Happy Friday,
The sea is the Lord’s, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.
Psalm 95:5
In a creative process, we cannot duplicate, God made everything out of nothing. This includes you and me and things like time, space, fire, consciousness, sunsets, and cicadas. It’s worth reminding ourselves that we could not create a cicada if we started with all the parts. It’s also worth remembering that because he made everything, it’s all his. And he retains all rights. In the words of Abraham Kuyper, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”
Idols: Although Christ Church has finished its Exodus-adjacent mini-series on idols, I’m still thinking about them. Before we started, I knew that: they were good things we try to elevate beyond their station, they reveal things about our heart, and they function a bit like addictions, i.e., they take more and more while delivering less and less. What I had not seen so clearly was how small, safe, and tame they are. Nor how small, safe, and tame they make us.
WOTW: Honorable mention goes to aporkalypse (coined to describe the escalating destruction wrought by feral pigs), moral inversion (coined by Michael Polanyi to refer to the distortion of an ideal such that it leads to the opposite outcome, such as the way totalitarian regimes promise equality and justice but deliver oppression and inhumanity), and Metamodern (a term coined to describe the feeling that life is “random, disconnected, contradictory, aimless, and altogether void of coherent logic and purpose”—sometimes known as Monday). Full honors go to juristocracy, a term I heard in the context of the EU but seems to be relevant elsewhere.
Speaking of the Courts: I haven’t bothered to read much about the Alito/flag case, but what I think I know about it is distressing. The suggestion that things are so polarized that the spouse of the justice of the SCOTUS cannot interact civilly with a neighbor is, well, distressing.
Quiz: 1) Coke is the number one soft drink brand in the world. Who is #2? 2) True or False? A couple is married in the US every 42 seconds. 3) What state has the lowest median age at which women marry? 4) What state has the highest median age at which men marry? and 5) Is the current US murder rate higher or lower than it was forty years ago?
Quote Worth Requoting: “Hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does to the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates…. You can’t see straight when you hate. You can’t walk straight when you hate. You can’t stand upright. Your vision is distorted. There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate. He comes to the point that he becomes a pathological case…. For the person who hates, the beautiful becomes ugly and the ugly becomes beautiful. For the person who hates, the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good. For the person who hates, the true becomes false and the false become true. That’s what hate does. You can’t see right. The symbol of objectivity is lost. Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater…. So Jesus says love because hate destroys the hater as well as the hated.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
FWIW: 1) Standing desks and Fitbits have become a thing because “sitting is the new smoking.” Silly me, I thought social media was the new smoking. Maybe sitting is the new social media? 2) Today’s terms you dare not say in polite company are different from when I was growing up—and George Carlin had his bit about the seven words you can’t say on TV. Today’s list is filled with words like: January 6th, gender, vaccine, pronouns, Deep State, lab leak, border, Hamas, and migrant; 3) The WSJ ran this piece on loneliness in the workplace. I’m guessing they were feeling the sting from Dockery scooping them in the Lakelight newsletter here; 4) Speaking of words, when CNN uses the term media they mean Fox, and when Fox uses the term media they mean CNN. But neither seems to use it of themselves; 5) Unlike their ’60s predecessors, today’s campus protesters don’t seem to be anti-war; they just think the wrong side is winning.
Answers: 1) After holding second place by its lonesome for nearly forty years, Pepsi must now share those honors with Dr. Pepper. 2) False: A new US marriage begins every 19 seconds, not every 42. A marriage ends every 42 seconds; 3) Utah’s 25.3 years is the lowest median age for a woman to marry; 4) Washington DC’s 32.5 is the highest median age for men to marry; 4) Lower. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the US murder rate spiked in the late ‘80s, reached its peak in the early ‘90s, declined between the 2000s and 2014, spiked again in 2020, and has slowly decreased since then. (BTW, for the 12th year in a row, Chicago is the murder capital of the US.)
Closing Prayer: You, O Lord, who command us to ask, grant that we may receive. You have put us on seeking; let us be happy in finding. You have bidden us knock; we pray you open to us. Be graciously pleased to direct and govern all our thoughts and actions, that for the future we may serve you and entirely devote ourselves to obeying you. Accept us, we ask you, and draw us to yourself, that we may henceforth be yours by obedience and love, who are already all your own as your creatures, even yours, O Lord, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. Augustine, (354-430)