Category: Thinking Things Through

In debates about the Regulative Principle of Worship (RPW), arguments are often made from the form of worship given in the Old Testament. To summarize the nature of such arguments, one might say that in the Old Testament it was very clear that God was pleased by worship offered in accordance with the rather detailed prescriptions he provided, and very displeased by worship offered in any other way.

Such a view arises from many passages of scripture, but can be summarized by highlighting a couple of key passages. As one example, in Deuteronomy 12:29-32, when commanding the Israelites to not take the form of worship used by the nations being displaced in the Land, the Lord states, “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.” It is important to note that this statement is made explicitly with regard to worship.

Leviticus 10 offers the story of Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, who varied from the regulations of tabernacle worship by bringing fire they themselves had lit in from of the Lord, and were consumed by the Lord’s fire. Such a story reinforces the seriousness of the admonition in Deuteronomy 12.

In all this, I believe we are to order our worship now and always in accordance with the word of God. However, As I have been reading through the Bible these past few weeks I have been startled to find many challenges to a strictly held viewpoint that God was only pleased by worship offered in exact accordance with his prescriptions. So many challenges, in fact, that I am beginning to conclude it is not sustainable apart from significantly more nuance as well as a few caveats thrown in for good measure.
Continue reading “Regulative Principle of Worship”

I don’t as a rule (read “hardly ever”) perform the necessary chore of mowing our yard. In the summertime, we hire a very reasonably priced yard service to mow and edge the yard once every two weeks. Jay fills in on the off week. Given we own about a 1/4 acre of oddly shaped yard on a corner lot, it is a decent-sized job but I didn’t have quite enough respect for the task until today.

Jay has been very sick for the better part of a week now, so he has not had the energy to attend regular work most days, let alone consider the idea of mowing in this heat. Then our faithful mowing service for whatever reason picked this past Tuesday to not show up, for probably the first time ever. So we’re looking at over two week’s growth of grass in our yard and this morning I decided something had to be done. Since my brother is in town I got him to help me start the ornery mower and then I was on my own.

I learned many things during my two hour job; if you are also new to the world of mowing, maybe some of these lessons will be of help to you:

1. A mower may likely run out of gas during a large job. Repeated sputtering, hesitation to start, and ongoing stalling while moving might all be hints that you need to refill that tank.
2. Oil is a good idea, especially if the mower has not been started in over 6 months.
3. If you are not bagging your clippings, the mower will get bogged down in high grass. Take measures to dump out or shake out excess grass which accumulates under the blades. This can also be accomplished by a reverse motion now and again during the mowing process.
4. Drink lots of water. Don’t underestimate the intensity of the mowing workout and its propensity to deprive you of liquids. I think I sweated off about 10 pounds of my body’s water. I certainly felt drained when I was done.
5. It is HARD to start the mower’s engine while the mower is resting on the grass. Move to the sidewalk or driveway to give yourself a better chance of success.
6. WEAR WORK GLOVES when mowing for any extended period of time. I have blisters all over my poor hands.
7. Don’t try to cut the yard to a drastically low height when dealing with tall grass. You will stall repeatedly and become very frustrated. So will your mower.
8. If your husband or some other beloved individual usually takes care of the time-consuming and exhausting (at least in Texas heat!) task of mowing your yard, don’t forget to hug their neck and tell them how much you appreciate it!! And make sure to fix them a cool, refreshing drink when they are finished!

By way of postscript, the children were so good while I completed the mowing job. They stayed indoors, watched their movie, kept themselves out of trouble (yes, yes, I checked on them regularly) and as a special treat, were rewarded with an afternoon of splashing in our wading pool instead of having to take naps. Two and a half hours of hard playing ensured that they were exhausted by the time 7pm rolled around, so while they sleep, Jay and I are enjoying an in house date night! Later!

For those interested, I am working on a catechism of sorts, borrowing heavily from the Catechism for Young Children as well as my brother. Here’s what I have so far: Training Young Children.

It is meant to be printed double-sided then folded in half to form a booklet.

Those of you who read the early days of “House of Horne” and its previous version, “Cogito Ergo Blog”, may be under the impression that very little “thinking things through” takes place in the Horne household these days. In the early going, I posted frequently on a range of topics. Over time, the site has morphed into something more akin to a family journal, a constantly updated Christmas letter.

Now, I don’t view this change as negative, but I did want to offer an explanation. In January of 2003 I became a ruling elder at our church, Town North Presbyterian Church. Since that time, I have discovered that most of my energy spent on writing down thoughts has been directed at preparing lessons for Sunday School and writing position papers for the Session. Though I’ve contemplated posting a paper now and then, I tend to want to err on the side of discretion. If I’m trying to influence or dialogue with fellow elders at a particular church on a topic, it feels awkward to broadcast my view before a mutual decision is reached. Once such a decision is reached, it still doesn’t seem appropriate to broadcast my views, particularly if my thoughts diverge from the consensus position.

Over time, I would think that a couple things will alleviate this set of issues. First, my sense of discretion will hopefully become more refined, thus allowing me a better sense of when my thoughts can be freely shared. Second, as certain topics age, I may feel the liberty to go back and post what I had written.

In reality, though, I’m guessing that the audience of this site has changed with the content, so that there isn’t exactly pent up demand for my ramblings…

Here’s Psalm 78:65-66 as found in the NIV:
  Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
    as a man wakes from the stupor of wine.
  He beat back his enemies;
    he put them to everlasting shame.

Here’s the same passage from the ESV:
  Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
    like a strong man shouting because of wine.
  And he put his adversaries to rout;
    he put them to everlasting shame.

And the NASB:
  Then the Lord awoke as if from sleep,
    Like a warrior overcome by wine.
  He drove His adversaries backward;
    He put on them an everlasting reproach.

How about the KJV:
  Then the LORD awaked as one out of sleep,
    and like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine.
  And he smote his enemies in the hinder parts:
    he put them to a perpetual reproach.

Did the NIV really get it that wrong? If so, how? I generally hear very positive feedback on the NIV’s translation of the Psalms. I can’t help but guess that someone didn’t like the Lord being compared to an imbibing warrior.

(Note: names changed to protect the innocent!)

Yesterday shortly after noon, I had a friend drop by. We’ll call her Annie. She was coming by to pick up something little, so I wasn’t sure whether she’d actually come in to the house or just run to the door, grab the aforementioned item, and leave quickly. Well, given her two little cherubs think our dog (we’ll call him Kid) is very cool, she voted for getting them out of the car and heading into the house.

Before I begin this next paragraph, you must understand that in keeping with my pride, I generally like my house to look a certain way when people come over. I like it to look nice for us but that desire is almost always heightened when the potential for company is on the horizon. I imagine many people feel this way, but I might be worse than most.

Well, as Annie and crew crossed the threshold into the House of Thorne I warned them in no uncertain terms that my home was potentially in danger of being declared a disaster area. (It is probably unkind of me to use such terminology given the recent devastation Claudette has brought to the Texas coast.)

Truthfully, though, it was indeed, ahem, untidy, to put it mildly. I had just returned from a mammoth Target trip and hadn’t put much of anything away yet. So the counters and kitchen table and even some of the floor were filled with groceries. The dishwasher was clean but not emptied so there was an accumulation of dirty dishes strewn across the counters near the sink. Then there was the little issue of the chocolate chip cookie bars I’d baked the evening before for Small Group. I made them last thing before it was time to leave for church, then I’d been away after group was over and didn’t return home till after midnight so doing dishes was not high on my priority list. The laundry I had earlier taken the time to fold had since fallen (or been thrown from) the love seat so it was decorating the living room floor. Meanwhile, my two eldest (we’ll call them Abishag and Nathan joe) had gotten out every board game we own and littered the dining table with them. They were all in varying states of being played. Lastly, the baby (we’ll refer to him as Nicolai) had contributed to the general state of chaos by plucking most of the magnetic letters off the fridge door.

Ok, I know I’m not making it sound as impressively awful as it was, but you have to trust me, it was bad, VERY VERY BAD!! However, I had just made a fresh pot of coffee which smelt very wonderful. So, as our friends made their way through the danger zone, tripping on target bags and magnetic letters, I meekly offered Annie a cup of coffee. She very bravely accepted and although we had to push aside the discarded mixer from the previous evening in order to prepare our coffees, they were warm and tasty nonetheless. Meanwhile, the previously mentioned Abishag and Nathan Joe offered to share their new toys (Viewmasters and slides purchased just minutes before at “The Target”) with their visiting friends. After picking myself up off the floor from the shock, I turned back to Annie and the two us had a good conversation in the midst of the mess. Our friends stayed on for the better part of an hour and a half and it was a lovely visit. For the most part: there was one little incident involving blood but nobody had to go to the emergency room!

I learned something in all this: if one can swallow their pride it is possible, even with a very messy casa, to extend hospitality to those who knock at your door. Being brave enough to allow Annie to enter the abominably untidy House of Thorne yielded a wonderful time together over coffee which, while offered humbly, was received warmly. I was immensely thankful for friends who accept me, my progeny and my house the way they are. What a blessing.

From John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (emphasis his):

Because we are finite, we cannot keep all of God’s commandments simultaneously. Often our inability to do this produces false guilt. One sermon tells us to spend hours in prayer, another to feed the hungry, another to study the Bible intensively, another to evangelize our neighborhoods, another to catechize our children, another to become politically active. All of these seem to be based on biblical norms, yet we often feel overwhelmed by such huge demands on us. There simply are not enough hours in the day to do all that we are exhorted to do.

It is helpful to remember that when God commands us to pray, to evangelize, to help the poor, and so forth, He is speaking primarily to the church as a whole and only secondarily to each of us as individuals. These are works that the church must do. Each individual in the church must contribute toward their fulfillment. But how the individual contributes will depend on his gifts and calling. Not all of us are called to pray six hours a day or to ring doorbells in our neighborhoods or to start political movements. Each one of us, then, must prayerfully, under the guidance of Scripture, devise his own set of priorities among these communal norms. That sounds dangerous. How can there be “priorities” among ultimates? And how can a human being choose for himself what priorities he will give to God’s law? He can, because Scripture says that he can and must.

…So a study of priority structures in Scripture itself may not be sufficient to break through the impasse, but in such debates, it is often helpful for each party to consider (as, unfortunately, they rarely do) that the other is simply trying to follow priorities that are in part dictated by his own gifts and calling. If we were more aware of the need for such personal priority structures, it would help us to understand one another better, and it would help to foster church unity.

It seems to me that this statement, which I find very compelling, needs to be expanded to balance the notion of individual prioritization in the context of corporate goals. That is, as Frame states, the community is to be a certain sort of community, but the individuals will have a more limited function. One person is a foot, another a hand, and they all add up to the body. But the implicit line of thought in the quote above is that the individuals all individually determine which body part they will function as in the larger community. Yet if the community is the level at which the goals are met (e.g. be this sort of community even if every individual does not live out every aspect of the community), why is the setting of individual priorities strictly an individual activity? That may be the case, but it seems likely to me that there will a be corporate dimension to the very act of setting priorities.

In the return from Babylonian exile, the Samaritans played the role of antagonist. Implicit in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son seems to be a comparison between the Pharisees of his day to the Samaritans during the return from exile (via the role of the older brother). That has led me to wonder if the broader return from exile pattern in the Bible has parallels with the Samaritans. In thinking about the exodus from Egypt, it suddenly hit me that the Philistines were just that. They were in the land while Israel was in bondage, and then sought to thwart the Israelites as they laid claim to the promised land.

I guess the main reason I had missed the correspondence (assuming it is right) was that the return from exile, if the Philistines are to be given such a role, extends up to the kingdom era (i.e. through the books of Samuel).

This past weekend I was involved in throwing a baby shower for one of our friends. One of my assignments as hostess was to give the short devotional near the front end of the festivities. As this was my first time to offer a shower devotional, I spent a great deal of time in preparation and thinking through my topic. All of that time period was during our month-long hiatus from the blog; I was basically spending most of my free time (heh-heh!) on this other activity, in addition to trying to keep up with my Bible Study reading and work for our weekly TNPC Ladies Group (Mommy Ruth, my third person name for my MIL, keeps us quite busy!! It should be noted that she is doing an excellent job in leading the study and I am very thankful for her diligent work here and quite proud of her too!) But I digress….

Anyway, since I put a decent amount of thought and effort into this, I thought it might be fun to post the general text of my 14 minute talk. My goal overall was to be helpful to Moms at various stages of parenting, and I hope perhaps it might be of encouragement to some of you readers. Please keep in mind that this is a very brief and general talk, and that the text you read was my attempt to write down the body of my devotional in order to make notes for me to then prepare for the shower. So, it was not originally written to be read as a paper, and it probably won’t flow that way for you. In an attempt to make it easier to read, I have inserted section headings to guide you through the talk. I’ve also added some recommended books at the bottom to go along with some of the points I make. Continue reading “Shower Devotional”