Ok. I now know exactly what I want for Christmas. More Amazon money. Even on the Kindle, books are expensive!
I can buy books used, for pennies to dollars, but then the delivery time is measured in weeks, and there’s still the cost of postage.
I’m not used to actually having to pay for my reading habit. But it feels like the library system has crashed for me. I haven’t seen a book I was looking for available for immediate check-out from a library in years.
I’m a hardcore Christian. I think the gospel should be explicit.
I’ve decided for the time being to pretend that any book which fails to keep my attention to the end is therefore a bad book, and not worth reading. This has greatly sped up the process, but will likely have an adverse effect on my allowance: I’ve finished two books in 3 days.
The first book was I Am Not a Serial Killer, by Dan Wells. The genre is horror, a bit like Silence of the Lambs for Young Adult, which is something I’d really never dabbled in before. But Dan Wells is one of the Writing Excuses Podcast hosts, and I’d gotten a friendly feeling toward him, so I thought I’d give his books a try. It was surprisingly good.
I won’t go too far into a synopsis of the story. To describe much of it is to give it away. John Cleaver is 15 when he is diagnosed with sociopathy. He doesn’t recognize or process emotions properly, which causes him to tend toward devaluing the lives of other people. He’s plagued by thoughts that he may become a serial killer. Instead of giving himself over to this, he fights it, and in the process stops an actual serial killer. Sort of.
There was a generally dark tone to the whole story, for obvious reasons. But apparently, the horror genre lends itself very well to intensely moral storytelling (think Frankenstein and Dracula) without drifting into purple preachiness (think Uncle Tom’s Cabin). A couple of parts in the book actually drew tears.
I don’t think I’ll be going to church today.
It’s the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, and I’m a US Army officer, deployed. I know how the service is going to go, and it isn’t going to have much to do with Jesus.
I’m as patriotic as I know how to be, and I feel the weight of the events of that day, though I’m sure I don’t feel it as heavily as some. 9/11 isn’t a harrowing echo in my soul, because I love Jesus more than America.
The United States may still be the greatest nation in the world, if only because we are still the most Christian nation in the world, and even our charlatans must live according to some shadow of Christian principle. We are involved in two wars that may, in some strange sense, be considered acts of charity.
But noble intentions and holy obedience are two different things. And the travesty that happened 10 years ago is nothing, compared to the triumph that happened 2000 years ago. The memory of the twin towers is no substitute for Jesus Christ.
For the armed forces, true Christianity is practiced mostly on the down-low. I’m forbidden to evangelize, except in pre-announced, private settings. People ask me in quiet, personal conversations what kind of religion I practice, and if I will pray for them. As an officer, I can enforce ethical standards, but not explain why those standards must exist.
Meanwhile, in public settings, God is invoked, without any inquiry into the nature and character of this God, without any discussion of what he has done, or what we might owe him. He will come to our aid, in some stabilizing way, because he is God, and we have mentioned him.
On a day like today, when a 10-year milestone falls on the Lord’s day, The service will go like this: Everything is combined to make a display of unity, and the heroes of our war will be remembered. The Creator of the universe will certainly be mentioned. His Son may or may not be referred to, by a brave chaplain who wants to do what’s right. But the redeeming work of the Jesus’ death and resurrection will not be put on full display; it will not be given proper honor on the dearest day of all. There may be a cross, but it will not stand taller than the towers.
I don’t know how many people will think to call that kind of service wrong, or how many will roll their eyes and say I’m making something out of nothing. I am sure, that around the world this kind of subversion of the gospel will be going on, as has been done in many times and places. But I’m not used to it, and I don’t like it. I’ve always been in a place where religion was unregulated. There was always room for a little dissent.
Please pray for the soldiers, and for all the other armed service members. I know many of you do pray, for protection and for strength. But pray also for the condition of our souls. Their bodies are in danger to enemy fire and to privation, but their souls are in danger of anemia and even hellfire. Pray for chaplains to learn to read their Bibles more deeply than they have been, and to see the current of the gospel surging under every text. Pray for leaders to see their sinful nature and look to the cross in repentance. Pray for every converted Christian to learn the gospel deep enough that they may every day, quietly if they must, always preach.
The church in the army is hardly persecuted, but it is asleep.
And yet, a fire of this size never hits cities anymore. In face, in the city, a fire never gets even as big as a block. Obviously, this is because cities are so bad for the environment that the environment stays away.
Having an Air Force makes about as much sense as having a Tank Force
How To Design A Consumption Tax That Isn’t Stupid.
Sounds great!
Voltaire on Earthquake Destruction.
Ironically, Voltaire’s target wasn’t the foolish theories of Keynesian economics, but the truth of the doctrines of providence.
Just finished reading The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson. It was very good. Sanderson is pushing into the realm where he’s starting to possibly compete with Tolkien. He certainly handles religion better than any fiction author I’m aware of.
The beautiful thing is that he goes there, when so many writers, infected by the practical atheism of the day, are writing stories about a magical world where people have no religion, and religion never occurs to them. Sanderson takes religion seriously, and he doesn’t lay all his cards down either. While it does come out that there are some “right” answers, in the mean time the opposing views get their say, and some times the argument that wins is clearly not the author’s own. That said, there’s still just a hint of a Mormon squint to it. So, like with Orson Scott Card, somewhere you’re going to find out that “God” is a little more mortal than you expected, and that holiness comes to those people who just work hard enough at it. (My standard caveat: if you’re afraid of that awful Mormon cult, don’t be. They aren’t a cult, they’re heretics, on a level with people who think Jesus was a great teacher. Mormonism is Pelagius, plus science fiction)
In the mean time, his characters and world building are believable, and they have good reasons for some pretty decent philosophical and theological debates. There were a couple of different places where he got my heart rate up.
The book is a little thick: At 1000 pages plus, it took me a little over a week to read.
Now I’m going to switch back to non-fiction, and see if I can plow through 200 pages in a month. I’ll probably quit the book, as usual.
neumatikos 