 son loved to go when we could save up enough to take some friends with us. Now, after 11 years, it's closed.

Number 1 son and I both hope that LQ can open another facility here in Lexington.

I've been wanting to vent, but I'm glad I didn't

I'm not happy with my blogging this week. I've been meaning to use Kentucky Packrat as a forum to present original theological posts, such as Joe Missionary's Theology Thursdays (although I know myself well enough that promising a regular schedule with my perpetual procrastination would be blogging suicide :) ). It doesn't help that I have all these good ideas rattling around in my skull, and then one of the WONDERFUL writers on my blogroll write about it first. Of course, it's one against a multitude, that kinda makes the odds uneven.

I could blame the dog waking me up every morning, or the stomach viruses (especially since Milady spent Wednesday night catching the virus). I could blame still being worn out emotionally from Number 1 son's pneumonia bout, or even the cold that he cought Thursday, replaying the start of his pneumonia.

There is no real excuse, but instead an embarassing reason. I have been trying to deal with some resentment left over from Number 1 son's hospital stay, and it's hurting my walk with the Lord, and thus my writing. My normal method of dealing with resentment is venting against the source of my problem, but I've held back so far. Now I understand why.

Number 1 son entered the hospital late on a Saturday night. Sunday morning, I went to church to drop off cookies we'd made for the dinner that afternoon and supplies for the next week's trip to the nursing home. I talked to at least 2 different people on the ministry staff & most of our Bible Fellowship class. By the next week, almost everyone in the church who knew us knew of our son's illness.

Milady and I have the weakness of self-sufficiency. We have learned (often the hard way) to rely on each other and on God, but it is hard for us to ask others to do things for us. Therefore, we rarely do. During the time we didn't ask the church staff for help or staff visits¹, so they didn't know to come to us, and they didn't.

God was meeting our needs well, as my earlier post on the subject says. Our families and the homeschool co-op stepped in before we could ask and met every need we had during this time. Our church (both staff and the members) were deep in prayer for us, and without that prayer Number 1 Son might not even be alive right now.

Like a 5 year old upset that you didn't do what he didn't ask, I've been upset that the church didn't do what I didn't ask and God didn't want to use them to do. Rather than realizing my own errors, I stewed in my own mental temper tantrum. Only over the last couple of days have I realized that it's my fault that I didn't ask the Lord for the church to be involved or ask the church members to come to me. My being upset was not rational.

It's humbling to think that I have thought myself ready and able to help teach the college class at church, and yet the Lord pushes me a bit and I'm back acting like a baby. I can only hope that I can let the Lord use this as a growth opportunity for me.

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¹We did ask for shut-in communion one week, and they came for that as soon as we asked.

My brain hurts.

I was being lazy this morning, so I turned into the digital wasteland (9600s) of Dish Network, and got a scare. On Free Speech TV, there was a recruiting video documentary about Radical Cheerleading. I was amazed that so many people were stuck in their high school era.

High school sports, and especially high school cheerleading, is the Lord of the Flies on steroids. You go in, win some popularity contests and a few trophies, you're hot stuff, and then (unless you're one of the top 1% of athletes who can get a spot on a college team or go pro) you move on with your life.

These Radical Cheerleaders appear to be the people who either weren't cool enough to be cheerleaders in the first place and have never gotten over it, or were high-school cheerleaders and never grew up.

Protest debate always reminded me of my kids arguments for wanting a toy:

I want a toy.

Why?

I just do.

Do you need it?

I want it.

And so on for hours on end. I wonder if one person featured in the video I'd watched could carry their own ideas an hour in a gloves-off debate. But, boy do those skirts keep the evil agents of The Man policemen from harassing them so much... </sarcasm>

My only excuse is that the Big Joe Polka Show was on RFD-TV, and there is only so much brightness and sunniness I can stand that early in the morning....

UPDATE at 23:20: I've reread this, and it's pretty obvious that I need therapy to deal with my high school years... :) That said, I have NEVER liked the "Glory Days" thought process. Bruce Springsteen's song has the singer saying that high school was the height of his life. When I was in high school, I knew life would be better in college, and it was. In college, I thought life couldn't get better, and then I met my wife. :) Now, I love my kids, and I know my best times ahead. And then there's the New Jerusalem.

Phenominal cosmic powers...

I finally got the new CPU for this box, and boy does it like it. :) In my early tests, the database and web server are happy, and the things just flys. Well, OK, it's not 3 GHz Athlon64 happy, but the Home Supercomputing Complex's fastest box used to be an AMD K6-2 underclocked to 375MHz (because of some fault in the motherboard), so a P3-750 is lightning fast by comparison. The only delays you should notice now is because of the network pipe.

As always, please feel free to let me know of any problems via a comment here, or by Emailing me at kypackrat@kypackrat.com.

Am I an Evangelical? Yes, but....

While looking for other people's ideas for what an evangelical is, I ran across Shane Raynor's WesleyBlog. In the article What is an Evangelical?, Shane gives a very nice definition of evangelical:

An evangelical is someone who emphasizes the need for Christian conversion and whose ultimate authority for faith and practice is the Bible.

By all measures and definitions, I am an evangelical. I do believe that the Bible is the absolute authority in all areas where it speaks, and that only those who accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior are saved.

Nonetheless, I am uncomfortable with the term, mostly because of the "right-wing nut job" connotations that the secular media have attached to the term. I grew up in a "left of center" household, so "conservative" was a bad word. Even though my political views have evolved into barely-right-of-center libertarianism, I'm leery of the identification. At least I do understand why "progressive" has become such a popular term. :)

I guess I'll accept the term evangelical, and just do what I can to keep it detached from the political meaning some want to attach it.

Unclean! Unclean!

Friday morning at 3AM, Number 1 daughter starts throwing up. We thought at first it might be a reaction to the antibiotic they gave her for her infantigo. We gave her some medicine that we had had for the "stomach virus" that turned into pneumonia for Number 1 son, and she got better. One more vomiting incident Saturday morning around 3AM, and she's fine.

Yesterday at my sister-in-law's, Milady looks at my neck and says, "You have a ringworm". Sure enough, I do. We think Number 1 daughter scratched a patch of her ringworm enough to get the infantigo, so I must have gotten it from her.

Last night at 8PM, Number 1 Son says, "I'm sick", and sure enough he throws up the Mexican food he'd eaten for lunch. Time for a dose for him. He's slept through the night.

The dog wakes me up at 4AM to go pee. I stay up a few minutes reading blogs, and then its my turn to make a deposit, which I've proceded to do about every 45 minutes since. The kids have run the last of the medicine out too, so Daddy gets to work it out the hard way (better than them being sick a minute longer, of course).

I should just have T-shirts made saying "Unclean". It'd be simpler.

Excuse me, I have to go now....

Am I an Evangelical? Part 2

In Part 1 of Am I an Evangelical?, I looked at the first four parts of the National Association of Evangelicals statement of faith. Let's finish the other three.

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We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.

I agree with this one. I think this is a fairly non-controversial one for Christians.

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We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.

This is a rather ingenious wording. There is a small subset of Protestant Christians who believe that the Bible teaches that God's Great White Throne judgement (as related in Revelation 20) results in eternal destruction (the "Second Death"), not in eternal torture. I am sympathetic to this position, since it's one I held for almost 10 years, and am still not so sure is wrong. This statement of faith is flexible enough to allow both positions.

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We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

This one really has a "design by committee" meets "new age" feel, but I suppose the underlying idea that all Christians are spiritually unified as a single Church. This is a no-brainer too.

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Really, these are little more than restatements of the Nicean Creed and other basic Christian creeds, and little sets it apart from what I would consider the "basics" of being a Christian.

I've found a couple of other people's ideas of what an evangelical is, so I'll look at those ideas, and see if I can give you an answer, in the next post.

Ouch, ouch, ouch...

We're refinancing our home loan to take advantage of lower interest rates, and that means having an appraiser into the house. And THAT means doing some of the things on the Honey-Do list.

Number one on the list was painting the main part of the downstairs ceiling. Several years ago, Number 1 Son splashed a bunch of water out of the tub, and it ruined our ceiling downstairs. I cut the spot out, let it dry, and then patched the hole up. You can hardly even tell how bad a job I did on it. :) [If you are my appraiser, I'm joking, of course.] Then I painted over the patched spot with some new ceiling paint that almost, but not quite, matched the rest of it. And then we waited. Why? Because we HATE to paint ceilings, and it didn't look all that bad. No one would notice but us, except of course an appraiser. Yesterday, we painted. I rolled, and Milady edged. I know I can barely walk, and I can only imagine how sore she is.

That said, we now have a nice, matching ceiling, and even new curtains in the kitchen. Not bad for one afternoon's work. Now if I can just get enough energy to walk back upstairs to take my shower....

Am I an Evangelical? Part 1

In a Christian Carnival article, Rick of Brutally Honest wonders if he is an evangelical. Given Milady's and my confusion about exactly what an evangelical is and whether we are evangelicals, I decided to read the the National Association of Evangelicals statement of faith as a starting point as Rick suggests in the comments.

First, I do need to outline my own background. I grew up in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and despite my problems with the liberal turn in the Disciples of Christ, I still consider myself a Restoration Movement adherant (and attend a nice, conservative independant Christian Church now). "In Essentials, Unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, love." These are not traits traditionally associated with evangelicals, but does it fit in with the definitions? Let's go through each one by one.

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Rick had trouble with the first Evangelical statement of faith:

"We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God."

I find that I dislike this slightly, since it allows for the "King James Version is infallable" fallacy that some people are prone to form. I like this restatement from this page from Answers In Genesis:

"The 66 books of the Bible are the written Word of God. The Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant throughout. Its assertions are factually true in all the original autographs. It is the supreme authority, not only in all matters of faith and conduct, but in everything it teaches. Its authority is not limited to spiritual, religious or redemptive themes but includes its assertions in such fields as history and science."

I suppose I just went further than the evangelicals. Oops. :)

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We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I can't disagree with Unitarians any less than I do now. Dr. Vallicella of Maverick Philosopher fame has presented some really interesting philosophical problems with the Trinity, but I admit that I take the existance of the Trinity on faith anyway.

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We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.

Again, I have to generally agree with this one.

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We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.

In his post, Rick says:

The problem I have with this one has to do with who the arbiter is in defining lost and sinful people. It leads to the practice of my saying I'm not lost and sinful and you are... when the reality may be exactly the opposite.

I think Rick here is half-right in his opposition, for the wrong reasons. Many evangelicals are very much "I'm saved, and you're not, so there. :P" It isn't our place as believers to declare that someone is not saved, but we can tell all that everyone is sinful (including believers) and that all are lost without the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

I guess I'm with the evangelicals again.

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I'll continue with the line items in another post today or tomorrow.

An issue with Rick's Post on Brutally Honest

Rick of Brutally Honest has posted an interesting comment to his own article asking if he is an Evangelical. I can't help but respond to it.

Rick says

• We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.¹

I certainly used to. And I certainly desire to but I can't with sincerity and integrity say that I believe it anymore. Besides, the argument given by some that Christ is the only infallible and authoritative Word of God seems to hold much more water with me now. And I think this one leads much less to unity within the body of Christ and much more to petty squabbles.

This is a very tempting idea. The practical problem with this is that Scriptures are the only definitive way to know what Christ did say, so without infallable autographs we don't have infallable statements from Christ. Without these, there's really no room to argue with revisionists like the Jesus Seminar, or cults like the Jehovah's Witness or Mormon who says that the traditional channel is not fully aware of some critical "new fact".

Bill Rick, I suppose I have to ask: If we can't be sure that the Bible was inerrant (in the original autographs, at the very least), how can we be sure about anything of Christ's nature?

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¹This quote is from the National Association of Evangelicals statement of faith

Not practicing true Gun Control

At first, I was a little upset that Lexington police were charging Kevin Beall with wanton endangerment (Read the Herald MisLeader's take on the news here), but then I read the entire article. If Mr. Beall did shoot after people who were driving away, then he did recklessly endanger the lives of those in the paths of his bullets.

I am not a pacifist. I believe that the Bible (both Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament) a person to defend one's self and others from life-threatening force¹. Any person who has entered an occupied house should be assumed to be a threat to the health of the residents of that house until the theives are dead, have surrendered, or have fled.

In Mr. Beall's case, he appears to have chased after the criminals after they had left the house. Assuming they were not coming back to the house, they were no longer a threat, and Mr. Beall shouldn't have shot.

Personally, I hope that these goons stop before they hurt anyone else, and I hope they stop before some citizen or policeman stops them. However, I would consider their death by self-defense action of a homeowner a better solution than some innocent's death or serious injury in their hands.

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¹There are times when people are called to be martyrs. That is a direction from the Holy Spirit, and is a bit out of the pervue of this discussion.

This is twisted AND wrong

Two words: Darth Tater.

(Thanks to the other blogger who had a link to this. I'll come back and update this if I can find who had that link.)

I know I should be posting, but enjoy these links instead

The last couple of nights, we haven't gotten to bed until almost midnight (so Milady could get a couple of hours of decompression time after homeschooling the little darlings), and I've been waking up at least once a night for either animal bathroom duty (our dog seems to have developed a pea bladder) or child wake-ups ("Mom, I can't get back to sleep"), and then up again at 6AM for my own bladder. Hit that for about a week in a row (I got up early all weekend for the new web server), and it feels like my brain is wanting to ooze out my ears. I think I'll save what little energy I have for work...

That said, here's some nice links I've found (and will be adding to the blogroll, if not already there). Cerberus tells us about police life in Some City. "Okay Rover, Time For Yer Booties!" and "Can't You Give Me a Break, Just This One Time?" are especially entertaining. The Policeman's Blog is a nice look at the reality of British law enforcement. (Thanks to suzanna at cut on the bias for the links.)

Professor Bainbridge has posted a nice letter from David Ragsdalee with some interesting thoughts on Dr. Rice as President in 2008.

Star Trek may be dead. Long live Star Trek

Appearantly, there is some show called "Enterprise" on UPN, and the rumors have started that the crew even knows it's going to be cancelled.

To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, after I had watched Enterprise a while, I did my best to forget about it. I like most of the ST shows (even DS9, the Babylon 5 clone). The nebula fight in The Wrath of Khan is my favorite theatrical space battle scene ever, and is only topped by Battlestar Galactica. Both give you that World War 2 submarine warfare feel that (IMHO) real space battles would be like.

Voyager was mostly a loss, what I did bother to watch, but I'd had high hopes for Enterprise. The Romulan war and pre-Federation politics would have been SO cool. They had a perfectly good story line, but NO, they had to have a Vulcan with few clothes, and time traveling.

Bah, I'm getting too bitter. Maybe Enterprise will die, and they'll have to go back to the drawing board.

Early notes about the new Battlestar Galactica

I have to admit that I haven't watched the entire BG 2 episode set through yet. We managed to have a low-TV day three-day weekend at the Packrat household. I worked on the web server in the few spare moments I had over the weekend, so I only glanced at my DVR recording of the first show. I intend to fix this, but I have already been struck by the "vengance of God" theme.

A common science fiction theme is how Science and Technology will lift ignorant man out of the trap of theism into the enlightenment of secular humanism. One could hardly watch the Star Trek: The Next Generation Friday marathons¹ on TNN without seeing one show about a "primative" species that believed in some Deity, and that belief, as wrong as it was, was fully protected by the Prime Directive. Knowledge would always prove that a Deity was a powerful computer, an advanced species, or a myth run wild.

BG is turning this on its head. It's the "backwards", stick-in-the-mud humans who are humanists, and have no desire or inclination to look for a God to either ease or explain their suffering (or even be mad about it). It's the technically advanced machines that believe in God and believe that they are God's instrument of vengance.²

I hope that BG can avoid repeating the "let's show five minute soft-porn sex scenes for ratings" of the pilot, and keep a record of quality.

Food for thought: Is Number 6³ really talking to Baltar, or is he just crazy?

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¹My wife would prefer me to put the period where this footnote was. She is not a Star Trek fan...

²I want to explore a little more what kind of God the Cylons do believe in, but I think that needs to wait for a few more shows.

³I smell a The Prisoner fan somewhere.

Up on new box - please forgive any hickups

I've got to go pick up a faster CPU from a friend, but I have kypackrat.com moved onto its new home machine. This shouldn't cause any problems, but that kind of statement usually gets one in all kinds of trouble. :) Please post in a comment here or Email me at kypackrat@kypackrat.com if you see any problems that need fixing.

Doing the geek thing

Sorry for no posts this weekend, but I've been doing the family thing (boy, does that sound so 90s), and using my little bit of spare time to build the new web server for this machine.

I do have some ideas mulling in my head, so don't go too far. :)

In Memory of S

My condolances to TheAnchoress and her family over the passing of S.

2 Timothy 4:6-8 (English Standard Version):

⁶For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. ⁷I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. ⁸Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

My first link - and a request to forgive any slowness

Wow, Bill of Bill's Comments is the first person to link to me (here), and such kind words too. I blush at them all. Thanks, Bill, I can only hope to live up to such a kind recommendation.

If you're coming from Bill's site, or from one of my trackbacks, please forgive any slowness. The blog's running on a slower box right now, and it's chugging just a little bit. The new box and its newer CPU will be up by Tuesday *crosses fingers*.