My New Blog

My long-awaited (well, not really…) new blog is up. You can check it out here. If you are presently subscribed via email or an RSS reader, you will need to do that again on the new blog.  If you are old-fashioned and have my blog saved as one of your Bookmarks or Favorites, then you will need to adjust that too.  If you are really old-fashioned and just remember to type in “beholdthelowlytomato.wordpress.com” every time, you’ll be happy to know that you will only have to type in davidhornor.com from now on.

By the way, I will continue to behold the lowly tomato and celebrate God’s grace.

See you over at Hornor’s Corner!

Red Flags

Recently, a friend loaned me a copy of Emmet Fox’s  The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life. Knowing that this book is often used as a resource or as study material by people in 12-step programs, I was happy to take a look.

I was shocked by what I found.  It breaks my heart that well-meaning and sincere people might be reading this book to discover the truth about themselves and God.  As I read, red flags sprouted in my mind like poppies on lapels in Canada on Remembrance Day.

Here are just a handful.

Red Flag #1: With a stroke of the pen, Fox summarily dismisses the vast majority of two millennia of historic Christian thought, prayer, study, worship, and practice. He writes:

It will startle many good people to learn that all of the doctrines and theologies of the churches are human inventions built up by their authors out of their own mentalities and foisted upon the Bible from outside; but such in the case (3, emphasis mine).

In other words, everyone else has gotten it all wrong, but not Fox.  Oh, no.  He has it right, but the rest…”do not have the spiritual or metaphysical key” (3).   First Red Flag: Despising the people of God in preference to one’s private interpretation.  In other words, Fox, without using the word, is declaring himself to be heretic.

Red Flag #2:  Fox apparently  trivializes and even mocks the significance of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.   Speaking of the development of doctrine, he writes:

Then a farfetched and very inconsistent legend was built up concerning original sin, vicarious blood atonement…

I don’t know whether Fox refers at this point to Scripture or the development of doctrine subsequent to the closing of the canon.   At any rate,  several Scripture passages come to mind

1. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2).
2. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10).
3. Many more could be mentioned from both Old and New Testaments.  Think here of Romans 3. Isaiah 53, etc.  The list goes on and on.  I am astonished at Fox’s audacity and can only think that me meant that John, Paul, and the other apostles fabricated their doctrines in contradiction to Jesus himself.

Red Flag #3:  Magic thinking. Here is one example of many:

If you want material prosperity, you must first think prosperity thoughts, and then make a habit of doing so, for the thing that keeps most people poor is the sheer habit of poverty thinking (32, emphasis in original).

Needless to say, this is very orthodox in some circles, but hardly does justice to the systemic evil and crushing burdens that afflict the poorest of the poor.

Why am I bothering to criticize this book, published in the 1930′s?  I don’t want people I know and love to fall over the cliff of this false teaching.

Best to put up some warning flags instead.  See 2 Peter 2:1.

Youthful Zeal

My kids and some of their friends have started to blog.  How easily they seem to write posts!  Theirs is a spontaneity, a joy, an unpretentiousness that is refreshing. You can see some of their work (play?) via the “Worth a Look” box in the right column.

Having noticed this zest for life,  I also ran into this gem from Austin Farrer’s The Triple Victory:

I who write these sentences am what is politely called a middle-aged man; that is I have perhaps the fifth part of my earthly course to run; and my intellectual decay is not so evident to me as it is (no doubt) to my colleagues.  I am certainly not so far

gone to wish to return to the thoughts of my early manhood…

At the same time,  I cannot be so blind as to miss the advantages I then held and have since forfeited. I do not speak of physical strength or sensuous enjoyment; charming as such faculties may be…

I speak of imaginative warmth and inventive fertility.  I was making my mental world then; now I have to live in it. I can clear it up and consolidate the parts;  I can reform it here or there;  I cannot make it again.

So, my young friends, enjoy making your mental worlds!  Live life to the fullest!  Walk with Jesus every day and let his never-failing youthful zest fill you up to the brim–now and as you get older!

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Cyrano de Bergerac

Photo source

My wife is studying Cyrano with her Middle School English class right now.  Just for fun, and because I vaguely remember reading this in High School, I got myself a copy.

A couple of conclusions:

1. Just because something was written a long time ago does not mean it is profound.  Cyrano is basically belly-button lint, in my opinion.
2. Theologically, if Rostand’s point is, in part, that none of us is very good at love, he succeeds marvelously.
3. There are some very funny lines here and there, especially the asides that Cyrano speaks.  Belly-button lint or not, Rostand writes very well.

Don’t worry, I don’t plan on giving up my day job to become a literary critic.

Byzantine Hymn of the Nativity

Lent begins today.  This is a brief look back at Christmas.  I could listen to this a hundred times and still be moved.  Wish I spoke Arabic, but the subtitles will have to do.

Transfiguration Sunday

Ascension was as much the natural way of Jesus as death is for us. He might ascend with [Moses and Elijah]. But to ascend now would be to ascend without us. Down below, on the plain, He sees mankind crushed beneath the weight of sin and death. Shall he abandon them? He cannot bring himself to do this

from Frédéric Louis Godet’s Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke (1871)

Guilty secret

from David Ker

Think about this

from They’re Only Chasing Safety

Gospel Joy vs. Morality

via Zach Nielsen

Where is this?

I stumbled on this photo on the net….somewhere. As I recall, it had a photographer’s name, but no description. My apologies to the forgotten photographer.

My question for you is: Where is this? I love this photo and would like to go there sometime.

Please leave your guess in the comments.

Thanks!

P.S. Photo by Marc Adamus

Oregon Hills National Monument