A Time to Laugh

I wrote this post months ago. It fits pretty much: 

I’m beginning to conclude that the big bugaboo in the New Testament is religiousity. Idol worship doesn’t mean watching too much TV. It means setting up any works-righteousness. Christ still hung around with the tax-collectors and fishermen and even a prostitute, not the Pharisees.

That’s why Paul called himself the chief of sinners. He missed the Mark so clearly. He was, in fact, setting up an entirely different target.

Any religion that’s Christ + X is still not Christ. It still muddles His message. It points people away from the Mark.

Just the facts. You can draw the conclusions yourself. I’m just pointing out this particular minor premise, and you can reach your own conclusions even if Aristotle, that apologist for the crown, would not approve.

I just spent the whole day re-reading Galatians 5, and I finally get it:

My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.

But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.

It’s time to speak.

Over the last two years, I was politely ordered to remove particular blog posts because they were contrary to the image of a proper “Christian.” I immediately complied.

I have now reposted them in their original order and the approximate date. You can see them and judge their significance for yourself.

If librarianship is the connecting of people to ideas–and I believe that is the truest definition of what we do–it is crucial to remember that we must keep and make available, not just good ideas and noble ideas, but bad ideas, silly ideas, and yes, even dangerous or wicked ideas.

Graceanne A. Decandido

Yankee:
1683, a name applied disparagingly by Du. settlers in New Amsterdam (New York) to English colonists in neighboring Connecticut. It may be from Du. Janke, lit. “Little John,” dim. of common personal name Jan; or it may be from Jan Kes familiar form of “John Cornelius,” or perhaps an alt. of Jan Kees, dial. variant of Jan Kaas, lit. “John Cheese,” the generic nickname the Flemings used for Dutchmen. It originally seems to have been applied insultingly to Dutch, especially freebooters, before they turned around and slapped it on the English. In Eng. a term of contempt (1750s) before its use as a general term for “native of New England” (1765); during the American Revolution it became a disparaging British word for all American native or inhabitants. Shortened form Yank in reference to “an American” first recorded 1778. 

When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade! It might be a little sour as you perfect the recipe. But isn’t that what our foreparents did in New England by turning the mean-spirited nickname “Yankee” into a proudly worn moniker? So here in this end-of-July heat, I’m trying to make a little rhetorical lemonade.

I’ve opened a cafepress store, A Time to Laugh, showcasing some things that make me giggle.

And we can’t forget about the very popular blog for educated believing women, True Womanhood in the New Millenium. Go take a look-see!

And, of course, my favorite person has now become my favorite blogger. It makes me smile. Because for so long so many people have been telling me to put a lid on it. And instead of Grant joining them, he joined me. This true Christian knight realized that perhaps there was something to this blogging that was making everyone upset.

The rhetorician in me notices that while my blogging voice is rather Esther-like and metaphorical, he pulls no punches, the Peter that he is. That’s my good ol’ Missouri boy. I knew I married good stock.

Look. Lookey-lookey-lookey!! I can’t believe it. You HAVE TO GO LOOK NOW!!!!!

Have you looked yet? WELL, GO!!

We just got back from the store. Isaac picked out his clothes for the trip — a construction helmet, yellow rain boots, and too-small soccer jammies (small enough that his tummy sticks out of them). We went to buy cherries for Daddy’s special homemade Chocolate-Covered Cherry ice cream. We also bought dried beans to make bean bags, macaroni for pasta “art,” and big marshmallows “for camping, Mommy!” And we learned the first step in finding bargains — look for the yellow tags.

While we were getting “gas” for the bus cart in the salad dressing aisle, my heart was warmed. This Mommy couldn’t stop smiling. And every other mommy and grandma that saw him understood too. There he was — that precious preschooler pretending and exploring. He was so unconcerned with the social mores that in 10 or so years might weigh heavy on him. That childlike abandon is precious and heart-warming because it’s so innocent.

I am convinced that that’s why Christ foregrounded children. What a radical move! That oblivious contentment and naive disregard for social mores is why Christ said that a child’s unfettered faith was the stuff of the Kingdom. Our own efforts at salvation (whether the definitive or progressive sort) make as much sense as believing we can fuel up our bus cart with a bottle of Bacon Ranch. Even a child understands that it’s pretend, but somewhere along the way we adults take ourselves so seriously and think that our more sophisticated and highly revered plastic hat and rubber boots make sense (see — even a child knows better!). A complete house of cards.

Spurgeon said it better, I s’pose:

We do not enter into the kingdom of God by working out some deep problem and arriving at its solution; not by fetching something out of ourselves, but by receiving a secret something into us. We come into the kingdom by the kingdom’s coming into us: it receives us by our receiving it. Now, if this entrance into the kingdom depended upon something to be fetched out of the human mind by study and deep thought, then very few children could ever enter it; but it depends upon something to be received, and therefore children may enter. Those children who are of years sufficient to sin, and to be saved by faith, have to listen to the gospel and to receive it by faith: and they can do this, God the Holy Spirit helping them.

The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

Henry Steel Commager

Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason–I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other–my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.

Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.