I don’t know what kind of person pays to read a blog that is available free of charge, but since some do, I’ve made this blog available on Kindle. To my surprise, a few subscriptions have actually been purchased. I can’t say how many. Most likely, the five reviews posted on Amazon represent the entire list of subscribers. The other day, I was for the first time made aware of those reviews, and I got a kick out of reading them. Three are positive and two negative. Both of the negative reviews said I was too political. This post is for them. On valid argumentation: Suppose I say the moon is made of cheese. You say it’s not. I then ask, what, if not cheese, is it made of? You say you don’t know, but you know it’s not cheese. I say, “Well, unless you can propose another theory, you’ll have to accept mine.” Or, suppose I look out my window and see the neighbor’s dog knock over my garbage cans and scatter trash all over my yard and across the street. I respond by grabbing my shotgun, stuffing my pockets full of 00 buck, and heading for the door. Then, suppose my wife gets nervous and asks me what in tarnation I’m up too. I explain that I intend to storm the neighbor’s house and blast everything that moves, including the neighbors. “You can’t do that!” she says. “Oh, yeah?” say I, “Well that’s exactly what I’m going to do, unless you’ve got a better idea.” I’m not schooled in rhetoric well enough to know what to call that line of reasoning, but there must be a name for it. I’m going to call it argumentum stupidum for now. It states that if you don’t have an answer, my answer must be right. I encountered the example in my first paragraph in a recent discussion of John 2:4. My second example is a close approximation of one of the health-care fascists’ answers to objections to government regulation of the medical industry. Take that for what it’s worth, which is, according to one of the positive Amazon reviews declaring this blog to be “Definitely worth the price!”, 99¢.

I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” Hymn XXVI. Dagon before the ark. I. Samuel v. 4, 5. John Newton (1725–1807) When first to make my heart his own, The small-caps;">Lord reveal’d his mighty grace; Self reign’d, like Dagon, on the throne, But could not long maintain its place. It fell, and own’d the pow’r divine, (Grace can with ease the vict’ry gain) But soon this wretched heart of mine, Contriv’d to set it up again. Again the Lord his name proclaim’d, And brought the hateful idol low; Then self, like Dagon, broken, maim’d, Seem’d to receive a mortal blow. Yet self is not of life bereft, Nor ceases to oppose his will; Tho’ but a maimed stump be left, ’Tis Dagon, ’tis an idol still. Lord! must I always guilty prove, And idols in my heart have room? Oh! let the, fire of heavenly love, The very stump of self consume. —from Olney Hymns. Book I: On select Passages of Scripture. John 8:37–47I know that you are Abraham’s descendants; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. 38 I speak the things which I have seen with My Father; therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father.”    39 They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you are Abraham’s children, do the deeds of Abraham. 40 But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do. 41 You are doing the deeds of your father.” They said to Him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father: God.” 42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me. 43 Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me. 46 Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? 47 He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God.” There are things taught in this passage of Scripture which are peculiarly truth for the times. Well would it be for the Churches if all Christians would ponder carefully the matter which it contains.    We are taught for one thing the ignorant self-righteousness of the natural man. We find the Jews pluming themselves on their natural descent from Abraham, as if that must of necessity, cover all deficiencies: “Abraham is our father.” We find them going even further than this, and claiming to be God’s special favourites and God’s own family: “We have one Father, even God.” They forgot that fleshly relationship to Abraham was useless, unless they shared Abraham’s grace. They forgot that God’s choice of their father to be head of a favoured nation was never meant to carry salvation to the children, unless they walked in their father’s footsteps. All this in their blind self-conceit they refused to see. “We are Jews. We are God’s children. We are the true Church. We are in the covenant. We must be all right.” This was their whole argument!    Strange as it may seem, there are multitudes of so-called Christians who are exactly like these Jews. Their whole religion consist of a few notions neither wiser nor better than those propounded by the enemies of our Lord. They will tell you “that they are regular Church people; they have been baptized; they go to the Lord’s table;”—but they can tell you no more. Of all the essential doctrines of the Gospel they are totally ignorant. Of faith, and grace, and repentance, and holiness, and spiritual mindedness they know nothing at all. But, forsooth! they are Churchmen, and so they hope to go to heaven! There are myriads in this condition. It sounds sad, but unhappily it is only too true.    Let us settle firmly in our minds that connection with a good Church and good ancestors is no proof whatever that we ourselves are in a way to be saved. We need something more than this. We must be joined to Christ himself by a living faith. We must know something experimentally of the work of the Spirit in our hearts. “Church principles,” and “sound Churchmanship,” are fine words and excellent party cries. But they will not deliver our souls from the wrath to come, or give us boldness in the day of judgment.    We are taught for another thing the true marks of spiritual sonship. Our Lord makes this point most plain by two mighty sayings. Did the Jews say, “We have Abraham to our father”? He replies, “If ye were Abraham’s children ye would do the work of Abraham.”—Did the Jews say, “We have one Father, even God”? He replies, “If God were your Father ye would love Me.”    Let these two sayings of Christ sink down into our hearts. They supply an answer to two of the most mischievous, yet most common, errors of the present day. What more common, on one side, than vague talk about the universal Fatherhood of God? “All men,” we are told, “are God’s children, whatever be their creed or religion; all are finally to have a place in the Father’s house, “where there are many mansions.”—What more common, on another side, than high-sounding statements about the effect of baptism and the privileges of Church-membership? “By baptism,” we are confidently told, “all baptized people are made children of God; all members of the Church, without distinction, have a right to be addressed as sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.”    Statements like these can never be reconciled with the plain language of our Lord in the passage before us. If words mean anything, no man is really a child of God, who does not love Jesus Christ. The charitable judgment of a baptismal service, or the hopeful estimate of a catechism, may call him by the name of a son, and reckon him among God’s children. But the reality of sonship to God, and all its blessings, no one possesses who does not love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. (Ephes. vi. 24.) In matters like these we need not be shaken by mere assertions. We may well afford to despise the charge of undervaluing the sacraments. We have only to ask one question: “What is written? What saith the Lord?” And with this saying before us, we can only come to one conclusion: “Where there is no love to Christ, there is no sonship to God.”    We are taught, lastly, in these verses, the reality and character of the devil. Our Lord speaks of him as one whose personality and existence are beyond dispute. In solemn words of stern rebuke He says to His unbelieving enemies, “You are of your father the devil,”—led by him, doing his will, and showing unhappily that you are like him. And then He paints his picture in dark colors, describing him as a “murderer” from the beginning, as a “liar” and the father of lies.    There is a devil! We have a mighty invisible enemy always near us,—one who never slumbers and never sleeps,—one who is about our path and about our bed, and spies out all our ways, and will never leave us until we die.—He is a murderer! His great aim and object is, to ruin us forever and kill our souls. To destroy, to rob us of eternal life, to bring us down to the second death in hell, are the things for which he is unceasingly working. He is ever going about, seeking whom he may devour.—He is a liar! He is continually trying to deceive us by false representations, just as he deceived Eve at the beginning. He is always telling us that good is evil and evil good,—truth is falsehood and falsehood truth,—the broad way good and the narrow way bad. Millions are led captive by his deceit, and follow him, both rich and poor, both high and low, both learned and unlearned. Lies are his chosen weapons. By lies he slays many.    These are awful things; but they are true. Let us live as if we believed them. Let us not be like many who mock, and sneer, and scoff, and deny the existence of the very being who is invisibly leading them to hell. Let us believe there is a devil, and watch, and pray, and fight hard against his temptations. Strong as he is, there is One stronger than him, who said to Peter, “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not,” and who still intercedes at God’s right hand. Let us commit our souls to Him. (Luke xxii. 32.) With such a being as the devil going to and fro in the world, we never need wonder to see evil abounding. But with Christ on our side, we need not be afraid. Greater is He that is for us than he that is against us. It is written, “Resist the devil, and he shall flee from you.”—“The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.” (James iv. 7; Rom. xvi. 20.) —J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels (Baker Books, 2007). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Considering the seriousness of yesterday’s post, I suppose it’s a poor reflection on my maturity that it left me thinking of this.

Our Fridays are dedicated to the promotion of liberty. Accumulated error is what you get when you measure from anything but your original starting point. For example, let’s look at the walls in your house. Beneath the sheetrock (or other wall paneling) is the wood frame of the wall. That frame is made up of vertical studs connected at top and bottom by horizontal plates. The studs are positioned on sixteen inch centers. For a number of reasons, it is important that that spacing be maintained fairly accurately. Therefore, when laying out the wall, the carpenter marks the stud positions on the plates, measuring each from the same point at one end of the wall. What would happen if he didn’t do that? Suppose he marked the first stud position, and then measured sixteen inches from that point to mark the next, and sixteen inches from that point to mark the next, and so on. Suppose then, in his haste, his marks were off just a little (as is often the case). If each mark was off only one sixteenth of an inch, the inaccuracy would accumulate with each new measurement until the studs were completely out of place. If, however, the carpenter measures all from the same point, he can make even larger errors without throwing the whole wall out of whack. Now consider the reference in law to precedent. When judges refer to precedent in their rulings, they are, as it were, measuring from the previous stud rather that the beginning of the wall. They are piling one possible error on top of another. When the Supreme Court — the guardians of the standard of measurement — does this, the consequences are much more serious than in the lower courts. The Supreme Court, more than any other, should ignore precedent. Hear Should-have-been-Justice Robert Bork on the subject: Robert Bork on Constitutional Precedent

It’s official: I am an idiot. As you may know, I joined Facebook yesterday. You can read my thoughts and intents on that here. As it turns out, I didn’t know what I was doing. I knew what I wanted. I just wanted a Facebook presence that would feed this blog. I didn’t want to go through all that phony phriend nonsense, so I declared right from the start that I wasn’t going to do that. Then, after setting up my page and seeing how things worked, I realized that, even though it was open to everyone, only “friends” could get my notifications. I therefore relented and began accepting “friends.” Then, a reader advised me that a “fan page” might suit me better. I looked into that and discovered that he was right; that was exactly what I wanted, so I set up a page for The Thirsty Theologian. It was perfect . . . Except for one thing. See, when you create a fan page, you have to put it in a category according to its purpose. Looking over the available categories, the one that seemed to fit closest was “writer.” It was either that, or “religious organization.” Anyway, I thought, “blogger/writer, close enough.” But then, in the search results, I saw that I was listed as an author. “Writer” can mean a lot of things, but “author” implies legitimate published work. I’m no author, and I was embarrassed to have anyone catch me misrepresenting myself. Having already acquired a few “fans,” and having already apologized to my “friends” for dumping them in favor of a fan page, I looked for a way to change the category to anything that wouldn’t be a bald-faced lie, but to no avail. Someone will probably now inform me of an easy, obvious way to do that, but I couldn’t find it. In the process, I discovered the category I had overlooked: “website.” Duh. I decided I had to start over, but it was late, so I simply deactivated my account to avoid accumulating any more fans, and went to bed. This morning (which, to my frustration, came at 3:15), I wiped the slate clean and started over. This time, I can say with a reasonable measure of confidence that I am finished, and that you can find my new Facebook page here. Again, I want to apologize to everyone who paid me the compliment of becoming my “friend” or “fan,” and hope you will give me a chance to redeem myself. Finally, I’m still uncomfortable with the idea of having “fans.” If there was a way to avoid it, I would, so please, if you know how that can be done, and it involves redoing anything, keep it to yourself.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. —Inigo Montoya You already know what I think of Twitter. I’ve already insulted a multitude of “tweeters” on that score. Yet I opened a Twitter account more than six months ago, and continue posting there for the reason given at the time. I consider myself a missionary to the grammatically impaired. Well, today I’m here to tell you that slippery slopes really do exist, and one sin does lead to another. The proof? I joined Facebook yesterday. Now, I’m not going to beat around the bush: my opinion of Facebook is several fathoms below my opinion of Twitter. Twitter, as most people use it, is shallow, narcissistic, pointless, and generally lame. What Twitter does to communication, Facebook does to human relationships — and I despise that. I actually had a much longer diatribe on Facebook prepared, but I think I’ll save it. Suffice it to say that everything I said about my use of Twitter will apply to Facebook as well, which means I probably won’t “friend” you*. Don’t take it personally, and don’t get me started about the abominable perversion of a word I hold precious. If you really are, or want to be, my friend, drop me an email, write me a letter, give me a call, stop by for a visit — you know, like a friend would. I don’t know how profitable this venture will be. Honestly, the best way to follow this, or any other, blog is through an RSS reader. If you already do that, there is no reason to follow me on Twitter or Facebook. However, if this sort of thing interests you, I’ll tell you what you can expect from me on Facebook. First, links to this blog’s daily posts. Second, next to nothing. I spent quite a bit of time yesterday going through all the privacy settings, basically fixing it so no one can see anything but my posts, which, if I did it right, everyone can see, so you won’t have to be my “friend” to get everything I’ve made available to anyone. So — for whatever it’s worth, here I am on Facebook. *Update: Okay, so what do I know? It seems you can’t conveniently follow my Facebook posts unless you are my “friend,” so I guess I’ll have to loosen up on that. But I don’t like it! *Update 2: A kind reader informed your clueless host that a Thirsty Theologian Fan Page would likely serve him better and solve the “friend” dilemma. That advice has been gratefully accepted, and the link above has been appropriately modified. He asks you to accept his apologies for the inconvenience, especially to those of you who so eagerly clicked the “friend” button. *Update 3: I’m not feeling too bright presently. For now I’ll just say I goofed, and consequently, I’ve deactivated my Facebook account. I’ll explain later, and have it all straightened out soon. But now, I’m going to bed. *Update 4: The Rest of the Story.