Today I was going through some stuff in our Archives. A pastor had donated some material he’d accumulated in researching a book a few years ago, and I’d been letting it sit. Today, I decided, I will start putting it in some kind of order.

Archiving is a very odd occupation, and one for which (I might mention) I have no formal training. Do I catalog a pamphlet as a book, or file it as a document? How do I organize my document files? It appears the previous librarians weren’t sure either, so I can’t even refer to their precedents most of the time.

I decided to catalog the Christmas annuals as books. Our predecessor church body published a Christmas annual, and (God bless ’em) operated with such humility that they didn’t even include publishing information in many of them (no bragging from the editors!). One issue didn’t even contain any mention anywhere of what year it was for. I had to work it out deductively, and I’m not entirely sure I got the right answer. Continue reading The Archive of the covenant →

(Due to popular demand, or at least my own demand not to have to come up with an idea tonight, here is the text of my talk at the 150th anniversary celebration of Hauge Lutheran Church, Kenyon, Minnesota, on June 28, 2009.)

At 10 o’clock on the evening of November 22, the bailiff came and delivered to me the provincial government’s order to read, which said that I should, under strict guard… be transported to Christiania…. The bailiff brought only his servant along and drove me to Christiania. He expressed his opinion that I would either be imprisoned in Munkholmen [prison] or exiled to the islands of the South Seas, so that I must not expect ever to see any of my faithful friends again. I answered him that as long as there is life there is hope of better things; and that if his prophecy should be fulfilled, my God would certainly take care of me, and “I am in His hands and satisfied to accept whatever tribulations He wills that I encounter.” With such thoughts and words I kept my courage up, and since the bailiff, as I experienced, did not care for my religious conversation, I spoke mostly with him of various projects for the public good of which I, here and there in the country, had been the initiator, of which I said, “It is sad to think that they should all be shipwrecked. Many will thereby lose their livelihoods. But even concerning that I will be at peace, if only I am myself satisfied that I have done what I could for the benefit of my homeland and my fellow men’s benefit, both temporal and eternal.”

These are Hans Nielsen Hauge’s own words, from his account of the arrest in 1804 which led to his long imprisonment. I read them here because they express something we sometimes forget about Hauge. He lived his message. He preached, first of all, that the gift of salvation must be received in the heart, and secondly, that true salvation must lead to good works. And he demonstrated that teaching by doing good—getting his hands dirty, sharing useful information and ideas, and building businesses that provided jobs.

It’s interesting that, while early critics of Hauge and his followers accused them of being shiftless, superstitious vagrants, later critics accused them of the exact opposite—they worked too hard, studied too much, were obsessed with money and profit. They didn’t have enough fun, and tried to spoil the fun of others.

These changes in criticism are really testimony to Hans Nielsen Hauge’s tremendous success. He changed the very character of his country. When Hauge was born, the best the average Norwegian could hope for was to be just what his father had been—and that was only if he was lucky enough to be the firstborn. If he wasn’t firstborn, he was lucky to make a living at all.

After Hauge, all Norwegians knew they had a multitude of possibilities. They could go into business. They could be teachers or pastors. They could write for a newspaper. And many of them did what was perhaps the most Haugean thing of all—they emigrated to America, where there was no class system and no state church, and no law prevented anyone from improving his situation and “edifying” his fellow men. Continue reading Hauge and social change →

On days like this, I should be legally barred from posting. We’ve got the deaths of not one but two pop icons from my youth, on top of the ongoing awfulness in Iran (which everybody seems to have forgotten all of a sudden), topped by the systematic transformation of our country into a European-style social democracy. Hmm, what shall the tone of tonight’s blog post be?

Speaking personally, Michael Jackson never really took up much of my mental square footage (and I do mean square). He was one of those phenomena, like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, that I observed from afar, uncomprehending.

But Farrah! The perfect face, at the perfect time of my life for emotional imprinting. She even resembled (sort of, in a distant way, in the right light) the girl who’d broken my heart about a year previously.

I forget what night of the week “Charlie’s Angels” was on. I do recall that it was opposite “Grizzly Adams,” because my roommate was a huge GA fan, while I always wanted to see CA. I don’t recall how we worked it out. Very likely we took turns. There was only the one TV. Continue reading De mortuis →

Kyle is not afraid of Freud.

I hesitate to write this because it’s such a common thought, but then I am a simple man, so if I rule out the common thoughts I won’t write about anything.

Last night, I heard a developing leak in a pipe beneath my kitchen. I’ve had a leak in that pipe twice before, so fixing it today will not convince me that something is not wrong with my water heater or something else that is causing this particular pipe to spring leaks. Of course, I tried to cast that care on the Lord and avoid worrying about it. This morning, I turned off the water main before leaving the house for a small group meeting.

At the meeting, we read a devotion by Frederick Buechner about hearing God’s voice in everyday living and hearing him in silence. It ran along the lines of considering the lilies.

Buechner writes, “God speaks to us, I would say, much more often than we realize or than we choose to realize. Before the sun sets every evening, he speaks to each of us in an intensely personal and unmistakable way. His message is not written out in starlight, which in the long run would make no difference; rather it is written out for each of us in the humdrum, helter-skelter events of each day . . .” Continue reading Why Do We Take So Much for Granted? →

As I understand it, we’re still waiting for a final word on the motives of the man who murdered Dr. George Tiller, the noted late-term abortionist. But indications seem to be that the killer was motivated by his anti-abortion (I won’t say pro-life) beliefs.

I’m appalled by this wicked, perverse and un-Christian act. The perpetrator, if and when convicted, should be punished to the full extent of the law.

I don’t know what else there is to say.

From Dennis Ingolfsland of The Recliner Commentaries:

Five university law professors and the legal council for the American Jewish Conference have sent a letter to a New York Assemblyman warning of the potential consequences of a New York same-sex marriage bill. Below is a summary of the likely consequences:

Read the rest here.

More than one way to slice it

What is culture? Is there a difference between people and culture? If someone argues that Jesus calls to redeem people but not culture, are they really saying anything, or is the difference inconsequential?

It seems to me people make up culture; to reach people would be to reach their culture, and you can’t reach a culture as such because it’s a concept, a description. You reach people who think and act in patterns we describe as cultures, and if we apply the gospel to the making of art or business, then we are reaching people within their cultural context.

Or am I missing something?