the night before, the night before Christmas

There are many things I want to write about including my trip to the neighboring town, Rhinelander, where Lindsay and I counted 21 different people wearing Packer clothing during our quick trip in and out. But I write to you in the middle of a snowstorm, which is likely to deliver over a foot of snow when all is said and done. It is days like to today that really make me miss the North. In this picture Nate (Lindsay’s sister’s, Angela, boyfriend) and I bring up our catch, an 18 inch Walleye, from a good day of ice fishing. Today it took us 20 minutes to get to church because we had to battle the treacherous roads. I struggled to keep my hand from getting frost bite as I dipped my hand into a minnow bucket to bait our hook for the ice hole. And I love all of it.

Christmas Anyone Part 3

The last top ten Christmas list of the Holidays. Again the category is a bit ambiguous. I should have really done, “top ten carols” and “top ten carols by artist.” Anyhow I have merged the two lists to get this.


10. Happy Christmas- John Lennon …I almost didn’t put this one on here. I think it’s been over done, but that isn’t Lennon’s fault.

9. White Christmas – Bing Crosby …the song just invokes feelings of nostalgia and reminds me of great movies

8. Christmas Canon – Trans-Siberian Orchestra …kind of cheesy, but I really like this arrangement

7. Ave Marie- Harry Connick Jr., the best song on the CD

6. Wassail Song- Polar Express version played by the ghost on top of the train using the accordion…slow and beautiful…but unfortunately not available on the soundtrack

5. Silent Night - John Ondrasik…took me over a year to identify who this was, but the best version of the song I’ve ever heard.

4. Angels We Have Heard on High – David Crowder…initially didn’t like the change where he goes “glory on hiiiighhhhh” and kicks up the notes a few octaves…but has since grown on me

3. O Come Emmanuel – David Crowder …”rejoice, rejoice, rejoice,” like only Crowder can

2. Carol of the Bells – no preference…2nd best carol ever

1. O Holy Night – no preference… though many people attempt to cover this and butcher it, it is the best carol out there.

Christmas Anyone Part 2

Did my Christmas shopping today. I hate malls and busy stores. I survived though. As promised more top ten lists. This particular list is a bit ambiguous as I discovered researching movies. The official category is Christmas TV specials. I realize that some of these listed might be categorized as a movie, but they just feel a little different to me. Most if not all are either animated, claymation, or old-school-mated.


10. Shrek the Halls- Funny story…haven’t actually seen this. It deleted off of the Tivo before I could watch. Bah Humbug. I have to wait until next year. I’m sure though that anything with Shrek will be great!

9. Jack Frost- love the creative interplay in the relationship of Jack Frost and the Groundhog. The Villain in this movie is fantastic and the humor is there if you have a palate for it.

8. A Year Without Santa clause- Mostly I just love the Heat Miser and the Snow Miser. I think this inspired a recent real life version that is mildly good.

7. Santa Clause is Coming to Town- Great at answering the meta Santa Clause questions and you’ve got to love a movie that has a character named the Burgermeister Meisterburger.

6. A Muppet’s Christmas Carol - I think I listed this in the movie post, but I’m convinced it better belongs in this category. I haven’t seen it in some time, but Lindsay loves it, so I do too.

5. Frosty is coming to town/Frosty Returns/Frosty’s Winter Wonderland/The Legend of Frosty- Really just the first two, the second of which has John Goodman as the voice of Frosty and has environmentally concerned themes. Saw WWL for the first time this year, kind of lame Frosty gets married. The other (LOF) I haven’t actually seen. It was made in 2005 and Burt Reynolds narrates. Should be worth at least one watch.

4. Charlie Brown Christmas- Didn’t love this one as much until recently. This successfully uses national television to shovel the gospel of Luke down youngsters’ throats. It’s pretty amazing. It also has a Christmas special type half hour deal after the traditional Christmas Charlie Brown. Never saw this one, but really enjoyed it. In several different scenes, Linus makes astoundingly detailed comments about Biblical information. In one scene he even refers to himself as a “theologian.” Figures Charles Schultz is from MN…North…where all good Christian culture lives.

3. Mickey’s Christmas Carol/Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas/Mickey’s Twice Upon Christmas- I’ve done some research and discovered that the reason I haven’t seen this one in a few years is because for the last four PBS has had the rights to it. Anyhow it is the best rendtion of Chaz Dickens stuff. As for the other two. They are o.k. Pretty solid animation.


2. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas- If I had to see two shows every year growing up it was this one and the winner of the #1 slot. I think the only thing that keeps it from being number is that #1 seems to be a bit more historical.

1. Rudolf the Rednose Reindeer/Rudolf’s Shiny New Year- A dentist elf, a gold digger named Yukon, a lion who represents the misfits, a Humble Bumble who is redeemed and a Reindeer who saves the day!!! It doesn’t get better.

Christmas anyone

Some of you may or may not know that Christmas is my most favorite time of the year. This season has seemed slightly less fantastic. I’ve decided this is for two reasons. This is the first time my life has not come to a complete halt because I’m not just finishing up finals only to have nothing to do for an entire month. Secondly, this is the first time I’m doing Christmas with a kid…namely Roy, who I’ve come to discover takes away both from precious Charle’s Wysocki jigsaw puzzle time and also mindless and endless movie watching. This week I have rebelled against the busyness to do both. In the spirit of this, I have decided to post a couple of top ten lists. Tonight I post the top ten Christmas movies of all time.

10. Christmas With the Kranks- My mom is Jamie Lee Curtis in this movie

9. Love Actually- minus the porn couple…I love this movie

8. Christmas Story- the classic funny Christmas movie

7. Home Alone/Home Alone: New York- Something about both locations…Chicago and New York that I love

6. It’s a Wonderful Life- Jimmy Stewart is superb

5. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Jim Carey)-mostly this is because I watch this movie the day after Thanksgiving to kick off the Holiday season

4. White Christmas- Bing Crosby’s singing is enough

3. Miracle on 34th St.- the best of the classic “believe in Santa Clause” movies

2. Christmas Vacation- Funny Funny Funny. Uses the best kind of humor…family dysfunction to make me laugh

1. Polar Express- I feel like I should have chosen something old for this but, the score is out of this world and the animation is impeccable.

honorable mention: Santa Clause, Santa Clause 2, Elf, A Muppet Christmas Carol

sacraments and justification

For some time now I’ve been struggling with the protestant view of justification. For the longest time it was just one of the words that I rattled off when participating in the Biblical language game. I didn’t really know what it meant. It was one of those words that when said next to a string of other overtly Pauline words quickly rendered the verse meaningless because too many of the words have meaning that needs to be unpacked. Let me give you an example of a fictional verse I’ll make up. “you have been justified through the propitiating atonement of the holiness of God’s righteousness imputed to you through the sanctifying holiness of the Zion one.” Huh? Me too.

Slowly though this word came alive. It came alive when I really started to investigate how or why I am saved. I’m justified in the eyes of God because of Jesus. A couple of months back Christianity Today let the cat out of the bag and let the rest of the Evangelical world know that there is a debate out on some of these key Pauline words…justification chief among them. They actually drew cartoon looking caricatures of three figures on each side of two pages as to pit them and their respective perspective on Paul and Pauline language. On the left side were the reformation figures Luther, Calvin and Beza (I think) and the other were those who represent the new perspective on Paul…namely E.P. Sanders, N.T. Wright and James D.G. Dunn (apparently initials are important in the new perspective). A perspective that I have found a breath of fresh air. The person from this school that I have taken particular interest in is Richard Hays of Duke whose work on the subjective/objective genitive construction pistis christou has been thought provoking.

Recently I stumbled onto the happenings of Baylor professor Francis Beckwith who converted back to his childhood faith of Catholicism. Part of the big deal about Beckwith is that he was the president of ETS, which is a group of Evangelical Theologians who wish they lived in a society where they could still burn people at the stake for believing the wrong things. In his blog post about why he went Catholic Beckwith writes:

The past four months have moved quickly for me and my wife. As you probably know, my work in philosophy, ethics, and theology has always been Catholic friendly, but I would have never predicted that I would return to the Church, for there seemed to me too many theological and ecclesiastical issues that appeared insurmountable. However, in January, at the suggestion of a dear friend, I began reading the Early Church Fathers as well as some of the more sophisticated works on justification by Catholic authors. I became convinced that the Early Church is more Catholic than Protestant and that the Catholic view of justification, correctly understood, is biblically and historically defensible. Even though I also believe that the Reformed view is biblically and historically defensible, I think the Catholic view has more explanatory power to account for both all the biblical texts on justification as well as the church’s historical understanding of salvation prior to the Reformation all the way back to the ancient church of the first few centuries.

At the end of this blog comments section, which is lengthy and full of angry protestants, Beckwith offers a pair of links both of which he says were compelling in his decision making process. One is from the Catechism and deals with grace and justification. I decided to take a peek given my recent convictions. I found it compelling. I agree with much of what is says, but have one notable hang up.

It states, “2014 Spiritual progress tends toward ever more intimate union with Christ. This union is called "mystical" because it participates in the mystery of Christ through the sacraments - "the holy mysteries" - and, in him, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. God calls us all to this intimate union with him, even if the special graces or extraordinary signs of this mystical life are granted only to some for the sake of manifesting the gratuitous gift given to all.”

My hang up is with what I know they think the sacraments necessarily are. N.T. Wright restored my appreciation for sacraments, but I have a hard time believing that the God of the New Testament traps himself to dispensing grace through a church that is full of free willed men who screw it up all the time. I guess this is why the Donatist controversy has resurfaced as a significant for me. I believe in sacraments. But I believe that new and creative sacraments are found in our lives daily. The creative God of the New Testament finds all kinds of ways to make the “veil between heaven and earth seem especially thin” to borrow from Wright.

Here is where I depart from the Catechism. Like them I believe that spiritual progress tends toward intimate union with Christ and that this has big implications for soteriology. It’s just that I don’t believe this happens inside archaic buildings with people who are un-thoughtful about what they are really doing. It happens when a parent spends time with a child. It happens when an alcoholic says no to another drink. It happens when a band raises money for aids victims. It happens when someone lends a lawnmower to a neighbor. These are the means…the modes of salvation through we participate and progress towards intimate union with Christ.

they hate your porn

Two times ago when Donald Miller came to speak at Baylor he talked about, among other things, why the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. I’m guessing it was to sort of take a shot at the Republican Evangelicals that sort of embody the type of Christian he disdains, but Miller commented that Islamic fundamentalists do not hate America because we are trying to spread freedom…rather they hate us because of our porn. This like many things Miller says was a blanket statement giving a glance into what he sees to be a bigger problem. Most of the time I write Miller off because even if he is correct I think he is often rhetorical and misses the whole “lovingly challenge” or “lovingly correct/rebuke” part of grace. I’m not suggesting he’s a bad guy, in fact I think he’s pretty bright, but this rhetoric makes it hard for me to listen to him.

Anyhow recently I read this blog post posted by Greg Boyd. I notice two things about Greg. He uses the language of and really is the embodiment of the sort of Christianity that I have rebelled against. However, Greg has always struck me as intensely passionate and authentic, thus he’s never lost the right to speak into my life. I still read his blog and listen to his sermons. Recently he made the same point Miller makes. I thought his ideas were thought provoking. Here are two paragraphs from that post.

“Radical Islamic groups notice that America has a drastic morally corroding effect on every country it influences. This is undeniable. Our brand of capitalism is inextricably bound up with sexually explicit advertising, which they abhor. And we are by far the main exporter of sexually explicit entertainment around the globe.

Consequently, these groups associate the “freedom” America stands for and now claims it wants to export to the rest of the world with its debauchery. And they understandably want to stop this at all costs. So, in the name of Allah, they have declared war on “the great Satan.” (Of course, they also have many other reasons for identifying America as "Satan" as well -- but our promiscuity is one of the major ones).”

It’s strange to me that the people who send the soldier to fight the Islamic Fundamentalists and the Islamic Fundamentalists end up being strange bed fellows. Allow me to be general and grossly oversimplify positions. I think the belief that Americans are over there to spread freedom because freedom is a good thing is a Republican belief. I also believe that these republicans that are interested in the spread of democracy would probably be the same people who would also like to see not only the stopping of America’s continual decline on the slope of moral ambiguity, but also to see the stopping of this part of America’s effect on the rest of the world.

Too bad the two parties couldn’t understand this about each other. Perhaps they could refocus their efforts in a more peaceful way.