Ex Libris

Well, I am now officially back from my hiatus in Harry Potter country, far enriched and refreshed. So I plan for the blog to be back up and running like normal once again, for all three people who read it (haa ha ha ha, there are only two ).

For those who continue to be interested in this side of the blog, I do intend to continue knucklefuzzing my way through the PCA ad interim report on the Federal Vision, but as other real-world offline issues dog my steps more and more, it will take some time just doing the appropriate research. I have heard nothing about it since that first week it was passed. Anybody got any info on what’s going down with our favorite ad interim?

A few of these issues haunting my snowprints are my upcoming eye surgery (July 31st) which will likely put me out of commission for possibly a week (that would be week 1 of August). I have ramped up work on my fantasy novel (The Book of Secrets), which I have finished, but continue to revise while I hunt for agents. In addition to all this, I finally have a job opportunity opening up for me here in town.

And so with all these powers combined, I am Captain Busy, which is actually really good, because two of these things will make me money (book publishing and working).

Pray for surgery, pray for publication, and pray for work, if you would all be so kind.

Don’t worry, I hate spoilers, so I’m not going to spoil you to anything that happens.

For J.K. Rowling, the release of the seventh Harry Potter book is very much a case of “That’s all, folks.” This is the last and final book in the Harry Potter saga, and what a series finale it is. After finishing it, I said to my friends, “I have never read this book’s equal.” And I meant it. I have never read a book, but especially a book series, like Harry Potter. If you thought J.K. had used up all her major surprises in book six and all that was left was a Horcrux hunt, then boy-o-boy are you in for a surprise. There are more mysteries, twists, revelations, and deaths in this book than in all the others combined. And they didn’t skimp on the surprise.

In terms of writing, this book is least like the other Potter books. Rowling’s style is the same, but is invested throughout with a building magnificence. She subtly uses more archaic and noble words and focuses less on the feeling of modernity (cars, the outside world, modern verbiage) and the book takes on the feel of a real, full-blown fantasy novel, with swords coming from lakes, ancient legends, fairy tales, magic, and above all, the looming pressure of coming death. Structurally, too, it is massively different than all the other books, because Harry is no longer at school, but out on a great quest.

Ultimately, this is by far and away the greatest of the Potter books. It is subtle, and shows a depth of forethought and development unlike anything I have ever experienced. Everything that has ever been done or said in the previous six books comes back in some significant way here. Unobtrusive lines of dialogue from previous books that you never thought about (such as “The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Potter,” from the first book) all come back into play for a second round, and they’re not just inserted in there for a mention, they’re there with a purpose that plays into the story. Really, what you get in this seventh book is the interplay of history, which bears down on the whole story and adds a weight of believability and depth to the whole project.

The bottom line is this: there is no longer any way for people to claim Harry Potter is literarily worthless. The breathtaking scope of Harry’s journey and the attention to narrative and development by Mrs. Rowling simply destroys all arguments by some critics who have claimed that the series is without literary merits. I greatly respect Nathan Wilson as a writer and Christian thinker, but he is particularly wrong on this point, and I hope this installment shows him that. Harry Potter has made it onto the shelf beside Narnia and Middle Earth as not only great fantasy fiction, but great fiction by strong Christians, with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Speaking of Christianity, this last book destroys all arguments by the anti-Potter Christian crowd. Harry Potter is Christian work by a Christian, and becomes explicitly Christian here in the Deathly Hallows. And not only cop-out light-weight Christianity, but full-boar Nicenian Christianity. Rowling explicitly quotes three verses, including “Where your heart is, there will your treasure be also,” and the verse of the book that becomes the beating heart of the book, and the whole series, is inscribed on the grave of Harry’s parents: “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

So if you haven’t read Harry Potter, I suggest you give it a shot, if your conscience will permit you. You won’t regret it. After you’ve finished reading the series, you can get a number of books by Christians showing how they speak profoundly to Christian truth, like Connie Neal, a woman who worked for a very long time with Focus on the Family, who has written The Gospel According to Harry Potter and What is a Christian to Do With Harry Potter? I would also suggest reading    The best books by a Christian on Harry Potter is John Granger’s Looking for God in Harry Potter and Francis Bridger’s A Charmed Life: The Spirituality of Potterworld. I cannot recommend any of the books Richard Abanes has written on literature, on fantasy, or on Harry Potter, as he has proved himself mostly incompetent at the job, and otherwise fundamentalist-esquely shrill about all the wrong things in all the wrong places.

Basically, Harry Potter is here to stay, and it is a classic. I look forward to the rest of Mrs. Rowling’s writing career.

Check out this video that I ran across on YouTube. Obviously it’s some sort of trick, but I sure can’t figure it out. This guy walks across the water of a swimming pool.

Yes, I said I wasn’t going to post for two weeks or so. But this was just too funny to pass up on.

A Romanian fellow has filed a law suit against God (!) for breach of the contract God made with him via baptism. The Romanian is a murderer, and claims that due to his baptism, God swore to keep him from evil, instead of turning him over to Satan to be tempted to commit the sin of murder.

The case was dismissed after it was decided that

“God is not a person in the eyes of the law and does not have a legal address where he could be served with court papers.“

Is this honestly the world that we live in? I mean, it’s funny, it really is, but it’s also incredibly sad.

I’d like to briefly respond as a FVer, since it is so often claimed that a Federal Visionary view of baptism makes salvation ironclad.

1) The starting point is election. God has predetermined a certain number of unchanging people to have eternal salvation. If you’re not eternally elect, baptism is a new birth into greater condemnation and ultimately is worse than being useless - it is a testimony to being non-elect.

2) Baptism bestows real benefits, and (in agreement with John Calvin) is a sign of your washing, cleansing, forgiveness, etc. Baptism puts you into the covenant. There is such a thing as a covenant breaker, just like there is such a thing as a traitor. The benefits of baptism are either temporary election (elected to be in the church for a time only to ultimately fall away), or permanent salvation (elected to be in the church for all time).

3) God does not promise to keep us from all evil and temptation. There is no such thing as a sinless life (leaving Christ’s life aside for a moment), even for a Christian. We all stumble, and God can bring us to temporary evil for our benefit or instruction even though we did nothing to cause it (think of Job).

4) The only person who broke the baptismal covenant was this Romanian fellow who committed murder. God does not change his promises. Rather, it was the misunderstanding of the Orthodox Church that claims God will keep his people from all evil and harm that brought about the problem.

Alrighty folks, I’d like to apologize for not having as active a blog as usual this last week or so, and I’ve gotta warn you that the blog’s gonna be silent for the next two weeks or thereabouts (except for the occasional quotus), due primarily to the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (book seven and book final in the Potter saga). I am, if you don’t already know, a huge Potter fan, and so I will be living completely analogue and off-line for the next two weeks, because I am also a huge anti-spoiler fanatic. I don’t want to catch a single wiff of anything involving the plot, characters, deaths, resolutions or anything concerning the story of this final installment until I discover them for myself as I read the book.

So, starting Monday, this blog will be sadly silent, until I have read Deathly Hallows. I apologize to those awaiting theological papers and so forth (Ben, you in particular). I will be done soon, but I won’t be posting them anytime until after I’ve finished Deathly Hallows.

Also, if you all would keep me in your prayers. I have just been to the eye doctor (I wear glasses), and it was his determination that glasses can no longer help correct my condition and surgery is required if I don’t want my eyes getting rather worse. So I am going under the knife on July 31st. Pray that the surgery would go well. Pray that it will fix my condition. Pray I don’t go blind. I dunno what I’d do if I went blind. I mean, I’m a reader and a writer.

Anyhoo, see you all after Hallows. I’ll have more eye updates after that point.

Much of today’s so-called “literary” writing -coming out of modern MFA programs, published in literary journals, by literary presses or imprints - is weak on plot. It is assumed that the writing’s being well crafted, line by line, is enough; that if the sentences are pretty enough, plot is incidental. But since there is no real plot, no real suspense or conflict or momentous journey, the writers have to compensate somehow. Often they try to make up for it by hinting, through minimalism or symbology or metaphor, at a deeper meaning that simply doesn’t exist. They’ll consistently leave paragraphs or chapters dangling with mysterious sentences, with lack of resolve, as if to intimate some greater truth. You must realize, though, that profundity comes from characters and circumstances, and cannot be imposed.

- Noah Lukeman, The Plot Thickens, p. 197.

Nothing is more fatal than the present fashion among intellectual leaders of extolling security at the expense of freedom. It is essential that we should re-learn frankly to face the fact that freedom can be had only at a price and that as individuals we must be prepared to make severe material sacrifice to preserve our liberty. If we want to retain this, we must regain the conviction on which the rule of liberty in the Anglo-Saxon countries has been based and which Benjamin Franklin expressed in a phrase, applicable to us in our lives as individuals no less than as nations: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

- F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, p. 147.

The comic strip Fox Trot, which is one of my absolute favorite of all newspaper comics, will stop appearing in newspapers as a daily strip on Dec. 30th. Amend says that it will continue as a Sunday run for the time being. He wants to pursue other things, and says to expect to see Fox Trot in other mediums than comicstrip form.

Foxtrot was a formative strip for me back when I was twelve. It really did shape my sense of humor, and I shall miss it greatly.

This is a sad, sad day.

Incidentally, the newest strip on the front page of the website I greatly self-identify with - as one of scottish-european descent.

All right, all right. I’ll weigh in on the current presidential race. My political views range from apathetic to “snorkel types are more interesting to me,” but recently more and more people have been asking my opinion.

A lot of these people make a career about setting “Politic traps.” The conversation starts innocently enough, and then they ask, “So, who are you supporting in the presidential election of this great nation?” And so I say, “Let’s quickly change the subject to snorkel types before I fall asleep.” To which they reply, with a minimum of spittle to face ratio, “HOW CAN YOU NOT HAVE DECIDED!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?”

These people are, of course, are the kind of people who talk like politics are more important than snorkels. The poor, deluded fools.

And, incidentally, I am exceedingly entertained by the current candidates’ attempts to appeal to my age group via their political websites and their help in polluting the part of myspace that hasn’t already been polluted by porn spam. The competition for biggest campaign loser is underway, and so far, all of them are in the lead.

You cannot appeal to my age group and younger by sticking your speech videos up on youtube - all you get there are a bunch of pampered middle-aged pudgies ruining youtube. Do you think that makes you hip? You’re still uncharismatic weasels with bad hair. Granted, that also makes up 90% of what is already on youtube - but at least those uncharismatic weasels with bad hair are doing stupid things, like setting their bad hair on fire or making fun of you for trying to appeal to them.

So I’m sure you won’t mind when I say - get the hooflerhahs off of youtube.

At any rate, I have come up with two rules which I would like to label “The First and Second Laws of Political Elections.”

You’ll thank me for spelling these out when the Pol Sci textbooks of the future include them in little colorful boxes off to the side that scream “I’ll be on the test. Reduce me to two key ideas for essay questions.” And then release a new edition of the books with my laws in even more colorful boxes of a different color so that a) the college bookstore won’t buy back the book you spent $73.86 on and b) the college bookstore can now charge $94.37 for the new edition.

The First Law of Political Elections

1. If you actually want to be President, this is evidence enough that you should under no circumstances be allowed to be president.

This law would, for the textbooks, of course be restated in cryptic textbook-speak which no living person can actually decipher (which would explain both evolution and modern economics), such as the following:

1. The relation of desire for election to permissiveness in any given political candidate (primarily in reference to presidential elections) cannot be equal or greater with reference to the former - excluding candidates of primate descent.

The Second Law of Political Elections

2. If after inserting the candidate’s last name after the word “President,” and their name still sounds stupid, then they won’t be elected President.

This law is fairly simple. You just take the last names of all the candidates and put them after “President,” and if they sound “Presidentish” then they are a viable candidate.

For instance, “President Obama.” Mmm, nope. How about “President Huckabee?” Definitely not. “President Jones?” Eh, maybe, but low end probability. “President Giuliani?” Never ever.

God adopts the children together with the fathers; and so, consequently, the grace of salvation may be extended to those who are as yet unborn (Romans 9.7). I grant, indeed, that many who are the children of the faithful, according to the flesh, are counted bastards, and not legitimate, because they thrust themselves out of the holy progeny through their unbelief. But this in no way hinders the Lord from calling and admitting the seed of the godly into fellowship of grace. And so, although the common election is not effectual in all, yet may it set open a gate for the special elect.

- John Calvin