Letter From America (About Ugly Redneck Relatives)

The Self-Important Hive

Katherine Timpf, writing in National Review Online has authored of those “you have to be kidding” pieces that leaves one incredulous.  The Left, and their chattering Hive-like propaganda organs, are a strange lot.  One of their peculiarities is a general air of messianic self-importance.  They are saving the world, you know.  Being a super-hero is not easy, but we, the BBG (“Borg of Greater Good”) can bear the load.  

Another peculiarity is the general air of perfumed condescension which oozes from their pores and sweat glands. There are enlightened mortals and then there is the great unwashed.  Mixing with the malodorous has to be done from time to time, and Thanksgiving is one of those times.  You end up sitting at a table with the rellies, who just happen to be ante-diluvian both in their non-chic fashion sense and, worse, their reactionary views.  But you can put up mingling with sinners if you take the opportunity to hector and evangelise.  

And so, we are told, the internet is awash with sanctimonious advice on how, not just to endure the red neck rellies over Thanksgiving, but actually use the occasion to advance the kingdom.  Timpf provides us with a summary of the Left’s recommended talking points when sitting down with the red neck rellies. 



Eight Most Ridiculous Suggestions for Talking To Conservatives This Thanksgiving

National Review Online
November 26, 2014

The Internet is full of advice on how to turn conservative family members into liberals by arguing with them on Thanksgiving. Here are this year’s eight most ridiculous tips:

1. “Redesign” the Macy’s parade to have only female balloons in it – mostly female “politicians” and “activists,” and only the “occasional princess.”

“Family holidays are ripe with opportunities to insert feminist commentary and social critique,” suggests a post titled “Pass the Turkey Spread the Feminism” from Ms. Magazine’s blog. It also suggests that you make fun of how the Elsa balloon probably offends the unrealistic body expectations of Disney —that they “would object to a princess with an expanded waistline” because “princesses can’t take up that much space.”

2. Rewrite the words to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” “to acknowledge the millions of Americans that don’t celebrate Christmas.”

Another suggestion from Ms. Magazine’s blog. Because apparently non-Christian Americans are just so hurt that Christmas songs are about Christmas and need you to save them.

3. Talk to your family about climate change, then “follow up with an email or a Facebook message pointing to whatever (or whoever) you talked about earlier.”

“Maybe your friend or relative will be singing a slightly different tune next time you see them,” suggests the Union of Concerned Scientists. Like what, a tune about how annoying you are?

4. Get into a Biblical argument with your “Evangelical Uncle” about the book of Leviticus to convince him he is wrong about gay marriage at the dinner table.

Has your family ever just been “eating delicious stuffing and having a pleasant conversation” when “suddenly your conservative Christian uncle launches into . . . [a] rant” about the “homosexual agenda”? No, mine neither, but apparently ThinkProgress thinks it’s so common for Evangelicals to interrupt peaceful family dinners with random anti-gay tirades that they had to write an entire article about it. Apparently, the way to deal with it is: Go toe-to-toe on the book of Leviticus, and don’t forget to bring race issues into the discussion! 

5. When your “Tea Party uncle” starts making “wild assertions” about Obamacare, tell him it’s actually just “misunderstood” because evil businesses are using it as a “convenient scapegoat” for the problems they would be having anyway. 

If businesses are saying that the law is forcing them to cut back hours and drop coverage, “they’re probably just using Obamacare as a convenient scapegoat,” states an article in ThinkProgress titled “Thanksgiving Arguments: How to Talk to Your Tea Party Uncle About Obamacare.”

6. If your little niece complains about how she hates having to learn fractions on a number line, tell her that she should love Common Core because “in 43 states it sets common benchmarks for what students should know and be able to do in reading and language arts at every grade level.”

“In the past, each state set its own standards for what students should be learning,” Vox suggests you explain to your niece. It remains unclear why Vox thinks that someone at the age of learning fractions (or, you know, anyone) would ever be interested in a discussion with you about state education standards during Thanksgiving.

7. Reassure conservative relatives that “the president is wholly within his authority” in taking executive action on immigration, “but encourage them to demonstrate really loudly against this executive action so that Democrats can win the Latino vote for a generation.”

A Los Angeles Times piece, titled “What To Do if Your Crazy Right-Wing Uncle Comes for Thanksgiving,” also advises conservatives to fire back at liberals that they should keep “overreaching” so that conservatives can win the presidency in 2016. Wow, sounds like a really pleasant meal – what a way to catch up with loved ones!

8. By the way, don’t you dare think that you shouldn’t discuss politics because talking about the issues – even at Thanksgiving – is a “civic responsibility.”

The author of the L.A. Times piece also advises: “I’m not saying that discussing politics at Thanksgiving is a service on the level of, say, troops returning from Afghanistan.” Oh. Thanks for clearing that up.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter at National Review Online.

 

The Historical Zeitgeist of the American Holiday of Thanksgiving

‘The Pilgrim Chronicles’ (Excerpt)

The Faith and Focus of the Puritans

by Rod Gragg  

27 Nov 2014

Breitbart News

Through the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity, Queen Elizabeth’s Settlement solidly established the Church of England as the nation’s official government denomination. It was a compromise of sorts: the Church of England would retain its Protestant doctrine, but it would also keep familiar, Catholic-style worship ceremonies and traditions. The publication of English language Bibles, once outlawed in England, now proliferated, and commoners and gentry alike eagerly purchased personal copies. Learning and sharing Scripture became the rage in England. “Everywhere might be heard the eager conversation of minds enlightened by the truth, speaking those wonderful words which the Most High had spoken unto men,” reported nineteenth-century church historian Edward B. Underhill. “The street, the tavern, the ale-house, the church and every company were the scenes of earnest dispute or holy zeal [as] scripture was compared with scripture and its sense closely scrutinized.” By the early 1600s, the common people of England were awash in a flood of faith. “The whole moral effect . . . was simply amazing,” observed renowned English historian John Richard Green. “The whole nation became a church.”

While Queen Elizabeth’s compromise solidified Protestant doctrine in the Church of England, it also placed requirements and restrictions on Protestants as well as Catholics. The English people were required to abide by the standards and policies of the Church of England as stated in the 1559 Book of Common Prayer.

Pastors and preachers were forbidden to publicly “preach, declare or speake any thing” that was not sanctioned by the Anglican Church. Disobedient pastors could be discharged from their salaried positions in the Church and even imprisoned for life. The punishment for any minister who deviated from Church policy was outlined in the Book of Common Prayer:

“And that if any manner of parson, vicar, or other whatsoever minister, that ought or should sing or say common prayer mentioned in the said book, or minister the sacraments, from and after the feast of the nativity of St. John Baptist next coming, refuse to use the said common prayers, or to minister the sacraments in such cathedral or parish church, or other places as he should use to minister the same, in such order and form as they be mentioned and set forth in the said book, or shall willfully or obstinately standing in the same, use any other rite, ceremony, order, form, or manner of celebrating of the Lord’s Supper, openly or privily, or Matins, Evensong, administration of the sacraments, or other open prayers, than is mentioned and set forth in the said book (open prayer in and throughout this Act, is meant that prayer which is for other to come unto, or hear, either in common churches or private chapels or oratories, commonly called the service of the Church), or shall preach, declare, or speak anything in the derogation or depraving of the said book, or anything therein contained, or of any part thereof, and shall be thereof lawfully convicted, according to the laws of this realm, by verdict of twelve men, or by his own confession, or by the notorious evidence of the fact, shall lose and forfeit to the queen’s highness, her heirs and successors, for his first offence, the profit of all his spiritual benefices or promotions coming or arising in one whole year next after his conviction; and also that the person so convicted shall for the same offence suffer imprisonment by the space of six months, without bail or mainprize.

And if any such person once convicted of any offence concerning the premises, shall after his first conviction soon offend, and be thereof, in form aforesaid, lawfully convicted, that then the same person shall for his second offence suffer imprisonment by the space of one whole year, and also shall therefore be deprived, ipso facto, of all his spiritual promotions; and that it shall be lawful to all patrons or donors of all and singular the same spiritual promotions, or of any of them, to present or collate to the same, as though the person and persons so offending were dead. 

And that if any such person or persons, after he shall be twice convicted in form aforesaid, shall offend against any of the premises the third time, and shall be thereof, in form aforesaid, lawfully convicted, that then the person so offending and convicted the third time, shall be deprived, ipso facto, of all his spiritual promotions, and also shall suffer imprisonment during his life.

In England, no group of believers was more committed to living according to the biblical worldview than the Puritans. Like the Presbyterians in Scotland and England, the Huguenots in France, and the Dutch Reformed in Holland, the Puritans were followers of the sixteenth-century French-Swiss Reformation theologian John Calvin, whose systematic theology, they believed, faithfully reflected biblical truth. Queen Elizabeth’s compromise of Protestant doctrine and Catholic-style ceremony was generally acceptable to much of the English population, but it deeply troubled England’s Puritans. The Puritan movement included large numbers of laborers, farmers, tradesmen, and merchants, but much of its early development occurred within the faculty of England’s Cambridge University. There Christian intellectuals contended that the Roman Church had long before veered off course by equating man’s tradition with God’s Word, and had thus burdened believers with unbiblical, man-made dogmas.

They and other Puritan leaders argued that worship should be Bible-based, emphasizing simplicity instead of ceremony and biblical doctrine rather than Church tradition. The focus of true worship, they held, should be God-centered, and they feared much in the Church of England was man-centered.

Despite their deep concerns, however, mainstream Puritans wanted to reform the Church, rather than replace it. Their goal was to bring it closer to what they believed was the model of the New Testament church. The Bible alone, Puritans believed, was the revealed Word of the Triune God, and was therefore inerrant and authoritative.

Puritans treasured Scripture, and loved deep, meaty sermons, which became a trademark of their preachers. Puritan theology consistently stressed salvation through personal faith in Jesus Christ rather than by good works. Saving faith, Puritans generally believed, was not merely belonging to a church, intellectually accepting a belief system, or engaging in religious practices. It was an undeserved gift, an act of grace, given by a loving and sovereign God to those who personally surrendered their hearts and lives to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Such saving faith in the life of a believer, Puritans held, was marked by repentance of sin, a desire to live as a disciple of Christ, and a belief that salvation from God is eternally secure. “This truth is perceived…” wrote seventeenth century Puritan theologian William Ames in The Marrow of Theology, “by a certain spiritual sense in which the grace of God now present becomes known and evident to the believer.”

The faith and focus of Puritanism was based on Bible passages such as the following, which are excerpted from chapters eight and ten of the New Testament book of Romans:

“Now then there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, which walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. . . . Also we know that all things work together for the best unto them that love God, even to them that are called of his purpose.

For those which he knew before, he also predestinated to be made like to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Moreover, whom he predestinated, them also he called, and whom he called, them also he justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

What shall we then say to these things? If God be on our side, who can be against us?

Who spared not his own Son, but gave him for us all to death, how shall he not with him give us all things also?

Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s chosen? It is God that justifieth.

Who shall condemn? It is Christ which is dead: yea, or rather, which is risen again, who is also at the right hand of God, and maketh request also for us.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nevertheless, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor Angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. . . .

For if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God raised him up from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth man confesseth to salvation. For the Scripture saith, whosoever believeth in him, shall not be ashamed.

For there is no difference between the Jew and the Grecian: for he that is Lord over all, is rich unto all that call on him.  For whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved.

But how shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?  And how shall they preach, except they be sent? As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them which bring glad tidings of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!

 

Thanksgiving

G.K. Chesterton on Thanksgiving

Justin Taylor
November 28, 2013

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”—G. K. Chesterton

“The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.”—G. K. Chesterton

“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”—G. K. Chesterton

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”—G. K. Chesterton

“When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?”—G. K. Chesterton

Douglas Wilson’s Thanksgiving Letter

Thanksgiving 2012 

Liturgy and Worship – Church Year
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 22 November 2012

I have been thinking about this for some years now, but for certain reasons rhyming with prudence have been putting it off. It has been my practice to publicly register my itemized thanksgiving to God on Thanksgiving Day, and I certainly have had no shortage of material. God is greatly to be praised — “Blessed be the Lord, Who daily loads us with benefits” (Ps. 68:19). My dear mother once said that she sometimes felt like “God’s pet” — and this from a woman whose life was filled with many trials and challenges. At the same time, she knew something about how much gratitude we all owe to God for all His blessings. Even the trials are presents — sometimes the wrapping is harder to get off, but at the center of everything is gift.

What I have been putting off is expressing my gratitude for my kids and their spouses.
Part of this is because of their differences in life-pacing. I was waiting for them to all get up on the stage — I wanted them to congregate and assemble up there, and give them a few minutes to joke around for a bit. This is because I wanted to say something about them all, and wanted to do it all at once.

Secondly, because of the nature of some of the, um, spleen that has been directed at our clan from time to time, I wanted the foundational accomplishments to be settled and in the bank before talking about them much. One of my family members could carve a cure for cancer out of a bar of soap, and we would have intoleristas on the horn to members of the Nobel committee urging them to think twice before granting any kind of prestigious honor to such a racist. If asked for evidence of the racism (not that this is really required anymore), they would point out, somewhat urgently, that said person, related to me, if given a choice between female African-American Secretaries of State named Rice, this miscreant would prefer the darker one named Condoleezza instead of the lighter one named Susan. The definitions of racism are admittedly hard to follow because they are constantly shifting nowadays, and I wandered off the point anyhow.

So let me briefly defend what I am about to do first. “A wise son maketh a glad father: But a foolish man despiseth his mother” (Prov. 15:20). When God has made us glad, we have a foundational duty to say so, and to say why. Fear of pulling a humblebrag can make us be silent when we should be a lot noisier. Many a Christian has been frightened away from a duty because of his awareness of how it might be misconstrued. But I would rather be appropriately grateful than to merely look like I am being appropriately humble.
Humility is supposed to come first. “The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom; and before honour is humility” (Prov. 15:33). But that said, the honor is supposed to follow, and invisible honor is not honor at all. “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another” (Rom. 12:10). If we are supposed to honor all men, honoring what is honorable, how much more should we honor our children?

Having said this, Nancy and I know, deep in our bones, that we are rejoicing in grace — sheer unadulterated gift. When we ask one another, “What did we do to deserve this?” we know that the answer is nothing. All of it — not just our salvation — is by grace through faith, and even that faith is a gift lest anyone humblebrag (Eph. 2:8-9). But God does not just give salvation, and then sputter to a stop. We are God’s craftsmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, prepared beforehand for us to do — and all that is a gift. Those good works prepared for us run spang out to the end of lives. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord, and that even includes everything that is taking its last breath.

So on this Thanksgiving Day, 2012, I want to honor my children and the remarkable people they married — not to mention the teeming and talented horde they have engendered. But I’ll give the grandkids a few more years to get some points on the scoreboard before I start going on about them. You have fair warning.
Our oldest daughter Bekah is married to Ben Merkle. They have five children — Knox, Jemima, Belphoebe, Hero, and Judah. Ben just finished his D.Phil. from Christ Church at Oxford. As I put it in a toast at our celebration of this just the other night, he is an “understated overachiever.” While working on an Oxford doctorate, he also wrote a biography of King Alfred on the side.

Bekah is a clothing designer, a first rate lit teacher, a hilarious writer, and a fantastic dessert cook. When they moved to England for Ben’s studies, Bekah stepped into that new role with might be called a graduate level aplomb, with a Dorothy Parker-like “what fresh hell is this?” gleam in her eye. If Bekah ever goes aaaaa!, it is only because it is so much fun, and makes for a fantastic story afterward, which she can then tell with wry understatement (blended adroitly withh overstatement) that leaves her readers wheezing.

Our son Nate is married to Heather. They have five children — Rory, Lucia, Ameera, Seamus, and Marisol. He is a best-selling author with Random House — he has six books with them, and three or four more on the way. His second non-fiction book, Death by Living, is due out this May with Thomas Nelson. I just finished reading it in manuscript last night — a glorious set of stories about numerous trips. When Nate was three-years-old, we all went to hear my dad talk about an around-the-world mission trip he had taken. When it was over, Nate said, “When I grow up, I am going to be like grandpa and tell everybody about my trip.” And that is exactly what he is doing, down to the present.

Quintillian says somewhere that a son is one person a man take joy in being surpassed by, and Nate has given me great joy in that department. His books have been lapping mine for some years now — and he got published well over a decade before I did. His mother gave him the Father Brown stories once, which he read, and then, while sitting on his hands in our living room, proceeded to solve the centuries’ old mystery of the Shroud of Turin. Nate stole Heather from the ocean, where she was an accomplished and sponsored surfer. Before Nate found her, Nancy had once told me she wanted Nate to marry someone he had to stand up straight for — and that is exactly what he did. She is well-read, well-educated, and highly intelligent. She is currently working through (for some reason) a dense history of the church in Russia. She shines as a motivator, both of her husband and of her children. Once her kids are all in school, she is the kind of person we wouldn’t be surprised to find out has become the mayor or something. A very fine cook, she also makes Thanksgiving jello with port, which I understand she is bringing over later.

Our daughter Rachel is married to Luke Jankovic. They have six children — Evangeline, Daphne, Chloe and Titus, Blaire, and Shadrach. Luke married Rachel while he was still a student at New St. Andrews. They started having kids pronto like good Christians, opened a household goods and floral shop on Main St., and Luke finished his degree while supporting the family by painting houses. I sometimes think there must be steam turbines involved. When they had the twins, they closed the shop to keep their priorities right side up, and when Luke graduated, he was recruited by a local economic modeling firm, where he has become a top salesman — which given the success of the company, is saying something. Rachel is a painter, a great cook, a manic knitter, and in conversation is every bit as funny as her sister. On top of that, Rachel has written a couple of outstanding books — Loving the Little Years and Fit to Burst — filled with earthy spirituality, the kind of wisdom that has peanut butter on it.

All six of them, our kids and their spouses, are characterized by certain remarkable shared traits. First, they laugh all the time — not out of scorn, not from malice, and not like crackling thorns under a pot. Joy is their natural turn of mind, and laughter is their native language. Second, they all work hard, they work like nobody’s business. That by itself would be a gradgrind affair, but combine it with the first trait, and it is one of the most attractive things in the world. A Puritan workshop has sawdust all over the floor, and laughter everywhere else. And third, the men are all as masculine as it gets and they are all devoted to their wives and fully engaged as fathers. When they sit down at our house, kids frequently crawl all over them, like ants on sugar. As my father has cautioned, watching all this, great care must be taken because “too much loving makes little girls ugly.” “Children’s children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers” (Prov. 17:6). Some months ago, Marisol was standing on the hearth (she is two), and she had a serious case of the cutes going down. My father, sitting across the room, exclaimed at her . . . “Have you no conscience?!” Apparently not.

Of course, I would be remiss if I said all this without standing up to honor their mother — the hidden spring who makes it all go. As I write this, she is preparing two turkeys, along with the fixings, leaving room for the imported fixings, having set a glorious table — and is also finishing up another book this weekend (her fifth). In a family filled with glorified work, she has set the standard. And she’s good-looking.

Not that she would put it like this, but Nancy reminds of that lady in the Maria Muldaur song —

I got a twenty dollar gold piece says
There ain’t nothin’ I can’t do
I can make a dress out of a feed bag
And I can make a man out of you.

Well, I think I should sign off now. I have been immeasurably blessed, and have written just enough to qualify as a helpless gesture in the direction of those blessings. So that’s it. And I have to go peel some potatoes.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Thanksgiving 2011

Liturgy and Worship – Church Year
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, November 24, 2011

Thanksgiving in the midst of war is not an incongruity; it is one of our chief weapons. The Lord prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies (Ps. 23:5). We are not yet privileged to sit down in Isaiah’s hall, where the trumpet and spear are mounted in places of honor, where we may celebrate as those who never have to study war again. Until we are ushered into that era (by the conquering gospel), we must learn to keep our powder of faith dry and our hearts full of gratitude.

The Lord inhabits the praise of His people (Ps. 22:3), and the God who inhabits these praises is a great warrior.”The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name” (Ex. 15:3). “The LORD shall go forth as a mighty man, he shall stir up jealousy like a man of war: he shall cry, yea, roar; he shall prevail against his enemies” (Is. 42:13). The Lord is not only a warrior, He is a good one.

We are privileged to offer our thanks to God on a weekly basis. Our celebration of the rite of bread and wine is a eucharistic act, and eucharist means thanksgiving. This is the culmination of our weekly worship; this is the crown of our labors. And it is thanksgiving because all our labors are the result of Christ’s labor’s for us, and within us. With this civil holiday, we are privileged to  point unbelievers to these same gospel realities, and to do so through a feast that they still celebrate with us, and under the proper name of Thanksgiving.

We need to help keep things oriented. The capstone really needs to be the capstone. I am thankful for the pies, and for my dear wife’s giftedness in making them. I am thankful for the fact that my children love the Lord, and their children with them. I thankful for the gravy. I am thankful for the televised football games. I thank God for His financial provision for us, and I thank Him for the green beans with pistachios in them.

I am thankful that I am invited to ask for things beyond what I have deserved, but never beyond what Christ has purchased on my behalf.

But the capstone is this. As we all labor at our place along the wall, as we sweat on the scaffolding, we are privileged to set our individual bricks of gratitude. There is a place even for the smallest ones. But as the wall goes up, we must think about the capstone. The capstone for all thanksgiving is the fact that God has determined to save the entire world through Jesus Christ. “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17). Despite the ongoing warfare, and despite the fact that the principalites and powers have not yet reconciled themselves to their final defeat, I am thankful to live in a saved world.

>Out of the Rubble

>The Blessings of Civility

Many of us were raised in post-Depression families where our parents constantly enjoined us to “count our blessings”. They had known to an extent some of the hardship and deprivation portrayed so powerfully by John Mulgan in Man Alone. The Apostle Paul said that he had learned to be abased and to abound (Philippians 4:12). He also said that if he had food clothing and shelter, with these he would be content (I Timothy 6:8).

Many people have lost a great deal in Christchurch and their lives have been shaken to the core. One of the most encouraging things amidst it all, however, is to see civil society rise to the surface. By “civil” we mean a society where people are treating each other with respect, care, and concern. Where neighbour is reaching out to neighbour. The news media has been full of such incidents. It has been encouraging. Our parents taught us that these are some of the things that really matter.

Stuff has published an open letter of thanks from a Japanese father who has apparently lost his daughter. It encapsulates the blessings to be counted amidst the tragedy.

To the people of New Zealand and Japan:

My daughter was involved in the earthquake disaster while studying English in Christchurch in order to fulfill her ambition of becoming a medical worker able to work globally. I have come to New Zealand hoping for a slim chance of her survival, but she has not been found and the situation seems desperate. It was such a consolation for me to have met you who helped and co-operated with us, the families of the victims, with such warm hospitality and encouragement. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to you all.

Here in Christchurch, I have seen how the people and the government of New Zealand have come together to work to rescue the victims immediately after the earthquake occurred and the government proclaimed a state of emergency. Having witnessed your dedication with my own eyes, I now understand why my daughter decided to study in Christchurch, 5600 miles far from my country.

Meanwhile, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Embassy of Japan in New Zealand, and the Consulate in Christchurch have been coordinating their collective efforts to cope with this situation and supporting the families of the victims. I am impressed and thankful for their painstaking efforts even when the families sometimes become impatient and demanding.

The agent that introduced my daughter to the language school in Christchurch has been supporting us by keeping in touch 24 hours a day, updating news every 1 to 2 hours, and continuously cheering us up. My daughter’s friends have also encouraged us by every possible means. Since arriving in Christchurch, many volunteers have been providing us with empathetic care. Staff members dispatched from the agent have been with the families, sympathetically listening to us and supporting us even when we lose ourselves in worry. The media staff members understand the feelings of the families of the victims well, and are reporting the central issues of the disaster. Even though my daughter has not been rescued yet, I think she is really lucky and happy because she is supported by so very many kind-hearted people.

Most of all, I am overwhelmed with gratitude toward the rescue teams from various countries, who have been engaged in the relief activities with their high technical capability and noble-minded motivation. I sincerely hope that those who are engaged in the relief effort will not be involved in secondary disasters.

I thank you all again for your unremitting efforts and unceasing empathy, which we will remember forever.

We ought not to take such civility in Christchurch for granted. There have been plenty of occasions in human history where it has been absent and suffering has been multiplied many, many times over. C. S. Lewis once remarked that Hell will be a collection of starving people seated at a long table with just a knife, each trying to eat peas . No civil society there. There have been times when hell has come on earth as neighbour has turned upon neighbour, and parents have devoured their children, and children their parents.

How thankful we ought to be that Christchurch has been spared this, and that civility and neighbourly love have been so strongly to the fore. We thank God that this has made the tragedy not as bad as it might have been.

To highlight the blessings which we are to count in Christchurch, contrast the following description of daily life in a city amidst tragedy as described by an eye-witness:

By mid-summer, as the blistered and jagged hills sprouted forests of fly-blow crucified cadavers, the city within was tormented by a sense of impending doom, intransigent fanaticism, whimsical sadism, and searing hunger. Armed gangs prowled for food. Children grabbed morsels from their fathers’ hands; mothers stole the tidbits of their own babies. Locked doors suggested hidden provisions and the warriors broke in, driving stakes up their victims’ rectums to force them to reveal their caches of grain. If they found nothing, they were even more ‘barbarously cruel’ as if they had been ‘defrauded.’ Even though the fighters themselves still had food, they killed and tortured out of habit ‘to keep their madness in exercise’. (The city) was riven by witch-hunts as people denounced each other as hoarders and traitors. No other city . . . ‘did ever allow such miseries, nor did any age ever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was, since the beginning of the world.’ Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem, The Biography, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2011), p.4.

The city, Jerusalem. The time, AD70. The occasion, the Roman siege led by Titus. The situation, a people who had lost all civility. The result, hell upon earth.

The Lord said of that time that it would be “a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall.” (Matthew 24:21).

Given that Jerusalem in AD70 teaches that of which we humans are capable, we thank God for a very, very different spirit manifest in Christchurch in AD2011. It is very beautiful to see–and not to be taken for granted.

Hat Tip: Keeping Stock

>Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

>Thanksgiving 2010 


Liturgy and Worship – Church Year
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, November 25, 2010

We begin by thanking God for who He is, and what He has done for us through His gospel of glory. He is the triune God, which means that He is love. Love is not an afterthought, not an add-on. From all eternity, the Father has loved the Son, and the Son the Father. The Spirit of their mutual love has been poured out upon us, now that Jesus showed us the love of the Father by dying on the cross for us, and who has come back from the dead for our justification.

We also thank God for the creational emblems of His goodness and grace, emblems that surround us on every hand. The overflowing goodness of God is seen in marital companionship, friendship, breath, light, beer, sex, sleep, hot water, pie, turkey, potatoes and gravy, sunlight, grass, snow, children, grandchildren, electricity, shelter, fire, electronic gadgets, cars, books, and music. We serve and worship a God who gives to us with prodigality and abandon.

So God in His grace has given us yet another celebration of Thanksgiving. On the one hand we should just do it — bow our heads and thank Him — and on the other we need to give ourselves to the study of thanksgiving. Were we to do that, we would come to understand how crucial this is. Our lack of understanding this point is why we are losing the culture war.

Whenever someone declares his gratitude for all the goodness that God showers us with, it is not long before someone says (or thinks), “But what about the people who don’t have these things?” Shouldn’t we feel guilty until everybody has some? No — because misdirected envy and muddled guilt are a principal cause of misery and poverty.

The first Thanksgiving was in 1623, and it was a time of abundance. It also marked a fundamental deliverance from the experiment of the two previous years, in which the Puritans had a go at collectivism, and almost starved to death. Didn’t work. Never has, never will. God hates that kind of sharing.

The kind of sharing He loves is based on private ownership, hard work, covenant blessing, all appropriate thanksgiving rendered to Him, and with the recipient of the glorious largesse going on to imitate God Himself in the resultant overflow. Refusal to give thanks cuts off the taproot of this kind of gospel blessing.

The enemy of thanksgiving is ingratitude, and therefore the enemy of the gospel is ingratitude. But the serpent is crafty, and so Paul wants Christians to be on their toes (2 Cor. 11:3). As Christians we all know that we are to render thanks to God for the good things. And so what we have done is become hypercritical, and we have convinced ourselves over time that our milk and honey is not the same as milk and honey in Bible times. Ours has cholesterol in it, and residue from pesticides, and fat probably, and the bees gathered pollen from land we stole from the Indians.

We should have none of this. Unless we know how to thank God for Cool Whip in a plastic container with a plastic lid, applied to pumpkin pie, in its turn made from the processed ingredients purchased in a can, it remains no wonder that the secularists are winning. Gratitude is simple. Food wowserism is complicated, and full of grumbles.

The lessons for us are basic:

“For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving” (1 Tim. 4:4).

“Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength” (Neh. 8:10).

“And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee” (Dt. 28:11).

And why did the Deuteronomic curses come upon them? Because they despised the Cool Whip. And the marshmallow jello.

” . . . because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things” (Dt. 28:47).

As I write this, Nancy — may her name be honored in our family for generations — is baking pies that some would like to claim are not good for my heart. On the contrary, before taking a bite, my heart is full of their mediated goodness.