I thought that these were worthwhile questions to ask about the war. A few samples:

5. Is it not true that the intelligence community has been unable to develop a case tying Iraq to global terrorism at all, much less the attacks on the United States last year? Does anyone remember that 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and that none came from Iraq?

15. Are you aware of a Pentagon report studying charges that thousands of Kurds in one village were gassed by the Iraqis, which found no conclusive evidence that Iraq was responsible, that Iran occupied the very city involved, and that evidence indicated the type of gas used was more likely controlled by Iran not Iraq?

23. How can our declared goal of bringing democracy to Iraq be believable when we prop up dictators throughout the Middle East and support military tyrants like Musharaf in Pakistan, who overthrew a democratically-elected president?

Mattijs Holter writes:

In all, this is a game I liked playing a lot. Its daring use of randomness, coupled with well-tested structures and a basic trust in that players will do cool things when given enough freedom, makes the game shine in many places. It’s a matter of taste that I really don’t like the conflict system in the game.

For the entire review, click here.

“Daring use of randomness”…I like that!

That’s right, Space Marine geeks. Power armor is apparently only a few years away….

Still, the hot button genre with the highest temperature seems to be horror, and how Christians should - or shouldn’t - interact with it.

Horror, Gore, Fear and the Christian…

Since I mentioned horror in an earlier post, I thought that I’d link to this.

Barb,

I took last week off from blogging, so I didn’t reply to your comment until now. Thought you’d like to know.

Seth

(Originally this was going to be a comment on this post. But then it got long and rambly, so I promoted it to full-blown blog post. Hooray!)

Hello, James!

I’m not a scholar in Hebrew, nor do I play one on television. But, after talking with my father and consulting Strong’s, I’m not seeing the evidence for your contention that the word for “children” (bane) must mean “champions”. After all, this is the same word used in 2 Samuel 5:13b: “…and more sons and daughters were born to David.” (Emphasis is obviously mine.) In this context, bane wouldn’t mean “mighty men” or “champions”; it would simply mean “sons”. Now, Strong’s mentions an idiom that includes bane that means “soldiers”, so maybe I’m missing something. However, the only “mighty man” that I currently see in the passage refers to the father, not to the children.

Be that as it may, I believe that my point generally stands. To quote David Bayly, “The one great danger we should seek to preserve our children from […] is sin. But even here, the solution to sin is not mere avoidance of temptation. The solution ultimately must be victory over temptation. Which of us would think we’ve successfully inoculated our children against the dangers of alcohol if we’ve only kept them from seeing wine or tasting beer?” Our children were baptized into this war with us. They join us in warrior-worship before the Throne. They sit at the Table as kings and priests. Therefore, they also share our sufferings and persecutions as warriors on the battlefield. “There be no shelter here/The front line is everywhere”. And trying to protect our children from the rigors of the battlefield is actually a disservice both to the cause of Christ and to them.

Now, does this mean that we abandon our children to the battlefield? By no means! Rather, we stand by them and instruct them as they wage their battles. But I would say the same about interacting with any new disciple…or any old disciple, either. We all need help and guidance from each other as we struggle against the flesh, the world, and the devil. And, in particular, I would be derelict in my duty as a father to teach and instruct my children in the way that they should go. But this instruction is not just for some unspecified point in the future, when they will begin serving God. It is for how they are serving God now, as well as for the future.

A couple of months ago, my daughter ended up in a counseling situation. Another girl opened her heart to Arianna, telling her about some serious things that she was struggling with. Arianna did well: she prayed with this girl and comforted her, and later, she talked to Crystal about her conversation, seeking further guidance on what to do in the future. This is exactly what I would want for my daughter to do. However, she was only equipped to address the issues at hand because (in a sense) Crystal and I have not sheltered her from the world. Instead, we have showed her the world, piece by piece, in all its horror, while showing her the beauty of what Jesus is doing to overcome this world. As such, she was not shocked at this other girl’s revelations and was able to minister the Gospel to her.

So this is not a theoretical concern of mine.

I should also say that I’m not raising this out of a perverse pleasure in what this means. Knowing that my children are already warriors means that I have to equip them. Part of what this means is that I have to disabuse them of their naive, innocent notions about how the world works. I have to explain to them how their family is special because of Jesus; how the love that we have for each other (flawed and sinful though it be) is not the norm for most people; how many families are broken; how people hurt those who want to help them; how costly it is to love the lost. I have to explain the damage that sin causes to us and those around us, how wicked the human race really is, how there are so many different ways to victimize and abuse another person. And each time I do, I see a little bit of that shining childish innocence die. I feel awful, like I’m desecrating a rainbow or tearing the wings off a butterfly.

But I feel the same way about myself. There are days I look in the mirror and I see my eyes. They seem so old now, aged because of what they have seen. It hurts me deeply to know what I know. Indeed, as I grow in my Christian walk, I find myself adding to the list of things that I long for in heaven. One of them is that I will not have to know that which I now know.

But the one thing that a soldier cannot afford to have is illusions. I do not have the luxury of being shocked by the spiritual wickedness that surrounds me, and neither do my children. Too much is at stake, both for their own souls and for the progress of the Kingdom. And so we continue to move forward, reaching out as a family to the hurting and the lost, to those who will use and abandon us, to those who will break our hearts. And they stand at my side, and we do it together, looking in hope to the coming of the Lord Jesus when we will lay this burden down.

(I wrote this on Sunday, November 18, 2007. For security reasons, I didn’t let it out into the wild until now.)

Tomorrow, I’m taking my family on a trip to Erie. As we were packing the van, it occurred to me that I’m looking forward to the trip. Maybe not to children complaining in the van, but we’ll see how that goes. But the actual trip will be nice. I like long drives. I find them to be quite relaxing, oddly enough. And this means that we will be driving along the interstate.

I know people who avoid the interstates, finding them to lack character. I don’t think that’s entirely true. Yes, driving along the interstate generally means that you don’t have to have the inconvenience of interacting with local culture, but the interstates have their own culture. Think of it as Interstateland.

I actually like Interstateland. It consists mostly of long stretches of empty road, punctuated by gas stations and rest areas. You can recognize the denizens of Interstateland when you stop at one of these oases. There’s a certain rumpled look, a thousand-yard stare, that marks out the citizens of Interstateland. It’s the look of too many miles, not enough sleep, caffeine, and that special kind of fatigue that comes from sitting in the same place for hours at a time. You pass in the hall outside of the bathrooms at the rest area, and you nod in recognition: fellow travelers in Interstateland.

It’s a happy place, Interstateland is. There is no racial discrimination, no sexism, no wars. The motto is simple: “Gotta get there tonight.” The rulers are obvious: the giant semis that track through this utopia. There is no famine, for above us all shines the Golden Arches. And the green signs go before us, leading us into the night.

And then, you find your final exit ramp, and you emerge into the real world once again.

WARNING: this is an incomplete thought. But that’s never stopped me before.

I may have found a common ground between Christian agrarians and Christian urbanists like myself. It’s dirt.

A true Christian agrarian isn’t just about living in the country. He’s about getting his hands dirty in the soil, actually being connected to the land. I submit that you can’t really be an agrarian without getting dirty.

A true Christian urbanist isn’t just about living in the city. He’s about getting his hands dirty in other people’s lives, actually being connected to those around him. I submit that you can’t really be an urbanist without getting dirty.

I like this symmetry, especially because it harmonizes these two major approaches to life.

Now, Leithart has pointed out that the essence of modernity is the avoidance of dirt. But I think that, as Christians, we do not have this option. We were made from the dirt, and we will return to the dirt. As such, we are called to be involved in dirt, whether that be the actual dirt of the ground or the dirt of other people’s lives. Removing ourselves from the dirt is to remove ourselves from our created place.

So, how are you getting dirty for Jesus? If you can’t think of the answer, maybe it’s because you’re not.

Of late, there’s a move afoot to return to a Christian understanding of family. In particular, men are embracing their responsibilities to their wives and children by loving, nurturing, and protecting them. This is a good thing.

At the same time, I’m concerned that this movement could easily get tunnel vision. So, I offer this quick thought.

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. (Psalm 127:3-5)

These verses spawned the label for a certain subset of family reformation: “quiverful”. But these same verses also make a critical point.

Family is a means, not an end.

I have seen families so caught up in the “return to home” that they have turned inward and turned their families inward. Rather than engaging the culture where they live, they have retreated to remote locations to protect their children from the “world”.

This is not what children are for. Children are for warfare. They are for storming the gates of the enemy, for launching in salvoes against the forces of darkness, for siege warfare and conquest.

What good is a quiver of arrows if it’s tucked into your bedroll, safely back at camp?

Today the Peiffer children were baptized. Last night, David messed his diaper. These two facts are connected.

So, it was the hymn sing, and Joshua and I were looking around for a place to change the respective diapers of our respective children. We ended up working on two different landings of the Evans’ house. Joshua then suggested an assembly line. Maybe I could wipe, while he diapered.

I objected. I don’t change diapers for other people’s children.

Joshua countered. Don’t I believe in bearing one another’s burdens? (Galatians 6:2)

I fell back. Sure, I would bear Joshua’s burden, but that’s not the same as his child’s diaper.

Joshua moved in for the finishing blow. David is going to be baptized tomorrow. Doesn’t that matter in this conversation?

I yielded the point. Because he’s right. Now that David is baptized, his messy diaper is my burden.

This results in a profound theological point: because of baptism, your crap is my crap.

(The title is a tweak to the author of this blog post. Lots of love, Joshua!)

Made me laugh when I heard this.

“This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will
Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain
And a hundred percent reason to remember the name!”

–Fort Minor, “Remember the Name”

Particularly that bit about “fifty percent pain”. Yeah, that’s about right.

Georgia needs rain. So the governor did something crazy.

He prayed.

And, check this out, it rained.

There’s a reason that “Politics” is a subcategory of “Theology” on my blog. This is just one example of why.

On Saturday, I bought fake flowers to use for playtesting A Flower for Mara. They are white roses, which is what I wanted. In the future, I might want to buy better “components”, but for now, these should do fine.

Last night, around 6:00, my family left the house to visit with the Evans’ family.

Last night, around 7:30, a neighbor named John was mugged in front of the neighboring house. Essentially, it happened at the base of my driveway. They took his wallet and his keys and left him on the sidewalk. You need to understand that John is in his 60s, plus he is autistic (or somesuch thing). Attacking him was the act of cowards, looking for an easy hit.

Another neighbor met him just after he was attacked. She called the police and then called us to let us know. I’m still a little unclear on all the details, but that’s really close enough.

I saw John last night. His cheek was scraped up and he had a nasty bruise under one eye. He was with a social worker from White Oaks who was trying to help him find his keys. Without them, he couldn’t get back into his house. I helped the social worker look around, but we couldn’t find the keys, which probably means that John stayed the night in a shelter last night. The social worker told me that the police had captured two of John’s attackers but the keys were still unaccounted for. So, honestly, it may have been better for him to be elsewhere last night. If someone unfriendly still had his keys, then he might not have been safe in his own house.

I prayed with John. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And I prayed for vengeance on his attackers.

I guess this is why we moved here. That whole “being a light in a dark place” thing. And I’m glad that I was able to try to be helpful to John and to pray for him. Feels like a first step in following my calling in this neighborhood. But still, I would rather that it hadn’t happened at all.

“I am not as manly as Seth.”–Ralph Mazza