Wheatstone 2008

Okay, so, best place I know of to find a well written post on what Wheatstone is, right here:

http://checkity.blogspot.com/2008/07/wheatstone-academy.html

Is checkity. =]

As for personal reflections:

My mentor for this week brought up a relevant and scary point. Being a "wheatstone" type person or even a "torrey" ish (meaning lover of books and ideas and great music and great art, etc.) is still not enough. There is even perhaps a greater danger to this. The fact is that Gammaliel (Paul's teacher) was among the best of the best and yet he still missed Jesus when He came. The officers of the Nazi Party listened to Schubert! Christ could be right in front of me and I could very easily miss Him! Western Civilization is on a knife's edge and Western Culture is dying. Lord have mercy.

On the bright side though, there is the example of Paul and Nicodemus, of the woman who washed Jesus' feet with priceless perfume and, ultimately, Christ Himself who promised us all things if we would abide in Him.

Now I'm beginning to see just how blind I am! Expanding our capacity for Happiness in Heaven through art and literature and ideas are all necessary, but they are worthless if one does not live a life worthy of them. They are useless if I find Dante yet miss Christ.

Two things to do to remedy:
1) Deepen Devotions. Start reading through Bible intensively with good commentaries (Calvin's commentary on Romans). And extend devotions to at least an hour a day.

2) Community, community, community. Torrey seems like a good example. Generally speaking, find Christians who are serious (and therefore most happy) about their faith and who love the God and strive to integrate the life of the mind, the sentiments and the acts of apostleship. (Head, heart, hand).

Of course we can never plan our way out of this. But Christ in us, the hope of Glory.

I can't really describe an experience like Wheatstone (because there's just so much it is impossible to distill it except to go there!), but I can say that it changes lives. It changed mine. Lord, I can't do it, but if You live in me, all things are truly possible.

Another life changing thought:

Each and every person is made in the image of God. In Plato's Phaedrus (our text for the week) there is this one part where Socrates becomes ecstatic after hearing Phaedrus read Lysias' speech (don't worry too much if it's not too clear what I just wrote) basically, it isn't the speech that propels him into such rapture, but the vision of the Beautiful which Socrates is able to see in Phaedrus. By not assigning Phaedrus' intrinsic worth to what he says (which is proven to be stupid shortly afterward) and seeing in Phaedrus' soul a vision and reminder of True Beauty, Socrates is reminded of (in the Christian sense) the Face of God. We too must do this. This is the secret to Loving one another. Even in the worst of sinners there is such Beauty and Goodness and Truth that if we could but see we would be tempted to worship. Lord, strengthen my vision that I might see Your face.

And I end this jumbled and confusing post with two refreshingly clear and lucid quote:

"...to abide in Christ is to renounce any independent life or our own, to give up trying to think our thoughts, or form our resolutions, or cultivate our feelings, and simply and contantly look to Christ to think His thoughts in us, to form His purposes in us, to feel His emotions and affections in us. It is to renounce all life independent of Christ and constantly to look to Him for the inflow of His life into us, and the outworking of His life through us. When we do this, and insofar as we do this, our prayers will obtain that which we seek from God."

-Ruben Archer Torrey, 'How to Pray'

"O dear [Heavenly Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him."

-Socrates' prayer, 'Phaedrus' (Bracket's mine)

Further up and further in!