White Shoes, White Stones
Rev 2:17
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. To him that overcometh, to him will I give of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and upon the stone a new name written, which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it. (ASV)
With the white stone mentioned above in the Scripture verse, "And will give him a white stone" it is "Supposed that by the white stone is meant pardon or acquittance, and the evidence of it; and that there is an allusion here to the custom observed by judges in ancient times, who were accustomed to give their suffrages by white and black pebbles; those who gave the former were for absolving the culprit, those who gave the latter were for his condemnation." (Clarke)
What has brought about this essay was my purchasing the other day of some very white and new Nike jogging shoes. My old pair of Nike's have been worn down. I was developing serious pain in my feet which is a solid sign that it is time to buy a new pair of running shoes. I have some odd feet...my left foot is about a 12, my right foot is closer to a 13. To add another layer of complexity, both feet are wider than average. So the 12's that are wide tend to not fit my right foot well, but do fit my left foot perfectly. The 13 wides fit my right foot well but turn my left foot into a flipper suitable for scuba diving (like one of those duck boats in big cities than transverse both land and sea on a sightseeing tour). So it makes shoe hunting like trying to kill a wily and solitary fox in the woods. Thus, the pain in my feet motivated me to finally go to the shoe store. As I remind my students at school, pain is a great motivator. Pleasure in the end is a whisper, pain is a scream.
After trying on probably 12 pairs of shoes (the boxes looked like barricading pillars made of supersized Legos) I finally settled one a size 13 that was not extra wide. As it turned out, it was the only 13 in the store and it took a considerable amount of time to locate its box. And, I intitially tried the pair on, and then went on to other pairs, only to return to it. First impressions should not prevail...it is only in comparison that decisions should be made. Heck, I should have gotten a sales commission myself for all of the hard work I did in ascertaining the right pair. I have to say that these white Nikes are perfect. They fit like a glove. And the Swoosh and the shoes' trimming is both black and orange (my high school's colors). Icing on the podiatric cake.
I almost fear wearing them because to wear them will mean that ever time I go to lace up, I am only hastening having to return to the shoe store for another hour plus long rummaging through the Nikes for another like pair. I have decided that Nike are the best jogging shoes out there for me. They offer durability, flexibility, and lightness. Jogging shoes can be light but poorly made and fit for quick destruction. Other jogging shoes like New Balance last a long time but feel like heavy army books. I am convinced that the Nike's get me under the 40 minute barrier of my taxing run to Grubb Lake and back. When it is muddy outside, I wear an old pair of New Balance and I clock in typically at 42 minutes. With my Nike's, I generally have a shot at a 38 something. Maybe I should endeavor to always run this run under my age. That seems to have symmetry.
As an aside, it is always astounding to when I see the boys at school with the same white shoes for months that do not lose their pure whiteness. It must be that they carefully avoid other students shoes, sneaker induced tardiness to avoid the scuffing crowd, and then lovingly restore their shoes nightly to whiteness with a care that if they also dedicated to their studies would have colleges wooing them like an eager school girl hoping to be asked to the Prom.
So, whiteness and rightness have been laced together. That reminded me of something I recently read. My buddy John and I have been reading (in my case re-reading) G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. It is truly prescient. For a book originally written in 1908, Chesterton certain nailed the times. He knew where Western culture would wind up a 100 years down the road. He saw the weeds in the seeds.
Orthodoxy is a book that is in our home's hallowed Book Hall of Fame in the aristocratic upstairs library versus versus the Hoi Polloi downstairs basement library. There is little chance that when a book is relegated to basement status that it will ever wind up in the upstairs library. I make my determinations and decree; it is a feudal system where I rule with a divine right...not over men, but books. What separates the great books from the merely good (and less than good, I have some useless tomes; see the Y2K section...although I think these books sounded a necessarly alarm that India was able to answer with low-wage, high-skilled computer code writers) is the quality of the ideas contained and the style in which these ideas are conveyed. It is possible for a book to have great ideas but for the writer to express them poorly. It is possible for a writer to have both poor ideas and poor style. The books upstairs express great ideas and do so in an artful manner.
Chesterton was a master of this duality (J.I. Packer calls such writers "logical visionaries"). Read the following quote:
"We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post...But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing romance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies. But, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies." (GK Chesterton)
Writer Os Guinness in his book Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance notes that great ideas, true ideas, are "eternally relevant." Wrong ideas perish like boats sinking--often with a culture's crew and passengers going down with the ship. This is not bathtub naval activities, this is serious stuff. Why is U.S. culture sinking? Bad ideas...or more accurately bad practices based on even worse ideas (truly it is God's grace alone that keeps us from being as bad as our ideas).
One of the big lies that Chesterton wrangled with in his times was Evolution, the idea that man came from purely and only materialist and biological processes, from a "simple" organism to a "complex" being. Yet, as Behe has argued, even the "simple" organism is highly complex and interdependent. To say that Evolution inherently has, within its own organizing process i.e natural selection where death is the decider, only begs the question of who created such a improbablistic mechanism which itself has made--and is making--the machine? It is a sleight of hand to delude the crowd, to have them look at the right hand while the left hand does its nefarious work. Evolution, like a car engine, is seen as building itself...defying common sense. If a student has to write a term paper on Darwin, does the paper write itself? Does the information organize itself into sentences, paragraphs, and sections? The teacher asks, "Johnny, where is your term paper?" He answers, "It is evolving" while he blithely keeps playing his PSP.
The social implications of Evolution are enormous. Is man just an evolved molecule? Mourn his passing as you would a culture of bacteria. Any sadness associated with this is mere a sham and sentimentality. The stimulus plan for the downtrodden, unemployed, the foreclosed? A true Evolutionist should, if he was consistent, withold aid and let death do its deed. But, our dignity as humans does not come from Darwin but Deity. Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Without returning to this "white post" of the intrisic worth of humanity derived from God, the world turns black, devilish, and Darwinian. White is right. To call that which is Black "White" is just plain wrong.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. To him that overcometh, to him will I give of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and upon the stone a new name written, which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it. (ASV)
With the white stone mentioned above in the Scripture verse, "And will give him a white stone" it is "Supposed that by the white stone is meant pardon or acquittance, and the evidence of it; and that there is an allusion here to the custom observed by judges in ancient times, who were accustomed to give their suffrages by white and black pebbles; those who gave the former were for absolving the culprit, those who gave the latter were for his condemnation." (Clarke)
What has brought about this essay was my purchasing the other day of some very white and new Nike jogging shoes. My old pair of Nike's have been worn down. I was developing serious pain in my feet which is a solid sign that it is time to buy a new pair of running shoes. I have some odd feet...my left foot is about a 12, my right foot is closer to a 13. To add another layer of complexity, both feet are wider than average. So the 12's that are wide tend to not fit my right foot well, but do fit my left foot perfectly. The 13 wides fit my right foot well but turn my left foot into a flipper suitable for scuba diving (like one of those duck boats in big cities than transverse both land and sea on a sightseeing tour). So it makes shoe hunting like trying to kill a wily and solitary fox in the woods. Thus, the pain in my feet motivated me to finally go to the shoe store. As I remind my students at school, pain is a great motivator. Pleasure in the end is a whisper, pain is a scream.
After trying on probably 12 pairs of shoes (the boxes looked like barricading pillars made of supersized Legos) I finally settled one a size 13 that was not extra wide. As it turned out, it was the only 13 in the store and it took a considerable amount of time to locate its box. And, I intitially tried the pair on, and then went on to other pairs, only to return to it. First impressions should not prevail...it is only in comparison that decisions should be made. Heck, I should have gotten a sales commission myself for all of the hard work I did in ascertaining the right pair. I have to say that these white Nikes are perfect. They fit like a glove. And the Swoosh and the shoes' trimming is both black and orange (my high school's colors). Icing on the podiatric cake.
I almost fear wearing them because to wear them will mean that ever time I go to lace up, I am only hastening having to return to the shoe store for another hour plus long rummaging through the Nikes for another like pair. I have decided that Nike are the best jogging shoes out there for me. They offer durability, flexibility, and lightness. Jogging shoes can be light but poorly made and fit for quick destruction. Other jogging shoes like New Balance last a long time but feel like heavy army books. I am convinced that the Nike's get me under the 40 minute barrier of my taxing run to Grubb Lake and back. When it is muddy outside, I wear an old pair of New Balance and I clock in typically at 42 minutes. With my Nike's, I generally have a shot at a 38 something. Maybe I should endeavor to always run this run under my age. That seems to have symmetry.
As an aside, it is always astounding to when I see the boys at school with the same white shoes for months that do not lose their pure whiteness. It must be that they carefully avoid other students shoes, sneaker induced tardiness to avoid the scuffing crowd, and then lovingly restore their shoes nightly to whiteness with a care that if they also dedicated to their studies would have colleges wooing them like an eager school girl hoping to be asked to the Prom.
So, whiteness and rightness have been laced together. That reminded me of something I recently read. My buddy John and I have been reading (in my case re-reading) G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. It is truly prescient. For a book originally written in 1908, Chesterton certain nailed the times. He knew where Western culture would wind up a 100 years down the road. He saw the weeds in the seeds.
Orthodoxy is a book that is in our home's hallowed Book Hall of Fame in the aristocratic upstairs library versus versus the Hoi Polloi downstairs basement library. There is little chance that when a book is relegated to basement status that it will ever wind up in the upstairs library. I make my determinations and decree; it is a feudal system where I rule with a divine right...not over men, but books. What separates the great books from the merely good (and less than good, I have some useless tomes; see the Y2K section...although I think these books sounded a necessarly alarm that India was able to answer with low-wage, high-skilled computer code writers) is the quality of the ideas contained and the style in which these ideas are conveyed. It is possible for a book to have great ideas but for the writer to express them poorly. It is possible for a writer to have both poor ideas and poor style. The books upstairs express great ideas and do so in an artful manner.
Chesterton was a master of this duality (J.I. Packer calls such writers "logical visionaries"). Read the following quote:
"We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post...But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing romance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies. But, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies." (GK Chesterton)
Writer Os Guinness in his book Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance notes that great ideas, true ideas, are "eternally relevant." Wrong ideas perish like boats sinking--often with a culture's crew and passengers going down with the ship. This is not bathtub naval activities, this is serious stuff. Why is U.S. culture sinking? Bad ideas...or more accurately bad practices based on even worse ideas (truly it is God's grace alone that keeps us from being as bad as our ideas).
One of the big lies that Chesterton wrangled with in his times was Evolution, the idea that man came from purely and only materialist and biological processes, from a "simple" organism to a "complex" being. Yet, as Behe has argued, even the "simple" organism is highly complex and interdependent. To say that Evolution inherently has, within its own organizing process i.e natural selection where death is the decider, only begs the question of who created such a improbablistic mechanism which itself has made--and is making--the machine? It is a sleight of hand to delude the crowd, to have them look at the right hand while the left hand does its nefarious work. Evolution, like a car engine, is seen as building itself...defying common sense. If a student has to write a term paper on Darwin, does the paper write itself? Does the information organize itself into sentences, paragraphs, and sections? The teacher asks, "Johnny, where is your term paper?" He answers, "It is evolving" while he blithely keeps playing his PSP.
The social implications of Evolution are enormous. Is man just an evolved molecule? Mourn his passing as you would a culture of bacteria. Any sadness associated with this is mere a sham and sentimentality. The stimulus plan for the downtrodden, unemployed, the foreclosed? A true Evolutionist should, if he was consistent, withold aid and let death do its deed. But, our dignity as humans does not come from Darwin but Deity. Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Without returning to this "white post" of the intrisic worth of humanity derived from God, the world turns black, devilish, and Darwinian. White is right. To call that which is Black "White" is just plain wrong.
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