Category: Day Bidet

Didn’t mean to make you cry:

1. “When [it] comes to morality, do you want to know what is cozy and comfortable? Atheism. Read any of the atheist writers who blather on about morality. You’ll find nothing there as disturbing, upsetting, and difficult as what you find [in] the book of Jonah.”
2. Homeschool your kids.
3. Love little details like this.
4. “Democrats now represent 65% of taxpayers with a household income of $500,000 or more.”
5. “[W]hat characterizes genuine faith is not that it never doubts but that it perseveres to the end.”
6. Clown GOP: “What the right has is nothing but … a whine-o-sphere … who are able to make their living publishing the latest ‘leftist outrage of the day.'” Clown GOP. (Related.) Clown freethinkers—not very freethinky!
7. “We struggle to live according to our design as lovers in large measure because our attention has been stolen.” (Related.)

More:

This aged well. (Related. Related. It’s still early.)

“Five incidents reported in biblical and extrabiblical sources set the context for the accounts of Pilate’s involvement with Jesus’s crucifixion.”

“If we are actually serious about gun control laws, the first step should be to enforce the ones we already have.” (Of course, most people aren’t actually serious about gun control laws—nor should they be. Related—language warning.)

“[T]he Sabbath remembers the liberation of slaves from Egypt, the Exodus just as much as it remembers the days of creation.”

I am a poor wayfaring stranger:

1. “Even though my relatives were African American people—the community was there to help clean up, handing them money and gifts of time and expressing love.”
2. Whoops.
3. Something I didn’t expect to read about just quite yet: “the underground church in Canada.” (Finland not far behind. Nor Oregon.)
4. Not national news. Not national news. Not national news. Not national news. Not national news. And fake news.
5. “We need to see in our minds Jesus entering into the mikveh, immersing himself, and soaking wet as he enters the Temple courts.” (Related.)
6. Clown World. Clown World. Clown World. Clown World. Clown World. Clown World. Clown World. Clown World. But this one takes the cake. Demon World.
7. “What, then, is the meaning of Armageddon for contemporary readers of Revelation? It is the confidence that God is at work in history to reveal divine justice and righteousness.”

More:

You can’t trust the experts. (Related.)

“Jeremiah may have been the brother of Azariah the high priest whose seal impression was found in the city of David.”

“Even in the 1980s, slightly over half of women had a maximum of one sex partner before walking down the aisle. … By the 2010s, only 5 percent of new brides were virgins.”

“The best explanation for why attribution of the fourth gospel to John was so popular in such a variety of orthodox and heretical circles from the middle of the second century onward is that the attribution predated that timeframe.”

Reading recommendations.

“Contact with Jesus didn’t render him unclean. Instead, sinners and the unclean were purified and made holy.”

A double portion:

1. “One would have thought that I, as a Catholic priest, would have spoken out against the atomic bombing of nuns. … One would have thought that I would have suggested that as a minimal standard of Catholic morality, Catholics shouldn’t bomb Catholic children. I didn’t.”
2. Flashback.
3. “Humans, to remain human, cannot become inured to killing. The death of each animal has to be marked and given sacred recognition.”
4. Carnivore success story. Carnivore success story. Carnivore success story. Carnivore success story. Carnivore success story. Carnivore success story.
5. “Those who complain about ‘drama’ in worship have limited historical understandings of what ‘worship’ was like in Israel, and for centuries among Christians.”
6. You can’t trust the experts. (Related: “The Road to Sociology is the ‘corruption of the epistemic process in an entire discipline’ when everything becomes subservient to progressive political ideology.” Related.)
7. “Jesus wasn’t born ready to be our high priest, but by the grace of God he died ready.”
8. “What kind of kingship is this?” Related: “Who, I say, could have hoped that the nations would hope in the name of Christ, when He was arrested, bound, scourged, mocked, crucified, when even the disciples themselves had lost the hope which they had begun to have in Him?”
9. Not national news. Not national news. Not national news. Not national news.
10. “I love Christ more than this.”
11. “[W]e’re told society pedestalizes whites while causing people of color to feel bad about themselves. The data say otherwise.” (Related. Related.)
12. “He had set the example by sexually exploiting one subject and killing another. Sexual exploitation and murder were soon to devastate his own household.”
13. Clown World: “How better to honor the legacy of a gang of murderous felons by discriminating against whites?” (Related. Related.) Clown World. Clown World. Demon World. Demon World.
14. Q&A on the Resurrection.

More:

It’s still early. (Related.)

“[W]e can place Paul confidently in Corinth in 52 CE.”

“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever”:

1. “I am more and more of the opinion that when the apostles argued ‘that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer,’ they were thinking especially of David in the books of Samuel (and as refracted in the Psalms).”
2. “If someone can’t argue for low-status beliefs without fear, then it’s better to just admit that there is no fair discourse.” (Related: “Not National News.” Related. Related. Related. Related.)
3. NT Wright on the Pharisees.
4. Nature trumps nurture.
5. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
6. A handy resource. (Related.)
7. “Idolatry Is Always Polytheism”

More:

Pray for the world.

An interesting suggestion.

HODL bitcoin. (And remember: You can’t trust the experts.)

“Christians who believed in bodily resurrection seem to have regarded their own mortal coils as the crucial venues in which they were to live out their devotion to Christ.”

All glory, laud, and honour to thee, Redeemer, King:

1. “Seriously, this soap opera is supposed to be an inspired religious text in which we learn about God?”
2. Big Business and Big Gov are two sides of the same coin. (So advocating for more government, as Democrats do, or less government, as Republicans pretend to do, misses the point. Related.)
3. “Who Is Melchizedek?”
4. “I can use this” (language warning). (Related. Related: Guess which gunman’s race CNN identified in this list of mass shootings. Related: “Spring breakers.” Related: “[T]he CDC totally sidesteps the politically incorrect topic of who is pulling the trigger in those homicides.” Related.)
5. “God sometimes lets true prophets know when conditions have changed and judgment is delayed.”
6. Clown Demon World. Demon World. Demon World. And last but not necessarily least: Demon World.
7. Lydia McGrew’s new book on the Gospel of John is finally out.

More:

This one‘s for the nerds.

This one‘s also for the nerds.

“What is Wrong with Illegal Immigration?”

“The Book of Revelation identifies Jesus as “he who is” (Revelation 1:4, 8), a clear utilization of Exodus 3:14.”

Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan His works in vain:

1. A quick primer on the Pentateuch.
2. “Memorial Day … saw the fentanyl-assisted death of George Floyd…. By the time of the riots of the following weekend, the Great Murder Surge of 2020 was underway.” (Related: You can’t trust the experts—or the news.)
3. “Materialism and Mysteries”
4. Skim this, which I have added to the Health page. We were made to eat meat. (Related. Related. Related. Related: “In the last 11 months I have worked with around 100 people transitioning them to the carnivore lifestyle. All of them no matter what sex or what age all seen results.”)
5. “As in Matt. 18: 15-17, the sequence of reproof among Qumran sectarians is to first be private, then in front of witnesses, and only afterward, if still needed, before the assembly. Such reproof must be humble and without anger.”
6. “We’re really not making a big enough deal of the fact that @amazon has begun deleting books.”
7. “The greatest song will always be the song born of suffering.”

More:

“The root cause of a lot of our problems today—much more than most people would expect—is simple legal uncertainty. … When people don’t know what they’ll get in trouble for, they have no choice but to turn off judgment, play it safe, and do stupid things with bad consequences.” (Related.)

Barth was a shameless adulterer.

“Strong hands.” (Related. Related. Related.)

“God ‘devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast.'”

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace:

1. Watch this. (Related. Related. Related.)
2. Read this. (Related: “All societies consist of a religious elite either edifying with truth or manipulating with lies those below them into certain beliefs, as the average person is incapable of rational thinking. … The only question is which elite will have control and propagate ideas to the masses. Will it be a benevolent elite, inculcating the truth of God’s Word into the population, or will it be a hostile, Satanic elite like we have today?”)
3. “[W]ould Paul have eaten your shrimp cocktail?”
4. “[L]ockdown policies have been extraordinarily harmful.” (Related.)
5. “[A]busive pastors almost always have two sides. One side is domineering, heavy-handed and threatening.  The other side is charming, gracious, and even flattering.”
6. “Almost all men are stronger than almost all women.” (Related. Related: “[A] growing number of women see staying home to raise children … to be the ideal circumstances of motherhood.” Related. Related.)
7. “[W]hen you track the deep narrative, you see the fingerprints of God everywhere you look.”

More:

“In Scotland, it is said, the steam whistle scared the Faery Folk away.”

“Spirit (pneuma) language is used for essentially three things: the (1) Holy Spirit/God’s Spirit, (2) unclean (i.e., evil) spirits, and (3) the human spirit.” (Related. Related.)

“Tesla has now made more money by holding some #Bitcoin than in thirteen years of selling cars.” (Related.)

“The twist ending of the story is that Yahweh isn’t like other gods.”

Fly swifter round, ye wheels of time:

1. “And so a beer commercial becomes our priest, offering us absolution: You are a good person.” (Related: “[P]ost-Christian and non-Christian progressives feel themselves to be, not elite, but elect.”)
2. “We have to be resigned to living in a world where social outcomes are substantially determined at birth.” (Related.)
3. “The true virtue, the true courage, is to maintain hope (and also love and joy) in the face of what can sometimes look and feel like an ocean of darkness. … Sometimes our prayer ‘goes well’ and sometimes it seems ‘dry,’ but if we offer our time to God with sincerity we can be assured that God has worked on our soul and the fruit will come at the right time.”
4. “1/4 of people in their early 20s have no friends, and many even claim to have no acquaintances.”
5. “Paul may have coined tapeinophrosynē himself in Philippia…. ‘[H]umility realizes itself concretely as individual … renunciation of one’s own status possibilities in the service of the community….'” (Related: “[W]e dare not risk losing the special connection with the poor and broken. We may serve and empower them, but we are also blessed by them; they have something that we too need.” Related.)
6. “[M]aximal strength benefits are obtained from the use of heavy loads while muscle hypertrophy can be equally achieved across a spectrum of loading ranges.” (Related: “Western Europeans are collectively losing more than 1.6 million years of healthy life because of traffic noise.” Related. Related. Related.)
7. “Assuming that the Bible’s Shishak and Egypt’s Shoshenq I are one and the same, if Shoshenq I’s list does indeed refer to location named after King David, this 10th century monument could contain the earliest known reference to the Bible’s King David.”

More:

“How Much Blood Does Black Lives Matter Have on Its Hands?”

“Why was Paul eager to visit Spain (Romans 15:24)?”

You can’t trust the (debunking) experts. Nor the scientific experts, because “science [has become] slave to power.”

“Coups in the Bible”

“A human being is one thing, not two, albeit a thing with both corporeal and incorporeal activities. And since it is one thing, the question of interaction does not arise.”

“The question, ‘What doth hinder me to be baptized?’ was suggested immediately by the appearance of the water; but it could not have occurred to the eunuch had he not been previously instructed concerning the ordinance. He had learned not only that there was such an ordinance, but that it was the duty and the privilege of men to observe it when properly prepared for it.”

“Man of sorrows,” what a name:

1. “Perhaps a reasonable translation of Heb 11:1 could be: ‘Now faith is being sure of the reality of what is hoped for, proof after examination of what is not seen.'”
2. “We were told the legalization of same-sex marriage would strengthen the institution, so it’s doubly confusing that support for more easily ending it has increased dramatically since the judiciary legalized it.” (Related. Related.)
3. “Something started to happen though, my heart started softening. I became more uncomfortably aware of who I was before God, more fixed of the Lord I was speaking to. I remembered who He was and who I am.” (Related.)
4. I have added a page on finances and (for now) specifically bitcoin. (Related. Related. Related. Related. Related.)
5. “Why Does It Seem Like the Smartest People Are the Ones Who Reject Christianity?”
6. Clown World. Clown World. Clown World. Clown World. Clown World. Clown World. Clown World. Clown World. Clown World. Demon World. Demon World.
7. “How Can the ‘Apocrypha’ Help Me?”

More:

“Woke speech is simply a ruling-class dialect, which must be updated frequently to keep the lower orders from breaking the code and successfully imitating their betters.”

“The Jerusalem Temple on Mount Gerizim”

“Removing a law-created privilege … meant to subsidize ‘infant industries’ is not ‘regulation’, it is de-regulation.” (Related. Related.)

Some good thoughts here.

Louise Glück, “Aubade.” (Related. Related?)

“Only once in the Old Testament is the word ‘faithful’ applied to a human.” (Related.)

Love isn’t some place that we fall, it’s something that we do:

1. “In the context of Jeremiah 16, this prophecy referred to judgment…. But in its fulfillment in Christ’s ministry, the sense is switched. Now God, in Jesus, is sending out fishers and hunters to recover his people Israel as well as the nations.”
2. “Applied to any other group, this would sound like a monstrous euphemism for mass extermination & cultural annihilation.” (Related.)
3. “Let those who deny … the originality of the Gospel superscriptions in order to preserve their ‘good’ critical conscience, give a better explanation of the completely unanimous and relatively early attestation of these titles…. Such an explanation has yet to be given, and it never will be.” (Related. Related.)
4. You can’t trust the (news) experts. (Related.) You can’t trust the (international relations) experts. You can’t trust the (medical) experts. You (definitely) can’t trust the (nutritional) experts, or the (public health) experts: “A lot of quirky internet commentators were totally right about this pandemic at the start and recommended a lot of important, common-sense measures which … would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars…. [T]hese people were right and all the crazy bioethics people, public health bureaucrats, and academic epidemiologists were wrong.” And you shouldn’t trust the experts, anyway.
5. “[I]t seems like a pity, and more than a pity, and worse than a pity, with all that in the back of one’s head, to think that all that gets offered to us now, by guys like these, in books like this, is the pale, small, silly, nerdy accusation that religion is, I don’t know, dumb.”
6. “[A] lot of the motivation behind Defund the Police was that municipalities are going broke, so non-police government workers have been hoping to raid police budgets to preserve their own pay. It’s a perfectly logical reaction. Just too bad about all the dead bodies.” (Related.)
7. “We don’t love each other well when we’re worshiping idols.”

More:

“Even after controlling for demographic differences between married and cohabiting adults (such as gender, age, race, religion and educational attainment), married adults express higher levels of satisfaction, trust and closeness than those who are living with a partner.” (Related.)

“Israel seems to have evidence of using two alternative calendars!”

“California is the future of the US, and Latin America is the future of California.”

“What is the Letter of Aristeas?”

“Just as it is necessary to eat, it is necessary to sometimes not eat.” (Related.)

“When you see the evils of politics and this world coming at us, please be certain to remember who you are in Christ Jesus.”