In a Nutshell

Tidbits – November 2024

Burke’s best

Most have probably run across Edmund Burke’s most famous quote: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Quite the punchy point, but like all wisdom, a man can sidestep it without too much effort: maybe good men need to get busy, but what can little ol’ me do? Well, Burke had a response to this sort of thinking too: “No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”

My new favorite knock-knock joke

Part 1
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Cows.
Cows who?
No, no, cows don’t who, they mooooo!

Part 2
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Owls.
Owls who?
Indeed they do.

Popsicle babysitting

A few years back, this was quite a thing in some Canadian Reformed Churches – popsicle babysitting. The premise is that every church has a lot of mothers in need of babysitting, who are also willing to do some babysitting. So every mom who wants to sign up is given 30 popsicle sticks, with each stick worth an hour of babysitting for one child. If you want another mother to babysit your four children for two hours, you’ll have to “pay” her eight sticks. That mom would then have 38 sticks to “spend” and you would be down to 22. If you quickly become low on sticks that means that you had better start babysitting someone else’s kids to build up your stick reserve. All babysitting requests and offers are handled via group emails. As one of the organizing mothers put it, “This gives you the option to have a ‘guilt-free’ sitter” because they don’t cost you a cent. So you can go out and have a good, inexpensive date night, or bible study, or doctor’s appointment, or whatever!

I don't know if this is still a thing, but if not, maybe it should be again.

10 truths from a man with one eye

Vivek Ramaswamy is a part of Donald Trump’s incoming government, earning his spot there with his uncommon amount of common sense, and his impressive ability to articulate it.

As an observant Hindu who rejects Jesus as Savior, he is, however, blind to what matters most. Still, a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind is going to be able to see far better than most, even if his sight is still impaired. In a discussion with Tucker Carlson he shared that he holds to 10 truths, and he was able to articulate all 10 off the tip of his tongue:

• God is real
• There are 2 genders
• Fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity
• Reverse racism is racism
• An open border is not a border
• Parents determine the education of their children
• The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind
• Capitalism lifts us up from poverty
• There are three branches of government in the United States, not four
• And the US Constitution is the strongest and greatest guarantor of freedom in human history

God has given us His Word to allow us to see even more clearly, and He charges us in 1 Peter 3:15 to always be ready with an answer for the hope that is in us. So, if we were asked to articulate our own lists of truths, would we be ready? And what would our one, two, or ten truths be?

Truth vs. tolerance

“If anybody comes along espousing some message and asking for tolerance, you can be sure it’s error because error demands tolerance, whereas truth demands scrutiny.”

– John MacArthur

Ventilation

by Jay Adams

Not too long ago there was a psychological theory called “ventilation.” I’m not sure whether or not it has died out everywhere yet. But theory or no theory, it’s still seems to be a popular idea – If you’ve got something churning inside, you’d better get it out, for your own good.

“What’s wrong with that?”

Well, several things. I think I’ll just mention two. First, the self-centeredness of it is apparent. Who cares what happens to the other guy when I take out my ire on him—I’m the one who counts!

“Well, I can see that. What’s the second thing?”
Let me read you what God says about the issue in Proverbs 29:11: “A stubborn fool fully ventilates his anger, but the wise, holding it back, quiets it.”

“Wow! Didn’t know God had spoken about the matter!”

Quite explicitly. Who wants to make a fool of himself? And it doesn’t hurt you to “hold it back” as the Freudians thought, either. In fact the more you work yourself up into a lather that finally spills out, the worse things get – not the better. Not only for you – but for everyone around you. And first thing you know, you have to go around seeking forgiveness. To vent your anger is foolish in every way you can imagine. For sure, ventilation isn’t an option for the believer. Something to think about, eh?

“Yea!”

SOURCE: Reprinted with permission from Jay Adams’ June 1, 2009 entry at www.nouthetic.org/blog.

High view of sex

It’s an irony that chastity is portrayed in today’s popular fiction and film as being a matter of prudishness, as if only those who hate sex would fail to indulge in it whenever and with whomever. It is not the chaste, but their opposite – the promiscuous – that can best be likened to sex-hating prudes. The prude and the promiscuous both share a low view of sex: the prude thinking it something so unattractive as to be done without, the promiscuous thinking it so ordinary as to be done with everyone and anyone.

The chaste, however, think sex is special. So special in fact, that we need to protect it, treating it as we would gold. We reserve it as a special gift as to be shared only with our intimate other, and even then, only after promises have been made, and two lives have been bound together. We don’t hate sex; we treasure it, protect it and love it!

A one-question test on the 5th Commandment

“Do you honor your mother and father? I’ll ask you one question to see if you do… Is your room clean? What does it mean to honor them? To obey them, right?”
– Earl Taylor Jr., an American Civics teacher, to a class of students who all seemed to think they honored their parents, but most failed this one-question test.

Post-secondary miseducation isn’t new

When I hear from nieces and nephews about the woke nonsense being pitched to them in university today, I can offer a strange bit of encouragement: at least it’s nothing new.

Two decades back, it wasn’t transgenderism, but another ideology that was not to be questioned. At least one of your profs was going to make you ingest Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth documentary, which had a generation worried about the planet’s certain, and imminent demise! It didn’t matter if you were taking English, Engineering, Medicine or Physical Education, you were going to see it!

Three decades ago, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. had this harsh evaluation, which seems every bit as topical today:

“In college one is exposed to a vast amount of information that is quite untrue, and it is most unjust that one should have to demonstrate one’s mastery of untruths to graduate – one has to go even further to graduate with honors.”

And William F. Buckley Jr. articulated his own indictment of post-secondary education more than seventy years ago:

“I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University. Not, heaven knows, because I hold lightly the brainpower or knowledge or generosity or even the affability of the Harvard faculty: but because I greatly fear intellectual arrogance, and that is a distinguishing characteristic of the university which refuses to accept any common premise. In the deliberations of two thousand citizens of Boston I think one would discern a respect for the laws of God and for the wisdom of our ancestors which does not characterize the thought of Harvard professors – who, to the extent that they believe in God at all, tend to believe He made some terrible mistakes which they would undertake to rectify; and, when they are paying homage to the wisdom of our ancestors, tend to do so with a kind of condescension toward those whose accomplishments we long since surpassed."

Spurgeon on the need for earnest preaching

“It is an ill case when the preacher:
Leaves his hearers perplex'd –
Twixt the two to determine:
‘Watch and pray,' says the text,
‘Go to sleep,’ says the sermon.”

“You may depend upon it that you may make men understand the truth if you really want to do so; but if you are not in earnest, it is not likely that they will be. If a man were to knock on my door in the middle of the night, and when I put my head out of the window to see what was the matter, he should say, in a very quiet, unconcerned way, ‘There is a fire at the back part of your house,’ I should have very little thought of any fire, and should feel inclined to empty a jug of water over him.”

SOURCES: C.H. Spurgeon’s Lectures to my Students and The Soul Winner

Lyric o’ the month

Addison Road’s What do I know of Holy?

I made You promises a thousand times
I tried to hear from Heaven
But I talked the whole time
I think I made You too small
I never feared You at all, No
If You touched my face would I know You?
Looked into my eyes could I behold You?

I guess I thought that I had figured You out
I knew all the stories and I learned to talk about
How You were mighty to save
Those were only empty words on a page
Then I caught a glimpse of who You might be
The slightest hint of You brought me down to my knees

What do I know of You
Who spoke me into motion?
Where have I even stood
But the shore along Your ocean?
Are You fire? Are You fury?
Are You sacred? Are You beautiful?
What do I know? What do I know of Holy?

What do I know of Holy?
What do I know of wounds that will heal my shame?
And a God who gave life "its" name?
What do I know of Holy?
Of the One who the angels praise?
All creation knows Your name
On earth and heaven above
What do I know of this love?