The Internet Monk Archives

Preparing for the New Church Year (1)

The Advent and Triumph of Christ, Memling

Note from CM: In 2010, we did a series on “Church Year Spirituality.” November is the month when we complete the annual liturgical cycle and prepare for a new Church Year, which begins the first Sunday in Advent (Nov. 30 this year). For the next four Sundays, I will run these posts again to help those of us who follow the cycle prepare for marking sacred time in the year to come. For those who are unfamiliar with this practice, or who wish to learn more about it, I hope these posts will be informative and encouraging.

• • •

Christians who follow the liturgical calendar will begin a new year of living in the Gospel with the commencement of Advent on Nov. 30.

The diagram on the right gives an overview of the annual Church calendar.

Advent is the season when we prepare for Christ’s coming. (4 weeks)
Christmastide is the season when we celebrate Christ’s incarnation. (12 days)
In Epiphany, we remember how Christ made God’s glory known to the world. (up to 9 weeks)
The Lenten season leads us to the Cross, the climactic event in Holy Week, which concludes Lent. (40 days plus Sundays)
Eastertide (the Great 50 Days) celebrates Christ’s resurrection, new life, and his ascension to glory. It concludes on the 50th day, Pentecost, the day of the Spirit’s outpouring.
The Season after Pentecost (or Trinity, or Ordinary Time) is the time of the church, when by the Spirit we live out the life of the Gospel in community and in the world. (up to 29 weeks)

I don’t know why so many Christian groups think they need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to “discipleship programs.” This time-tested annual pattern for the life of individual believers and the Church together that is focused on Christ, organized around the Gospel, and grounded in God’s grace, is sheer genius. It is simple enough for a child. It offers enough opportunities for creativity and flexibility that it need never grow old. Each year offers a wonderful template for learning to walk with Christ more deeply in the Gospel which brings us faith, hope, and love.

My favorite book on church year spirituality is Robert Webber’s Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year. Here is his summary of the subject:

Ancient-Future Time presents the historical understanding of the Christian year as life lived in the pattern of death and resurrection with Christ. This spiritual tradition was developed in the early church and has been passed down in history through the worship of the church. It enjoys biblical sanction, historical staying power, and contemporary relevance. Through Christian-year spirituality we are enabled to experience the biblical mandate of conforming to Christ. The Christian year orders our formation with Christ incarnate in his ministry, death, burial, resurrection, and coming again through Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost. In Christian-year spirituality we are spiritually formed by recalling and entering into his great saving events. (p. 21f)

In today’s post I will merely list five primary reasons why I think it advantageous for Christians to form their spiritual lives — their walk with God through Christ — around the liturgical year. Then, throughout the month on subsequent Sundays, we will take these points and expand upon them. We will continue exploring and discussing this over the next two weeks as we prepare for our new Church Year to begin on Nov. 30.

Five Reasons to Practice Church Year Spirituality

It enables us to live in God’s Story. Church Year spirituality forms Christian people around the story of redemption in Christ. It does not focus on “principles” or “steps” or “programs” for spiritual growth. It is thoroughly Jesus-shaped and uses the biblical story to conform our lives to his. As Israel was shaped by their story of slavery, redemption, covenant, and Promised Land, so the New Israel is formed by the story of Messiah.

It keeps the main thing the main thing. Church Year spirituality is Christ-centered. It is shaped around the events of his incarnation, ministry, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and the outpouring of his Spirit. At every turn we see Jesus, we hear Jesus, we follow Jesus.

It recognizes that one’s calendar forms one’s life. Church Year Spirituality is down-to-earth, utterly realistic about the day to day, season to season patterns of life that shape our behavior. All our lives we have developed habits by the way we mark and use our time. A spirituality formed around the Church Year is designed to form our habits around following Jesus. We take the place of disciples, and walk through the same experiences they had as they lived with Jesus day in and day out, season after season, over the course of three years.

It links personal spirituality with worship, family, and community. Church Year Spirituality recognizes both the individual journey and the corporate pilgrimage. What happens on Sundays is of a piece with what happens during the week as our corporate worship and our daily lives as individuals and families are shaped around the story of Jesus.

It provides a basis of unity and common experience for Christians everywhere. Our unity with other Christians is in the Gospel story. This is summarized in the Apostles’ Creed and the other creeds of the church. Propositional doctrinal statements have their place as ways to express more detailed understandings of the meaning and significance of God’s saving acts, but our unity with other believers is in Christ. We celebrate this throughout the year when churches of various traditions and denominations celebrate the Church Year and conform their worship and congregational lives to it.

This is by way of introduction. On the Sundays to come, we will examine these points and other matters related to marking the Christian Year.

When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” (John 1:38-39)

It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. (Col 1:28)

Saturday Ramblings: Nov 1, 2014

SATURDAY RAMBLINGS: November 1, 2014

Welcome to our new format for Saturday Ramblings. Bigger pictures, more quotes, fewer editorial comments so that you can respond to words directly from the horses’ mouths, a summary of the week that was and is from Chaplain Mike’s perspective — I hope you’ll find that it’s a veritable potpourri of enjoyment.

For those of you who might be new to Internet Monk, each Saturday we load up the family Rambler and head to the country where we can traipse down cyberspace trails together looking for interesting flora and fauna.

This was Jeff Dunn’s brilliant idea back when he was running the iMonastery. Each Saturday morning, he would sit out in the driveway behind the steering wheel of the Rambler, honking the horn until the rest of us stumbled out of the house and piled in, fighting over who got shotgun and the window seats. Sadly, Jeff has moved on, but we’ve tried our best to keep this family tradition alive week after week.

We’ve never had a contest to see how many folks we could fit in the old family truckster, but there’s always room for more and so we’re glad you’ve joined us. Feel free to play the license plate game or “I Spy” as we travel, but please don’t ask, “Are we there yet?”

If I hear that too many times, I swear I’ll turn this car right around and go home.

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings: Nov 1, 2014”

Lead Us Not Into Temptation… But Deliver Us From Evil

There have been more than a few comments this week about the Devil, demons, and evil. All of which started me thinking of a recent study I had done with a small group on the Lord’s prayer.

The Lord’s prayer is familiar to all of us. Many of us have said it a thousand times or more. I don’t know if you have ever heard a sermon on the Lord’s prayer, or looked at it in a bible study or small group, but there is an incredible amount of richness packed into a few short verses. The sentence that I was reminded of this week was: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Did you realize that there is the underlying assumption express here that God leads us into temptation. Jesus is the speaker, and it parallels his experiences in the early part of his ministry. Perhaps the following was what Jesus was thinking about when he taught this prayer.

At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness,and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him. – Mark 1: 12-13

Michael Spencer once wrote:

The most striking thing about this passage is the verb ekballo used by Mark to indicate how the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the desert. Mark uses this verb 17 times, often in the context of exorcisms. The force of the verb is not captured by the NIV’s “sent”. Better is the NASB “impelled.” We are not to think that Jesus is reluctant to experience this chapter of his life, but to see the strong hand of the Spirit leading Jesus in his ministry. The Spirit of the Lord is truly “upon” him and we read of similar strong directions by the Spirit in both the Old and New Testaments. John’s gospel records many statements of Jesus explaining that he is in the world to do and say exactly what he is directed by the Father. We are not to think of Jesus as a puppet, but we are also not to think of the Holy Spirit as anyone less than the sovereign God! God’s Spirit is the mightiest of powers and we should expect strong leadership of the Holy Spirit in those things that are in the plan and purpose of God.

James 1:13 tells us that no one is tempted by God, but as Job can attest, God can certainly allow tempting to take place. In the case of Jesus, there appears to have been an appointment with temptation orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. James, interestingly enough doesn’t ascribe temptation to the Devil, but to our own lustful desires. Peter, on the other hand, is much more upfront about Satan’s role.

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. – 1 Peter 5:8

I think James and Peter both have a perspective on the big picture. I know that when I am tired, that is not alert and sober minded, I am more easily tempted by food. For those of you who are old enough to remember it, one of the catch phrases of the ’70s was, “The Devil made me do it”, coined and popularized by the late Flip Wilson. I can remember debates and sermons in those years discussing how much blame should be attributed to the Devil, and how much should be attributed to our own sinful desires. (Feel free to continue the debate in the comments below.)

The second part of the phrase also has its own interesting twist. While I learned the Lord’s prayer, I learned the version that included the phrase “deliver us from evil.” Or at least that is what it says in certain translations, not to mention the form used in Catholic and Anglican churches. Most translations now express the second part of the sentence as “deliver us from the evil one”. The Greek is literally “the evil”, leaving us to wonder what Jesus had in mind. Scholars are divided, and we see that expressed in our translations. Most scholars however are of the opinion that it is more that a generic evil that is being referred to here, but rather a reference to Satan himself. This too would parallel Jesus’ experience in the wilderness as the evil he faced was Satan himself. Could he have been talking about some other particular evil, like the persecution that his followers would face? It doesn’t appear to be likely, as Matthew doesn’t use the phrase elsewhere in that manner.

So those were the thoughts that I was ruminating on this week. What do you think? Do you see God playing a role in temptation? Did the Devil make me do it? Or am I responsible for my own actions? Jesus appears to speak of evil personified. Do you agree with that interpretation? How tied together do you see the ideas of personified evil and general evil? As always your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Screwtape on the Existence of Demons

Whenever we consider the subject of demonology, it is hard to ignore the contributions of C.S. Lewis. In the modern era, few have stimulated the imagination with regard to the spiritual realm as much as the author of The Screwtape Letters. The book, dedicated to his friend and colleague J.R.R. Tolkien, begins with two quotes:

The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn. (Luther)

The devill . . . the prowde spirite . . . cannot endure to be mocked. (Thomas More)

This Lewis proceeds to do in masterful literary fashion. Through witty epistles, he captures the cleverness and wiles of Satan’s agents as well as their ultimate shortsightedness and folly. This series of letters and memos comes from a senior demon (Screwtape) to a younger protege, his nephew Wormwood — a “Junior Tempter” — regarding Wormwood’s assignment to damn the soul of a human being known only as “the Patient.”

A portion of one of the letters pertinent to our discussions this week deals with modern humanity’s view of the existence of spirits and the Devil. Here is Screwtape’s counsel about how to best exploit that.

My Dear Wormwood,

I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least, not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The “Life Force”, the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits” – then the end of the war will be in sight. But in the meantime we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that “devils” are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.

Chapter VII

Luther: Living in a “Halloween” World

And though this world with devils fill’d
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath will’d
His truth to triumph through us.

• Martin Luther, trans. Frederick Hedge

Brother Martin lived in God’s presence, but they were generally three, for the Devil was seldom absent.

• G.W. Foote

• • •

The world in which Martin Luther lived and led a Reformation was a magical one in which spirits filled the common imagination. The woodcut above by Lucas Cranach (1512), who later did many illustrations on behalf of Reformation causes, pictures a folkloric world of dark woods and the threatening presence of mythic creatures like the werewolf, here seen devouring a peasant woman’s family. Halloween was not a dress-up holiday to them, but an ever-present imaginative reality.

In Heiko A. Oberman’s remarkable study of the Reformer, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, the author contends that we cannot understand the good monk without accepting that he was a man “raised with the devil.” Oberman argues that it was not only his mother, whom Luther’s enemies described as a backwards peasant woman who introduced young Martin to a world full of demons. Indeed, the rumor they spread included the tale that the boy was conceived in a bathhouse through intercourse between his mother and the Devil himself! But belief in spirits and witchcraft and the devil were not simply the superstitions of ignorant peasants. Oberman says even the most erudite humanists of the time maintained such beliefs.

Today, I share with you a quote from Heiko A. Oberman, setting forth Luther’s mindset.

Luther’s world of thought is wholly distorted and apologetically misconstrued if his conception of the Devil is dismissed as a medieval phenomenon and only his faith in Christ retained as relevant or as the only decisive factor. Christ and the Devil were equally real to him: one was the perpetual intercessor for Christianity, the other a menace to mankind till the end. To argue that Luther never overcame the medieval belief in the Devil says far too little; he even intensified it and lent to it additional urgency: Christ and Satan wage a cosmic war for mastery over church and world. No one can evade involvement in this struggle. Even for the believer there is no refuge — neither monastery nor the seclusion of the wilderness offer him a chance for escape. The Devil is the omnipresent threat, and exactly for this reason the faithful need the proper weapons for survival.

There is no way to grasp Luther’s milieu of experience and faith unless one has an acute sense of his view of Christian existence between God and the Devil: without a recognition of Satan’s power, belief in Christ is reduced to an idea about Christ — and Luther’s faith becomes a confused delusion in keeping with the tenor of his time.

Attempts are made to offer excuses for Luther by pointing out that he never doubted the omnipotence of God and thus determined only narrow limits for the Devil’s activities. Luther himself would have been outraged at this view: the omnipotent God is indeed real, but as such hidden from us. Faith reaches not for God hidden but for God revealed, who, incarnate in Christ, laid himself open to the Devil’s fury. At Christmas God divested himself of his omnipotence — the sign given the shepherds was a child “wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12) . To Luther Christmas was the central feast: “God for us.” But that directly implies “the Devil against us.” This new belief in the Devil is such an integral part of the Reformation discovery that if the reality of the powers inimical to God is not grasped, the incarnation of Christ, as well as the justification and temptation of the sinner, are reduced to ideas of the mind rather than experiences of faith. That is what Luther’s battle against the Devil meant to convey. Centuries separate Luther from a modern world which has renounced and long since exorcised the Devil, thus finding it hard to see the difference between this kind of religion and medieval witchcraft. But Luther distinguished sharply between faith and superstition. He understood the hellish fears of his time, then discovered in the Scriptures the true thrust and threat of Satan and experienced himself the Devil’s trials and temptations. Consequently he, unlike any theologian before or after him, was able to disperse the fog of witches’ sabbath and sorcery and show the adversary for what he really was: violent toward God, man and the world. To make light of the Devil is to distort faith. “The only way to drive away the Devil is through faith in Christ, by saying: ‘I have been baptized, I am a Christian.”’

The following chronicle of his own encounter with the Devil as a poltergeist has a clearly medieval ring:

It is not a unique, unheard-of thing for the Devil to thump about and haunt houses. In our monastery in Wittenberg I heard him distinctly. For when I began to lecture on the Book of Psalms and I was sitting in the refectory after we had sung matins, studying and writing my notes, the Devil came and thudded three times in the storage chamber [the area behind the stove] as if dragging a bushel away. Finally, as it did not want to stop, I collected my books and went to bed. I still regret to this hour that I did not sit him out, to discover what else the Devil wanted to do. I also heard him once over my chamber in the monastery.

The final passage, with its pointed formulation and its underlying expression of contempt for the Devil, was amazing at the time and is overlooked today: “But when I realized that it was Satan, I rolled over and went back to sleep again.” It is not as a poltergeist that the Devil discloses his true nature, but as the adversary who thwarts the Word of God; only then is he really to be feared. He seeks to capture the conscience, can quote the Scriptures without fault, and is more pious than God — that is satanical.

When I awoke last night, the Devil came and wanted to debate with me; he rebuked and reproached me, arguing that I was a sinner. To this I replied: Tell me something new, Devil! I already know that perfectly well; I have committed many a solid and real sin. Indeed there must be good honest sins — not fabricated and invented ones — for God to forgive for His beloved Son’s sake, who took all my sins upon Him so that now the sins I have committed are no longer mine but belong to Christ. This wonderful gift of God I am not prepared to deny [in my response to the Devil], but want to acknowledge and confess.

Luther’s purpose is not to spread fear but to strengthen the resistance of the faithful. Like Christ, the Devil is omnipresent. He acts and reacts, is drawn and challenged by anything that smacks of Christ and true faith. Here is found a radical deviation from the medieval concept of the Devil, according to which the evil one is drawn by the smell of sin, the sin of worldly concern. In Luther’s view, it is not a life dedicated to secular tasks and worldly business that attracts and is targeted by the Devil. On the contrary, where Christ is present, the adversary is never far away: “When the Devil harasses us, then we know ourselves to be in good shape!”. . .

(p. 104f)

What can we learn from Luther and his thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and actions regarding the Devil and the spirit world? Are these to be viewed merely as remnants of a bygone age of medieval superstition? Or does he have things to say which can inform and assist us in our lives today?

Another Look: Writers Roundtable on Halloween

Note from CM: In 2010, Jeff Dunn solicited responses from our IM writers on the subject of Halloween. We had a great discussion, and I thought it worthy of repeating this week.

• • •

Boo!

Ok, so that didn’t scare you. Maybe this will. I have five of the six iMonk writers sitting around a table right now, and they all look very scary. And Adam hasn’t even put on his mask yet.

We wanted to have some fun with this roundtable, but also touch on some serious issues. If you are new round these parts, or have forgotten who is who, allow me to introduce to you the greatest group of blog writers on the entire internet. Starting on my right, there is our editorial director, Chaplain Mike. Then there is Lisa Dye, Mike Bell, Damaris Zehner, and Adam Palmer. We excused Joe Spann as he and the Mrs. have a newborn baby that seems to be more important to him than participating in our roundtable.

Snacks today include one of my favorites this time of year: A bowl with salted peanuts and candy corn mixed together. Grab a handful, pop it in your mouth, and you’ll swear you’re eating a PayDay candy bar. We also have some apples, some popcorn, and what’s this? Mulled cider? Now we’re talking!

Jeff Dunn: So let me start this off by asking if you think Halloween might be the most Christian of all holidays. Or is it totally evil and to be avoided by followers of Jesus? Lisa?

Lisa Dye: I’ve never viewed Halloween as a Christian holiday. As a kid, I just enjoyed it. I looked forward to it for a variety of reasons – getting more candy than I was allowed to have any other time of year, the opportunity to dress up, the fun of meeting neighbors or going door-to-door with a group of friends and the fact that fall, with its crisp air and beautiful foliage, is my favorite time of year.

It wasn’t until I became a Christian that I began to view Halloween with the seemingly required suspicion, bordering on revulsion, that most churches advocated. So, I reigned in my overt enthusiasm, kept my children’s costumes decidedly unghoulish and visited only immediate neighbors and family for the candy haul. Later on, I read bits and pieces about the history of Halloween and realized that some aspects of it is rooted in Christian tradition. By no means have I made an in-depth study, but generally I think Halloween, as we see it today, is a conglomeration of customs from around the world combining pagan and Christian traditions.

Continue reading “Another Look: Writers Roundtable on Halloween”

iMonk Classic: The Annual Halloween Rant (one of them)

As October 31st looms, it’s time for true confessions.

I grew up among Southern Baptist fundamentalist Baptists. The KJV-only, women can’t wear pants, twenty verses of “Just As I Am,” Jerry Falwell, Jack Chick, twice a year revival kind of fundamentalist Baptists.

We were serious about things like beer. By sheer quantity of attention in sermons, drinking beer was the most evil act one could describe. We were serious about movies, cards, and something called “mixed bathing,” which normal people would call “swimming.”

We were serious about the Bible, Sunday School, suits and ties, and walking the aisle to get saved.

And we were big time into Halloween.

No, that’s not a typo. I said we were big time into Halloween.

From the late sixties into the early seventies, the churches I attended and worked for — all fundamentalist Baptists — were all over Halloween like ants on jam. It was a major social activity time in every youth group I was part of from elementary school through high school graduation in 1974.

Continue reading “iMonk Classic: The Annual Halloween Rant (one of them)”

You can take the boy out of evangelicalism . . .

Chaplain Mike singing for kids in the village of Mangala, south India — Chaplain Mike and friends singing for kids at a hospital in the village of Mangala, south India

You can take the boy out of evangelicalism, but you can’t take the evangelical out of the boy.

I’m coming to terms these days with the fact that I’m a spiritual mongrel, and one of the strong components of my spiritual makeup is my evangelical heritage (in the modern sense of the word — the revivalistic tradition). Though I call myself a “post-evangelical,” that designation refers to my relationship with American “evangelicalism,” the conservative evangelical culture which has risen to public prominence in the U.S. in the past 45 years or so.

We’ve been over this before, but it bears repeating and it helps me to write it out as I reflect on getting reconnected this weekend with an important part of my evangelical experience.

Last night we had a meeting in our home, an open house for a friend from India who has been working for India Youth for Christ for twenty years. This was his first trip to the U.S., though we have been together in India in the past. We first met him in 2000, when we went on a mission trip to Mysore in south India. Through many intense experiences of ministry and conversation and prayer together, we formed a deep bond. We met each other again in 2007 in Bangalore and saw some of the fruit of our prayers and labors together in his family’s life and in the IYFC ministry. Yesterday we learned that he will be taking a high position in the organization, opening up new possibilities for further developing our relationship with him and IYFC in the future.

Now, there is no organization more identified with the evangelical movement than Youth for Christ. Billy Graham himself was the first staff member of Youth for Christ USA. YFC is synonymous with post-war evangelical parachurch missions and, along with other youth-oriented ministries in those days, YFC is largely responsible for making possible what Thomas Bergler called The Juvenilization of American Christianity. You know: Pop worship music. Falling in love with Jesus. Mission trips. Dressing casually for church. Spiritual searching and church hopping. An emphasis on discipleship in terms of “practical Christianity.” “Relevance” and seeker-sensitive outreach. Christianity as a “relationship” rather than a “religion.”

In short, most of the stuff, “post-evangelicals” like me now criticize.

However, India YFC serves in a vastly different setting. Although their focus is on youth evangelism, discipleship, and training, they have a much different relationship with the culture and the Christian churches throughout India than parachurch groups have had in the U.S. For example, our friend told us that IYFC encourages 99% of the young people who come to them from churches to stay in their own congregations and traditions for the ongoing sustenance of their faith. Many of the churches in India tend to be conservative and traditional in their worship and ministry, and he said part of their discipleship work involves counseling youth who wonder what to do when they contrast their enthusiastic youth meetings with the “dull” churches they come from. In other words, IYFC is not about changing church culture, it is about reaching youth with the Gospel and helping them integrate into the churches.

In short, there are a lot of evangelicals in India, but there is no “evangelicalism” as we know it in the U.S.

And the need that India YFC is trying to meet is vast. The number of Indians under the age of 24 is twice the entire population of the United States! About 600 million young people need to hear the Gospel there.

Continue reading “You can take the boy out of evangelicalism . . .”

Saturday Ramblings – Oct 25, 2014, Scary edition

nameoftherose — Chaplain Mike is glimpsed sneaking through the labyrinth to the monastery library. *Nice haircut, huh?*

I’m so tired of the ranting that’s going on in cyberspace these days it’s scary.

That’s right. I’ve had it with all the attention being given to that pastor in Seattle who resigned last week, and then showed up at a big conference where he talked about being a victim. Just seeing him sitting next to Steven Furtick was about all I could take.

And I don’t care to keep discussion going on and on about the subpoenaed sermons in Houston, even if one pundit called it a “secular jihad” and then, in the next breath, said, “We should not overreact” to this. Ya think?

And then there’s that couple who run a wedding mill, performing 1,400 weddings a year, because, well of course they believe in traditional Christian marriage™ (shouldn’t all believers get married in one of those cheesy little chapels by the side of the road?). Well, you may have heard they are getting in trouble for refusing to marry a gay couple, because, well of course they believe in traditional Christian marriage™ and are sworn to uphold the highest moral standards — but then again, they run a wedding mill!

michael-spencer-21 — Michael Spencer LOVED Halloween

Anyway, I don’t want to talk about any of that. It’s too depressing and annoying.

Instead, let’s look forward to an annual EVENT here at Internet Monk: Halloween is just around the corner. We’ll have our annual Michael Spencer Halloween rant next week, but since this is the last Saturday Ramblings before the fateful night, we’ll wend our way through forbidden corridors in the haunted monastery today, searching out clues and rambling through secret passageways to discover answers to life’s great mysteries. You know, like awesome arachnids, tasteless Halloween costumes, why petting a dog can lead to death threats, and nuns who sing about some very un-nunly things.

Before we begin rambling through the scary and spooky side of cyberspace this morning, here’s an update with good news from our friend and partner Jeff Dunn:

Hi guys. I thought I would share with you the good news I got yesterday. I went for a follow-up CT scan on my lungs on Monday, and saw the doc yesterday to get the report. NO CANCER! That is the good (great!) news.

I do, however, still show signs of the infection in my left lung that I’ve been dealing with for five or six weeks now, but it is getting better. Just not as fast as I would want. I’m probably breathing with 3/4ths of a lung now instead of 1/2 a lung I had a week or so ago, and no lung to speak of when this all started. I asked about the pain in my chest, and the doc said, “Well, this infection has made you have to work a lot harder to breath, and that has really ticked your chest off.” I guess that is medical jargon for “just deal with it.”

Anyway, the good news is I will most likely recover from this at some point, and there is no need for any more CT scans. I wanted to thank each of you for praying for me during these last few weeks. It has not been fun, I can tell you that.

Jeff wrote me again yesterday and said, “Be sure to tell the iMonks that I so appreciate all of their prayers and encouraging words. That helped me more than they can know.”

That’s so good it’s scary.

Now, this next item is so scary it’s scary.

Pictures of the world’s largest spider have been making the rounds on social media and the news sites. I include it today mainly to scare the spit out of my wife, who has had me kill every spider who ever had the misfortune of startling her in our almost 36 years of marriage.

Live Science reports that the South American Goliath “birdeater” spider (Theraphosa blondi) has a leg span that can reach up to a foot, or about the size of “a child’s forearm,” with a body the size of “a large fist.” And the spider can weigh about as much as a young puppy.

If any of these get in my house, I’m gonna have to find a bigger shoe.

Sorry to inflict this next bit of silliness upon you. This is so tasteless it’s scary.

The Atlantic has determined that the “Ebola” costume is the worst Halloween costume of 2014. BrandsOnSale.com offers this Ebola suit, which comes with a face shield, breathing mask, safety goggles and blue latex gloves, but boots are not included. The costume’s web page calls the Ebola outfit the most “viral” costume of the year and say the wearer is “sure to be prepared if any outbreak happens” (though the company warns that it is not a real protective outfit).

Most “viral” costume of the year. Ha!

One guy whose store doesn’t carry the costume suggested instead that one might dress up as an Ebola victim, complete with gory details he’d be happy to design for you from their stock of make up and gag products. “Gag” is right. What is wrong with people?

If that doesn’t sound inappropriate enough for you, BrandsOnSale offers other costumes sure to induce groans and winces. How about a Joan Rivers wig? Or perhaps you’d like to dress your child up as a baby cigarette or a pot leaf?

I want to comment, but I got nothin’.

And then, this is so “biblical” it’s scary.

Syed Azmi Alhabashi, for some reason, decided to introduce himself and other Malaysian Muslims to the joys of petting dogs by holding an event called, “I Want to Touch a Dog.” It drew more than a thousand people to Central Park in Kuala Lampur. Many Muslims consider dogs to be ritually unclean, and one purpose for the event was for Muslims to learn what they should do after touching a canine. And so, one Muslim scholar demonstrated how followers of the faith should ritually cleanse their hands after touching dogs, a process that involves washing six times with clean water and once with dirt.

Well, call the scribes and the Pharisees (or the imams in this case). Senior Muslim clerics raised a stink, an investigation was launched, and Mr. Alhabashi has become the target of death threats and accusations of apostasy. Rumors have been circulating, claiming that he is secretly Christian, Shia or Jewish and trying to corrupt Malaysia’s majority-Sunni Muslims.

Most of us read those Bible accounts of rules about “clean” vs. “unclean” and cannot relate in the least. These people are still living in that world every day.

This next story is so tricky it’s scary. What would you do?

Thanks to alert iMonk Steve who told us about Carla Rivera’s story in the LA Times about campus groups in California State Universities. Chapters of InterVarsity and some other Christian groups were stripped of recognition at California State University campuses this fall because they refused to sign a non-discrimination policy requiring clubs and organizations to open their memberships and leadership to all students.

This so-called “all-comers” policy is not directed specifically at Christian groups. Rivera notes that Democratic clubs must open membership and leadership to Republicans and those supporting other parties, ethnic groups must allow people from other ethnicities to join and lead, and so on. If a particular group refuses to sign the non-discrimination policy, they can still meet, but not with any of the government-funded benefits of a university sponsored organization.

With regard to religious organizations, Rivera quotes leaders of Jewish and Muslim groups who have gone along with the policy and said it hasn’t been an issue for them. And she notes, “Even with the open-leadership requirement, campus organizations can set rules that reflect their core missions: They can require a potential officer to show a deep knowledge of the Bible or, in the case of the guitar club, a certain level of musical ability.” However, many of the Christian groups insist that requiring their leaders to be Christians is an essential part of the Bible’s teaching and their identity and mission and that they should be allowed to maintain that condition.

Finally, this last piece is so bizarre it’s scary.

Sister Cristina Scuccia, Italy’s “singing nun,” became famous after winning a TV talent show. As a devout Catholic she wanted to use her gifts and celebrity status to testify to her faith through a music video. All well and good. I’m not sure she chose the right song, however. Sister Cristina decided to cover Madonna’s Like a Virgin. She said she was trying to “redeem” the song for Jesus. But, um, I’m not sure that one’s redeemable, Sis.

http://videoplayer.vevo.com/embed/Embedded?videoId=ITUV71400112&playlist=false&autoplay=0&playerId=null&playerType=embedded&env=0&cultureName=en_us&cultureIsRTL=False

If that’s not crazy enough for you, here’s a link to Sister Cristina’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

Not quite sure what to say, but Sister’s stuck in the 80’s.

Enjoy Halloween. And be safe.

A Short Reflection on the Week that Was

Canada, or at least its institutions were attacked this week. In two separate incidents two soldiers were killed. One of them Cpl. Nathan Cirillo was from my home town and was a friend of a friend. Although my son didn’t know him, they did have a number of mutual friends.

My facebook feed is filled with thought and comments (mostly good) by friends who have been affected by this tragedy. One commented that 10/22 has become Canada’s 9/11. It is the date on which we were attacked within our own country. Another commented that both attackers were known to have a history of mental illness, and that maybe the debate should not be about Canadian security, but about the lack of treatment for mental illness in Canada.

There will be an inevitable over reaction to this over the next days, weeks, months, and possibly years. As for me, I am filled with great sadness over this and similar events.

My grandfather served in the military. So did my father. I have as well, in sister units to the unit of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo. I don’t see a military solution. Instead, I long for the return of the Prince of Peace to put an end to all war.

Cpl. Nathan Cirillo leaves behind a young son. I pray for him and for all others who are grieving at this time.