Overheard in the park one day…

Caption: YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE THE CHOSEN ONE!
Uploaded to flickr by rylanddotnet
HT: challies.com

A day in the van

• 78 hours total
• 23+ hours in the van.
• 1300+ miles of Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri's finest highways and county roads
• 15+ hours (my best guess) of Thomas the Tank Engine, Disney Sing-A-Longs, and Winnie the Pooh
• 2 family reunions

…and this was, by far, the highlight of the trip:

View our entire route here, thanks to Google maps.

Japanese television technology

Will we ever catch up?

Price per ounce

I just filled up my car at lunch today, and bought a 20 oz. soda as well. I paid $3.39 per gallon for the gas, which is high enough to keep network news anchors busy and make me wonder how much higher they're going to go. The soda was $1.39. I thought nothing of the price of my Cherry Coke, other than that I remember when you could buy one for $.95 from the vending machines on campus when I was in college.

Here's a little comparison for those folks who are keeping score at home. At $3.39 a gallon, gas breaks down to 2.648 cents per ounce. At $1.39 for a 20 oz. bottle, the Coke costs 6.95 cents per ounce, or roughly 262% more than gasoline. Keep that in mind the next time you wonder if Congress should do something about these skyrocketing gas prices.

Going national

ImpeachReidandPelosi.com has recently been "rebranded" as the Red State Rascals in order to give us a broader scope of issues we can comment on. Yesterday we received our first "national" attention when one of our posts was linked to in a Washington Post article. It's only a matter of time before we're invited to the White House for tea…

Arminian Acronym - W.A.T.E.R.

We're going to be heading in a new direction with our Sunday night men's Bible Study in a couple of weeks. After spending almost 8 months in the Book of Mark (yes, it's only 16 chapters long… we're just a little slow), we have decided to do a 12-week study of the five points of Calvinism vs. the five points of Arminianism. It promises to be an interesting study, to say the least. Matt Beran and I have been asked to lead it, which will be a great opportunity for me to go back and review what I've already studied and to also be challenged to learn even more of what God's Word has to say about the Doctrines of Grace.

One challenge I've run into is that there doesn't seem to be an acronym for the five points of Arminainism. OK, that's not quite true. There doesn't seem to be an acronym for the five points of Arminianism that isn't pejorative in nature¹, so I took the liberty of putting my own little list together:

• Wounded Will - Man's "human nature" has been seriously wounded by the Fall, but he is not completely spiritually helpless. Some Arminians believe that man still retains the ability to choose or reject God in and of himself, while others believe that God has graciously restored/maintained this ability in man. Ultimately, it is man's free choice that determines his eternal destiny. Faith is man's contribution to his own salvation, and he may give or withhold it at his discretion
• Ancillary Election - God chose, before time, those who would be saved. However, this election was secondary and entirely dependent on his foresight of future choices that these free beings would make. Those who would freely believe the gospel were elected unto salvation. Thus, it was an election of omniscience, but not of sovereignty, and man is ultimately responsible for his own destiny.
• Total Atonement - Christ died equally for the sins of all humanity. His redeeming work makes it possible for all men to be saved, but does not directly guarantee the salvation of any individual man. Christ's death enables God to pardon anyone who believes the gospel, but it did not actually, nor effectually, appease God's wrath.
• Effectual Resistance - The Holy Spirit calls men to salvation through the outward proclamation of the Gospel. However, the Spirit's work is ineffectual unless the sinner believes the message of the Gospel. Thus, the will and disposition of man can (and often does) thwart the work of the Spirit. Again, man is free to choose his ultimate destiny.
• Relapse Unto Judgement - Man, who was saved and regenerated in accordance with his own free and determinate will, can forfeit his salvation if he does not maintain the faith that saved him. Some "Four Point Arminians" would not hold to this point, while others would maintain that a person can be saved and lost repeatedly and that his eternal state before God is determined only by which side of the fence he is on when he dies, so to speak.

It's nothing special, but hopefully it is easy to remember and at least relatively fair and even-handed. I would love to hear any criticism and/or different ideas on how these points could be reworded and fit into an easily remembered list.

A Fair(y) Use Tale

A multi-media production that teaches us all about copyright law:

Watch it fast before Disney takes it down…

The video's "official site" is here.

Why not bring 'em home now?

In the Band of Brothers miniseries, in the 7th out of 10 episodes, one of the men noted that the men started to get a sense that the outcome of the war had already been decided. Knowing this, they were a little extra careful. After surviving so much, none of them wanted to get killed or injured that close to the end of the war.

Fast-forward 60-odd years. The Democrats have already declared that the outcome of the war in Iraq is certain. We've lost, or so they tell us. If that's the case, why are the fiddling around with arbitrary withdrawal dates 18 months away? If they truly care for the troops as they claim they do, they should bring them home today. Otherwise, every casualty our servicemen and women suffer between now and the withdrawal deadline is blood on their hands. Why would they be willing to leave the troops to fight a war that was already lost?

The reality is that they don't care about the troops. Their main concern is making sure we lose this war, for their own political gain, without appearing to have been responsible for our defeat. Because of the position they've put themselves in, the only way they can win is for us to lose the war slowly and painfully.

You can call it redeployment, you can call it holding the Iraqi government accountable, you can call it whatever you want. But, the only way to end a war is to win it or to lose it. It's not like a sandlot baseball game where you can just run home when mother calls you for dinner. Their "surrender at all costs" strategy is good for Democrats, good for insurgents, good for al-Qaida, and horrifically bad for our troops and our nation as a whole.

Plenty of parallels have been drawn between this war and Vietnam, but two glaring differences need to be kept in mind. First, most of the troops in Vietnam were there because of the draft, whereas our current military is an all-volunteer force. Secondly, the Viet Cong didn't follow us home, but al-Qaida and its minions have proven repeatedly that they are willing to fight us in our own cities. It is obvious that the Dems are comfortable with the idea of Iraq being left in a state of chaos and bloodshed when we leave, but are they willing to endure terrorist attacks on our own soil? It would seem that they are, at least if such attacks would gain them a few cheap political points.

Crossposted over at RedStateRadicals.com

Mom should be married

W. Bradford Wilcox has a wonderfully politically-incorrect article posted on National Review Online, in which he states that "motherhood typically works best — for our nation’s neighborhoods, children, and even most moms — with a wedding ring." This idea has very little popular support in our culture, in which having a father around (or not) has become just another "lifestyle choice." Even more old-fashioned and out-dated is the idea that mommy and daddy should actually be –gasp– married to each other (it's just a piece of paper, right?), or even –here it comes– married to each other *before* they have a baby.

Who am I to judge? How can I make such sweeping moral judgments like this? What if I hurt someone's feelings? Our society has gone out of its way to take what was once marginal and scandalous and make it normal, or even venerable. Because there are no absolutes anymore, one "family unit" is just as valid as the next, and we have no right to make statements like, "Children are better off in families with one mommy and one daddy."

Let's leave the moral judgments aside for a moment, and just look at some facts. Wilcox cites a report, Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-Six Conclusions from the Social Sciences, that clearly states children are better off when their parents stay married. The research shows that children with married parents commit fewer crimes, have fewer serious emotional problems, and better relationships with their mothers.

Of course, these conclusions seem obvious to anyone who isn't drinking the "I'm OK, you're OK" kool-aid. The reality is that not all "family units" are equally valid. We can play make-believe all we want, but our children are the ones paying for our foolishness.

God, Hurricanes, and Shootings

"God wasn't in this." Pastors and politicians make this assertion when something tragic and/or evil occurs. They suppose it is of great comfort to those who mourn to think that God had nothing to do with the loss they have suffered.

I would argue that it is actually a terrifying thought to suppose that God is unable, no matter how hard he tries or how much he loves us, to stop gulf coast hurricanes or campus killers.

Don over at Locusts and Wild Honey has a different, more biblical perspective on this topic. It is also worth noting that Don pastors a church in Mississippi that was destroyed by Katrina.