November 2005

Look, if you like big bangs, if you live for the firecracker that can wake up neighbors six blocks away, you have a choice between constantly running from the ATF or doing something more constructive and less illegal than night runs to Tijuana.

Two years ago the manliest man on earth gave me a copy of Backyard Ballistics, commending it to me as the quarter-stick addict's equivalent of a Nicorette patch.

Last January a friend and I spent a happy afternoon with our sons sawing and assembling PVC pipe into two carbide cannon following directions in the book. Once done, place water in the reservoir, add a pinch of calcium carbide, stick the lighter by the touchhole and watch your neighborhood shake. BANG. Wonderful.

(If you happen to make a carbide cannon, forego the Bangsite calcium carbide recommended in the book. Sellers on Ebay will sell you perfectly suitable ground carbide for one-twentieth of the cost of the Bangsite product.)

Other cool projects in Backyard Ballistics include spud guns, tennis ball mortars, Greek fire, and ballistic pendulums.

Not only does the book contain detailed plans for each project, but scientific principles and histories of the various contraptions are covered in entertaining detail as well.

It can't be posted here because it's premium content on the Chronicle of Higher Education site, but if you're able to get your hands on the December 2, 2005 issue, read "For the Love of Narnia" by Michael Nelson. It's an excellent defense of C. S. Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia against the rabid smears of another children's book author, Philip Pullman, who is using the occasion of the release of the movie, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, to vent his spleen against Lewis, Lewis's books, and Lewis's God.

Typical of the fungus growing through Pullman's toes is this charge:

The Chronicles of Narnia are "propaganda in the cause of the religion [Lewis] believed in," and they teach that, "Death is better than life; boys are better than girls; light-colored people are better than dark-colored people; and so on." Pullman calls the Chronicles of Narnia "one of the most ugly and poisonous things I've ever read," "propaganda in the service of a life-hating ideology," "blatantly racist," "monumentally disparaging of girls and women," with a "sadomasochistic relish for violence."

It may give our good readers a better idea of where Pullman is coming from to inform them that Pullman himself is a noted author of a series of children's books called His Dark Materials. Pullman says he wrote His Dark Materials because he "really wanted to do ... Paradise Lost in 1,200 pages. ... It's the story of the Fall which is the story of how what some would call sin, but I would call consciousness, comes to us."

Some would call the Fall sin but Pullman calls it consciousness--that about says it all, doesn't it?

Sadly, in 2001 His Dark Materials won two of the prestigious Whitbread Awards, for best book published in England and best children's book.

I'll leave you with this final charge levelled by the self-avowed atheist, Pullman, against Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia: "The highest virtue, we have on the authority of the New Testament itself is love, and yet you find not a trace of that in the books."

Maybe one of our good readers can find a legit copy of Nelson's article? It's in the Chronicle of Higher Education and it's... wonderful!

(Thanks, Joe.)

I'm struck by the willingness of some Lutherans on this blog to impudently claim grace in the face of potential violations of Old Testament commands. It seems grace covers every failure, even failure to think seriously about the Law. This is not Lutheranism in its original sense, but however far devolved from the teaching of Luther, it does represent modern Lutheran practice and a dangerous trap for the Reformed community as a whole.

What place is there for fear of the Lord in modern Lutheran thought? Is it merely Old Testament legalism, withered to nothing after the Cross?

Perhaps it's time for these revelers-in-grace to heed the actions of the New Testament, post-Resurrection, Covenant-of-Grace, Spirit-filled apostles who held themselves compelled to heed even the non-normative, prophetic passages of the Old Testament....

One of the most remarkable verses in Acts is found in Acts 1:21 where Peter, after speaking of Judas, tells the assembled disciples "it is necessary" that an apostle be chosen to replace Judas simply because David had so prophesied in the book of Psalms.

Acts 1:20-23 20 "For it is written in the book of Psalms, 'Let his homestead be made desolate, And let no one dwell in it'; and, 'Let another man take his office.' 21 "Therefore it is necessary that of the men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us-- 22 beginning with the baptism of John until the day that He was taken up from us--one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection." 23 So they put forward two men, Joseph called Barsabbas (who was also called Justus), and Matthias.

It "is necessary" that the disciples choose a successor to Judas, necessary because Scripture ordains it. And in rigorously seeking to heed the Old Testament they are following the well-worn footsteps of their Master. Time after time Jesus acted so that "the Scriptures might be fulfilled"--even in areas of non-normative prophecy, not to mention Scripture's normative commands.

Yet many modern Lutherans think grace covers every failure to take the Old Testament seriously, even the plainest commands of the Decalogue.

Perhaps it's time for modern Lutherans to listen again to their namesake on the fear of the Lord, a man far better acquainted with the salutary effects of such fear than they...

But the people of Sodom are like crags and very hard rocks. In their case brimstone, lightning from heaven, and thunder are needed. Those foolish and lying prophets who maintain that the Law should not be taught in the church and that, in general, no one should be rebuked too severely or burdened in his conscience are not aware of this.

If this is true, however, why does the Lord want the example of Sodom preserved in His very church and taught by Abraham? Moreover, in view of the fact that He adds "in order that they may fear the Lord," do not those who want only the promises to be taught exclude the doctrine of the fear of the Lord entirely from the church? Hence the fanatical spirits who confound the entire system of heavenly doctrine in a pernicious manner must be shunned.

Several years ago I was speaking to Ken Sande and he told me of the growing movement in Canada to prosecute Christian pastors, churches, bookstores, etc. who proclaimed Scripture's doctrine of sexuality, particularly its condemnation of sodomy. Sande's organization, Peacemakers was at that time involved in providing legal counsel for Canadian Christians under such attack.

Since then, my own congregation has had occasion to use the services of another Christian legal organization, the Alliance Defense Fund, and I commend them to our readers for their godly work defending the free exercise of religion.

A good example of that work is their involvement in the notorious case of the Swedish pastor, Ake Green, whose prosecution for preaching Scripture's truths concerning sexuality is before Sweden's supreme court. (Here's the text of Pastor Green's sermon.)

Here are the details concerning Pastor Green's case as well as a call to prayer published by the Alliance Defense Fund. And here is where you may be kept abreast of other religious freedom cases the ADF considers noteworthy. I warmly commend the ADF to our good readers, both for their financial and prayer support, and also their training--those who are in the legal profession, that is.

Perhaps the lowest form of argumentation is neither argument ad hominem nor argument by analogy, but the "been there, done that" school of polemics.

I was recently reading a manuscript in which the author pleaded his inconoclastic past on behalf of his icon-approving present. What tripe, I thought. And then I was forced to consider the many times I've been guilty of the same vanity in argument--assuming my criticisms of another's position possess special authority because I once held a similar position myself.

It's a common mistake of debaters to assume that the ability to say, "I once was as you are," gives special weight to our insights. Converts from Evangelicalism to Roman Catholicism (and probably vice versa, if truth be known) claim this all the time: "I was once in your position, I know it...."

Well, no, they weren't and no they don't. They weren't where I am as a gratefully Reformed Protestant Evangelical. And thus they don't know my position today. They think they do, but they don't. If they once were where I now am, they would never have left.

This is true in every variety of argument. The man who claims he was once an iconoclast and now promotes icons was never a true iconoclast in the way an unremediated iconoclast is an iconoclast. The same with converts to and from Roman Catholicism. If I, as a cradle Roman Catholic, were to find truth in a Protestant church and convert to Protestantism, I would never have been Roman Catholic in the same way a lifetime Catholic is Roman Catholic.

This should be self-evident but it's not. It's no denial of the truth of the convert's experience to say that his Roman Catholicism differed vastly from that of a lifetime Roman Catholic. The one was willing to change, the other is not. Surely we recognize a profound difference in the religious experience of the two.

Though the convert's experience differs from the non-convert's it is no less real. Nor are his arguments less valid because they've changed. Change in position is strong evidence of serious examination and consideration; against an untutored opponent such experience usually results in polemical advantage.

But as a form of argumentation, few things are lower than saying, "I once held the position you hold but now I know better."

Every position stands or falls objectively. Subjective claims of experience are simply ad hominem claims to superiority. They have no impact on the actual weight of one's argument.