Pastor’s Notes (Page 29)

• The article I mentioned on Sunday, Same-Sex Science, is up on the website. Go to www.cpcissaquah.org and click on the first slide (photo). Or, you can click on “sermons and resources” in the left column. Then, when the menu expands, click on “ resources” and you’ll see “ Sermon Links” on the right: “ Same-Sex Science.”

• I admit it’s a strange source from which to draw encouragement, but media responses to the NY Post photo of the man about to die on the subway tracks have been appropriately indignant. Photojournalists debate this kind of thing at length, but even if the incident were to lead directly to the installation of railings in the subway, everyone seems to know it’s wrong to…

• I’ve always thought the term “Christian worldview” was an odd one — as though even after being made a “new creation” you had to select a lens through which to see everything, and one of those lenses was called “Christian.”

• It is stunning and disheartening to watch a career such as Gen. Petraeus’s end in dishonor (his words), or a life such as Joe Paterno’s end in shame. The list could be much longer, of course. We might be tempted to think the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit would make us immune to some similar collapse, but we know better. We’ve seen prominent Christian leaders go…

• A last thought on the people of God and politics. In chapter 7 of Daniel’s prophecy, he is transported and haunted by a vision which reads in part: “As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat; his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire…

• You should remember to VOTE since our government, which “ God has appointed” (Rom 13.2), is one “ of the people, by the people and for the people.” That phrase, among several other elegant phrases crafted by Lincoln for Gettysburg, is honored by use in the current French constitution, drafted in 1958 (Title I, article 2).

• Sick this week and on the couch, watched the presidential Debate and debates about the Debate, reading political pundits, watching interviews and noting, everywhere, the condition of my culture and country. This is probably impossible, but let me try to pull together, in several paragraphs, some broad, complex ideas that bear on the moment. This is longer and not…

• In 2008 when my son was at Covenant College, one of the chapel speakers was Henry Luke Orombi, Archbishop of Uganda and a leader among biblically faithful Anglicans. I recently found a photo-copy of his address while cleaning my office. Near the beginning of his message he says of his boyhood village, “ my father was a medium, meaning he had demonic forces— twelve of…

• Years ago I became convinced of the usefulness of Prov. 18:17: “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” Implied in this is the universal and, unfortunately, profoundly deep problem of human self-deception. You can hear it in the ideas that follow the verse above, especially verse 19, “ a brother offended is more unyielding…

• I should take a moment and clear up misconceptions I’ve created about my politics, with apologies for glib and vague comments in sermons. First of all, I am political and have favorite blogs and commentators, political heroes from the distant and not-so-distant past, and what you might call emotional investment in the outcomes of elections. Of course my calling in…