Food & drink

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The good father: you are what you eat...

The last thing you think about when your first child is born is your church. Rather, your mind is focussed on the hospital (or midwife) bill, whether you have enough diapers, how long your mother-in-law will stay, which car seat to buy, whether you and your mother-in-law will get along, whether your mother-in-law and your wife will get along, when your baby's conehead will go away... But the church?

Isn't the church like a sound system; if you have to think about it, it's failed? Your wife has just given birth to your first child and the church should stay in the background. Yeah, the first day or so it would be nice if the pastor and his wife visit, hold the baby, read Psalm 139 (except those crazy verses near the end), pray, and leave. Also, it would be nice if the church women helped with food. They can fill your refrigerator with...


Doug's creatively working with ingredients...

Don't know how or why I get e-mails like this, but this one arrived today and I thought readers might get a kick out of it. Now we know what Doug's been doing on vacation. What I can't figure out, though, is why no mention of Nancy? My Dad and Mud always shared the cooking, but when I've been at the Wilsons for a meal... 


One Lord, One Faith, One Cup, One Loaf...

The church has always divided over food. Which food is currently labelled "unclean" will change year by year, but the church has always divided over food.

Want to know why the New York Times isn't doing so well? Yesterday they ran an oped with this tucked into the middle of the piece...


Gluten intolerance...

There are many things we don't normally talk about here on Baylyblog, some of which we do talk about in person, in sermons and elders meetings, and at home. One of these is the diets and food fads regularly coursing through our congregations. Everything God created is good, and to be recevied from Him with thanksgiving. But try telling that to the daughters of Carrie Nation in our congregations whose purpose in life is to keep track of unclean foods.

Back in the late nineties it was Weigh Down. Evangelical women across the country jumped on board and began confessing their gluttony. They lost some weight for a few days, but the fad died when the heresy of Weigh Down's prophetess, Gwen Shamblin, was exposed. "People don't care about the Trinity," Shamblin said, and over the next couple months most of the pounds went back on.

Since then there have been a succession of foodie-spiritualie fads. Recently I've heard the quest for sanctification in some PCA churches has veered into the neo-vegan program, Forks over Knives ("ORDER NOW!"). Their name is an allusion to the spiritual superiority of food eaten with forks to food cut with knives. Think spinach and parsley over chicken and beef. Of course the souls caught up in these Quests for Higher Life deny their disciplines have anything to do with moral or spiritual purity, but the fervor of their evangelization of others and their testimonies of body purification belie their words. What awful church feasts their fellow congregants must endure!

The mother-of-all food fads today is, of course, gluten intolerance...


Foodie quack fads...

Another helpful post from Pastor Doug Wilson, this one on the men promoting the acorns, birchbark, and cow-dung-milk foodie quack fads and those they've duped. Read all the way to the end where he peels back the truth about hypochondria. And note his wise advise about choosing a church.


Feminism, homosexism, and veganism: The Grand Conspiracy

An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule on their own authority; and My people love it so! But what will you do at the end of it? (Jeremiah 5:30, 31)

You may want to dismiss it as looniness, but this assault against God's Order of Creation is rebellion against the God Who made us. It's not naive or misguided. It's evil. Attacks on God's Creation Order are all around us and we must recognize that each of them is a part of Satan's conspiracy to grease the descent to Hell.

Feminism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God made Adam first, then Eve. Thus those who conspire to place woman in positions where she teaches and exercises authority over man are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.

Homosexism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God made Eve--not Steve--for Adam. Thus those who conspire to legalize sodomy and promote sodomitic unions are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.

Veganism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God created adam alone--both Adam and Eve--in His Own Image. He did not create animals in His Image. Thus those whose morality has descended to Veganism and the claim of personhood and legal standing for animals are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.

Satan has conspired to paint each of these revolutions a pretty face. Feminism is a long-overdue correction of patriarchal oppression. Homsexism is a long overdue correction of homophobic oppression. Veganism is a long-overdue correction of speciest oppression.

Satan has also conspired to silence the Church of Jesus Christ... 


Make Applesauce Day...

11 - 1Today was Make Applesauce Day in our kitchen. Six bushels of apples cut, cooked, and run through the food mill by four generations including my mother, my wife, our three daughters, and nine of our grandchildren. Daughter Michal Crum took the pic and I pulled it off Google+.

And although there was already lots of naturally-occurring sugar in the apples, they added lots of white refined stuff as well. (TB w/thanks to Michal)


Yah yah dumpsterhood...

You the best, Jonathan. Great clip. (TB)


Food is for the stomach...

As a principle, I never, ever read Huffington Post. But something about foolish consistency…

Here's an article pointing out that the habit of taking vitamins inculcated in David and me by Dad and continued by me for a few years, recently, is worthless. Note that I didn't say "dangerous," but "worthless."

Not addressing observable rashes and visible vomiting and painful skin maladies and lactose intolerance, or my own throat-swelling from eating Mangos (their skins have the same oil as Poison Ivy), but when people get their meaning in life from not eating sugar and veganism and supplements and so-called "natural" food, I always think of Scripture's declaration:

Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. (1 Corinthians 6:13)
Discipline for holiness is where our focus and work and money should be--not losing weight to be sexy or buff, or buying thousand dollar mills so our grain can be more wholesome. I'm waiting for someone to propose we all weave our own toilet paper. (TB)

 


The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof...

 For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. - John 1:16

GardenEndofSummer The garden's winding down. Just a few butternut squash still on the vine. String beans waning and cantelope and watermelon and summer squash gone. Cucumbers still ticking, but only slowly. Lots of every kind of pepper still coming--especially jalapeno and habanero (see pic on next page) and poblano (there behind the basil). The basil bushes are huge and we've finally let them flower. Bumblebees are all over them today. Our tomato plants go on bearing fruit, denuded down the bottom third of the stalk but sputtering out enough for joy at every lunch and dinner...


Social security is D.C.'s cash cow...

The American Spectator's "Another Perspective" just ran an excellent piece titled, "What Would Reagan Cut?" The author is Bob Patterson, a close friend who served as the stated clerk of Northern Illinois Presbytery (PCA) back in 1991 when I transferred with my congregation from the mainline PC(USA) into the PCA. Since then, Bob has moved into writing on public policy matters and currently serves as editor of the Rockford Center's very helpful quarterly, The Family in America.

Two reasons to read this piece: first, everyone thinks cutting Social Security benefits is the only realistic way to address the deficit, but did you know that the payments you and I make into Social Security have long served as one of Washington D.C.'s principal cash cows? Bob reports that Social Security has long been producing a surplus...


A derailed coal train birthday cake...

Josiah'sCake:Derailment We just celebrated grandson Josiah's sixth birthday and I wanted to post a pic of the birthday cake his mother, Heather, made for him. You'll remember we had a thirty-five car derailment around the corner, recently (the road is still closed). The cars were aluminum coal gondolas and when they went off the tracks they created an indistinguishable mass of aluminum and coal.

The children were taken over to the nearest crossing where they loved watching the cherry pickers and bulldozers clean up the aluminum skeletons and pick up the coal. Josiah's cake is a perfect reproduction of that wonderful scene. (TB)


Trains, derailments, and climbing trestles...

TrainDerailment Two days ago, a mile and a half from our home, a coal train derailed spilling thirty-five aluminum gondolas of coal on the rail bed at the Garrison Chapel Road crossing. Unlike the old steel coal cars, these aluminum cars didn't go off the track and sit on top of each other. They turned into mangled carcasses filling the crossing with something like seven million pounds of coal! Here's a picture of our grandchildren and friends watching the cherrypickers working. When I was an air brakeman/car knocker for Chicago & North Western at their Proviso Yards in the early seventies, working the cherry picker at a derailment was the most coveted job.

About five miles west of the derailment, the coal train had just crossed this viaduct. Imagine the mess if the train had derailed just a few miles earlier!

This trestle is the third highest in the world and we love driving there on a Sunday afternoon to hang out. We took my mother there, recently. She sat in a chair at the side of the road and watched her grandchildren and great grandchildren climb the hill to the top of the viaduct. Then she watched my wife, Mary Lee, climb the steel support she was sitting under...


Pleasure or pain: which would you choose?

Here's an excellent article by Brian Carpenter that's filled with wisdom for all of us, but particularly those of us learning how to raise our children in the Lord. Read it. Then ask your wife and children to read it and discuss it around your dinner table.

(TB: w/thanks to David W.)


Sierra Trading Post...

Readers will note Baylyblog doesn't sell its content. There are only a couple links to stores in the sidebar to the left and those are links to Amazon lists we think readers may be interested in--specifically books written by our dad, Joe Bayly, and another list of recommended books on sexuality. Also, because of our appreciation for...


B&B in the Utica area...

RosemontInn (Tim) If you're traveling through Utica, New York, may I suggest you stay at Bob and Rita Sley's Rosemont Inn. And while you're at it, buy some of their homemade granola. It's delicious!


The Institute of Awesome...

(Tim) I've been privileged to attend several of the Ministers Conferences put on by Christ Church of Moscow, Idaho, and I commend them to you. So take a minute right now to go over to their web site and check out this year's conference. Speakers will include Doug Wilson, Ben Merkle, Toby Sumpter, and Nate Wilson--all speaking on the theme "The Institute of Awesome: Keeping Calvinism Sassy for the Next Fifteen Minutes."

And if you go, do as we've done and take an extra day to go up and hike in Glacier National Park, wondering at the beauty our Creator throws willy-nilly everywhere: the fall colors, the elk herds, and their bugling bulls.


Proclaiming the Gospel replaced by "place-keeping"...

(Tim) Lest anyone who's been watching the debate with our R2-K brothers think they're making much ado about nothing, check out this NYTimes piece about the various ways churches in the Pacific Northwest are replacing Father God with Mother Earth. Millwood (Washington) Community Presbyterian Church, for instance, holds a very successful Greenies market in their church parking lot where deeply spiritual beef and sanctified vegetables are sold.

When the city fathers came to the church and told them to stop hosting the market or start paying taxes, the church started paying taxes. Pastor Craig

Goodwin explained it this way:

“It’s like we’ve got more going on in our parking lot than we do within

the walls of the church...."

I'm betting it's not "like" that at all...


Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

Michigan:Zion(Tim) Our extended family came up to what we call the Michigan House to celebrate Christmas. We arrived in batches Wednesday and Thursday, and are leaving in batches yesterday and tomorrow (Saturday and Monday). The first pic is of Ben and Michal's youngest--Zion Bjorn. I tell them they spelled it wrong--that "this one is Zion Born"--but they don't listen.

MichiganHouse:JosephKidsThe house bubbled with chidren. Here Joseph reads a book to four while the others are...somwhere else. Eating, taking a nap, in the bathtub, nursing, having their diapers changed, eating, having their nose wiped, eating, playing ping pong, eating, and asking questions--Josiah's specialty.


Three days a-counting...

ChristmasSingalong (Tim) Only six days from now, next Friday evening beginning at 6:30 PM, the Good Shepherd Band, Good Shepherd Choir, Good Shepherd Symphony Orchestra (no kidding), and Good Shepherd Cookie Crums with special guest Hot Cocoa will be putting on the Third Annual Christmas Sing-a-Long.

It will all start with a bang when a composition of our own choirmeister, Phil Moyer, receives its world premier. Right here at Church of the Good Shepherd across from Karst Farm Park and just down the street from our very own SuperWalmart. (Eat your hearts out, Oxford and Cambridge.)

It won't be "saving the best for last" this year. Rather, "the early bird gets the worm."

Come one! Come all! Bring every last one of your roomates and friends and relatives and neighbors and co-workers!

Come as you are! And don't be late!