I wouldn't want to live here but it would be a really cool study.
The electric fuel pump is installed.
It doesn't work, but it's installed.
The + side of the ignition coil is supposed to be switched power, but it isn't. I only know the pump works because I hot wired it directly to the battery and heard it BUZZZZZ. Alas, no fuel entered the filter in the engine compartment.
So all in all this hasn't been a rousing success. I'll go back to it tomorrow when my brain is fresh.
For all the railing against retailers opening on Thanksgiving Day it seems pretty obvious they wouldn't open if it was a money loser. The villain, if there is one, is on the other side of the glass entry doors.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo
Noel stopped by today and we scheduled Monday morning for me to go do some work at his house. He refuses to let me do it for him as a friend; he insists on paying me. It was not the usual conversation about compensation. I got the feeling it would violate some deeply held principle if he didn't pay me. That's too bad. It suggests he'll have trouble accepting a Gift.
"It's easier to give than to receive."
Every once in awhile it's necessary for a pastor, if he's going to do his job with integrity, to speak difficult truth. (Not just inconvenient truth.) A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with my adult class at Pathway, almost all of whom are parents of young children, about the problems with engaging in the Santa routine with their kids.
But wait! There's more!
Do you know about the "Elf on a Shelf?" If not, read here, down through the second paragraph, titled "Plot." Of course, parents move the elf each night after the kids go to bed to maintain the deception.
There is a long list of problems associated with the whole Santa and Elf on a Shelf routine and we talked through some of them, including the parental deception and inevitable discovery. We tell our kids not to lie but they will eventually discover mom and dad have been lying to them for years, all to suit our own purposes. (The elf is clearly a means for manipulating behavior through deception.)
But for Christians the more serious problem is the confusion of Santa and elves with God. The attributes of omnipresence, omniscience, and miraculous activity belong to God alone. We teach our children that in their classes at Pathway. If they then go home and look at that elf on the shelf who sees and knows everything, and can fly to the North Pole and back overnight, the inevitable result will be what theologians call syncretism. The truths of the Bible are blended with the myths of culture, and both are accepted as reality, as truth. Their Sunday School teacher tells them one thing ("only God...") while their parents tell them another.
The preach never knows how these kinds of discussion will go over. But true to form the good people of Pathway listened and took it to heart. I only got one report later; dad sat his kids down that afternoon and told them the truth. But everybody showed up the next week and sent their kids off to their Sunday School classes. That's significant because I told them the Santa/elf routine put those teachers in an impossible position and they shouldn't be expected to lie, even with their silence, to support an error at home.
All of that to say this:
Stuff happens. We ALL - me included - get sucked into the wrong stuff from time to time. A pastor only wants people who take the accountable life seriously and make course corrections when necessary. It's not about being perfect, it's about owning mistakes and fixing them. Given that kind of congregation a pastor's gonna be a happy camper.
So, is there an elf on your shelf?
No comments:
Post a Comment