Competition

Ugh-oh... after feeling very pleased to have defaulted to a positivist and comfortable name for the blog, I saw, upon searching out the phrase, that it's been taken by a fellow in New York. So I'll be finding another one. Soon as I get around to it.

Also secured this. Will get around to that as well.

I'm going to surmise that the pastor in New York convenes with the American Baptists; the church where I presently have membership does so with the Southern Baptists. I have belonged to churches of both conventions and find it most grievous that the fissure has not been resolved. It was over Toby the manservant.

Toby was a slave whose "owner" committed to a mission in Africa in the early 1840s. When his submission went before the mission board in Boston, the principals were not amenable to his having Toby along in that circumstance. Hence, in a huff, slave-owning Baptists, who accommodated themselves with a perception of sanction for bonded service (to put a fine point on it) in Scripture, reconvened in satisfaction of their misperception, for, if salvation is of the Jews, then He who brought His people out of slavery is Lord, no?

Which brings us to a crux!

Is a Christian but a Jew liberated from all these misguided authorities? As a Baptist, I'd volunteer that there's something to that; must one become a God-fearing, convicted Jew before "becoming" a Christian? I think so.

Well, I look forward to finishing the book mentioned. Off the top of my head I'd say, in a historical sense, that it was so-called Greco-Romanism which perverted Christianity with its neurotic conflicts and violent disputations - which led to dhimmis being enslaved in dreadful fear of manic ghazis. Sound familiar?

He has told you, O man, what is good;

And what does the LORD require of you

but to do justice, to love kindness,

And to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:8

Before Aardvark

Finished The Lunar Men several weeks ago. It was related how many of the things we take for granted, even as I sit here and tap an electronic keyboard and think of Dr. Franklin and his kite, were just beginning to be understood. That's always an intellectual challenge, to understand how things are, and what exactly they are in a premise along with, "How goes it, compadre?" A contact switch sends a binary pulse of electrons to relay in the processor, etc., but the sum of the parts and persons, all powered up, tends toward a will to more power, doesn't it? That's how I'd reduce the striving, and, well, I'd rather not.

Contemporaneously to those fellows, Dr. Johnson was compiling his dictionary. (Henry Hitchings has done up a read about that.) Very nicely done. A single-minded individual he was. He found it a drudge, but he accomplished what he set out to do. Oats! Used to be Quaker. Now Sprouts has got some excellent blends in the barrels. How low-tech can you get?

Golly if I haven't gone through several books (Love the free downloads.) since my last post, including one about bibliophilia!

So, replete of this, what have I got to say?
I'd rather not.