James's Weblog

Hmm. Not sure.

It’s often been said that the golden calf is a breach of the 2nd commandment, rather than the 1st. That is: It’s not worshipping another God. It’s worshipping the right God in the wrong way – by use of images. In support of this is Aaron’s declaration: Behold, your God who brought you out of the Land of Egypt.

But I wonder.

The contrast between Moses up the mountain and what goes on as the people below get bored is striking.

Many will remember the furore when Prince Charles stated, many years back, that he wanted to be not “defender of the [implied, Christian] faith”, but simply “defender of faith”.

Some of the problems of that should be obvious.

I had a great afternoon at Blenheim Palace on Saturday, listening to Doug Wilson talk about

• The gospel and your church
• The gospel and your family

• The gospel and your government.

What does we conclude from this?

I’m sure Mark Horne is right in his post Israel was not (all of) the Church over at the new Biblical Horizons Blog.

It’s not a long post, so I won’t summarise it – I’d do it a dis-service. Just go and read it.

Exodus 7-15, there is a pattern.

Egypt asserts her might as the enemy of God and his people (7-11)
God defeats Egypt (12-13)
God destroys his defeated enemy (14-15)

That’s a pattern that recurs.

Whilst doubtless local feelings are mixed (they always are), I think it’s exciting that Audley now has its own branch of Tesco. It’s not very big. But it’s there. Tesco Express Audley opened its doors at 8am this morning, and from now on will be open 7 days, 6am-11pm. Hurrah!

There are plenty of people out there who are Tesco Haters.

I’ve been enjoying reading all of James Cary’s posts on the subject of baptism. His most recent post on infant baptism is paticularly fine and worth reading. It’s refreshing to read some clarity on this.

There are now about 5 posts on this subject, all worth a read.

Linking my two previous posts. That is:

Environmentalism as religion

Romans 1: A Fair Exchange

Really we shouldn’t be surprised by the way we treat the environment. Here is the heart of human sin

Romans 1:18-32: We, the human race, have suppressed the knowledge of God that we all have. We all have it because God has made his existence, deity and power known in his creation. The creation is his conscious handwriting intended to communicate to us. We have done so effectively, such that Paul can say we all knew God. The problem is not ignorance, it is culpable suppression of what we know.

God’s temporal judgement for this is to hand us over to self-harming sin. The human-race is constantly attempting to self-destruct; Romans 1 interprets this as God taking off the reins.