The Desert of the Real

Too tired to write just now. I came back to a work issue that sucked up all of my summary time and energy. However, I do want to take a moment to blog about this. Mostly because it’ll be easy. I don’t even know what to say. Nothing here that will surprise any of you that know me, as I’m sure you’ve heard me rant about the absurd abuses of power by the (police & CPS). How incredibly sad for this poor family having to endure such a nightmare for playing with their 16mo baby.

Meanwhile, when we do catch sicko child molesters, rapists, etc we smack them on the wrist and let them go.

I was reading Tom Ascol’s new blog and saw his post on the baptistfire.org website. Aside from its rather sad ripoff of ‘The Drudge Report’, it’s also basically just a big anti-reformed screed masquerading as a religious news site. It is, really, quite a sad display.

What’s really interesting is reading the terms of use.

Pro-Calvinism posts are prohibited

BaptistFire Community is designed as a safe haven for like-minded Baptists who agree with the doctrinal statement found on our home page masthead. Posts which promote Calvinism are therefore prohibited.

I include this only because I’m sure it’ll draw the attention of any that think to post on some of the threads I link to here. It’s well within their rights to make this request. Indeed, in the chat channel I participate in, while we generally allow more reasoned debate than this does, we do reserve the right to restrict discussions to those that are profitable or edifying. It is not a forum that is there for the promulgation of false doctrines. We do not allow roman catholics and mormons to come in and turn it into a forum for preaching their false gospel. So, while we would be more charitable towards those in this forum who came to our channel than they obviously would be towards us even in their TOU in their forum, I do not begrudge them the right to make such restructions.

I do however think it reveals a lot about their inability to handle reasoned discussion on the issue, or exegetical debate. Otherwise they would at least provide an alternate forum in which to have discussions. Indeed, if we were lost, teaching a false gospel and a false god, is it not incumbant upon them to do what they can to reach us?

Number One Rule of BaptistFire Community

This is a bulletin board by Baptists and for Baptists. All users of this bulletin board are expected to follow the commands of the New Testament. Especially appropriate here at BaptistFire Community are “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted …” (Eph. 4:32), and “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Mat. 22:39).

This one is a good rule. Of course, then in the very first thread I visit I see these posts from the webmaster:

The below quote is from the article. Anyone notice any similarities between the fatalism of Islam and five-point Calvinism?

and

But it provides a perfect illustration of how much explaining it takes for a Calvinist to get his point across. He could have just come out and said it: God wants them to go to hell. God could have saved them but he doesn’t love them. He wants them to burn in hell forever.

This last was in response to a post that was, beginning to end, nothing but a passage from a sermon by Spurgeon, in response to the claim that Spurgeon was not a calvinist.

I dunno…I guess that ‘love your neighbor’ includes samaritans, but not us nasty calvinists.

A few brave souls spoke up admonishing others that in the same way that their beliefs are often misrepresented, so are ours, and to lump us in with fatalistic hypercalvinists is wrong, etc. I would like to note here again, as I did in my first post on that site, my appreciation for those folks who make the effort to demonstrate such character.

Well, being who I am, I couldn’t let this pass. So, I asked a question. I reproduce it here, because it was promptly deleted, despite being a question about their faith, and not a defense of calvinism per se.

Webmaster, you malign calvinists for believing that God in His justice condemns some to hell that He could have saved. I’m curious to know how your own position handles that accusation.

I may be assuming too much here, but from your site I assume that you are a conservative baptist. That you probably believe the scriptures are inerrant, and that God is all knowing, and all powerful. That you would concur with the scriptures when they say that with God, nothing is impossible.

So, lets assume your position on things, that through whatever method you believe, that man has to participate in his salvation, and must make a free and conscious choice to serve him. (I hope I’m not mischaracterizing your position on this, I’m trying to keep it general)

Given that you believe God knows all things, he knows that in the manner of his choices in creation that billions are going to reject him, and thus spend eternity in hell correct?

So in choosing to give man free will, not just now, but in the garden as well, has he not willingly condemned them to an eternity of torment when he could have saved them?

Obviously, no, I did not get an opportunity to expound upon what was covered last night. I might have to wait and go back and try to give an overall commentary when the whole thing is done. there just isn’t enough time.

Tonight was again, a wonderful experience. Dr Renihan spoke with clarity, and I learned much from what he had to share about the men involved, and what their writings and chosen language reveal about their intent and meaning within the confession. This is, honestly, the most valuable part of this. Obviously, I can read the confession for myself, but his knowledge and background opens up so much more of it. Gives direction and advice in its study and manner of reading. Historical and grammatical perspective. Like so many other writings from earlier times when men chose their words more carefully there is much more to be gained than what is just on the surface.

Wow!

How’s that for a summary? Concise, yet accurate. Dr Renihan is a gifted speaker. I honestly didn’t know what to expect. There was no published schedule and not very much information was given in the mailer I got, or on the website. I had thought it would be an assortment of lectures on various topics related to the subject. Somewhat like how the founders conference was. I was quite mistaken.

No, instead, this seems to be essentially a compressed version of part of one of his classes. We are specifically going through as much of the 1689 (sorry, 1677) LBC. as possible during the time we have, and then, hopefully, he’ll be back to do the rest next year. Given that I did not grow up in a baptist church, I really know next to nothing about baptist church history specifically. So, understandably, I’m very excited to learn from Dr Renihan whatever he can manage to squeeze into this time, and even more importantly every bit of illumination he can provide on the content and truth of presented in the 1689 confession.

Tonight, we covered baptist church history from around the 1600s (I was a bit late tonight) to the time of the confession itself. Discussed the people involved, those who wrote the first and second confessions, and those who wrote against them. We also covered the outline and structure of the Confession itself, and what that tells us that can help us properly read the confession. I dunno though, my heart was near to bursting just from hearing him exposit the outline of the confession. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to handle the actual presentation of the confession itself.

If I can squeeze out some time over lunch tomorrow I’ll try to post some thoughts and quotations from my notes tonight. However, things are very busy at work, and as it is my productivity will be down this week. up at 5, working till 4, driving till nearly 6, lectures till 10, driving till 10:30, and then (when possible) trying to blog at least something about it, is going to be rough on the body.

Ah, nothing like adding insult to injury. Since receiving the ticket just a couple days ago I have not been able to get home in time to get to the DMV to take care of my vehicle registration. So today, my wife is driving to the store, and sure enough, she gets pulled over. Of course, the ticket doesn’t show on her license when they run it, so they write her /another/ ticket. It’s not good enough that we have one, we have to have two.

Of course, they’re only doing their job right? Cause you know, their job, as defined in the oath they take, involves harassing law-abiding citizens about minor infractions of paperwork.

I just love this. I have three monitors on my desk at work. I am part of a two man team, that used to be a four man team, and should probably be a five man team. We manage approximately sixty to seventy servers, email systems, network management systems, general administration, dns, etc. Because of where we currently stand in headcount, we are doing our best just to tread water. Every bit of extra efficiency helps. Three monitors is big that way.

On my setup, for example, I have my left monitor dedicated to monitoring information. Email queues, the network management systems, and other such information on each of four desktops, so I can glance through quickly on a regular basis and have a good idea of what is going on. Right hand monitor holds more long-term information, like my remote connection to my windows laptop for viewing outlook, and my primary web browsing session, instant messanger client, and other such tools. Center screen is where active work gets done, with open xterms to various system groups collected per desktop. Very efficient, and lets me work on lots of things at once. Especially since my window manager lets me pell back part of the desktop to view other desktops.

Unfortunately, some other groups apparently aren’t quite so busy. In fact, they have so much time, they can walk around our area being vexed that we have one more monitor than them. So they gripe, and complain, to the upper management until they get sick of hearing the whining and make us take a monitor down each. Understand, ,that with my configuration I had the quivalent of 12 monitors, so taking one is the equivalent of taking 4, leaving me with only 8. While I can add more desktops, this does not allow me to make up for not being able to view as much information at once.

Meanwhile we have various folks with gorgeous widescreen mac displays, and the nice expensive macs to go with them. People with huge 21” and larger monitors. Users with nice crisp flat panel displays. But our castaway 19” monitors that nobody has a use for that we put to work, we can’t have because it makes some people feel … something…I don’t understand what. Jealousy I guess. I have no idea what they’d do with three monitors, but if they want it, there are more quickly fading monitors back there ready for use if they want them that bad. But no, they don’t. They have no use for multiple monitors, they just don’t want us to have them. I just don’t get it. How pathetic does your life have to be, how devoid of meaning, to make you think you need to whine about something so petty?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

You may have thought this was gone, but I checked just today and it’s still there. I had to check, because I wasn’t sure after getting pulled over today. I thought maybe it might’ve been removed while I wasn’t looking.

You see, I was stopped today, by an (otherwise courteous) officer for the Dallas Sherrif’s department. On saturday I had my inspection sticker renewed, and noticed my registration had expired. Unfortunately, given the hours the DMV is open, I wasn’t able to fix it then, and their online process won’t take expired registrations. So, I hadn’t gotten in yet.

While driving down the highway, I passed this officer as he turned off his lights from his last stop and he pulled out behind me. I was driving just under the speed limit, and observing all traffic laws. He pulled me over anyway. He walks up, and says, openly, and without apology, that he ran my plates and the computer said my registration was expired.

Now, I’m quite sure that the DSD, and the courts probably do not see this as a violation of my fourth amendment rights. I must respectfully disagree. Historically, the courts agree with me too, though they might not here.

In Prouse vs Delaware, the courts found that except where there is at least articulable and reasonable suspicion that a motorist is unlicensed or that an automobile is not registered, or that either the vehicle or an occupant is otherwise subject to seizure for violation of law, stopping an automobile and detaining the driver in order to check his license and registration are unreasonable under the Fourth amendment. More than that, they found that doing so constitued a seizure on the order of that prohibited by the fourth amendment, even though the seizure is limited and short-lived. They ruled (rightly) that just because the automobile and its use is subject to government regulation doesn’t mean that you lose all fourth amendment protection. Same as you don’t lose it just by stepping on a public sidewawlk.

Of course, in my situation he didn’t have to stop me to find out. So I’m sure he thinks that’s ok, but in my opinion at least, that still constitutes an illegal search at the very least. He had no cause to do a search on my records and information. Are we comfortable with the idea that police officers can now pull up our information at will while driving down the road? I know we all want to think the best of those to whom we have entrusted serving the public good, but they are men like you and me. Fallen men.

Even so you might think I had it coming today, but what if my registration hadn’t been expired? They’d have looked it up and I wouldn’t have even known. I don’t even know what all information is available to them through that. Can they see where I live? What my name is? My phone number? It’s all in the system, it’s not an unreasonable possibility. If you’re not bothered by this now, will you be when some cop sees an attractive woman and uses this to get her name and address and stake out her house?

Police officers are not special. They are people just like you and me. They are subject to the same types of temptations as everyone else who obtains a position of any sort of power. To turn a blind eye and assume that the powers they are given by our complacency will always be used for good and never abused is naieve in the extreme.

I just love this get fuzzy, and couldn’t resist linking to this particular strip.

Had to swing home early today from work so my wife could go to the dentist. I made the mistake of flipping over to Rush to see what he was talking about. I should’ve known it’d be the terrorist attack in London today.

I was, again, reminded of how bitterly disappointed I am in the man. He was one of those who set me on the path to where I am today politically, and in an odd way, spiritually as well. (My education in politics teaching me to go to the sources, question everything PS had taught me, and relearn soon spread to my faith as well) Despite the fact that God simply used him as the means to direct me to where I am today, for some reason my brain insists that he should be better than he is. Not just a sad shill for the replublican neocons.

This time it was our treatment of them and his commentary on it that saddened me. While I agree with him that the idea that our terrorists should not have access to the US Constitution, US Law, our lawyers, and our legal system in general, he also defended the idea of torturing them. They are not US Citizens, and thus do not have the rights of US Citizens. However, the ban on such tactics as torture is something that should be recognized as a basic human right.

We raise a hue and cry over here when our soldiers are/were tortured in vietnam, and when they are tortured and killed in Iraq. Yet somehow apparently we are supposed to turn a blind eye when our own government does it to them. How is this right? Are we, as americans, somehow entitled to basic human rights that we do not see fit to grant to others simply by the nature of our citizenship?

Once there was a farmer, who obtained a piece of land. The land was populated by wild pigs, which he found difficult to eradicate. The pigs were fast, knew how to hide, and were rather dangerous when cornered.

One day a man walked by and saw the farmer struggling to capture one of the pigs. He told the farmer, “I can capture those pigs for you, but it may take awhile”.

“I don’t care how long it takes, I just want them captured.” replied the farmer.

The two worked out a price, and the man dug out a small bit of earth and placed some food in it, and left. The pigs came to the food, didn’t see anyone around, smelled no danger, and so they ate it. The next day, the man came back and did the same. Again, the pigs sniffed around, but ate the food. This he did for two weeks, till the pigs no longer even sniffed for danger, just going straight to the food.

Then the man daily begain adding fence posts. At first the pigs eyed the posts with suspicion, but soon learned to ignore them. He bagan adding rails, until one day, the fence was complete. He placed the food into the pen, and the pigs came to eat the food, and the pigs were captured.

The farmer complimented the man on how smart and subtle his method was.

The man replied, “Anything I can make depend on me for food, I can control.”