I think my dog Moses just had his first experience chewing tobacco.

I was trying to put together thoughts for a lecture I’m giving on Harry Potter in a couple of days at the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University, and I decided to go outside, smoke a cigar (Oliva Serie V), and hope to catch a few earlier Leonid meteors from the limited view I have on the front porch of my house here in the city. No such luck with meteors, but several ideas for Friday’s talk came to mind.

Moses was sitting with me on the porch, and about halfway through my cigar, I heard him chewing on something. It was dark, but I’m pretty sure it was the end of the cigar that I’d snipped off.

It’s been almost a decade since the last time I waited up for meteors. I’m thinking about what would have happened if a soothsayer had approached me at that time and said, “A decade from now, you’ll be smoking a cigar and watching this same meteor shower from the front porch of your city street.” I’d have shouted “False prophet!” I’m sure.

Here’s the deceptive thing about the Fallen human condition. I’m no longer the legalist I was then. But the pride that serves as a foundation for legalism doesn’t go away when the pharisaical rules are stripped away. Instead, I can be proud that I’m smoking and drinking and cussing, and thanking God I’m not like those Pharisees, who think they’ll be accepted for their rule keeping. And so, paradoxically, I’m being just like the Pharisee in my quest not to be like the Pharisee.

What was Jeremiah saying about the deceitfulness of the heart?

Moses – the OT one, not my dog – is an interesting character. A decade ago, under that meteor shower in my parents’ backyard, if you’d asked me about Moses, I’d have told you all about how he’s an example of what might happen if you sin. Well sure, he’s that. He got all the way to the Promised Land, and then botched it with anger and disobedience. The funny thing about the New Testament, though, is that when it retells the story of Moses, it doesn’t mention that incident. It seems like that’s a pretty defining incident in Moses’ life, but that’s not how the NT talks about Moses.

Grace is a pretty radical thing, and it tears down our pride, whether that pride is a foundation for our moralism or our celebration of liberty from legalism. At the end of Moses’ life, despite all the lessons he’d learned, he screwed up, and he’s accepted and loved. At the end of my life, having traded legalism most likely for other, more subtle forms of prideful behavior, I’ll probably screw up like Moses did. I’ll be accepted, too. That, and only that, is the antidote for pride and the prescription for humility.

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Just don’t be prideful about it. We need grace every bit as much as the Pharisee.

John Gardner, from On Moral Fiction:

[E]ven at its best, criticism – including the criticism set down by poets and novelists, composers, pinters, sculptors, dancers, and photographers – is easier than authentic art to grasp and treat as immutable doctrine. Depending as it does on logic and scheme, on arguments well argued, criticism uses parts of the mind that are more readily available to us than are the faculties required by art.

From an article at Patrol Mag:

But so many twenty-somethings are not calling themselves “post-evangelical” because they know too little theology or have put too small an effort into synthesizing it with reality. They have come from the most apologetics-obsessed generation of Christians in American history, and have realized that many of their prepared answers are for questions that no one is asking. Adrift in the cultural sea, many turned to traditions and theological systems of the past, only to find those similarly unequipped to address the questions of our time. The only choice has been to begin the messy and at times overwhelming process of drafting something new.

The old article is a must-read. HT to iMonk on Twitter.

Quoted by @JaredCWilson on Twitter today:

“We trust not because ‘a God’ exists, but because this God exists.” — C.S. Lewis

“We must not try to decide what is God’s will by prying into His secret counsel, when He has made it plain to us by external signs.” (John Calvin on 1 Timothy 2)

“Whenever there is any question of forgiveness of sins, we must flee to Baptism and from it seek a confirmation of forgiveness. For as God reconciles us to himself by the daily promises of the Gospel, so the belief and certainty of this reconciliation, which is daily repeated even to the end of life, he seals to us by Baptism.” (John Calvin, Antidote to the Council of Trent)

(HT to Mark Traphagen via Twitter)

The new banner here at Letters from the Perilous Realm is the work of Aaron J. Smith, aka Cultural Savage. Those buttons for my two books on the sidebar below the pictures of Rochester are also his work.

If you’re looking for logos or banners, this is the guy you want to work with!

Last night, I watched, for the first time, the film 28 Days Later. An incurable infection spreads causing a rabid, inhuman rage within 10-20 seconds of exposure. One small pocket of the uninfected exists, consisting of a few military men and the story’s three main characters.

The military commander gives an interesting speech at one point, in which he explains that this current situation – infected humans killing everyone who remains – is as “normal” as the world has ever been. All he ever saw 28 days before, and 28 days before that, and 28 days before that, was “people killing people.”

And this military commander, who spoke such wise words, was about to give the two female protagonists over to his men to rape.

It’s a stark and ugly picture of humanity. The “uninfected” are just as awful as the infected, ready and willing to commit evil on the very few human survivors that exist. We don’t like these pictures, but I’m of the opinion that it’s better to face reality than ignore it (hence my love for fantasy, fairy tales, and the Gothic, where reality is explored better than in much “realistic” fiction).

While I have some theological disagreement with an All Saints vs. All Souls day (look – if the Corinthians were saints, we all are), there is something theologically powerful about the Hallowe’en —> All Saints and Souls Days progression. Hallowe’en gives us the Gothic picture of the Fallen world as it is – the imagination’s grappling with a world that we all know is a big mess. And after facing our fears on All Hallows’ Eve, we recall the departed and the life to come on Novembers 1 and 2.

I’ll post pictures later of Sophia in her Clifford costume, Tricia in her Marge Simpson costume, and me in my vampire costume. In the meantime, I need to link the James Jordan piece on Halloween that I link almost every year. It’s a favorite.

PubCast #71: “A Hog’s Head Halloween,” or “John Granger’s Tell-Tale Dead Dog” will be posted at The Hog’s Head later tonight.

I’ve recently cut a few things from my life that will allow more time for writing, and I’ve begun the preliminary brainstorming work on a three-book series on The Christian Imagination. I’m in talks with a publishing company about them at present. Letters from the Perilous Realm will be my “home base” for scratching out the initial thoughts, so, once again, I’m working to revive this blog. I’ve also got an artist – new BHT fellow and brilliant log0-maker and photographer Aaron J. Smith – doing great work for me now, so new banner and connections to a new hub for my work will be coming in the near future.

Hope your Halloween is a great one!

This health care debate is as painful as it gets when it comes to politics in America. I am exhausted by watching people willingly abandon critical thinking about their own beliefs in order to join a team and tear apart the other team.

Listen: Both sides are lying a little bit. Both sides have folks who are telling the truth and genuinely want to see a resolution in this debate, and both sides have morons. So please, spare us the headlines and blog posts and Facebook updates like, “Facts Don’t Matter to the Anti-Obama Camp!” and the like.

Sheesh.

I am, as usual, with the libertarians on this one, and I think the official LP response (I’ve recently joined the LP) to President Obama’s speech is right on target.

/ rant off.