“Only churches and bars are on that list” this article says referring to places concealed hand guns are banned in Arkansas.  Apparently they’re voting on lifting the ban.
I have to say, I’m all for 2nd amendment rights, but I really have to wonder what would make this necessary.  For meetings of presbytery I would understand, but for worship?

I’m sharing today’s quote, not so much for its wisdom or insight as the date and proof that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“The young people of today think of nothing but themselves.  They have not reverence for parents or old age.  They are impatient of all restraint.  They talk as if they know everything, and what passes for wisdom with us if foolishness to them”.

–Peter the monk, 1274

This was on John’s shared feeds this morning:

Should be interesting to the ruling in this case where a Nebraska Senator is suing God.

Read this at John Piper’s blog this morning.  Makes me think of how the ancients understood the connection between the good, the true and the beautiful.

I was reading Irenaeus’ ‘Against Heresies’ last night.  I’m in book one where Irenaeus lays out all the different gnostic beliefs, explaining in detail what they teach.  Not the most exciting reading, but it did have what has to be one of the funniest lines in the history of the Church’s writings, or at least during the Patristic period:

“But along with it there exists a power which I term a Gourd; and along with this Gourd there exists a power which again I term Utter-Emptiness. This Gourd and Emptiness, since they are one, produced (and yet did not simply produce, so as to be apart from themselves) a fruit, everywhere visible, eatable, and delicious, which fruit-language calls a Cucumber. Along with this Cucumber exists a power of the same essence, which again I call a Melon. These powers, the Gourd, Utter-Emptiness, the Cucumber, and the Melon, brought forth the remaining multitude of the delirious melons of Valentinus.” (Book I, ch XI)

 Anyway, in Book I Ch XXI, he mentions groups that initiates people through a ‘mystic rite’ of sexual acts followed by a baptism “Into the name of the unknown Father of the universe— into truth, the mother of all things—into Him who descended on Jesus—into union, and redemption, and communion with the powers.” What struck me in the passage was how the gnostic group’s dualistic view of body and soul was held with the worship of sex (as representing heavenly conjunctions) and the confusion of sexes as in the following passage where the son is to say :—“I am a vessel more precious than the female who formed you. If your mother is ignorant of her own descent, I know myself, and am aware whence I am, and I call upon the incorruptible Sophia, who is in the Father, and is the mother of your mother, who has no father, nor any male consort; but a female springing from a female formed you, while ignorant of her own mother, and imagining that she alone existed; but I call upon her mother.”

Looks like current challenges to orthodox views of the Holy Trinity, Baptism and our bodies aren’t so progressive after all.

Saw this at the Touchstone blog.

Apparently the Sundance Film Festival has premiered a film about bestiality. A review is here. I noted that the person who wrote the review used the terms ‘elegant’ and ‘beautiful’ to describe this movie on a subject the director describes as “the last taboo, on the boundary of something comprehensible.” Not long ago it would have been incomprehensible. The way things are going in a few years it will not only be ‘comprehensible’ but no longer taboo, and what is today unimaginable will be comprehensible. I also noted that twice the term ‘marriage’ was used as a metaphor to describe the movie’s style.