Skerritt Family Update

My grandfather, at age 93, has passed away. The man who survived extreme poverty, the Second World War, Juno Beach, a concentraition camp, raising a bevy of hungry boys, heart disease, three strokes, and liver failure died on Saturday morning, my birthday, by throwing himself into the Grand River.

Pray for me.

Two reasons more why I'm not Lutheran

After my foray into Neo-Puritanism, it was understandable and predictable that I should investigate Lutheranism. However I stayed in the Reformed churches, obviously. Here are some of the reasons why:

1. At the end of the day the Lutheran view of the Sacraments makes little sense. Asking a Lutheran about sacraments is a little like asking a grandmother about her grandkids, you're going to get an earful. Lutherans tend to say that they take Christ's words as they are concerning the Lord's Supper, namely "This is my body" with little or no interpretation. But do they? I don't think so. Lutherans do not believe that the elements of the sacrament, bread and wine are the Blood and Body of the Lord Jesus Christ. They believe it is "with" the elements. So it looks like at the end of the day Lutherans don't take their beloved "Words on Institution" as seriously as they'd have us believe.

What's so confusing about the whole thing to me is that after making all sorts of noise about why we ought to take Jesus' words literally they insist that the whole Christ is not present in the Eucharist. If you take the time to read how and why Lutherans can say this (Kelmet Preus' "The Fire and the Staff" is especially helpful on this) you will see some use of Magisterial Reason to put it mildly, even to thomistic extremes. The only church which takes Jesus' words literally at this point is the Roman Catholic church.

2. Law/Gospel Preaching tends to get tedious. A few months ago I was visiting a friend in a town where there was no conservative Reformed church. So I went to a congregation of the Lutheran Church-Canada (the Canadian sister church of the LCMS). As soon as the minister announced that the text for his sermon was going to be on Mark 2, I could practically outline the sermon for myself. After hearing Todd Wilkin's sermon reviews I knew where the sermon was going. We heard about how Sabbath observance won't save you. We heard that the Pharisees were trusting in their own righteousness. Stuff we all knew. During the sermon I was thinking about all the things that the sermon could have said. How about how God's resting and our resting is related to our holiness? How about how resting on the day of Christ's day of resurrection relates to our resurrection and how after which we will enter the eternal rest? "No" says the hyper-lutheran "that's not preaching the cross." No kidding.

This is why I've come to believe that that Historical-Redemptive method of preaching is superior to the Law/Gospel method. In the former, you get salvation history as it unfolds throughout the history of God's people. In the latter you get the cross, and almost always the cross only. Sola Creux is not a Reformation doctrine.

Childhood Friends

I don't think we ever have friends like we do when we're kids. The other day, a holiday here in the frigid north, I wrote a list of all of my friends where I was a kid, or at least the ones I remember. Here's some reflections:

1. Misa Piercey. Misa and I were friends back when we were in grade 6. We used to laugh a lot. She, however has some neurological problems and as I grew older and more sophisticated the gap widened. The last I heard about her she was at Sheridan studying mechanics which is odd inasmuch as she's a woman and she's about 5'1. I remember her number so I think I'll give her a call sometime.

2. Chris McConnell. Admittedly I didn't like this friend very much. He was always my "plan B" so to speak. He was totally obsessed with Power Rangers to the extent that he still watched the show and collected the figurines when he was in grade 11. We had very little in common, although we were in the Sea Cadets together and he was a favourite of my dad. The last time I saw him was in a convenience store not far from his house. We made eye contact and I think we both knew that neither of us wanted a little insincere little reunion in the middle of 7-11. A few years ago I think his dad died and his mom moved back to Newfoundland. I have no idea what he's doing.

3. Chris Gainy. Of all the friends I've ever had he was by far the coolest. He introduced me to "Kris Kross" and "Beastie Boys." Though we were friends for only a year I think that he helped me to become much more confident. Last I heard he got someone pregnant and drives a forklift. Good thing the coolness didn't rub off on me.

4. Jason Foote. This guy was probably my best friend. He was cool, but not really in the in crowd like Chris was. He and I got kicked out of pretty much every store in out neighbourhood for causing some kind of raucous mayhem. Once he snuck a bottle of some disgusting alcohol from his mother's stash and we sat in my backyard drinking it pretending to enjoy it until he vomited. We spent time together doing nothing specific. He'd pretend to be interested in Star Trek and watch it with me and I'd pretend to be interested in WWF just so we could hang out. We were friends from grade 4 until grade 9 when we went to different high schools. He fell into a gang (a real gang) and I became the Mayor of Nerdsville. I heard from a friend that he's into drugs big-time. I'd contact him but I have a feeling that I'd become somewhat disappointed.

5. Mike Durham. This guy was quite odd. There are no real words to describe how strange this guy was. At first it was funny and then it was scary. Needless to say I stopped hanging around him. He's living in Hamilton and involved with some type of heavy metal band. I have no interest in hearing from him again.

6. John Stone. John and I did a lot of mischievous things together like hiding in a deep freezer full of pies at school or incessantly making fun of our teacher's South African accent. I still have limited contact with John. He's living on the street somewhere in the Annex area of Toronto and does very heavy drugs. Sometimes I meet him and take him out for some food. This is tragic because I think that this guy is smart enough to do anything.

7. Chris Manton. Out of all my friends, this one was the "bad boy." (We all were pretty bad, but him especially) I once asked this guy to throw a cinder block through the windshield of a parked car and he did it with no hesitation. I seriously think that he suffered from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. He's doing drugs someplace I'm sure.

8. Chris Sheardown. I was good friends with this guy for a while. I went to his house pretty much every day after school. His mother was really odd though. I ran into her a few months ago and she stopped me in the mall. I asked her how Chris was doing and she said "Ah, he's no good anymore." I didn't ask anymore questions.

I'm amazed sometimes that I didn't end up in the same situation as many of these people. I attribute this to the following factors:

1. I was afraid of my father. Unlike some parents, I knew that if a came home with cigarette
smoke on my breath for example, that there'd be a heafty fee to pay at home. So heafy that I knew that I couldn't afford it. It was all economics. The price of running wild was too expensive.

2. Every summer of my childhood I was gone to camp. I was never around. Within a week of school letting up I was gone for 7 weeks and wouldn't return until one week before school began. All kids know that summer is prime-time for trouble but the difference was that I was making trouble in Muskoka and was being supervised by 17 year-olds.

3. I went to a different high school. All the kids in the neighbourhood go to the local high school called Meadowvale. I went to Graydon, where the gifted kids go.

4. I was in private school for grades 5 to 8. When your dad pays $12,000 a year to send you to school he makes sure you're a highly motivated learner.

5. My family was better-off economically than most of my friends. More money sometimes means less trouble for the kids demographically speaking. I don't know why this is but I think it's true.

6. I was preserved by God. 'Nuff said.

Our help...

When I go to church I'm in the habit of writing down the liturgy with my sermon notes. I think this makes sense because God is "speaking" to us throughout the worship Service. Here's the order of Service from a Sunday two years back:

Votum: Ps. 124:8
Greeting: Rev. 1:4:5a
Singing: Ps. 33 stanzas 1,3,5
10 Words of the Covenant: Exodus 20:1-17
Singing: Ps. 107 stanzas 5,6
Prayer
Reading: Genesis 3
Singing: Ps. 68 stanzas 1,2
Text: Genesis 3:15
Sermon: "The Gospel of the Antithesis"
i. For Satan's punishment
ii. For the Church's benefit
iii. For God's glorification
Singing: Hymn 37 (Based on many passages in the NT)
Prayer
Collection: Canadian Reformed World Relief Fund
Singing: Psalm 116 stanzas 1,6,7
Benediction: Numbers 6:24-26

Yet another day

The more I reflect upon my Christian life, the more I realize that there's no real bunch of Christians anywhere that I'll fit in with. I'm simply different from any of the Christians who I've met so-far.

When I first became a Christian I attended a garden variety evangalical church with charismatic leanings. I, at first, danced, sang at the top of my lungs, and said those pietisic catch phrases that in retrospect make me cringe. Then one day I was at the weekly youth service and began thinking that the fact that this service was almost exactly like an Elton John concert I attended the week before didn't really bode well for what was going on. I approached the Youth Pastor and told him what I thought and he invited me not to come back to the youth meeting and I gladly conformed to his request.

I attended this church for about six more months, months when I devoted myself to reading the Bible in it's entirety. I was shocked to discover that the Bible was so interesting and was delighted that I could understand it without some kind of anointing that no one I asked could speak intelligently about. I left home to work as a tour guide for the summer and I attended a Bible-Believing Independant Fundamentalist Baptist Church in North Bay Ontario. After this I was a committed fundamentalist and began attending a fundamentalist church here in Mississauga. I loved the fact that with each week I could go to church and expect to hear something that wasn't watered down in psychology but has strait from the text, as it were. I was even toying with the idea of being a pastor with the Independant Baptists. Fundamentalists, however, tend to define themselves by what they're not rather than they are. I remember visiting a fundamentalist church in Toronto and the pastor in discussion told me that his church (yes, his church) was "Against Billy Graham-ism, NIV-ism, and Women in the Pulpit-ism." It seemed like no one from within evangalicalism, Roman Catholicism or Mainstream Protestantism could break wind without someone David W. Cloud, Peter Ruckman or The Sword of the Lord writing an article that was an offence to academic documentation, reason and grammar. So by the time the second semester of university rolled along, I'd elected to find another church to worship in.

I briefly (4 months) attended a high Anglo-Catholic church in Toronto but left when the Priest said that a male God bears no relevance to a woman. So I wasn't a liberal, I decided.

One day I was in Second Cup and a young man came up to me and asked me if I was reading my Bible. "Well, I've got it in my hand." I said. It turned out that this guy was Kiernan Stringer, the pastor of Living Hope Reformed Presbyterian Church in Toronto and that this church was meeting in the building where I lived. That Sunday I went to that church and attended there every Sunday for about two years. I loved the preaching and the acapella psalm-singing. However things got rocky when I began struggling with certian sins in my life. It seemed as though every time I went to church I'd leave with no assurance. I wrestled with this for about six months after which I left Living Hope with their blessing. In retrospect I'm not sure I had legitimate reasons for leaving.

One day I found out about the Canadian Reformed Church of Brampton when I happened to drive by it. I went the following Sunday. I found that Reverend Berends' preaching was hard to follow. But soon I got to understand it and discovered that I like Dutch Reformed theology better. So that's that.

And now for something completely different...

If you're here it's because I love and/or like you and I'd very much enjoy having you join-in my latest adventure in the Blogosphere!

This blog will be somewhat different than Dorting Thomas, however I think it'll be more personal and I'll avoid getting into debates with people like the plague (there's only so much that can be learned from a seventeen year-old Seventh-Day Adventist or a guy who thinks that the Pope lives in his mother's basement in a townhouse in Hoboken, New Jersey). My spelling and grammar aren't as good as they should be, especially for a grad student so you'll have to bear with me in that department.

Perhaps some of the things you'll notice when reading this blog are that I've got no clue what to do with my life, I'm into food in a huge way, I'm a Christian who, while being somewhat open-minded, is nonetheless incapable of countenancing theological liberalism.

Let the disco(urse) begin!

Cheers,

Tom