(Tim, w/thanks to Michael) Since we Presbtyerians are so very class conscious and desirous of making a good impression on our upper middle class and highly educated friends, I thought I'd pass along this site for the convenience of our readers. Here you may employ Professor Schpinkee's Greehhouse Calculator to arrive at the age you've used up your fair share of Gaia's resources and need to check into the Thanotel.
by David and Tim Bayly on October 21, 2008 - 4:15pm
For we are not like many, peddling the word of God... (2 Corinthians 2:17a) (Tim, w/thanks to Jeff) You couldn't make this stuff up, could you? One company's peddling an "Illuminated" Bible that "looks more like a gossip rag you'd find in a dentist's office than a
Bible... (and) features intense pictures of violence and death
around the world along with the people who are working to find
solutions for many of today's problems."
Intense pictures of violence and death? Maybe it has color images of aborted children's body parts next to a photo of Judie Brown, Joe Schiedler, or Justices Thomas, Scalia, or Roberts?
Not missing a beat, Zondervan's released a Green Bible that "highlights more than 1,000 verses about the earth in
soy-based green ink" and contains "essays by religious leaders and other resources on
eco-justice." The Green Bible's editor, Michael Maudlin, reports that environmental concerns are "a big part of the Christian agenda
today, especially among the youth."
Also, this: "Matthew Sleeth, a doctor who's been pushing fellow evangelicals to go
green in recent years, writes in his introduction to the Green Bible
that the biggest problem in the world is that the planet is dying."
Over seventy million babies slaughtered each year by medical ghouls and the mothers and fathers who paid them, but bad doctor Sleeth breathlessly reports the imminent death of the planet itself. Or maybe I should say, "the planet herself."
by David and Tim Bayly on November 8, 2008 - 4:16pm
(Tim) Sure, most NOOMA videos you've seen already, but here's one we're betting you missed. It's a clip of Bell's latest church leadership technique called "deformission." Like Bells' other videos, the letdown here's so quiet and soft most believers miss it entirely.
by David and Tim Bayly on November 21, 2008 - 5:34pm
(Tim, w/thanks to David T.) Apparently the chattering classes never knew where turkey wishbones, legs, and breasts came from. Quite a firestorm has broken out over Governor Palin taking an interview at a turkey farm. As she was interviewed, turkeys were being killed in the background.
Aghast at the scene, as the clip was about to be aired, MSNBC newscaster David Shuster advised parents to get their kids "out of the room." After the clip, Shuster reported a "photographer asked Governor Palin if she wanted that as a backdrop and she replied, 'No worries.'" (Good responses here and here, and full length video here.)
Every Christian would do well to make sure his sons kills an animal now and then as a reminder that God has given critters to us for food and we should rejoice in His provision. To kill and eat animals is not to be cruel. It's an act of faith. Man alone bears the Image of God. Turkeys, dolphins, dogs, and crickets do not. (And with apologies to certain friends, certainly not cats.)
Earlier today, Mary Lee and I agreed that, like it or not, our youngest son, Taylor, will go deer hunting next week with Mike Boles and his son, Seth. Taylor isn't particularly interested, but he'll be going anyhow. It's a discipline fastidious boys shouldn't miss...
by David and Tim Bayly on December 11, 2008 - 12:32pm
(Tim, w/thanks to Jake) Yesterday, Richard Cizik resigned as Vice President for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). In the past (see here, here, here, and here) Cizik's public statements have led me to suggest that my denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, resign its membership in the NAE. I'm only more convinced of this now, given Cizik's failure and resignation and the moral failure and resignation of NAE President Ted Haggard two years ago.
The context for the present scandal is that Cizik had this question put to him during a December 2 Fresh Air interview with National Public Radio's Terry Gross:
"A
couple of years ago when you were on our show, I asked you if you were
changing your mind on that. And two years ago, you said you were still
opposed to gay marriage. But now as you identify more with younger
voters, would you say you have changed on gay marriage?"
by David and Tim Bayly on January 20, 2009 - 11:12am
(Tim) Here’s the truth. Obama is the oppressor of children, born and unborn. But since his skin color is black, we can’t believe he’d oppress anyone. So we come out with all this blather about other social justice issues equally commanding our attention as Christians. Our goal, of course, is to obscure the fact that abortion absolutely dwarfs the death toll of all other forms of oppression around the world combined. That’s combined, brothers and sisters!
Why, just in these United States alone, since the bloody decision, Roe v. Wade, was issued, our nation has torn limb from limb, leg from torso, body from mother’s womb, over fifty million—50,000,0000—of our little children.
This number is so large that it makes Africans' Rwanda, Asians' Pol Pot, and Europeans' Hitler look tame by comparison. The only bloody oppressors who are even close to slaughtering the numbers we have slaughtered by our own national, systemic, bloody, oppressive, enslaving child-murders are Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.
But, get this: If instead of talking about the death toll in our nation alone, we consider the international death toll from child slaughter through the murders we call “abortions,” then we’re talking about one Joseph Stalin every year. That’s well over 50,000,000 children slaughtered EVERY SINGLE YEAR!
It’s disgusting for otherwise educated and thoughtful men to seek to legitimize their conniving at this great bloody oppression that defines our nation by sniveling about systemic poverty and education and secondhand smoke and carbon emissions and AIDS.
If men who claim to know the Triune God want to vote Democratic; if men who claim to know the Triune God and have faith in Jesus Christ have black skin and want to vote for another man with black skin; we’d all be better off if they’d have the courage of their prejudices and admit them... You know, something like, “I’m afraid of not appearing progressive enough.” Or “I’m afraid my congregation would have my hide if I didn’t speak up for the brother.”
by David and Tim Bayly on January 21, 2009 - 8:25am
(Tim) Entertainers are the only ones permitted to be honest, today. But sometimes, scientists are cut some slack and are allowed to speak their minds, too. In that vein, did you notice yesterday's news that women are hard wired not to lose weight as easily as men. WebMD titled their article on the study, "Hunger Control: Women the Weaker Sex?" Turns out if we pay scientists to study the difference between the sexes, one of the results we'll get is that the sex that carries and nurses our children is hard wired to...
Well, to what?
Amazingly, to carry and nurse our children. Brilliant! Which got me thinking...
Anyone who's viewed a Reubens has to be skeptical of the cult of the thin body rampant in the American church. Only the perfectly naive would see it as a battle for holiness, the repentance of those who recognize their god is their belly.
When I was in Africa several years ago, David Wegener cautioned me to watch how I spoke about weight. Over there, he explained, any reference to one's weight (if one is adipose, as I am) is seen as arrogance. In other words, Africa is normal across history in thinking a fat wife contented and prosperous. Not sinful.
Through the years, I've had a number of wives come to me and ask me to pray that they'd lose weight...
by David and Tim Bayly on February 2, 2009 - 2:34pm
(Tim, w/thanks to Brett R.) Either children are a blessing from the Lord, the fruitful womb His reward; or Al Gore and Jonathan Porritt are right, and the days' likely to come soon when "persecuted is the man whose quiver is full." Check out this, from yesterday's Times. Here's a teaser...
(Tim, w/thanks to Jake) Back in the day, Mary Lee and I drove diesel Rabbits and loved them. We averaged 40 MPG, handling the clogged fuel injectors endemic to diesels used in very cold climates which left the driver sitting in a car that would barely idle by cutting the diesel fuel with ten percent regular gas. It worked fine.
To give an idea what an excellent car this was, when we moved to Boulder, we drove the Rabbit loaded to the gills with stuff, two adults and a child, two bikes on a roof rack and pulling a 1,930 lb. trailer containing all our earthly possessions from Sawyer, Michigan to Boulder. Given the weight of the trailer, we couldn't touch the brakes or we'd have jackknifed. Getting up to speed took about three hours, and that was only if the on-ramp wasn't uphill. Most of the trip, we ran at 55 MPH in third gear (out of four). So what was our mileage on that trip?
(Tim, w/thanks to several readers) The Y chromosome is what makes a man a man, genetically. But geneticists tell us the Y chromosome is in trouble. Apparently, this genetic diversity we call "manhood" has lately been suffering "deterioration," "mutations," "deletions," "anomalies," and "degeneration." And how!
Blame the feminists, is what I say. Joke.
According to the scientists, men are in danger of "disappearance" but not yet "obsolete." They go on to reassure us evolution's top priority is reproduction. Gaia decrees sperm must survive. Then this priceless quote:
...Geneticists and evolutionary biologists determined that the Y
chromosome's deterioration is due to accumulated mutations, deletions
and anomalies...
by David and Tim Bayly on November 13, 2009 - 6:56am
(Tim) This is written by a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. Thinking readers might have some responses, I post it here. I've received it second or third hand, so I don't know the writer or context.
While recognizing that some people have a calling from God to speak out specifically on these sins, I find that the focus among many Evangelicals on the abortion and same-sex marriage issues to the exclusion of all others reflects the extreme individualism of Protestant theology and ethics, both "conservative" and "liberal". Evangelicals care rightly about the killing that goes on within a woman's womb, and about the improper and irreverent use of our God-given sexual organs in our own bodies or in the bodies of others. But there is not always a corresponding concern about the killing and grave threats to human life that are present outside of the womb, and about the improper and irreverent use of the natural world and material possessions given to us by God.
I don't think it's an accident that the same individualistic faith traditions that emphasize and sanctify "my personal choice" (to accept Jesus as "personal Savior" in the case of conservative Protestants, to have an abortion as a "personal matter" in the case of the liberals) but downplay the physical unity and continuity of the Body of Christ across space and time would also be quite uncertain regarding the social obligations that Christians have to their political and military enemies, to the poor and sick among us, and to the rest of God's creation. A faith tradition that fails to connect our moral obligations inside our bodies with our moral obligations outside of our bodies is deficient in both its anthropology and its ecology.
To get things started, it seems to me evangelicals are now close to the heart of the movement for the social justice of cutting carbon emissions, calling for the government to increase funds for AIDS research, and shaming people who litter. Rick Warren, anyone? Brian McLaren? Rob Bell up there in Grand Rapids? Inter-Varsity? Zondervan? Navigators? Willow Creek? Tim Keller and his flock?
And of course, every last prof at Covenant and Taylor and Gordon and Westmont and Wheaton.
Maybe our critic is only speaking of historic evangelicalism--not the classic liberalism that's taken over these past few decades.
by David and Tim Bayly on November 22, 2009 - 7:43pm
(Tim) It wasn't until my thirties that I learned scientists lie, too. They just use different techniques. So no surprise tonight when I read that someone hacked the servers of a global warming advocacy group called the Climatic Research Unit of University of East Anglia and posted thousands of their e-mails, papers, and other correspondence on a Russian server for all the world to read. It's caused big problems:
Global warming alarmists are scrambling to save face... The messages ...reveal correspondence
between British and American researchers engaged in fraudulent
reporting of data to favor their own climate change agenda.
Summing up the damage the documents have done, climatologist Patrick J. Michaels said: "This is
not a smoking gun, this is a mushroom cloud."
by David and Tim Bayly on December 13, 2009 - 3:42am
Sinners in Zion are terrified; trembling has seized the godless. “Who among us can live with the consuming fire? Who among us can live with continual burning?”
He who walks righteously and speaks with sincerity, he who rejects unjust gain and shakes his hands so that they hold no bribe; he who stops his ears from hearing about bloodshed and shuts his eyes from looking upon evil; he will dwell on the heights, his refuge will be the impregnable rock; his bread will be given him, his water will be sure. (Isaiah 33:14-16).
(Tim) At the top of Google's news page this morning appeared a headline beginning: "Environment ministers try to..." And directly under that headline, this one: "Houston elects first openly gay mayor."
The salvation of the earth will not come from environment ministers, but...
by David and Tim Bayly on December 23, 2009 - 12:47pm
(Tim, w/thanks to Jiho) For those still inclined to jump on the bandwagon of anthropogenic global warming, take a look at the latest call for repentance. Turns out pets are as bad as cars--SUVs even. So we must repent of our dogs and cats--even our goldfish.
A medium-sized dog has an annual footprint of 2.07 acres, which is about the same carbon footprint as driving an SUV 12,500 miles. John Barrett of the Stockholm Environment Institute was asked to "calculate eco-pawprints," and he summarized his very scientific findings:
"Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat," Barrett said.
Showing how serious a problem pets are, further calculations revealed cats have an eco-footprint slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf
for a year, two hamsters are about the same as a plasma television, and even a goldfish burns energy equivalent...
by David and Tim Bayly on January 5, 2010 - 3:35am
Avatar is Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism — a faith that
equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion
with the natural world, (leading us to) collapse distinctions at every level of creation.
-Ross Douthat in the New York Times
(Tim, w/thanks to Mick) About twenty-five years ago, Mary Lee and I took in Dustin Hoffman's Tootsie with a sister and brother-in-law. The movie infuriated me, but my loved ones thought I was psycho. "It was funny!" they announced triumphantly.
Yes, yes; of course. But the meat sandwiched between the humor was toxic.
"The message was sex doesn't matter until body parts touch," I said. "The only time there's anything yucky about Hoffman playing the woman is when his body is about to be touched by the man who likes her. Which is to say, the only barrier left to the complete normalization of homosexuality is body parts that still don't quite fit together. Androgyny has carried the day except in bed."
Of course I convinced no one. Overreacting I was. Couldn't see the joke. Taking life just a little bit too seriously.
But that night I had a vision of the tsunami about to wash over us...
by David and Tim Bayly on January 23, 2010 - 1:59pm
(Tim) If the earth awaits salvation, will limits on carbon emissions bring it? If the earth suffers under some anthropogenic torment, when did it start and when will it end?
It started with the Fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden--that real eating of real fruit by that real man in that real place. And it will end when Jesus Christ returns.
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. (Romans 8:20-22).
(Tim) Lest anyone who's been watching the debate with our R2-K brothers think they're making much ado about nothing, check out this NYTimes piece about the various ways churches in the Pacific Northwest are replacing Father God with Mother Earth. Millwood (Washington) Community Presbyterian Church, for instance, holds a very successful Greenies market in their church parking lot where deeply spiritual beef and sanctified vegetables are sold.
When the city fathers came to the church and told them to stop hosting the market or start paying taxes, the church started paying taxes. Pastor Craig
Goodwin explained it this way:
“It’s like we’ve got more going on in our parking lot than we do within
the walls of the church...."
China alone stands to have as many unmarried young
men—“bare branches”, as they are known—as the entire population of young
men in America. -"The War on Baby Girls," in The Economist, March 4, 2010.
(Tim, w/thanks to Ross C.) The two big social justice causes Emergelical hipsters are concerned about just now are sex trafficking and earth-keeping--female circumcision had a short half-life. Like articles in refereed journals, clothing, and liturgy, the choice of social justice issues is merely a giggling excitement over fashion.
There are more trees in the Eastern third of these United States than there were when this continent was first settled by Europeans; landfills are filled with the chattering class's newspapers--not fast food packaging and diapers; and people who claim to be Green don't recycle any more than the uneducated slobs who make no claim at all. Which is not to say recycling or using cloth diapers or laying pine flooring from Log's End aren't good things.
But religious things? Biblical things? Christian things? No, sorry...
(Tim, w/thanks to Michael) If John wasn't allowed to speak of the hand of God that honed in on Lutheran sodomy politics, I wonder what we're allowed to say about lightning striking this graven image that has long been a fixture visible to I-75 commuters passing Cincy's Solid Rock Church?
Well, by an act of Nature, it burned last night. But not to worry: church officials told the press the graven image will be rebuilt.
If judgment is no act of God, but only an act of Nature, it's quite a relief since Nature never calls us to repentance. Or, should I say, Nature only calls us to repent of things like a carbon footprint that's bigger than it ought to be.
Knowing many readers think I've lost my mind posting this video, please read my apology, such as it is, in the next to last comment, below. And those who read it earlier, I've added some text just now, late Tuesday afternoon.
(Tim) The wonder of this world is that in His wrath against sin God doesn't consume every last one of us. Not your neighbor, but you. Not the Roman Catholic priest or Mormon elder, but me. By all rights, each and every day should end with a universal flood that consumes us all.
But God Who is rich in mercy has promised He will never do it again and the rainbow is His covenant sign that this promise of mercy will stand until the end of time.
That is what this means. And our friend is right to be overwhelmed and cry. Our Heavenly Father made a sign of terrible beauty and splendor to point to a covenant of unbelievable mercy and love.
It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.(Genesis 9:14-16)
Al and Amy Parker run a Christian camping and education program called Canoe Creation based in southeastern Ohio and I commend them to you. I've known Al and Amy and their children for almost twenty years now, and I can't think of a better place for you to send your children to learn about camping and God's creation.
by David and Tim Bayly on December 27, 2011 - 11:16am
An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule on their own authority; and My people love it so! But what will you do at the end of it? (Jeremiah 5:30, 31)
You may want to dismiss it as looniness, but this assault against God's Order of Creation is rebellion against the God Who made us. It's not naive or misguided. It's evil. Attacks on God's Creation Order are all around us and we must recognize that each of them is a part of Satan's conspiracy to grease the descent to Hell.
Feminism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God made Adam first, then Eve. Thus those who conspire to place woman in positions where she teaches and exercises authority over man are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.
Homosexism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God made Eve--not Steve--for Adam. Thus those who conspire to legalize sodomy and promote sodomitic unions are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.
Veganism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God created adam alone--both Adam and Eve--in His Own Image. He did not create animals in His Image. Thus those whose morality has descended to Veganism and the claim of personhood and legal standing for animals are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.
Satan has conspired to paint each of these revolutions a pretty face. Feminism is a long-overdue correction of patriarchal oppression. Homsexism is a long overdue correction of homophobic oppression. Veganism is a long-overdue correction of speciest oppression.
Satan has also conspired to silence the Church of Jesus Christ...
Something you likely didn't know and wouldn't guess is that Mary Lee and I are environmental wackos. Our home is a Touchstone/Energy Star home with a HERS raing of 52--geothermal with an ERV and all that.
The first two cars we bought were diesel VW Rabbits. The summer of 1979, one pulled a trailer weighing 1,950 pounds from Madison to Boulder. If I'd touched the brakes we would have crashed. Used third gear the whole way at 55 MPH and averaged 37 MPG!
A few months ago, The Atlanticpublished an interview with S. Matthew Liao, professor of philosophy and bioethics at New York University. Professor Liao, along with professors Anders Sandberg and Rebecca Roache of Oxford, has co-authored a paper to be published in Ethics, Policy & Environment. In that article, titled "Human Engineering and Climate Change," Liao suggests that it would be good for the environment if we took a pill to induce nausea when we eat meat. That, then, would create a long-term aversion to the taste of meat. These bioethicists also suggest that we have smaller babies...
Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing shameless deeds and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. (Romans 1:24-27)
Shame is a gift from God with a mission-critical function within His creation. For immoralities to increase in a culture, shame must be repudiated. Today there's precious little left.
Back in 1950, the pagan anthropologist, Margaret Mead, saw it all coming when the pagan zoologist, Alfred Kinsey, released his Kinsey Report. Mead condemned Kinsey's number-crunching approach to human intimacy, pointing out that all the talk about sexual perversion would lead to shamelessness:
In every society sex patterns depend on a careful and meticulous balance between ignorance and knowledge, sophistication and naïveté. (The Kinsey Report) has upset the balance …between the things we don’t mention, and the things we do. And it may be expected to have considerable effect in our society for that reason. Quite a good deal of our virtue has depended upon people not knowing what other people were doing (in their bedrooms).
In the past, it was said, “It is better to marry than to burn.” Now we translate, “It is better to have an outlet of some sort, because you’ve got to have an outlet of some sort.” …so it’s just a question of which outlet and (this) suggests no way of choosing between a woman and a sheep.
Sixty years on, the most basic distinctions God gave us in the Garden of Eden prior to the Fall we call "male" and "female" are being obliterated by postmoderns. This precious diversity is being destroyed before our eyes.
