Misc.

Several men in my congregation have suffered from Tinnitus, one quite severely, and a recent article reviewing headphones for use with iPods directed me to this site. We parents should caution our children, young and old, to exercise great caution as they listen to their MP3s, particularly if they use ear buds or headphones.

With one hearing-impaired person in our household, I can say that hearing loss is no fun for those afflicted by it, but also a constant sadness to those who live with that person and are unable to communicate with him in any normal way.

If you've ever been, or wanted to go, to the EAA's OshKosh air show, you'll get a big kick out of these movies. Be patient--they're large.

When we lived in Wisconsin, Oshkosh was one of the highlights of the year.

This weekend, World will be switching servers. Thus, beginning Friday evening and continuing until Monday morning, World's blogs will not be active.

Please be patient and, Lord willing, we'll see you Monday morning.

Tim Bayly

PS: This is a good opportunity to encourage you to support World financially. Subscribe to World, give gift subscriptions to others, send donations to World; encourage businesses, publishers, churches, schools, medical clinics, seminaries, and colleges to advertise in World. Do whatever you can to help World grow.

Passed on by a friend...

With all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person which almost went unnoticed last week.

Larry LaPrise, the man who wrote "The Hokey Pokey," died peacefully at age 93. The most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the coffin. They put his left leg in. And then the trouble started.

Some years back, I bought some Christmas presents from the British toy merchant, Firebox. For pre-Christmas fun, check it out--no boy, big or small, will be disappointed. (I can't speak for girls.)

In reading Doug Wilson's blog I came across this fascinating DiscoveryChannel article on his son Nathan's research on a possible mechanism for forging the Shroud of Turin.

This New St. Andrew's College experiment is apparently entering the big leagues of Shroud research. Nathan Wilson's site on his experiment can be found here.

This blog is now a year old and it's time to do some housekeeping, specifically regarding the anonymous posting of comments.

It often happens that comments are made by people wanting to hide both their name and E-mail address. Normally, we allow such comments to stand because the anonymity does not appear to be a matter of unwillingness on the part of the author to own up to his identity in the midst of accusing others of being in error, but rather a matter of convenience--usually the commenter does not want others on the internet to be able to call him, write him, or E-mail him at home.

We have sympathy for the second reason. Recently, Tim has been the recipient of attacks bad enough that his wife, Mary Lee, reported them to the police.

However, despite the risks involved, when it comes to confessing Christ in these evil days, it's imperative that our confession be personal, not anonymous. No matter how biblical our position, if we refuse to identify ourselves when we take that position we have not yet confessed our faith. In fact, a good case may be made that an anonymous confession of God's Truth in this evil day amounts to our being ashamed of our Lord and His words.

So we sign each piece and run the risk of being assaulted. And we exhort each of you to give us your real name and E-mail address when you make a comment. It is a sign of boldness and courage that strengthens all of us who believe. But if you refuse to give the name and E-mail address you are asked for in the comment posting box, normally we will not remove your comment.

There is one case, though, where you must use your real name--both first and last--as well as your real E-mail address, and that is when you make personal accusations against an author of either a comment or a blog post who has identified himself. In other words, you may not make anonymous accusations against people who have been faithful in identifying themselves.

For example, recently a reader who identifies himself as "Pensans" has been accusing Tim of being furious about Terri's death, and has said that two of Tim's recent posts are simply his way of lashing out at all those he blames for her death. He may be right. But he has not signed his real name and we are unwilling for him to shoot this arrow from behind a tree. So we just sent him the following E-mail:

Dear Mr. Pensans,

I write to find out if this E-mail address is honest. Also to ask you please to sign your comments with your real first and last name. You know this is requested in order to post comments on our blog. Many choose not to do so, and we don't ask them to change. In your case, though, since you are making personal accusations about my character, I do not ask you to cease making those accusations, but rather to make them personal on both ends--you should know my name and I should know yours; you should be able to write me personally and I should be able to write you personally.

So if you're willing to do this, I'd be grateful and you are welcome to continue your personal accusations. If you are not willing to do so, I will not allow you further posts.

Signed

Please notice that we're not asking Mr. Pensans to stop making personal accusations, but rather simply to identify himself. Scripture commands us to speak directly with one another when we are confronting sin. To make such accusations anonymously is, in most cases, sin.

To reassure our readers, though, let us quickly point out that, of 1,518 comments posted to this blog this past year, we're removed less than ten.

If you have suggestions or disagree with this policy, please do let us know. But please keep in mind that it is not our desire to stifle debate. Rather, we are asking that those making personal accusations identify themselves.

David Bayly
Timothy Bayly

Last week I was speaking with a psychologist who specializes in a particular disorder quite common among children who have been adopted by healthy parents after spending their first years in abusive homes and/or orphanages. Such children typically are extremely resistant to authority and will go to almost any length to keep from being under the control of any adult, even the most benevolent ones.

Asking him what he does to help his clients, the good Doctor described an in-house treatment program he and his associates run three of four times a year that is aimed at working through these control issues with such children.

I asked him how he gets the children to obey them and he said they have various punishments, one of which is requiring the disobedient child to stand facing the wall for a long period of time until the child is ready to obey.

"But what if the child refuses?" I asked.

"Then we make him stand at the wall for an hour"

"But what if he refuses to do that?"

"Then we make him stand at the wall for as long as it takes, even several hours if necessary."

"And what if he refuses to face the wall at all?" I asked.

"Then we tell him to drop on the mat on the floor and lie there."

"But what if they won't do that, either?"

"Well," he responded, "I used to wrestle and I'll take him down if I have to--always while being videotaped and always with another counselor in the room."

Then he added, "And if we have to, our worst possible punishment (and he said this without a trace of a smile on his face--he was deadly serious) is for me to hold him immobilized on the mat on the floor while I sing Kum Bay Yah to him. Sometimes it takes fifty or sixty verses before they give in."

While he sat there looking at me with a confused look on his face, I roared with laughter. I knew there had to be some use for that song, although I was surprised he'd chosen Kum Bay Yah instead of It Only Takes a Spark.

World's blog server has been screwy for three days now. It accepts alterations on forms, but changes don't show on the main page. Sorry, folks.

Rowan Williams at Druidic induction service

There's no end to the thrills issuing from Anglicanism these days. The church which gave us a Druidic primate and more recently the wonderfully Pauline confrontation between African Bishop Peter Akinola and effeminate American Bishops Griswold and Robertson is again courting public breakdown as it seeks to reconcile with Rome over the worship of Mary.

Yesterday a joint Anglican-Roman Catholic working group of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) issued a report on the place of the Virgin Mary in Christian doctrine.

Surprise, surprise. Against the church where druids are welcome and homosexuality isn't a problem even Rome gets its moment in the victor's circle--that is, if Rome wants it. To the rest of us it seems Anglican virtue goes so cheap these days that whoever gains her loses more than he wins.

In a document called Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ, published yesterday in Seattle and to be released in London on Thursday, the study commission declared:

"We do not consider the practice of asking Mary and the saints to pray for us as communion-dividing ... we believe that there is no continuing theological reason for ecclesiastical division on these matters."

The report also says of Roman Catholic docrines of the Immaculate Conception of Mary and Mary's Assumption into Heaven that though they "have been seen as points which have separated Anglican and Catholic Churches...neither is contrary to scripture."

The AP quotes Anglican Archbishop Peter Carnley of Perth, Australia, co-chairman of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, as saying the Catholic dogmas concerning Mary are "consonant" with biblical teachings about hope and grace. "'For Anglicans, that old complaint that these dogmas were not provable by scripture will disappear,' Carnley said during a news conference with Seattle's Catholic Archbishop, Alexander Brunett."

Perhaps he's right--at least about Anglo-Catholic wing of the Anglican church which has long cast admiring glances at Rome. But despite the presence of some in Anglicanism who may embrace Maryolatry, even Bishop Carnley can't be as sanguine about the prospects of his report as he lets on. Surely he doesn't believe his neighboring diocese of Sydney will stop complaining about these dogmas. The Akinola-Jensen wing of Anglicanism will be no more happy to embrace Maryolatry than it was to embrace homosexuality.

This is a church divided against itself: Perth against Sydney, Africa against America.... In the middle stand Rowan Williams, N. T. Wright and a bunch of other Brits twisting their hankies into knots hoping to mediate these problems away. Won't happen, folks. This train's done left the station.

I've got the world's best ringer on my phone. It's the snarl of a Tasmanian devil converted into a ringtone via Nokia's audio conversion tool.

When I first got this file I played it for my kids and asked them to guess what it was. The two youngest immediately said, "It's Uncle Tim!" Listen for yourself to see if it sounds like Uncle Tim.

If any of you would like this for your phone, here it is in mp3 format and here it is in ringtone format.

Just took this screen shot. It's what happens just now if you try to go to Overstock.com. Delightful honesty.

One of the joys of pastoring a new church is having the opportunity to establish new precedents in areas of previous difficulty. So, I'm delighted that at Christ the Word no one seeks to know the precise number of worshippers in the sanctuary each Sunday morning. It's easy enough to make an informed guess, but no one's saying, "Let's check the numbers and see how we're doing." Attendance is not unimportant--we want to grow and we praise God for His additions to our church. But concrete numbers reported each week tend to assume unwarranted importance. It's a sign of the faith of CTW's elder board that our elders do not ask about numbers. (And further, that they save finances for the end of elder meetings.)

Which brings me to...blogging. I've noticed that the availability of statistics in blogging leads almost inexorably to a desire for increased numbers. It's amazing how a ranking instrument such as Truth Laid Bear or Technorati or Site Meter almost automatically turns us into statistics-addicted influence seekers.

Blogging at Woodside Hospice during the murder of Terri Schiavo sent our numbers through the roof. And the influence of those numbers lingered afterward. I checked our numbers daily--sometimes hourly--for months afterward and I was always interested to see the stats of other blogs.

Not only are numbers important to bloggers, the more you blog the more you want other bloggers to link to your blog. The result is a self-referential series of quid pro quos wherein we mention other bloggers positively and link to them so that they will in turn mention and link to us.

More often than not, this circularity is accompanied by rather obsequious expressions of praise from smaller blogs to more prominent blogs in the apparent hope that the more prominent blog will link back to the lesser-known blog--a form of vassal-lord relationship in which the vassal renders fealty and honor and the lord in turn grants a place in the penbumbra of his blogging glory. In the end, the outcome is a self-reinforcing system of mutual admiration.

Because pride is a constant temptation to bloggers who pay attention to links and stats I've made certain decisions about my approach to this blog. First, I'm no longer checking our stats. If I don't know how few people view this blog each day, I'm not disappointed and my pride isn't bruised if we decline (and bruised pride is still sinful pride). Conversely, if I never see how many are reading the blog, I won't be as likely to derive pride from increased numbers.

Second, I'm no longer checking our referral logs. In the past I would find people who were linking to our blog from the referral logs and add them to our links. No longer. Now, if you want to be added to our links, just email us and let us check out your blog. If you like us we'll probably like you.

Finally, I would encourage bloggers who read this to be on guard against the potential for pride and favoritism in their own blogging life. Blogs can be tools for God's Kingdom, but back-scratching and numbers-seeking is never the path to God's pleasure, no matter how many wise, good things we say along the way.

Upon leaving Yellowstone we headed south to our final destination of Breckenridge, where we had rented a condo for our second week of vacation.

The trip out of Yellowstone wended through the Grand Teton National Park. The Grand Tetons are rugged, grand mountains. Pure power mountains--all angles, sharpness and snow.

Snake River south of the Grand Tetons

South of Grand Teton National Park we passed through Jackson, Wyoming, a booming town which gives the impression of being at one and the same time, unspoiled, and on the cusp of overdevelopment. The Snake River, heading south through Jackson, was our companion for several hours. If I were to choose one place in the west for a vacation home, it might be along the Snake River.

Playing in the Snake

South of Jackson we made a wrong turn and continued southwest for thirty miles along the Snake River instead of heading southeast toward Rock Springs. Our choice, when I realized my mistake, was between continuing almost to Salt Lake City where we would encounter an interstate or retracing our path. It was no sacrifice to head back up the thirty miles of Snake River roadside.

Watching for prairie dogs near Jackson

Once we were back on track at Hoback Junction, scenery turned surly. Southwest Wyoming is high desert: lots of shrub, oil wells and brown. Not very attractive.

After stopping Friday night in Rock Springs, we continued to our cabin in Breckenridge the next day.

A salutary post on Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago at Jack's Pipe.

The comparison to Hell is thought-provoking.

In future centuries, should Christ tarry, Solzhenitsyn will be viewed as one of the very few who looked out on the 20th century with unblinkered gaze. Few of our time have understood the world as keenly as Solzhenitsyn.

Yet, for all the respect he receives today, he may as well be dead. In fact, I'll bet many who read this don't know for certain whether he's still alive (he is, living in Russia again after years of exile in America).

In the midst of a querulous week prompted, partially, by a nasty something gripping my innards, I posted about Samaritan Ministries in an uncharitably harsh manner.

I've wondered whether to take the post down or leave it. In the end, I leave it so that I don't appear to be covering my mistakes. You may want to read the charitable response of one of the Samaritan Ministries team in the comments to my post below.

It seems to me from further reading about Samaritan Ministries that they are:

1) Serving a cross-section of the Christian world that routinely struggles to find affordable health coverage (ministry personnel, missionaries, etc.)

2) Doing so with minimal overhead. If my estimates based on available public records are correct, Samaritan Ministries overhead is somewhere between 5-10 percent of the "givings" it superintends. I suspect this is far less than a typical health insurance program.

3) Providing a reliable, low-cost means of medical coverage to many who might otherwise have none.

I appreciate the difficulty of covering vastly expensive treatments for chronic conditions. Samaritan Ministries sets criteria for entry and limits payments for preexisting conditions for the same reason many other health coverage plans do the same. Adverse selection ended the PCA's health insurance plan. Samaritan ministries, if it wishes to stay solvent, must avoid the danger of becoming a health coverage plan of last resort.

Without saying more about Samaritan Ministries, Christian responses to the cost of health care in America cannot forego coverage of the poorest and most helpless physically of our brothers and sisters. Perhaps the answer is not a revision of the insurance/payer system, but a parallel Christian health care network. Seem impossible? It wasn't in the 1800s. The lingering presence of so many St. Vincents and St. Lukes and Presbyterian medical centers in America is proof of how thorough-going the Church's commmitment to helping the poor obtain medical care was in America's recent past.

Probably my favorite CD purchase of the last fifteen years was a chance purchase via a forgotten record club of The American Vocalist by the Boston Camerata conducted by Joel Cohen.

I love religious vocal music. As a young Christian in the 80s I would put the King's College Choir singing the Psalms of David on my turntable and listen with chills running down my spine.

But it's rare to find music that is both totally new to you and wonderful at the same time. That's what this album proved to be. Though the tunes are themselves beautifully simple with great harmonies, the words are the key to this album. The powerful words of Christian truth from the late 1700s through late 1800s in these songs will stun you. Believe it or not, this was popular Christian music of the day.

Here are the words to the initial recording on the CD. Also, here is a Windows Media Audio version of the song to convince you to buy the album.

The Warning

Ah, guilty sinner, ruined by transgression,
What shall thy doom be, when, arrayed in terror,
God shall command thee, covered with pollution,
Up to the Judgement, Up to the Judgement!

Wilt thou escape from his omniscient notice?
Fly to the caverns, seek anhihilation?
Vain thy presumption, justice still shall triumph,
In thy destruction, In thy destruction!

Stop, thoughtless sinner, stop a while and ponder,
'Ere death arrest thee, and the Judge in vengeance,
Hurl from His presence, thine affrightened spirit,
Swift to perdition, swift to perdition!

Come, then, poor sinner, come away this moment,
Just as you are, but come with heart relenting.
Come to the fountain, open for the guilty,
Jesus invites you, Jesus invites you!

Oh! guilty sinner, hear the voice of warning,
Fly to the Saviour, and embrace His pardon.
So shall your spirits meet, with joy triumphant,
Death and the judgement, death and the judgement!

Apparently, The Amercian Vocalist CD is no longer in print. You can find it used on Amazon here.

The Boston Camerata and Joel Cohen followed up The American Vocalist with a similar offering called Trav'ling Home. It's equally worthy of your attention. It's in print and can also be found at Amazon.

For more on The American Vocalist, the 1800s hymnal from which most of these songs are taken, visit this site where both MIDI files and PDF songsheets of American Vocalist hymns are available.

Give a man a hammer and every problem becomes a nail.

Give a man a new pejorative term and every person he disagrees with gets labeled with it.

Thus, at Christ the Word, we no longer permit the accusation "gnostic" to be voiced in our office. The word is outlawed, as is "Donatist" and one or two others. Why? Because the minute a young theologian learns such words, they become his term of condemnation for every opponent.

Labeling is not the same as countering. Those who bandy about newly-acquired terms such as "gnosticism" and "fideism" would do better to stop the pejoratives and engage the issue. Labels win arguments only among the credulous.

I'm reminded of the old joke about prisoners imprisoned together so long they simply numbered their jokes and called out the numbers: "12," "18," "57...."

"Yo, you gnostic! You freakin' fideist." Such labeling often sounds cool to sophomores but it's evasion of the polemical process.

Most blogs are more influential in theory than fact--with several important exceptions.

PowerLine, one of my favorite non-Christian blogs, is as influential as many local newspapers. A large portion of PowerLine's influence is due to tone. You read it and think it's written by responsible adults who have more going on in life than their blog. And the range of topics covered is attractive. PowerLine's authors have eclectic interests. They write with authority and they're not shrill, even when writing on their hobbyhorses.

On the Christian end of the blogging world, I suspect few blogs are more effective than BatesLine.

Michael Bates, author of BatesLine, is an MIT grad and PCA member in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His blog is filled with the nitty gritty of political life in Tulsa. And his blog's influence is clearly substantial. The Tulsa World now has daily competition in BatesLine and entrenched local powers have a check on their influence. Michael is allied with a Christian talk show host in Tulsa; together they've become a force to be reckoned with.

I'm not sure any other major American city has seen a blog become more influential in local political life than BatesLine has become in Tulsa.

But Michael's writing extends beyond Tulsa. He writes on pro-life issues: we became acquainted through his coverage of the court-ordered killing of Terri Schiavo. He's had recent posts on topics as varied as the Dwight Tilley Band and the new look of McDonalds restaurants....

Finally, let me join Michael and BatesLine in commending to you this post by Joel Martin of On the Other Foot who has a neat post remembering his godly grandmother.

A fascinating article on worldwide reaction to Katrina on Reuters this morning.

Among the reactions:

"I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering," said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, as he watched a cricket match in Colombo, Sri Lanka. "Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population is."

Whoa. I suspect many of us have had similar thoughts.

And this:

A female employee at a multinational firm in South Korea said it may have been no accident the U.S. was hit. "Maybe it was punishment for what it did to Iraq, which has a man-made disaster, not a natural disaster," said the woman, who did not want to be named as she has an American manager. "A lot of the people I work with think this way. We spoke about it just the other day," she said.

In Luxembourg, apparently, the sins punished by Katrina are those of a weak state:

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, in a veiled criticism of U.S. political thought, said the disaster showed the need for a strong state that could help poor people. "You see in this example that even in the 21st century you need the state, a good functioning state, and I hope that for all these people, these poor people, that the Americans will do their best," he told reporters at a European Union meeting.

According to Liberation, the leftist French paper, Katrina is a cause for schadenfreude by Osama bin Laden:

"A modern metropolis sinking in water and into anarchy -- it is a really cruel spectacle for a champion of security like Bush... bin Laden, nice and dry in his hideaway, must be killing himself laughing."

...though one suspects the schadenfreude is as much in the editorial offices of Liberation as in bin Laden's hideaway.

Meanwhile, few stop to consider what God has said:

(Isaiah 45:6b-7, NASB95)
"I am the Lord, and there is no other, The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these."

During our month's travels, one hit with both parents and children was what was called "The Roof Tour" at Winchester Cathedral. The four of us had two guides (pic 2) who took us on a two-hour labyrinthine walk through every nook and cranny (pic 5) above the cathedral, including the bell room (pic 3), the ringing chamber (pic 4), across a catwalk above the length of the nave (pic 6), and onto the roof itself (pic 1).

Anyone out there old enough to remember how Maya Lin's design for the Vietnam Memorial in Washington was initially pilloried and ridiculed?

Veterans complained that it was a gash in the ground, a mockery of the sacrifices of those who died, that Lin was expressing shame for the war by digging into the dirt. That's why there are those conventional-looking memorial statues at the end of the wall--to placate angry veterans and conservatives.

Does anyone view the Vietnam Wall as a shameful gash in the ground today?

Let's be quiet for a moment about Flight 93's proposed memorial and simply consider it pragmatically as memorial design on the ground, not some archetypal statement to the sky.

Honestly, I think the shrill shouting should end. It's a good design.

It's nearing midnight, bedtime.

So as a little treat, here's a link to the TC2K, described this way in Engadget:

...the TC2K may be as vindicating and satisfying experience as we can imagine. Do Not Call Registry be damned, the TC2K identifies incoming telemarketer calls and using caller ID (or more specifically, their lack thereof), and is programmed to ensnare the caller in a software-driven conversation in order to keep them on the line as long as possible--the theory is that by decreasing their overall productivity, and telemarketing becomes an undesirable business proposition. But for your trouble you get something out of the deal, too--a tidy recording of the "conversation," which we might call both painful and hilarious.

The TC2K requires computer equipped with a modem capable of caller recognition.

Here's an animation of an actual TC2K conversation. My kids and I rolled on the floor listening to it earlier today.

Elvis Presley.........Johnny Cash
Husker Du.............The Ramones
Rolling Stones........The Who
Styx..................Cheap Trick
Pink Floyd............Moody Blues
Foreigner.............Boston
Sting.................Elvis Costello
Jefferson Starship....Jefferson Airplane
Rod Stewart...........Eric Clapton
Jim Morrison..........Jimmy Hendrix
John Lennon...........Paul McCartney
Jackson Brown.........Neil Young
Simon & Garfunkel.....Beach Boys
Dino..................Liberace
Talking Heads.........Television
U2....................The Clash
Blondie...............Patti Smith
Linda Ronstadt........Loretta Lynn