Leftover goulash from a frenetic week

I've had a hard time finding opportunities to blog this week. It's certainly not that there's nothing to blog about. But I've simply been too busy to write everything I'd like to say about all the scraps of this 'n' that which catch my attention during the course of a typical week.

And this week was a lot more "typical" than most—with C. J. Mahaney's visit to Grace Community Church, John MacArthur's appearance on "Larry King Live," Pat Robertson's Stage-One Plan for World Peace, and Karl Keating's use of John MacArthur as a foil for some rather blatant cheap shots. You might have expected me to comment on any or all of those events. I would have, if I had found the time.

However, I'm grateful for friends in the blogosphere who make my job easier. These guys said pretty much what I wanted to say—and they all said it better than I would have, anyway:

• Steve Hays, in an article titled "Keating's Hissy Fit," exposes the fallacies in a recent propaganda piece Karl Keating sent to his constituents. I don't know how Steve Hays writes so much superb stuff, so well, so fast. Here I was, still pondering whether to categorize Keating's outburst as a hissy or a conniption, and Steve had already posted a full answer.
  
• James White likewise answered Keating well. (James wisely chose the more all-inclusive expression "blew a gasket" to describe Keating's histrionics, thus covering both the "hissy" and the "conniption" aspects of Keating's fit.)
       Like Steve Hays, James also underscored the laughable hypocrisy and utter irrationality of Keating's cynical attempt to caricature MacArthur as someone driven by self-conceit, while straight-facedly portraying Pope Ratzinger as the very model of self-deprecating humility.
       James also noted the utter tastelessness of Keating's disgraceful attempt to make a trophy out of Rosalind Moss, a former Grace Church member who converted to Catholicism. (For those who wonder—yes, I knew Rosalind. I respected her and considered her a friend. But as far as I know, she spoke to no one in leadership at Grace Church and sought no counsel from the elders here while she was contemplating her conversion to Roman Catholicism.)
  
• Tim Challies (see comment 4 in the linked thread) made a quick, funny, but quite accurate summary of Tuesday Night's discussion about "intelligent design" on "Larry King Live."
       Tim managed to capture many aspects of the tone and atmosphere—things the actual "Larry King Live" transcript can't record very well. One other vital thing you'll miss if you did not see the actual broadcast is Deepak Chopra's body language toward MacArthur. Though he is ostensibly a very sharp new-age guru whose message is all about tolerance and harmony, Deepak simply cannot manage to communicate anything other than sheer animosity toward John MacArthur personally, as well as utter contempt for everything John stands for. Each time the two of them have appeared together on Larry King, Deepak has become progressively more rude and condescending. At times, it is downright funny, such as the episode where Deepak insisted the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic rather than Koine Greek. The Great, All-Knowing Guru became extremely exasperated that MacArthur would not simply take his word for it.
       "Positive energy," indeed.
       This time, Deepak interrupted or spoke over the top of MacArthur virtually every time MacArthur opened his mouth. I was glad for our pastor's Christlike meekness and good manners. I'll confess that as I watched, I kept thinking how difficult it would be for me to restrain myself from wanting to "accidentally" roll my chair over the toes of this pompous, self-styled swami.
  
• Speaking of less-than-sanctified responses to wicked people, Frank Turk perfectly captured my thoughts about the dangers posed by Christian leaders like Pat Robertson, who apparently think "belligerence" is the operative part of the expression "co-belligerence."
  
• Al Mohler also graciously but boldly called for Robertson to repent and retract.
  
• Ligon Duncan, who always seems to know just what to say, blogged about C. J. Mahaney's ministry at Grace Community Church.

Two posts I noticed with really clever titles:

1. "God Loves You and Has a Wonderful Frisbee for Your Life," by Eric Zeller at "Foolishblog."
   
2. "At Least Her Skin Was Thin" (a post about the lady who filed a complaint against her doctor for telling her she was too fat), by Jared Wilson at "The Thinklings."

BlogSpotting
Disclaimer: Technorati has become wll-nigh useless, and even The Truth Laid Bear seems to be seriously crippled lately, (completely losing track of some 300+ links to PyroManiac in the past three days alone). So it's not easy to ferret out who is linking to the blog nowadays.

If I have missed anyone who desperately hoped to get BlogSpotted, I'm sorry. But time is short, the hour is late, I'm really tired, my dial-up connection is slow, and all the standard search-engine tools are working against me.

Here, however, are a few blogs that have caught my attention by linking here:

• Sal at "Stand Up and Walk" finds another spiritual analogy in the Rubik's Cube.
  
• Some anonymous guy at "Miscreant" finds high irony in my recommendation of Carl Trueman's book, and he is convinced Trueman's essay exposing the maladroit handling of historical theology by New Perspectivists is "unsupportable"—though he admits he hasn't actually read Trueman's book.
  
• John Schroeder intimidates me with his knowledge of math.
  
• Bill Hayes liked the Rubik's Cube post.
  
• Kevin at "Kevin Carey Music" seems shocked that I am not in step with the postmodern party line on new-model theology and labels. He reminds us that labels can be misused. Then, as if to give an object lesson, he misspells my last name throughout his article. I still say the fact that people often misuse labels and misspell surnames is no valid argument against the correct use of name tags. In fact, I would point out that judicious and proper use of labels can go a long way toward correcting the bad thinking and wrong ideas that result from careless mislabeling.
  
• Julian at "Christian Thought" is pleased that I noticed the Canadian blogging hordes. It does sometimes seem that half the bloggers who link here are Canadians. But, then, what else is there to do in Canada without hockey?
  
• Daniel J. Phillips remarks on the significance of young Charles Spurgeon's "slow roasting" under the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit.
  
• Joel at "Life Under the Son" liked the penguin smackdown video almost as much as I did.
  
• Bret Capranica shares my pain when his computer goes down—though he seems to boast that he drinks more manly coffee than I do (hah!), and he points out that I should not be snide about what anyone else's picture looks like (point taken).
  
• Doug Wilson can't imagine what possible connection anyone might see between postmodernism and the friends of the Auburn Avenue Theology. Doug characterizes the movement as nothing more than an "affirmation of an objective covenant." It seems to me that Peter Leithart's assessment of the Auburn movement is a lot more candid. And notice where "an objective covenant" has got the cast and crew at Communio Sanctorum. Tim Enloe's frequent disclaimers about the uselessness of the term postmodern notwithstanding, many of the arguments Enloe and friends regularly employ are borrowed straight from the pomo playbook.
  
• Pastor Ray Pritchard has some nice things to say about PyroManiac.
  
• John Rabe lures me to his blog so that he can diss the Cubs. However, I personally think his "throw-stuff-at-Rita-Cosby post" was both brilliant and wickedly funny.
  
• Jeremy Moore is a happy man.
  
• Samuel Smith loved John MacArthur's discourse on spoonerisms.
  
• Ebenezer is surprised to find himself knee-deep in controversy.

That's all I have time for at the moment. I have a very full weekend, and I'm leaving for Tulsa Monday morning. I'll post again when I can, but no promises about when that will be.

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