Reflections on Our Summer

Hello, everyone. Sorry I've been gone. We (our computer, this is) contracted a nasty virus that sent pop-ups violently careening about the screen. They were particularly nasty and ill-mannered pop-ups that wouldn't go away no matter what you did.

But we (our computer, that is) are well now and ready to blog.

This week marks my last week of summer vacation. I am deeply thankful for all the magnficent blessings that God has given me during these months. We have had abundant work, helpful co-laborers, cooperative children, and plenty of time spent together as a family. Though I am assuredly not the world's most exciting daddy, I nonetheless am here and involved in the lives of my children.

All of my college student laborers went back to college, and then business picked back up again. Sigh.

We had a family mini-vacation to the Cities yesterday and today. We left on Wednesday mid-day and checked into a Country Inn and Suites somewhere east of St. Paul. It was a perfectly accommodating hotel with a pool and an attached restaurant. Around suppertime Ben and Emily met us and we drove to Hudson, WI for dinner together at a restaurant called Barker's. I enjoyed the food but everything else was a trial. The atmosphere was the type in which you can't hear your waitress, your children, your neighbor, or your food ("Don't eat me! Please don't eat me! I said DON'T EA-). Also we had to wait quite a time for a table and for a refreshment. We went swimming back at the hotel with no drownings and nothing else too frightening.

After continental breakfast at the Green Mill (I always LOVE continental breakfast... for an extremely skinny guy I really eat, and I with great enthusiasm almost all the time) we headed west to the Science Museum. Now, I will admit that the Science Museum contains many interesting things, but I am a big fan of productivity (almost none here) quiet (absolutely none here) and predictability (definitely none here). The kids were great and generally quite interested but the whole experience, including the much-hyped Star Wars exhibit, holds very little meaning or fascination for me. I am not a Star Wars fan and don't really perceive the delight that they seem to bring to others.

I also noted that the Science Museum faithfully teaches evolution every chance it gets. Placards throughout proclaim this creature or that fossil "60 million years old" and so forth. They also make speculations about species that survived and species that didn't and why that is so ("front teeth must have been useful to primates because..." or "perhaps the glyptodont became extinct because 3 million years ago was a period of rapid climatic change and it just couldn't keep up").

I would love to see some documentation... but of course there isn't any. Zilch. The claims about the ancient past are made with the gross audacity of, say, a Latin teacher lecturing on neurosurgery. It is a tragedy of epidemic proportions because thousands of children a day tour the place and read these profession, confident-sounding placards that quietly foster the assumption that the universe is purely materialistic.

As long as I'm ranting, let me further say that I'd love someone to admit that evolution is the necessary creation story for a particular worldview known as philosophical naturalism (a close cousin to secular humanism). Every thinking person's worldview includes some take-off of Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration.

Try it for philosophical naturalism:

CREATION-- Stuff evolved. We evolved.

FALL -- Extinction. Climate change. Nature vs. Man (maybe-- I'm fuzzy on this one)

REDEMPTION -- Science! Scientists! Freedom from truth claims of religion!

RESTORATION -- Overcoming the things that cause physical death/mental and emotional problems. Just a few years ago some scientist published on the idea of living forever... physically.


Now try the same four categories for Christianity and see what bold, rich, and accurate claims you get for each category. When I say accurate, I mean accurate to the experience you have of the world around you.

Well, I'm done for tonight. In-service on Monday, would you believe. Another year is starting again, and I'm here for it.