CharlesJones

Writing Down the Jones

Archive for the ‘Asides’ Category

March 24
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Adopting Penguins

penguin-chick.jpgI was standing in Wal-Mart today, not buying anything, just watching the HDTV’s as I do from time to time.  Today was a knockoff of March of the Penguins. If you’ve seen it, or Happy Feet, you know that after the eggs are laid, the fathers shelter them while the mothers go off to fish.  By the time they get back the eggs have hatched and the babies are all fluffy and cute.

Well, some babies don’t make it, so when the mamas come home they have all these motherly instincts and no one to use them on.  Some mamas don’t make it either, so the babies (and the fathers) wait with anticipation that won’t be satisfied.  So they seek a new mama, like babies will do.  We know that from human experience.

What we don’t know from human experience, is the mad rush the female penguins who lost their chicks made for the orphans.  If only human women would make such a rush to care for our orphans.  My wife and I plan to adopt at least one child, and we marvel at the lengths women will go to in order to have biological children – hormones, drugs, ivf, surrogacy – when there are children everywhere who need loving as much as they need someone to love.

Shall we leave our own motherless and fatherless out in the cold, while these animals race and fight for the chance to care for theirs?

February 9
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Mark Driscoll on Point

I don’t often read something I so whole-heartedly agree with, so here it is, in its entirety:

Mark Driscoll discussing Jesus and the woman at the well in John 4:

“And in his greatest act of love for this woman, Jesus later hung on a Roman cross- punished between two thieves- dying for the many sins of this woman. Jesus then rose from death and ascended into heaven to prepare an eternal home for her. He then sent the Holy Spirit to empower her new life and ministry.

Reformission is ultimately about being like Jesus, through his empowering grace. One of the underlying keys to reformission is knowing that neither the freedom of Christ nor our freedom in Christ is intended to permit us to dance as close to sin as possible without crossing the line. But both are intended to permit us to dance as close to sinners as possible by crossing the lines that unnecessarily separate the people God has found from those he is still seeking. To be a Christian, literally, is to be a ‘little Christ.’ It is imperative that Christians be like Jesus, by living freely within the culture as missionaries who are as faithful to the Father and his gospel as Jesus was in his own time and place.

I am advocating not sin but freedom. That freedom is denied by many traditions and theological systems because they fear that some people will us their freedom to sin against Christ. But rules, regulations, and the pursuit of outward morality are ultimately incapable of preventing sin. They can only, at best, rearrange the flesh and get people to stop drinking, smoking, and having sex, only to start being proud of their morality. Jesus’ love for us and our love for him are, frankly, the only tethers that will keep us from abusing our freedom, yet they will enable us to venture as far into the culture and into relationships with lost people as Jesus did, because we go with him.

So reformission requires that God’s people understand their mission with razor-sharp clarity. The mission is to be close to Jesus. This transforms our hearts to love what he loves, hate what he hates, and to pursue relationships with lost people in hopes of connecting with them and, subsequently connecting them with him. This actually protects us from sin, because the way to avoid sin is not to avoid sinners but to stick close to Jesus.”

The Radical Reformission, 39-40.

(H/T: Enjoying God Fellowship)

November 14
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WDW Magic

I was on vacation in Disney World for the last six days, just got back in from Orlando last night. It was a great trip and I’ll be sharing plenty of thoughts about it soon.

One of my goals for the week was to knock off at least two of my unfinished books, which I did.  I finished John MacArthur’s The Truth War, and John Twelve Hawks’ The Dark River.  Both were great, and I’ll be putting together a review of The Truth War today.  I won’t review the other because I couldn’t do it without spoiling some stuff.  If you don’t know about it, check out Hawks’ The Traveler, which is the first in the series.  Great stuff.

Also, today is my birthday, I’m 26, and feeling somewhat unaccomplished.  I read about a 26 year-old in Wired who is redefining the connection between art and science, and thinking, “Hey, last week I redefined the connection between Halo and Firefly. That’s got to count for something, right?”  My wife, the wiser of our motley crew, reminded me that I’m happy and healthy and have more in the way of friends, family, and material blessings than most of our friends. I felt better.  Also, I’d like to say “Happy Birthday!” to Obie Trice (30), Condoleeza Rice (53), Prince Charles (59), Josh Duhamel (35), Curt Schilling (41), D. B. Sweeney (46), Yanni (53), and Boutros Boutros-Ghali (85).