7/31/2016
#195 OLD PEOPLE
GOAFS II: #195
OLD PEOPLE
JULY 31, 2016
Some time ago I wrote a poem about old people. This perspective was quite
focused—there is much more to old people than you will find in this brief
sketch. The poem came to mind the other day when I received a piece titled “Old
Person Pride.” The sender describes the subjects as “My Kind of People.”
It was not attributed, but it rang some bells for me that
sounded out clearly above the din of the GOP Convention. Here is the poem:
OLD
PEOPLE
Mount Hermon, May, 2001
Old
people pray for their children;
And
then,
They
pray for their children’s children.
And
sometimes even,
For
their children’s children’s children.
Old
people, from long practice,
Can
do this praying while taking a nap;
First
on the left hip,
Then
on the right,
Then
on the back until
All
their bones are slightly
Achy.
Eventually,
They
get up… slowly…
To
answer questions and
Eat
rhubarb pie with ice cream.
And here is the piece that rang true for me:
OLD PERSON PRIDE
Old People are easy to
spot at sporting events; during the playing of the National Anthem. Old People
remove their caps and stand at attention and sing without embarrassment. They
know the words and believe in them.
Old People remember World
War II, Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal , Normandy and Hitler. They remember the
Atomic Age, the Korean War, The Cold War, the Jet Age and the Moon Landing.
They remember the 50 plus Peace-keeping Missions from 1945 to 2005, not to
mention Vietnam .
If you bump into an Old
Person on the sidewalk he will apologize. If you pass an Old Person on the
street, he will nod or tip his cap to a lady. Old People trust strangers and
are courtly to women.
Old People hold the door
for the next person and always, when walking, make certain the lady is on the
inside for protection.
Old People get
embarrassed if someone curses in front of women and children and they don't
like any filth or dirty language on TV or in movies.
Old People have moral
courage and personal integrity. They seldom brag unless it's about their
children or grandchildren.
It's Old People who
remove their hats while eating in a restaurant in respect for the ladies and
guests.
It's the Old People who
know our great country is protected, not by politicians, but by the young men
and women in the military serving their country.
This country needs Old
People with their work ethic, sense of responsibility, pride in their
country and decent values. We need them now more than ever.
Thank God for Old People.
These have always been my kind
of people, even more so now that I am in the Geezer Cohort myself.
Jerry Sweers
GROWING OLD
AIN’T FOR SISSIES
Sailing directions for Pilgrims of the Heart.
Remembrances, reflections and rants
of an endangered species;
Curmudgensis Americanus Bibliophilius
site: crmudgeon.blogspot.com
email: cmudgeon@windstream.net
#194 INFALLIBILITY
GOAFS II: #194
BREAKING NEWS—INFALLIBILITY
JULY 24, 2016
As I savored my morning coffee and
biscuit with apple butter, I came across the July 13th LEXINGTON
HERALD-LEADER. My friend and fellow Submarine veteran subscribes, reads it
early and drops it off in the café. Occasionally I take a piece with me. This
morning I was struck by an interesting confluence of bold headlines.
Public schools warned about taking trips to Ark
“A secular foundation has contacted hundreds
of public schools in Kentucky to warn them against taking field trips to the
Ark Encounter, the new amusement park featuring a 500 foot replica of Noah’s
Ark and a belief that the world is only 6,000 years old.
Officials with the Freedom From Religion Foundation say field trips would expose
children to religions proselytizing that would violate the Constitutional
separation between church and state.” (this
is under EDUCATION on the front page, above the
fold.)
On page
three, the paper, ever watchful of the sensitivities of the progressive left in
these things, presents a supplementary Commentary by Tom Eblen:
UK’s science guy apt counter to Ark
“If you worry the Creation Museum and its new
Noah’s Ark theme park will cause outsiders to think Kentuckians are a bunch of
anti-science rubes, at least take comfort in this: Lexington was the home to
perhaps America’s greatest evolutionary biologist.
Sept.
25th marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Thomas
Hunt Morgan, who won a Nobel Prize in 1933 for pioneering research that is the
foundation of much modern biology and genetics.”
Before you
think of stopping here, let me give you one, big fat caveat—I have no intention of arguing the age
of the world or the validity of Darwinian evolution. The point of this posting
is to briefly examine the idea of absolute authority as it has changed over
time how it relates to the mess we are in today.
X
As I read these things this morning one word came to mind: Infallibility.
This is defined simply and clearly in most dictionaries:
1. Incapable of erring: an infallible guide; an infallible source of information.
2. Incapable of failing; certain: an infallible antidote; an infallible rule.
3. Roman Catholic Church; Incapable of error in expounding doctrine on
faith or morals. thefreedictionary.com
You will not
find the word in the Bible—but the concept is there from Genesis to Revelation.
Whenever the Word of God is used or discussed or appealed to, it is not
explained, it is simply assumed to be infallible.
One of the
most enduring questions throughout the history of man is this: whose word is
infallible? What are the requirements for the speaker of an infallible word?
A the very
least, the speaker of an infallible word must meet the following requirements:
1.
An
infallible word can only come from a totally self-determined, totally self-conscious
source.
2.
The
speaker of an infallible word must possess total power—omnipotence—in order to
speak the word and then bring it to pass.
3.
The
speaker of an infallible word must be the absolute sovereign of all creation,
past, present and future.
Only a
sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent, predestinating, self-conscious God can
declare an infallible word. In the whole context of Scripture, spoken, written,
and Incarnate, only one Person is qualified to proclaim his own word as
infallible—The Triune God. The Creator and Sustainer of all that is, all that
ever was, and all that ever will be.
God declared through
the Prophet Isaiah (42.8-9):
I am the Lord, that is
my name;
my glory I give to no other,
nor my praise to idols.
See, the former things
have come to pass,
and new things I now declare;
before they spring
forth,
I tell you of them.
Here God
declares that when He speaks, His Word surely and infallibly comes to pass. He
declares also that He alone is God and He will neither share nor give His glory
to another. But in our day, many question this declaration; they reduce it to
religious poetry, Isaiah’s rhetoric, or Hebraic imagery, and they deny to God
His sovereignty and to His Word its infallibility.
Now, let’s
briefly follow the concept of infallibility forward from its expression in the
Old and New Testaments into the present day.
v God spoke his infallible word to our
fathers through the prophets (Thus saith the Lord) and eventually the
incarnation of his only begotten Son (I
am the way, the truth, and the life). This held through the early years of
the Church. The Apostles and their disciples proclaimed what they had seen and
heard and wrote much of it down.
v Eventually the Church of Rome became
the custodian of God’s Infallible Word, or at least it claimed to be. In time
this devolved downward into the claim of Papal Infallibility—which has
deteriorated to the current Pope Francis whose habit seems to be that almost
every time he opens his mouth, he puts his foot in it.
v Next came the Kings of Europe who did
not always accept the word of Rome, especially about marriage. The Divine Right
of Kings had a good run. Eventually the fathers of the Protestant Reformation
claimed possession of sola Scriptura as the basis for their defection from
Rome.
v In time The Secular State became the official,
infallible, ultimate, absolute authority in the world.
v As the downward slide continued, the
assumption of infallibility came to rest on the lowest common denominator—Autonomous
Man. The single individual, believing that (1) Feelings are knowledge, (2)
Opinions are truth, and (3) and all sincerely held opinions are equal, became
the only source of the infallible word.
All we need
to do is read some history and look around to see the sorry result of this
downward regression of fallen man’s ideas of the source of absolute, ultimate
truth.
In a
nutshell: We have come from Thus saith the Lord and It is
written, all the way down to Thus saith Judge Harry Blackmun and the
Supreme Court of the United States: which has ruled that
At
the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of
meaning, of the universe, and the mystery of human life. Planned Parenthood vs. Casey 505 U.S. 833(1992)
(The effect of this decision
was to propound the universal moral right of any single person not to recognize
the universal moral laws on which all rights depend. It is a liberty of
infinite width and zero depth. It is the shakey moral compass and shifting sand
foundation of contemporay culture—in a word, the status quo, or Latin for Da
mess we is in…)
So what does
this have to do with the Ark and Darwinian Evolutionary Theory? In one
sentence—those who deny the existence of a Sovereign God will never give up
their efforts to ban the Creator from His Creation—and there is no place in the
cosmos they will miss in their attempts to smother the One True God—Who will
not be smothered.
X
For those of you who have hung in there this far I will toss
in a brief theological note on infallibility and meaning from volume 1 of R. J. Rushdoony’s Systematic Theology.
“Because God is the
absolute creator of all things, and because nothing exists outside of Him or
apart from His creating decree, all things have their existence and their
meaning from their sovereign creator, God. God, having no unconscious aspect of
His being, is totally self-conscious and purposive in all His ways, so that all
creation is a universe of total meaning. There is not a meaningless fact or
atom in all creation, nor an event, nor any facet or aspect of anything that is
not marked by total meaning. The meaning of most things elude us. We do not
understand the meaning of mosquitos, for example, or the hairs that fall from
our head, nor the often unhappy events of our lives, because we tend to look
for the meaning in terms of ourselves. The meaning of all things is theocentric--God-centered,
not man-centered - which means that of necessity things are meaningless if we
try to read them in terms of man, in terms of ourselves. We do not create them,
govern them, nor more than slightly, in a limited area and manner, influence
them; they are of God’s ordination. Attempts to read the meaning of things humanistically
are thus erroneous, futile, and blasphemous.
All the same, however, men insist on trying to force their
meaning on history and to ascribe a totally humanistic meaning to events and
things. If meaning is derived from man, then man’s ‘creative man’ is also
spontaneously infallible: his every expression is an expression of original
meaning. If man is ultimate, then man is creative, and his expressions have a
naturally ultimate and infallible character.”
Today the world is filled with the chatter of “infallible
words,” we, are immersed in the devilish din of autonomous man, who, like our
first parents in Eden, choose to “be like gods,” a poor bargain from the
beginning.
Jerry Sweers
GROWING OLD
AIN’T FOR SISSIES
Sailing directions for Pilgrims of the Heart.
Remembrances, reflections and rants
of an endangered species;
Curmudgensis Americanus
Bibliophilius
site: crmudgeon.blogspot.com
(As of
7.17.16 I am no longer able to
post on this
site. You may find previous
postings
there--If you wish to receive
my postings,
notify me at the address
below and I
will add you to my list.)
#193 DAYBREAK III
GOAFS II: #193
DAYBREAK III
JULY 17, 2016
Daybreak
III
Death is not the extinguishing of the light;
It is merely putting out the lamp
Because the dawn has come.
R.
Tagore
Thank you Father,
For your Eternal Word.
The Eternal Word of the Eternal God
Who is our dwelling place,
And refuge in all generations, and
Thank you for the Everlasting Arms
Underneath…
I praise you this morning
For my adoption as a son that
Includes an everlasting warranty—
That the redeemed have no “sell by”
date.
Thank you, Father, for today’s
Providence,
Mercy,
Grace,
Lovingkindnesses,
Compassions,
Faithfulness,
Hope,
Goodness
to those who wait
and those who seek.
Thank you, Father, for today’s assurance
that
What happens to me matters to you
And for your aid and interest in all
things
That pertain to me,
And to all your other children,
Called according to your purpose,
At all times, in all places.
For each new day,
And the strength you provide,
One day at a time—
I thank you Father…
For the earthly family you have given
us, and
The Body of Christ, our heavenly family,
And for the neighbors to love
As we love ourselves--
Thank you Father…
For the blessed hope
Of the Last Trumpet—
That great gettin’ up mornin’,
When faith becomes sight, and
We see our Saviour face to face,
With those who’ve gone before us--
I praise you and give you my thanks.
Thank you, Father
For the Covenant,
For your Law in my mind,
Engraved upon my heart—
I love you with all that heart,
With all my mind and soul,
With all my body and strength—
By your grace I will do what you say,
today,
That your Kingdom may come,
Today, on earth,
And your will be done, today,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Thank you Father,
For free access in the Spirit
To your throne room in heaven
Where I may sing, each morning,
To You and the Lamb …
With
the Cherubim around the throne;
Holy, holy, holy
Is the Lord God, the Almighty,
Who was, and Who is
And Who is to come.
With
the Twenty-four Elders seated around the Throne;
Worthy are you,
Our Lord and our God,
To receive glory and honor and power;
For You created all things,
And because of your will they existed,
And were created.
With
the Cherubim and the Elders together;
Worthy are you to take the book
And to break its seals;
For you were slain, and
Purchased for God with your blood
Men from every tribe and tongue
And people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom
And priests to our God,
And they will reign upon the earth.
With
the Cherubim, Elders, and Myriads of Angels;
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain
To receive power and riches and wisdom
And might and honor and glory and
blessing.
With
Every Created Being;
To Him who sits on the throne,
And to the Lamb,
Be blessing and honor and glory
And dominion forever and ever.
Yesterday is a memory,
Tomorrow is a dream.
By Your grace I will live today with
full attention
To the reality You bring me, fitting
myself to it
By doing what needs to be done.
And finally, thank you, Father,
For my childbride, my dear, dear, friend
of 61 years
Who has gone ahead and waits for me in
glory.
167
07/16
Jerry Sweers
GROWING OLD
AIN’T FOR SISSIES
Sailing directions for Pilgrims of the Heart.
Remembrances, reflections and rants
of an endangered species;
Curmudgensis Americanus Bibliophilius
site: crmudgeon.blogspot.com
