Joke of the Week
For the next few weeks the Joke of the Week will feature remarks made by Yogi Berra, the famed catcher for the New York Yankees in their glory years. “Yogi-isms,” as they are called, are so wrong yet so understandable. I hope you find them as funny as I and many others have.
“I really didn’t say everything I said.”
“You can’t think and hit at the same time.”
One of his most famous lines, spoken about a restaurant in St. Louis: “Nobody goes there anymore. Too crowded.”
“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”
“The only reason I need these gloves is ’cause of my hands.”
More next week.
A book review of The Crescent and the Cross
Danika Cooley has a blog, thinkingkidsblog.org, where among other things she reviews books for (primarily) home schooling parents. She just published a very kind and positive review of The Crescent and the Cross, Saluda Press’s book of Christian fiction for juvenile and teenage readers. If you wondered whether it was a book you ought to buy for your child (or grandchildren) read her review, then follow the Saluda Press link in the review; that will take you to the Buying My Books page of this blog, where you can buy it through PayPal using any major credit card. Your kids need something fun (and profitable) to read when they are immersed in school work.
BTW, if you order The Crescent and the Cross through PayPal and include your email address, I will email you a free study guide in Word to use with your child if you so choose.
Should the Antifa go after Joan Baez?
Many of you will remember Joan Baez, a folk singer of the Bob Dylan era (if you have to ask who Bob Dylan was, you are woefully uneducated.) Joan Baez would be considered a progressive in today’s political climate. But one of her hit songs was, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” The first person lyrics tell of the sufferings of one Virgil Cain, a Confederate sympathizer at least, if not a soldier: “Like my father before me, I took a rebel stand.” The song portrays the Confederate cause with sympathy. Are those who are quick to pull down the statues of historical persons who were slaveholders, fought for the Confederacy, or were otherwise racists ready to castigate Ms. Baez for her song? Will they burn her records, tapes, and CDs, and delete their downloads of her music? I think not, though it follows from their Jacobin logic (sic). They will abandon consistency because, as progressive radicals say, “There are no enemies on the left.” I’ll agree that some statues deserve to be removed, e.g., that of Ben Tillman on the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol–Google him and I think you will agree. Nevertheless, in my view the iconoclasm of the Antifa is motivated more by hatred, virtue-signaling, and peer pressure than anything else. Comments?
Luther’s 95 Theses for 21st Century Christians
- If remission of all penalties whatsoever could be granted to anyone at all, certainly it would be granted only to the most perfect, that is, to very few.
- For this reason most people are necessarily deceived by that indiscriminate and high-sounding promise of release.
In human affairs, pardons are granted to prisoners who have shown good behavior while incarcerated. Luther is saying that, likewise, only those who had been greatly sanctified by the fires of purgatory, that is, those who had not much more to go to achieve full sanctification, would be granted release from the rest of their sentence if such release were possible. Sanctification, after all, was the intended purpose of purgatory. Yet the pope promised “plenary remission of all penalties” (Thesis 20) to all who had obtained an indulgence because someone living purchased it for them, even to those whose process of sanctification in purgatory had scarcely begun.
Luther asserts that such promises are deceptive, first of all, because the Church’s penalties apply only to this life and cease with death (Theses 20 and 21), and secondly, because it is not reasonable to remit the penalties of purgatory until the sufferer had become nearly perfect.
Twenty-first century Christians need to believe the Apostle John, not the Catholic Church. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, John wrote, “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:10, emphasis added). John says nothing about confessing to a priest. He says nothing about being cleansed in purgatory. He asserts that if we confess our sins to God, he will cleanse us from all unrighteousness—there is no unrighteousness left over, not even venial sins, from which we need cleansing after death. It dishonors Christ and his work to say that there is still some sin to be expunged from our record before we can enter heaven.