Fort Monmouth, NJ
August 31, 2005
Military bases are being closed, and apparently one base on the way to extinction is Fort Monmouth, NJ. What memories that piece of news triggered!
Located near Eatontown, NJ, it is the home of the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratory. As a newly commissioned ROTC shavetail in 1954, Ft. Monmouth gave me my first taste of active duty. I was enrolled in the Officer’s Basic Course, which was supposed to transform a college kid into an Army Officer in twelve short weeks. We were subjected to the usual basic training stuff like pre-breakfast calisthenics, confidence courses, running in formation with weapon and pack; rifle, pistol, and carbine training, field exercises, Saturday morning parades, and some classroom instruction. The latter included the same grainy films about the dangers of VD and graves registration that have entertained many generations of GIs. We were also taught such useful skills as laying miles of twisted pair field wire and climbing poles with spikes and belt.
We lived in World War II-style wooden barracks that had been remodeled as BOQs (bachelor officer quarters) with private bedrooms but retaining the communal toilets and showers, which prompted the same bathroom humor familiar to many generations of soldiers.
That was my first stay at Fort Monmouth. Years later, after I had fulfilled my active duty obligation, I suddenly found myself back there in uniform, but that is another tale.
Lt. Dave
Galatians 2:15-21
August 31, 2005
Jews and Gentiles are Justified by Faith
2:15 We are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, 2:16 yet we know that no one is justified by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by the faithfulness of Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. 2:17 But if while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found to be sinners, is Christ then one who encourages sin? Absolutely not! 2:18 But if I build up again those things I once destroyed, I demonstrate that I am one who breaks God’s law. 2:19 For through the law I died to the law so that I may live to God. 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 2:21 I do not set aside God’s grace, because if righteousness could come through the law, then Christ died for nothing!
Paul fully made the case for the theological doctrine of justification by faith in his letter to the Romans, but here he sets his sights on those in the Galatian church who were convinced that one had to be a Jew first before becoming a Christian. The Jews may have been given the law first, but strain as they might to keep perfectly the law, it was not enough to earn God’[s favor. To depend on the law to be justified in God’s eyes leads to the preposterous idea that Christ came to encourage sin.
The key phrase in this passage is in verse 20: “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” The powerful idea of spiritual death and rebirth is central to the life of Christian faith and worthy of study and meditation. Having said that, I must remind myself that I am dealing with a profound mystery here. I don’t expect to fully comprehend it in this life. -sdg-
Double-wide
August 30, 2005
Moseying down the sidewalk, lost in my thoughts, I heard rhythmic steps in the street behind me. I turned to see a wisp of a young lady floating along, water bottle to her lips, perhaps settling down for a leisurely morning jog. She nodded as she pulled away ahead.
After a while, I heard more rubber slapping the pavement. I again turned and found myself staring at two turnip-headed babies, comfortably snoozing away in their double-wide buggy. Pushing the buggy at a brisk jogging pace was a husky guy, bare to the waist and glistening with sweat, one hand pushing the buggy and the other holding his water bottle. I waved and asked, “How’s it going?” He waved back. “Well, OK…I think,” as he lumbered on ahead. He obviously was getting a lot more exercise than the presumed mother up ahead, not a very fair division of labor if you ask me.
I thought of the puny young boy Calamy on board the HMS Surprise, staggering along carrying a calf. His older shipmates had told him that if he carried the calf every day until the calf was grown he would become big and strong. If my buggy-pushing friend continues his jogging routine for a few more years, I may have exchanged waves with the future strongman of the world.
Or maybe they were in training for a future pair of Terrible Twos.
Dave, content to saunter along in the sunshine.
In the mood for gloom and doom?
August 29, 2005
Then read this about $200/bbl oil.
EconLog, Son of Simon, Bryan Caplan: Library of Economics and Liberty
Probably won’t happen, but who knows?
Dave, not too worried. Yet.
Tech talk - sorry.
August 29, 2005
Those of you interested in the tech end of things may be interested to know that last night the Orlop files at gilford.textdrive.com were moved from a server on the east coat to a new server in San Diego with nary a glitch. This involved a change in IP addresses and DNS records (and a lot of other magical stuff that I don’t ken). The actual transfer of data was done using rsync, a slick file transfer program that I use regularly. This site “went black” for an hour or so, but I was asleep and wasn’t aware of it.
I was able to follow the process of one-by-one migration of the half-dozen servers here. The guys (and maybe gals, too) spent a long weekend effecting the migration, apparently without losing customer data or worse. An impressive feat!
I had only to edit my hosts file to change the address and regenerate my known_hosts file to restore ssh access to the new server. All the rest was transparent to me.
Now, back to speaking English.
Dave, admiring tech feats like this.
Lord’s day
August 28, 2005
That’s evangelical-speak for “Sunday,” and the tag never fails to rattle my chain. I happen to believe that the biblical ten commandments (Exodus 20:2-17) are hard to beat as first principles for any civilization, regardless of religion. They are much more than that to a Jew or Christian, of course, but that’s not my point here.
The fifth commandment basically says that you should work hard for six days a week, but on the seventh day you should stop to catch your breath and let your body, brain, and spirit recover from the weeks busyness. It also implies that the seventh day should also be devoted to family and worship, because when we are working during the week we probably aren’t thinking too much about our spiritual health. There’s something in our makeup that makes this cycle of work and rest work for most ofus.
I certainly don’t yearn for a return to “simpler times,” when the norm was to work long, back-breaking, hours for six days and balance it off with a long nap, some reading, and family activities on Sunday afternoon. It was the norm then because Christian mores pretty much governed the average working stiff’s way of life.
Today we all live in a predominantly pagan society that regards Sunday as just another day of the week. Making Sunday a universal “Lord’s Day” in any meaningful sense of the term is a non-starter.
But to you, dear reader, whether Christian or no, I recommend this biblical rhythm to your days. Whatever else it may be, it’s also just common-sense.
Dave, struggling with his sense, common or otherwise.
Guardian WatchBlog
August 27, 2005
I have been getting the urge lately to weigh in on the mideastern war. While gathering my thoughts for that post, I ran across this article in Guardian WatchBlog about the way “the media” is reporting on stuff going on in Iraq. From the article:
During the actual Iraq war itself, the “mainstream” media was quite fair in its coverage. It could hardly be otherwise, with reporters taking the field alongside the soldiers themselves. The talking heads on the home front started using the “Q-word” and making Vietnam comparisons before even a week had passed, but their dour outlook was negated by reports from their own embedded colleagues.
I rather think that this is a fair statement, but YMMV. The whole article provides a needed counterbalance to The Guardian’s point of view.
Dave, mostly trying out Wordpress’s “Press it” feature.
Another old couple
August 26, 2005
On the corner of 22nd and Harrison there is a house with a small west-facing porch. For quite a few years now, when the weather is not too hot nor too cold, a grizzled old man sits there with a cigar in his mouth, a cowboy hat perched on his head, often with his wife alongside. I am as familiar a part of the scenery to them as they are to me, and we never fail to exchange waves and a few words about the weather.
They apparently have family nearby, because sometimes there is a pickup truck in their driveway and a not-so-young-themselves couple is crowded onto the little porch with them.
The mile of south 22nd Street that I regularly walk is my own little microcosm of the character of mid-america. It is a wide, smoothly paved street, lined with large maples and oaks that shade the sidewalks on both sides and provide shelter and sustenance for myriads of brown squirrels. The homes are mostly small, well-kept bungalows with neat lawns, many with old-fashioned front porches. There are flags and flower beds galore. The inhabitants seem to be mostly retired and working people with a sprinkling of youngsters with kids, in short the kind of ordinary folk that are the sinews of our land.
The only downside is that I keep thinking of Norman Rockwell and his mawkish illustrations. I refuse to get sappy about all this, if I haven’t already done so, because I believe there is real strength displayed by the unremarkable people in the small town neighborhoods of our country that deserves real respect rather than mere sentimentalism.
Dave, proud of his walk-neighbors
End game
August 25, 2005
Ahead of me an elderly couple very slowly walks along, hand in hand; he is gray haired, straight and tall, slowing his pace to that of his mate; she is bent over and struggling for each step. I watch them turn into their front walk and make their way up five agonizing steps to their front porch and door. With a big smile, he turns and waves at me, as he always does, and they disappear into their bungalow. I’m guessing that without his patient urging, she might not get any exercise at all.
So I absorb yet another lesson in contentment, patience, and forbearance, from my fellow man.
Dave, admiring them both.
Galatians 2:11-14
August 25, 2005
Paul Rebukes Peter
2:11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he had clearly done wrong. 2:12 Until certain people came from James, he had been eating with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he stopped doing this and separated himself because he was afraid of those who were pro-circumcision. 2:13 And the rest of the Jews also joined with him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray with them by their hypocrisy. 2:14 But when I saw that they were not behaving consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “If you, although you are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you try to force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
Proverbs 27:17 says that
As iron sharpens iron,
so one person sharpens his friend.
I believe that the Galatians passage is an example of how this happens in real life as Christians hold each other accountable. Peter was caught in a personal conflict between his Jewish upbringing and the new (to him) freedom given to him by the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul valued Peter’s leadership in the young church enough to point out his inconsistent behavior. So far as we know, Peter acknowledged the truth of Paul’s rebuke, and both men continued as strong leaders among the new believers. -sdg-
