5/21/2009
WHAT WOULD BUDDHA DO?
NUMBER 204
WHAT WOULD BUDDHA DO?
The other day I found myself sitting at a stop light reading messages to the world on the back of a late model van. The one that caught my attention was this attempt to stick a finger in the eye of those sincere Christians with their WWJD? paraphernalia.
WHAT WOULD BUDDHA DO?
I had a very strong urge to get out of my car, walk to the driver’s window and give her an answer to this question. I say “her” because the rest of the stickers on the back door strongly suggested a “save the whales-kill the babies-tree hugging-vegetarian lesbian” with a very large chip (organically grown, oven-baked, of course) on her shoulder.
I would have said was this: “Your bumper sticker asks a question: What would Buddha do? I have the answer; Buddha would do nothing, he has been dead for almost 2,500 years.”
But the light changed and the van moved off and I had to go about my business.
You can ring this little fellow’s bell and ask for good luck, but he will not answer and is not able to do a thing for you. The Alpha and Omega, THE ONE WHO WAS, THE ONE WHO IS and THE ONE WHO IS TO COME is in a whole different class than the gods of the pagans who inhabit the bumper-stickers of the world.
Some years ago when we lived in Southern California it was a fairyland of bumper stickers. I’m told it still is. A pair that still stands out in my memory was on the back of a scruffy looking pickup truck:
On the left side; WELCOME TO MILLER TIME
On the right side; JESUS IS LORD
I have often wondered if this represented a husband and wife debate. The British Preacher Leonard Ravenhill used to suggest that if you put a bumper sticker on one side that says:
JESUS LOVES YOU AND HAS A WONDERFUL PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE
You should balance it with one on the other side saying:
GOD IS ANGRY WITH SINNERS EVERY DAY!
It takes more space than a bumper sticker offers to present the One the Apostle John describes in his vision on Patmos:
I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,” and, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”
Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength.
And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. Revelation 1.9-18
This is the Lord we serve—He is not a bumper sticker kind of God.
WHAT WOULD BUDDHA DO?
The other day I found myself sitting at a stop light reading messages to the world on the back of a late model van. The one that caught my attention was this attempt to stick a finger in the eye of those sincere Christians with their WWJD? paraphernalia.
WHAT WOULD BUDDHA DO?
I had a very strong urge to get out of my car, walk to the driver’s window and give her an answer to this question. I say “her” because the rest of the stickers on the back door strongly suggested a “save the whales-kill the babies-tree hugging-vegetarian lesbian” with a very large chip (organically grown, oven-baked, of course) on her shoulder.
I would have said was this: “Your bumper sticker asks a question: What would Buddha do? I have the answer; Buddha would do nothing, he has been dead for almost 2,500 years.”
But the light changed and the van moved off and I had to go about my business.
You can ring this little fellow’s bell and ask for good luck, but he will not answer and is not able to do a thing for you. The Alpha and Omega, THE ONE WHO WAS, THE ONE WHO IS and THE ONE WHO IS TO COME is in a whole different class than the gods of the pagans who inhabit the bumper-stickers of the world.
Some years ago when we lived in Southern California it was a fairyland of bumper stickers. I’m told it still is. A pair that still stands out in my memory was on the back of a scruffy looking pickup truck:
On the left side; WELCOME TO MILLER TIME
On the right side; JESUS IS LORD
I have often wondered if this represented a husband and wife debate. The British Preacher Leonard Ravenhill used to suggest that if you put a bumper sticker on one side that says:
JESUS LOVES YOU AND HAS A WONDERFUL PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE
You should balance it with one on the other side saying:
GOD IS ANGRY WITH SINNERS EVERY DAY!
It takes more space than a bumper sticker offers to present the One the Apostle John describes in his vision on Patmos:
I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,” and, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”
Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength.
And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. Revelation 1.9-18
This is the Lord we serve—He is not a bumper sticker kind of God.
5/14/2009
STTTA--5
NUMBER 203
SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT—5
"They were making more of the ark than of the Lord. Their religion was degenerating into superstition. I become superstitious whenever the means of worship are permitted to eclipse the object of worship."
(The cult of Oompah! in a nutshell.)
Devotions For April 14, John Henry Jowett comments on 1 Samuel 4.1-11
"Conscience is the free acceptance of the objective moral law as the basis of all our choices – it is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ."
George Cardinal Pell, The Inconvenient Conscience, discussing John Henry Newman’s view in First Things, May, 2005
"Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens—and then everybody disagrees."
Boris Marshalov
"The holy trinity of modern man: Me, Myself, and I."
Anonymous
"All Spirit and no Word--believers blow up. All Word and no Spirit—believers dry up. Both Spirit and Word—believers grow up."
Alistair Begg
5/06/2009
STTTA--4
NUMBER 202
STTTA—4
“When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer ‘present’ or ‘guilty’”.
Theodore Roosevelt
“Mother Nature is not a feminist.”
Various, un-attributed (probably because attribution could easily stir up the PC Police)
“You will never understand the answer if you have not asked the right question.”
James V. Schall
“A person who never travels always praises his own mother’s cooking.”
Bagandan Proverb
His (Ray Bradbury’s) tales spring from a fecund moral imagination which one of his friends, conservative man of letters Russell Kirk, defined as man’s power to perceive ethical truth, abiding law, and what we ought to be, amid the seeming chaos of life. ‘It is the strange faculty— inexplicable if men are assumed to have an animal nature only—of discerning greatness, justice and order beyond the bars of appetite and self-interest,’ wrote Kirk.
James E. Person, Jr. in a book review in National Review May 23, 2005
(If you have never tried science fiction, even if you don’t like science fiction, Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles” would be worth your time and effort.
Coram Deo
“The principal thing is to stand before God with the intellect in the heart, and to go on standing before Him unceasingly day and night, until the end of life.”
Theophan the Recluse, 19th Century Russian Orthodox Bishop on the prayer of the heart
