A Wintery Week at Seminary

Officially, it is still Fall in West Michigan. In reality, however, we have entered the world of winter already. With frigid temperatures – in the teens at night and 20s during the day! – and a large body of warmer water to our west (commonly known as Lake Michigan), we have had major lake-effect snow this week. In fact, it hasn’t stopped snowing since last Saturday. We now have a total of anywhere from 6 inches to 18 inches in our area! And with a storm system and more cold air arriving this weekend, we only stand to gain more.

We have had our share at Seminary too. Which makes us groan a bit. Driving up “Seminary hill” is a treat in the winter. Driving down is even more fun! Clearing cars of four or more inches of snow at the end of the day is not everyone’s idea of a good time. And keeping the walkways and entrance to the building clear and safe are a challenge as well. I have been shoveling these parts during the day to the tune of three times per day! My back does have its limits! But, so far so good 🙂

So, it could be a long winter. Even the wild turkeys had a meeting yesterday to discuss whether or not to head south. From what I could gather from the gobbling, there was little agreement on whether it should be Florida or Arizona.

Yet we Michiganders have learned to see beauty even in winter and lots of snow. Snow is, after all, God’s creation, which makes it good, even when we don’t think it is. So, we praise Him as Lord of the snow and cold. And as our Redeemer in Christ, Who through His shed blood makes us whiter than the snow (Psalm 51:7; Isaiah 1:18).

Today marks the end of our first semester and brings the last day of classes. Exams start already tomorrow. Pray for the students, that they would have sound minds and bodies to be able to give a good account of themselves to the Lord of their studies and preparation for the ministry of the Word.

P.S. After lunch today the deer came out finally and under the snow found a few more old apples to eat. We haven’t seen much of them this week, so it was a treat to see them again.

C.Trueman on the “Proddy Pens” of Protestant Writers

Our first post this Friday is taken from Carl Trueman’s essay “The True Repentance of an Inconvenient Jester” (penned in 2010), found in the latest collection of his essays Fools Rush In Where Monkeys Fear to Tread (P&R, 2012). In this chapter Trueman responds to a critic who judged his use of humor and wit to be “inconvenient” and even unchristian. To which Trueman rose to the defense of humor and wit and laughter, even as he decried the lack of good Protestant humor.

As part of our “Friday fun” this week, I thought we might get a chuckle out his comments. And maybe in following weeks we can post some more of his thoughts on this subject, since he does have some serious things to say about the lack of humor in Protestant writers. Just don’t overdo the chuckles, ok? 🙂

Here he is comparing Protestants to Roman Catholic writers (Chesterton, Percy, etc.) who gave plenty of evidence of how to use humor:

In comparison with Catholic wit, Protestantism has clearly been far more sanctified. While Spurgeon was definitely a master of the one-liner (hey – nobody’s sinlessly perfect this side of glory), and Kierkegaard a master of irony (but no orthodox persons reads him today, on the grounds that Francis Schaeffer told us he was a naughty boy), Protestantism has thankfully produced very few decent humorous prose stylists. In fact, just to be on the safe side, Protestantism has actually produced few decent prose stylists of any sort, for that matter. Indeed, I suspect one would have to go back to Jonathan Swift to find a broadly orthodox Protestant churchman who was able to write sustained, elegant prose that still proves capable of provoking laughter. And he wanted to eat Irish babies, didn’t he? Now, I love Irish babies, but I could never eat a whole one. We can be grateful, therefore, that polished Protestant prose more or less died with the dean, and we are now free to enjoy the more godly, less ambiguous, and certainly less jesting prose of modern-day wielders of the Proddy pen, from Peretti to LaHaye. How convenient is that? (p.185).