More Cowbell Award IV
April 20, 2006
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Best of Cerulean Sanctum, More Cowbell! Feedback : 14 comments
Sometimes it’s just silly, and sometimes it’s on a scale of utter mental vacuity that deserves its own prize. That’s why I must hand out another More Cowbell Award. Yes, “The Award That No One Wants to Win” is back with a vengeance. Perhaps it’s been holed up in a cubbyhole plotting its return in a blaze of black helicopter glory that will bring down democratic nations and establish a one world….
Hey, wait a second!
I hereby bestow the fourth More Cowbell Award on a group of folks who can’t disengage from the latest Jack Van Impe scarefest. Lately, their ilk has dominated so many discussions that even I’m growing paranoid listening to them.
Here’s a sampling of their wares:
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“Don’t ever buy anything from a Christian bookstore with a credit card. Those transactions are routed to a data vault in Antwerp and correlated. That’s how they know whom to round up for extermination.”"The Roman Catholic Church has infiltrated the National Association of Evangelicals. Ted Haggard is nothing more than a papist stooge installed by Opus Dei.”"Did you know that the U.S. Government has a warehouse in upstate New York filled with guillotines to use on Christians during the Great Tribulation?”
“Zionist bankers in Switzerland are even now funding a phony vaccine that will actually be targeted for use on believers. We’ll be told its an avian flu vaccine, but its most devastating component won’t actually kick in until a year after UN workers administer the shot. Think Ebola here, except a thousand times more powerful. Ever seen an eyeball melt?”
“Rick Warren’s PEACE initiative is an attempt by Illuminati groups to undermine the true Church and diminish its power so the antichrist can be more easily installed after the Temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem. This is all Bill Hybels’s fault.”
“Whenever a church that uses electronic tithing methods receives your monthly tithe out of your bank account, one percent of your tithe is routed to the estate of Aleister Crowley in order to print more copies of The Necronomicon.”
“Today, a red heifer was born in Bethlehem…”
Frank Black (guess the reference) couldn’t make this stuff up. Nor could he track it all down to a shadowy group portrayed in an eponymous TV show. Nothing about these crackpot ideas is shadowy.
Anyway, the fourth More Cowbell Award goes to
Honestly, I’ve had to unsubscribe from a number of formerly rational blogs of formerly respectable Christian organizations. They once legitimately pursued heretical thinking in the Church, but now resemble little more than conspiracy sites run by folks who find nefarious global plots against Christians under every rock. There’s healthy discernment and then there’s just fearmongering.
Part of the problem is a lack of love. If perfect love drives out all fear, then we have to ask if folks are being loving (and loved) when the conspiracies start flying. Bad eschatology comes into play, too. Hyperkinetic dispensationalism run amok is threatening to drive hardcore orthodox amil- and premillennialists to drink. Maybe now’s a good time to be a Preterist!
Christians everywhere are up in arms about the pending DaVinci Code movie, yet we’re totally unwilling to silence our own who simply cannot shut up about harebrained conspiracies against Christians. By comparison, some of the cranium-busting hysteria trotted out as normal Christian thought today makes The DaVinci Code read like The Pokey Little Puppy.
Honestly, if someone can track down the company making all those guillotines being supplied to the U.S. Government, I want to buy their stock because they’re going to make a killing.
Grace Amid Strange Fire
April 18, 2006
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Godhead, Grace, Holiness Feedback : 2 comments
And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the LORD, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the LORD, and devoured them, and they died before the LORD.
—Leviticus 10:1-2 KJV
If you’ve been reading through the McCheyne Bible Reading program for the year, you’ll be in Leviticus right now. It’s been a while since I read all the way through Leviticus, but the passage above, especially in its KJV rendering is well-known—especially among charismatics.
More than anything else, a reading through Books of the Law should give all us Christians today pause.
No sooner had God begun to lay out the proper way to perform tabernacle ceremonies when Nadab and Abihu fouled up the instructions. The penalty for their mistake was to die in a conflagration of the Lord’s doing. 
Evidently enough of the two was left over for the remnants to be dragged outside the camp, but the point was frighteningly clear.
Commentaries conjecture about the nature of the strange fire that was offered. Many say that the two sons of Aaron were to take fire consecrated from the altar to light their censers. Perhaps that took fire from another source. Others claim God’s admonitions concerning incense within the tabernacle were only mentioned later in Leviticus, so the very act of using incense at all before God authorized it was their downfall. No matter the exact reason, something was amiss in the way that the two went about their new work.
Steve Camp wrote a song many years ago called “Stranger to Holiness” from an album that was one of my favorites of his. The title of that song continues to drive home to me that most of us are no better than Nadab and Abihu. And while it’s true that like them we’ve been consecrated, the difference between us and them is a chasm bridged by the cross of Jesus Christ. Those two did not have the precious gift of grace that we so easily take for granted today.
We’ve just enjoyed the beauty of Christ’s death and resurrection in this last week. Without Christ’s atoning sacrifice, I suspect that all of us would have committed an act similar to Nadab and Abihu, two men who learned a stunningly harsh lesson about what it means to be a stranger to holiness.
Yet even to those of us who have some maturity and know better, our best intentions often wind up no better than a man with holy intentions, but who was still a man, sin and all:
And they carried the ark of God on a new cart and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. And Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart, with the ark of God, and Ahio went before the ark. And David and all the house of Israel were making merry before the LORD, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah, and God struck him down there because of his error, and he died there beside the ark of God. And David was angry because the LORD had burst forth against Uzzah. And that place is called Perez-uzzah, to this day.
—2 Samuel 6:3-8 ESV
Ever pull an Uzzah? I’m certain I have, though maybe not in as extreme a way as this man did. Nonetheless, I think all of us have had that zealous need to do the right thing, but we violated God’s holiness along the way. David’s response is just as human as ours, the anger that comes in the “Why, God?” questions that always follow best intentions that run afoul of our righteous Father in Heaven.
The nature of God is holiness. The nature of Man is anything but. God’s wisdom is in knowing how frail we are underneath such a crushing debt of sin when compared against His holiness. Only Christ’s sacrifice makes it possible for us, unveiled faces and all, to behold Him.
Moses struck the rock. Samson toyed with his sworn vow. Peter fell in with the Judaizers. And you and I are no better in our practice of the Faith than Nadab and Abihu.
The sooner we understand this, the sooner we understand the manifest depths of grace.
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He Is Risen!
April 16, 2006
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Jesus Christ Feedback : 2 comments
In the annals of Christendom enough has been said about the resurrection that I have no hope of contributing anything profound except to say, “He is risen indeed.”
I pray your Holy Week was blessed beyond measure.
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Tim on the Terrors of Tech
April 13, 2006
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Simplicity, Technical Feedback : 16 comments
Tim Challies hits an inside-the-park home run with his post on the possible evils of technology and what they mean for believers. As someone who’s becoming more and more of a neo-Luddite as time goes on, I think his assessment is dead-on righteous.Can’t really add much more. Loyal readers of Cerulean Sanctum know that I’m a quasi-agrarian besides my affinity for flipping off technology’s switch. Yes, I realize the hypocrisy of blogging about these things, but the fact remains; I don’t think we’re better off as human beings for all our wondrous tech inventions. Something has gone wrong with our disconnected society. I see social networks decaying faster than you can say “neighbor.”
Oengus Moonbones, a regular reader with a keen sense of discernment, has labeled me “Dismal Dan” whenever I get on these kinds of topics, so rather than continuing to fuel that appellation, I’ll just point you all to two good books on this topic:
by Eric Brende
by John Locke
(that other John Locke)
Enjoy!
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Lotsa Changes Coming!
April 12, 2006
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Announcements Feedback : 5 comments
My head is spinning!
Folks, things are going to be rather shaky here in the days to come. I apologize in advance for the lack of substantive Christian content, but for the last two weeks I’ve been inundated with work. I’ve spent so much time in front of the computer I think I’m ruining my eyes. But it’s all good and some of the things I’ve been working on will result in a much better reader experience at Cerulean Sanctum. Lotsa changes comin’!
Goings On:
1. Found a new host: Dotable.com. They’re an Australian company, but their servers are in LA in one of the most important telecom buildings on the West Coast. They’ll be hosting several sites for me, including my business site, author site, and Cerulean Sanctum. Small company, but outstanding support and offerings. Was a recent “Best Host” award winner at Web Hosting Magazine. Their friendly owner sealed the deal. Finding a host that had all the capability and features I wanted was another one of those Traveling Salesmen Route Optimization problems, with too many variables and no way to optimize. I spent about sixteen hours looking for a new host in the last few weeks! I’m ecstatic that I was finally able to locate such a great host.
2. Cerulean Sanctum will be migrated to http://ceruleansanctum.com and the current URL will be redirected. Please note this and switch over to the new URL. It’s live already and works.
3. Cerulean Sanctum will transform from Blogger to Wordpress! A huge change and probably an enormous headache, but I need more control over the blog and how it works. I made mistakes when I first set it up and it’s almost impossible to search the blog as a result; Blogger isn’t forgiving on this. Anyone who would be willing to answer some transition questions on moving from Blogger to Wordpress and redirecting URLs, I’d love to talk with you. Wordpress plug-in advice is highly desired, too.
4. Cerulean Sanctum’s look will be changing for the better. I’ve got zero CSS skills, but I’ll be taking a shot at a new design. If you’re a Wordpress or CSS guru, I’d love to talk with you. Graphic artists are also welcome to help!
I’ll make another announcement when I’m ready to get everything changed over for good.
Stay tuned!
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