The Enigma of the Blog Title Explained in Living Color!

Ever since Cerulean Sanctum debuted back in September of 2003 (after I put to rest my previous blog started in 2001, The Boiled Frog Blog), at least a dozen denizens of the blogging world have attempted to deconstruct the title of this blog. All have gone down to ignominious defeat in their vain efforts to pierce the veil.

So here today, I lay before you all my entire motivation/reasoning/cunning for coming up with the blog name that confounds the great unwashed, Cerulean Sanctum. I will bust myths, teach the ignorant, and astound the gullible, all from the pinnacle upon which my humble hermit’s office rests, and without so much as a square inch of safety net below me.

Look now to the center ring…!

The only Latin I know consists of what Noah Webster tells me. I took Ancient Greek in college and French in high school. I wanted to become fluent in Russian, yet both colleges I attended canceled their Russian programs the summers before I arrived on campus, leaving me scrambling to find another class to take instead. Based on my rusty Greek and my comatose French, I can add the two together with my passable English to guess which words are Latin and which are not.
Despite the fact that the only Latin sentence I know is “Et tu, Brute?”—how marvelously appropriate—I did score a perfect score on the Test of Standard Written English on the SAT. I was able to use this perfection to no discernible advantage at either Carnegie-Mellon University or Wheaton College. I am fitfully attempting to manipulate it to my ends now.
In choosing my blog’s name, I wanted something with a touch of the exotic, something that if listed in a myriad number of links would stand out and make people say, “What the heck is that? I think I’ll click on it to find out!”
I wanted to convey a place of respite, of thought, of camaraderie with Christians who are looking around and wondering how we got to the weird place we are now. I wanted a sanctuary. As a charismatic, I also wanted to maintain an aura of the majestic and the mysterious. Sanctuary became Sanctum.
Poetry moves me; I love to write it (even though there’s not a dime to be had in doing so.) As a writer, the lyricism of words stirs me. Something had to come before Sanctum and it had to have consonance and rhythm.
I’ve always been the square peg in the round hole and as a result have run afoul of many folks who could never put a finger on me without having a figurative fist do the follow-up. I’ve never truly felt the sting of real persecution like that of the underground churches in China or the Soviet-era martyrs, but I’ve felt enough of the American variant—light though it be—to count it a friend. Persecution passages in the Scriptures move me as a result. In the course of thinking where this blog would go and how it would exist to challenge the Western Church’s status quo and American “easy believe-ism,” the Lord laid this passage on my heart:
…They shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name’s sake. And it shall turn to you for a testimony. Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer: For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist. And ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks, and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake. But there shall not an hair of your head perish. In your patience possess ye your souls. And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.
—Luke 21:12-28 KJV {emphasis added}
Out of the sky He will come and we will enter our ultimate Sanctum. And what is the actual color of that sky? Cerulean—the official name for the blue that encompasses our world.

And so the ne plus ultra of titles had come.

But there is one more interesting piece of trivia. After I had decided on the name, I surfed around to see if there was anything like it out on the Web and I stumbled upon this astonishing piece of synchronicity. So not only did I have a name, but this blog is destined to be the blog of the new millennium!

Now you know the secrets; the mysterious has been unveiled. I hope none feel diminished for want of one more mystery now gone t0 resolution.

With that—and the lateness of the hour—I bid you till another day, Adieu!

{And yes, the image above is done in pure cerulean, being RGB 155/196/226 and HTML code 9BC4E2.}

The Myth of “Pantribulationism”

Matt Self of The Gad(d)about has stepped into the Blogosphere with both feet and made a mighty big impression. I think only the (now) ubiquitous Phil Johnson has entered more blogrolls more swiftly than Matt. I read The Gad(d)about every day via Bloglines, and not only do I like Matt’s take on a lot of issues (real level-headed charismatic ones, too!), but he’s probably the only Christian blogger I know that the two of us could get into the merits of Evans hydraulic heads while the rest of the world thought we were talking about cars.

Now he wants to talk about the antichrist and eschatology. (Ooh, scary!)

{Word to Matt: You have to have been blogging for at least two years before you can post opinions on eschatology. It’s the Christian equivalent of the restriction on rabbinical students teaching The Song of Solomon.} 😉

Now I’m all for a good thrashing of Hal Lindsey or that Van Impish guy or whoever he is. And I like the fact that Matt nails the truth down that the spirit of antichrist in people who hate God is as much or more important than actually identifying he/she/it. But your eschatology really doesn’t matter all that much as long as you’re an ardent Christian? Hmm….

I used to think that one’s eschatological leanings made little difference, but after almost thirty years observing the Church, I don’t believe I could’ve been more mistaken. In actuality, people’s eschatology influences almost every single aspect of their lives, especially the way they walk out their interpretation of the Christian faith.

Dispensationalists, for instance, are always thinking about Israel in the light of eschatology. The rise of dispensationalism in the 20th century is one of the reasons that Israel exists as a state today. U.S. foreign policy revolves around dispensational eschatology in many regards. This is no small thing. Dispies have probably donated more money to Jewish causes looking to rebuild the Temple than anyone. And somewhere in Israel, right now as I type, some Lindsey-ite rancher is trying to genetically engineer a red heifer perfectly acceptable to the Lord.

The hardcore pre-tribbers of the Left Behind variety have their own issues. Much of their Christian praxis takes on a disposable mentality because “it’s all gonna burn.” They’re the ones who roll their eyes when some “eco-whackjob” starts talking about wise use of natural resources or preserving the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. If they could find a way to BBQ every known species of woodpecker over the world’s total supplies of coal and oil, they’d do it. At least to this writer, there’s a healthy model of living for today and there’s being psychotic about the whole thing.

Preterists are the stoners of the eschatological wars in that their view is, “Hey man, like it all happened in 70 AD, so we’re like free.” They live by one rule: “Whatever!” To get a preterist to get serious about building a Church that can withstand some persecution is like trying to get Woody Harrelson to stop toking and start planning for the day his movie career dries up. (Oops, too late!) All I can say is, “Wise virgins, foolish virgins.”

Now I just got done talking about postmillennialists and their “Onward, Christian Soldiers!” battle cry in my series on the business world. The “every day, in every way, we’re getting better and better” routine means you might as well flush your head down the john because there’s no way you’re going to get a postmill-er to acknowledge any kind of societal collapse theories. In some ways, the Latter Day Rain aficionados are in that same boat, thinking that worldwide revival is coming…coming…coming despite that fact that the entire West has pretty much traded in their Jesus card for the one that reads “Apostasy.” I don’t know about you, but I think the thinking behind “Jesus, now that you’ve returned, here’s the perfected Christian world we created for you!” takes a WEE bit of tweaking in light of Luke 18:8. (I’ll let you look that one up.)

As for the amillennialists, well, since they take everything figuratively, they just don’t believe anything, now do they?

My whole point here is not to make fun of the different eschatologies, but to point out that what you believe about Christ’s return, the end of the world, and the New Heaven and New Earth does make a difference in how you live out your faith.

I was twenty-six-years old when the infamous book 88 Reasons the Rapture Will Occur in ’88 was #1 with a bullet in Christian bookstores, so I actually remember the fallout from it fairly well. People who believed that numerological piece of detritus did all sorts of wacky things. Most of the senior class of Cedarville Bible College not far from me went out and got married rather than die virgins. People by the score around the country euthanized their pets rather than see Fluffy fall into the hands of the animal-sacrificing Satan-worshipers that would run rampant across the country once all the Christians had been raptured. I was working full-time at a Christian camp and that book was all the young summer staff people could talk about. And they changed their behavior—for good or ill—simply because of that book. I was in the midst of a serious relationship at the time and despite the fact that I thought the whole book was utter ungodly hogwash it still crossed my virginal mind once or twice that perhaps I’d never get to…well, you know. Group-think has power, let me tell you.

In the end, no one is a “pantribulationist.” (Note: it’s an old Mike Warnke joke—”I’m a ‘pantribulationist’ because it’s all going to ‘pan’ out in the end.”) Everything you and I believe about the End daily influences how we live (or don’t live) for the Lord and His Kingdom. Our views on evangelism and discipleship, our thoughts on preparing the Church for tribulation, the manner in which we raise our children, and our general view on daily living—all are influenced by our eschatology. If we “sensible people” were all truly pantribulationists then the Christian bookstores wouldn’t have any eschatological books in the Top 20 every time a world crisis erupts. But you and I know that’s not how it is in reality.

People’s eschatology governs their lives far more than we realize. The old aphorism is that there are no atheists in foxholes. Well, there’s no pantribulationists, either.

{Image: Woodcut, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Dürer, 1498}

Psychology a Pseudo-Science?

'Sigmund Freud' by Andy Warhol David Wayne over at Jollyblogger takes Tom Cruise to task for trashing Matt Lauer in a discussion on the merits of psychology as a real science. Scientologist Cruise—he of the belief that evil space aliens control our minds—labeled psychology a “pseudo-science” and there was much rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth as a result.

I’m no apologist for Scientology or for Tom Cruise, but he’s right in one thing: psychology IS a pseudo-science. And Christians have swallowed and subsumed that pseudo-science to the point that it is wrecking the North American Church from the inside out.

Psychology and psychiatry are rooted in the exaltation of the Self. This is clearly at odds with the Gospel. Psychology and psychiatry possess a worldview of their own that conflicts with the truth claims of Scripture time and again.

If ever there was correct labeling of anything as a “pseudo-science,” psychology merits that label.