Category: Miscellany

My wife recently told me that Russell Moore (www.henryinstitute.org) spoke about his adopted sons (any mention of adoption captures my wife’s attention, though our four small children leave her little of it to spare). He reports that he became quite perturbed when people asked if the two adopted sons — who bore no blood relation — were “brothers.” When he responded that they were certainly brothers, the next question was whether they were, you know, “really” brothers. “Yes, they’re really brothers” Moore is quick to point out, and their brotherhood demonstrates the adoption we have as children of the living God.

When I tell people that I am in seminary, I get sort of the same response: “Are you really in seminary?” I suppose the fact that we have not moved to campus and go about our lives seemingly as usual contributes to the incredulity. (Plus, I still practice law – a profession people apparently consider closer to Poltergeist than Preacher). But then, I’ve always carried about copies of An Invitation to Biblical Hebrew.

“Is Faircloth really in seminary? He’s always read that dry stuff, anyway. I once even saw him reading How to Read a Book, of all things.”

“Yeah, he’s really in seminary.” Wink, wink, nod, nod.

Here’s where I stand now: after starting The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fall, 2007 I’ve completed 21 hours; I’m taking 12 hours for Fall 2008, and the gpa is sure to decline afterward, not because of the work load, but because my “invitation” to Biblical Hebrew seems less like invitation and more like abduction and hostage situation, wherein my captors give proof of life via the screams elicited from scraping my bare chest with a barrel cactus — right to left, of course.

“Daddy, why are your fingers bleeding?”

“I got Hebrew vowel points jabbed under my nails.”

So, anyway, here’s the list of classes I’ve completed:

Elementary Greek
Systematic Theology I
Introduction to Old Testament I
Greek Syntax and Exegesis
Systematic Theology II
Introduction to Old Testament II
Biblical Hermeneutics

Here’s what I’m taking now:

Systematic Theology III
Introduction to Biblical Counseling
Elementary Hebrew
Inroduction to Church History I

Here’s what I’ll be taking in December:

Recovering Your Eyesight I
Advanced Sleep Deprivation
Re-Acclimation to Sunlight
Speed Reading for Dummies

My wife has chided me recently for not posting more. I think her particular form of encouragement took the form, “I’ve blown past you in total hits.” Of course, her blog has the advantage of posting photos of the kids, video clips of them in their hilarious antics, and descriptions of their incomprehensible kid-logic, all of which give her an advantage over a blogger like me, even a ‘drummer extraordinaire.’

Perhaps, if I posted video of me playing drums in a rotating cage, head banding, hair flying, dry-ice-smoke wafting…

I started the blog between semesters. During the spring I had taken 12 hours, and was anxious to release in some way. I started fall semester recently, taking another 12 hours. With the full-time job, getting the house ready to sell, co-rearing four kids, and doting on my lovely wife (ok, she is definitely lovely, but my ‘doting’ may be a bit too generous), something had to give. It has been, obviously, the blog.

So, I suppose I must officially take a break. I’ll post occasionally during the semester, but don’t count on anything near 30 per month.

By the way, 10 years ago, today, I married well above my station. Happy anniversary, Carrie!

I’ve recently suffered the crash of a laptop, for which I thought I was prepared by making copies of files on an external drive. Then I discovered that I had not considered all those programs that I had purchased online and downloaded, which in my crippled computer’s moments of lucidity shone tantalizingly at me through their desktop icons, teasing me from the ephemeral safety of some ghost of a motherboard.

Then there are the email addresses, numbering in the thousands but when culled for use, age and likelihood of actually contacting me, are immeasurably fewer but nonetheless out of reach. This is not to mention the messages themselves, not much use except for mining the email addresses of those I was too lazy to add to the address book, which, one regrettably recalls, is also in cyber exile.

Another category of lost bits and bytes is programs which can be reloaded, but whose information, entered painstakingly over many moons, may not be. iTunes, for instance, can easily be updated to the newest function of Pi (version 3.14159, and counting), but once those tunes are stuck to a certain CPU, they won’t tune again for you. And for especially IT-savvy bookworms, Bookography allows one to enter not only the titles of books and their authors, but comments, keywords and other nerdy stuff. What is a geek to do when he is unable to review the notes he made while reading How to Read a Book?

Whatever did people lament when information systems were not so complex? Of what would IT crashes of one thousand years past consist? Of two thousand years? Three?

Perhaps the monastery denizen, a bit woozy from stimulating conversation and strenuous calisthenics, spills his gruel onto a freshly illuminated manuscript. Or the Roman librarian, testing the pyrotechnics text in which he is so engrossed, finds that as it has been reported, one can fry ants with the concentrated sunlight through a refracting lens, but not until they’ve crawled off that stack of dusty scrolls. Or the Egyptian bookkeeper who finds that his meticulous records, scrupulously inscribed upon clay and carefully dried in the desert sun, have been decimated by a group of wayward teens who made great sport of skipping the hardened tablets across the waters of the Nile.

Some right now might be considering writing to tell me that despite my earnest despair, my info may be recovered. Don’t. Let me wallow in technological misery, fondly recalling the simple non-techno life of Thoreau’s Walden.

(Unless, of course, you can get my music from the iPod to the new computer.)

In the movie, The Eye, starring Jessica Alba, Alba’s character has been blind since childhood and has received a cornea transplant, which is causing her some difficulties (she sees the donor’s visions).

An eye specialist, attempting to help her process the new information that her brain has not received for so long, tells her “Your eyes will want to dominate how you see the world, but you can’t trust them…not yet.”

For believers in Christ, it is the flesh in general that wants to dominate how we see the world. The lingering sin nature wants to dictate to our renewed heart how to view reality, how to perceive truth, how to relate to man and to God. But we can’t trust its interpretation of those things. Not yet.

Skeptics frequently criticize Christianity (and other religions) for its views of eternity. Even believers, without a biblical understanding of what happens when we die and when this world passes away (eschatology), are a bit reluctant to grasp the concept wholeheartedly, thinking that eternity with God is sitting on cloud, strumming a harp. Forever.

Critics point to the observable world and rightly conclude that nothing in the created realm is eternal. Things here may last a very, very long time — like diamonds, uranium, Styrofoam, plastic bottles. But even fruitcake is not forever. So, they ask, how can we believe anything is eternal?

But God gives us glimpses of eternal realities in the fading one in which we find ourselves.

Scientists know that during times of extreme stress, the human brain releases chemicals and hormones that enable it to process information much more quickly. Mere seconds of “real time” feel like much more, enabling the brain to better direct the body to react to the crisis. We’ve all had some experience like that. Mine was when I jumped a ten-speed bike off a five-foot ramp. As soon as the wheels left the ground, everything went “super slo-mo,” and although I had no time to change the outcome, I did have time to count each click of the turning wheels, look at the saucer-shaped eyes of each of my bystanding “friends,” mentally draft my Last Will & Testament, and imagine taking each bite of an entire pepperoni pizza before the bike and I inverted and I landed head first.

Scientists also maintain that we really use only a small percentage of our brain’s capacity. One might imagine, then, a supercharged brain processing information so fast that one minute “feels like” five, five minutes feels like sixty, and so forth until time is virtually “standing still.” In fact, that is how we frequently describes those instances of stress: “as if time stood still.”

And, if time “stands still,” it is no longer time, but eternity.

“Don’t take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God” (Romans 12:19).

Proponents of evolutionary theory suppose that every characteristic that now exists in beings today, most especially humans, is the product of natural selection, wherein blind, impersonal forces choose which mutations to keep and build upon, through countless millennia. The survival of the fittest asserts that only those characteristics best able to preserve the existence of the species is selected in this process.

But many things cannot be explained in this way. Such human emotions as love and affection, melancholy and irony don’t fit this scheme. What purpose would these emotions serve in preserving the human species?

Revenge, the saying goes, is best served cold. Which leaves it an unappetizing dish and wholly unsuited for preserving offspring. Unlike the huge tusks of a bull elephant, representing his health and vitality, revenge does not accomplish the dominant male’s right to breed or the abundance of his progeny. In fact, revenge is reputedly best when it has no utilitarian (Darwinian) benefit whatsoever. Revenge is delicious to the one serving it up when he has already been shown to be the least fit, so to speak.

Should an alien be charged with the task of assessing just what sort of beings existed on earth, and what was important to them, but could only do so by visiting a post office in December, he might very well conclude that all of the people on earth were children, wore white clothing and lived at the beach. He might also conclude that everyone had credit problems.

I am looking now at a 2007 Christmas greeting card — the kind that incorporate a family photo — still magnetically affixed to our refrigerator. We received quite a few of them, and of all that we got I only recall one that included parents in the photograph. It’s as if the only people truly interested in Christmas are the kids.

Is that as it should be? Is the only compelling reason for a thing that it is “for the children”? (Recall Dr Joycelyn Elders’ proclamation that we need ‘safer bullets’ for the children, but not, apparently, for adults, who are able to handle dangerous bullets just fine). Do adults not have a compelling interest in Christmas, in the advent of Christ? Have we become so anti-adult, so pro-child, so enamored with Peter Pan that we have unwittingly become kidolaters?

Sure, Jesus was a child for part of his earthly life, but no significant role in his ministry was occupied by anyone other than an adult. During his short ministry he was an adult, his disciples were adults, his opponents were adults. Yes, children are important, but primarily because they will, eventually, become adults.