Let’s consider the reading below. The Law of the Sabbath was that no one could or ought to do work. You should keep the day holy — which means separate. The Law says it applied to those who lived in Isreal, regardless of status — it included slaves. And animals.

Now, there were a whole pile of traditions and customs placed around this with good reason. The scholars worked by exegesis and precedent.  But they lost the aim of the Sabbath.

It was to allow us to rest, not to be a burden.

And losing the reason for the law… for tradition, offends God. We worship tradition, and not God. And that — particularly attributing the tradition to God — is blasphemous.

Luke 6:1-11

1One sabbath while Jesus was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked some heads of grain, rubbed them in their hands, and ate them. 2But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” 3Jesus answered, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4He entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and gave some to his companions?” 5Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”6On another sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. 7The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would cure on the sabbath, so that they might find an accusation against him. 8Even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” He got up and stood there. 9Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” 10After looking around at all of them, he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored. 11But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.

via Daily Lectionary Readings — Devotions and Readings — Ministries & Programs — GAMC.

Boys will both be attending an all boys school next year. The ex and I agree that single gender schooling is better.

The other issue we talked about was teaching. My solution to the lack of male teachers was simple: open more boys schools.

via “Reimagining Masculinity” and the Macho, Macho Murse.

Let gay men and straight women teach girls. The boys benefit from being taught by gay women and straight men.

This one started on Facebook. The NZ teacher’s union is trying to negotiate a pay increase. This ir resisted because the economy is in a poor way and “three is no new money” [Minister of Education} (Context for anyone international. There are only 4 million NZers. There are two national award for teachers — primary school and secondary school).

Lets be honest, a decent amount of replies on this page suggest the education systems been stuffed for a while.

via Facebook | Michael Laws Tuesday: Is it just me … or is the NZEI (primary teachers union) insane? They are resisisting the National Standards and highlight the case of a teacher with 20 of 21 decile 5 kids BELOW the national standard in reading as somehow an indictment on education minister Anne Tolley … fire the teacher, I’d suggest! Every parent, surely, is entitled to know their kid’s achievement (or not)..

Both my parents teach. My father returned to it after a career in insurance and farming. I chimed in…

Well, this used to work.
1. Remove all electronic devices from the classroom. Desks in rows.
2. Concentration on a few tasks until mastery. The tasks were called reading, writing, arithmetic.
3. Repetitive drilling. Encouragement of memoriz…ation.
4. External assessment — of teachers (by inspectors) and of students (by examination).
5. Higher class sizes once the basics are mastered, with clear rules and clear punishments. Classes of 40 after about year 5…
6. Forget self esteem. High self esteem predicts failure. We are educating you — teaching you things you need to know and cannot discover by yourself — so you can be a productive citizen.
This is what we used to do. It worked. I suggest we do it again.

Then someone said the truth… in parts.

Teachers would like to teach the basics but we are constantly getting the curriculum changed and added to.

Quite true. See notes below. However, the next bit is a classic example of ad hominem reasoning combined with a certain sense of self pity.

This whole discussion is insulting. I have worked my ass off for ten years teaching and really tried to do the best for my students. …I am so sick of society blaming us for all their ills. Go to school and put the effort in if you want to succeed – stop blaming the teachers – and i direct that at parents and students. As for the national standard debate – parents of my children always knew if they needed help in a particular area we did not need national standards to tell us this. My point about national standards is that they are based on white middle class standards and it is not equitable for maori or any “minority group”. With these standards children from low decile schools – children who work really hard are going to be labled. That i don’t like. Am i frustrated? Yes.

What the writer forgot is:

• “white middle class” is a shibboleth. It is meaningless. It means “I hate this and I don’t want it”.
• Education was seen as a way to improve. This involves reading outside one’s culture. Learning history, logic. Being prepared to look at sources, not myths about sources.
• Effort does not count. Results do. (and yes, this is unfair –as an example  some struggle to be articulate, others are born with a full flown rhetorical stance. But all have to be able to speak. Logically).

And as Micheal Laws observed, the teachers, who used to teach logic (rhetoric) after reading and writing (grammar)… are no longer using any form of reason. They are just screaming. And hating. What they forget, is that after 30 adult years of watching this cycle, it becomes boring.

The prophets at times speak elliptically, at other times prophetically, but this is fairly clear.

Hosea 3: 4,5

For the Israelites shall remain many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim. Afterward the Israelites shall return and seek the LORD their God, and David their king; they shall come in awe to the LORD and to his goodness in the latter days.

via Daily Lectionary Readings — Devotions and Readings — Ministries & Programs — GAMC.

The question for interpretation will be… what are the latter days… and the second question is who is David their King? For David, the King, was long dead, and his line of kings was extinguished… as in the first part of the prophecy.

Calvin helps here. He looks at this verse in the context of the verses before. Hosea has bought his wife back. The cost of her contract was 15 shekels — half that of a slave injured by an ox. However, Hosea does not take her into his bed, but (Calvin goes on at some length about the provisions she has, and how this implies she was on barley or black bread) she lives as a widow, in his house, provided for, but without luxury. It would take a while before Hosea was prepared to let her into his heart, or bed. He kept her because of the commands and covenant he was bound to. Calvin then turns to these verses and comments.

“They shall” therefore “return, and then will they seek Jehovah their God”. The name of the only true God is set here in opposition, as before, to all Baalim. The Israelites, indeed, professed to worship God; but Baalim, we know, were at the same time in high esteem among them, who were so many gods, and had crept into the place of God, and extinguished his pure worship: hence the Prophet says not simply, They shall seek God, but they shall “seek Jehovah their God”. And there is here an implied reproof in the word “Elohehem”; for it intimates that they were drawn aside into ungodly superstitions, that they were without the true God, that no knowledge of him existed among them; though God had offered himself to them, yea, had familiarly held intercourse with them, and brought them up as it were in his bosom, as a father his own children. Hence the Prophet indirectly upbraids them for this great wickedness when he says, “They shall seek their God”. And who is this God? He is even Jehovah. They had hitherto formed for themselves vain gods: and though, he says, they had been deluded by their own devices, they shall now know the only true God, who from the beginning revealed himself to them even as their God.

As we can see, Calvin states that the period of dryness and lack of guidance or civil order that Israel would suffer was a consequence of their following other gods. We have to be careful here. Because it is very, very easy to give into the experiment: to allow our nation to tolerate all sorts of wickedness as part of “tolerance” or “diversity”.

We are not to worship Tolerance or Diversity. We are to worship God and God alone — even if our secular state says, as it has of old, that this is seditious and blasphemes the noble purpose of the State.
For the State itself can be a false idol

Paul’s final speech to the Ephesian elders. Three reasons for his confidence.

1. He had not just preached a comfortable gospel. He had preached the whole gospel.
2. He had warned them to stay with the simple faith repeatedly. There are no higher levels. There is just living in faith.
3. He had not demanded the riches they had. He had supported himself.

25″And now I know that none of you, among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom, will ever see my face again. 26Therefore I declare to you this day that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you, 27for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.

28Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son. 29I know that after I have gone, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. 30Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them.

31Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to warn everyone with tears. 32And now I commend you to God and to the message of his grace, a message that is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all who are sanctified.

33I coveted no one’s silver or gold or clothing. 34You know for yourselves that I worked with my own hands to support myself and my companions. 35In all this I have given you an example that by such work we must support the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, for he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

via Daily Lectionary Readings — Devotions and Readings — Ministries & Programs — GAMC.

Paul is the exemplar for all missionary work. He let his rights off to one side — Paul was a Roman citizen, a skilled tradesman, and a scholar — to build up this church. We would do well to emulate him.

Attended a Sermon in a series called “Thank God for evolution. The man was a progressivist. Peter Kreft disagrees. The essay is well worth reading.

Progressivism is a form of snobbery, and has the same terrible moral effects as any other form of snobbery. In fact, it is snobbery masked, and therefore is even more harmful than open snobbery. It is a form of pride, the deadliest of the deadly sins.

If, as Chesterton said, “Tradition is the democracy of the dead,” then Progressivism is the elitism of the living — and within that, of a certain educated, well-off subset that enjoys sneering at once at its ancestors and its neighbors. Progressivism stifles the voices of the past, and amplifies the sound of our own speech, the better to help us pretend we have heard all points of view, then do exactly as we wish.

Progressivism also cuts us off from what tradition gives us: a pile of precious intellectual and cultural gifts from our ancestors. And even when we receive the gifts and use them, we are not grateful for them, for Progressivism forbids us the virtue of humility, which is necessary for the acceptance of gifts; and from gratitude, without which there is simply no wisdom or happiness

via Progressivism: The Snobbery of Chronology.

“Reynolds’ Law.” “Subsidizing the markers of status doesn’t produce the character traits that result in that status; it undermines them.” That’s actually Philo Of Alexandria’s formulation, but I’m happy to bask in the reflection.

via Instapundit.

The Kingdom on this earth is precious. It is worth everything.

Matthew 13:44-52

44″The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.45″Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.47″Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; 48when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. 49So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.51″Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” 52And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

via Daily Lectionary Readings — Devotions and Readings — Ministries & Programs — GAMC.

But the Kingdom is also like a net. It drags in the good and the bad. The Church is thus Catholic — it is universal and membership of the church does not imply that all in the congregation are righteous. The idea of Catholicism includes the idea of the net — there will be evil people in the church. We should not be surprised by scandals.

James 3

¹Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. ²For all of us make many mistakes

Like a net, the Church calls people in to be healed. Not because the people in it are holy, but because we all need help.