Artwork: unknown Artist: Rob Joseph

To fight your enemy, you must be trained to fight.

To train to fight, you must learn to fight by fighting with your friends.

The highest forms of such fighting we call sport.

We live in an age awash with sport, and yet absent of it. Profiteering knows no bounds to the mammon that can be made. But the age old value of sport - not to watch, but to play - is absent from our daily lives.

We want to overcome. But we find drudgery. We want to rejoice. But we find friendly fire where we had hoped for peace.

Like good sportsmanship, God sends you the daily fights of your Christian walk for the sake of the sport itself. This means that all the obstacles you find are there not for your destruction but for your resurrection.

As long as I remember that I cannot die, then I can also remember that there is therefore nothing to fear.

Satan can only focus his assaults one person at a time. He is not in all places, nor does he know all things. His taint is inside of you, but he is not.

That means that the "friend" God sends you to fight against, in order to prepare you for the real Spiritual War when it seeks you out, is your self. The Christian walk is to wake each day, prepared to wage war against the fallen nature of your own flesh, the original sin inherited from Adam.

There will be no lasting peace in this age. Jesus has said this is certain. To ask God otherwise in any honest way must be a most delicate prayer.

It is right to pray for bread today. It is less right to pray for bread for tomorrow ahead of schedule.

Better to trust than to fear.

This is what it means to pray, in your distresses to call upon the Christ. He is not like the mute idols who stoically reign over the winds of fortunes. He is the Living God who orders light and matter, life and history, from beginning to its end, ever bringing goodness out of the abyss of chaos.

Do not muse in your head upon your bed or at your work and call this prayer. Open your mouth and speak to God.

Begin with Psalm 23.

Speak it every day and believe what it says about you. In it, recite your troubles, seek conviction, own your King and Master, and discover the otherworldly superpower that is the faith alone which only a wizened Christian may know.

Until next time,

Be strong, and let your heart know courage.
Rev. Fisk

Lord willing, Talk Them Into It: The Truth about Making Christians will be released to all newsletter recipients next week! Of course, we want you to talk to your friends about Jesus, but why don't you share this newsletter as well? You first heard it from the Rev.- when we get to 1000 subscribers, we will release an alternative book cover. It's so easy; simply forward this email to a friend and they can subscribe using the link below.

🔹 Morpheus might not be in The Matrix reboot
🔹 A mouse-loving artist in Sweden has been making miniature pop up stores
🔹Amazing footage from 1902: a “flying train” in Germany
🔹Someone wishes screens could do more
🔹Geeky pixel art from Taiwan
🔹 The world-record holding card stacker

A British writer draws some connections between politicians who enjoy Dungeons and Dragons and how the skills needed to enjoy the game might be useful in the political sphere:

“...to happily immerse yourself in a prolonged exercise in shared storytelling, you need language, a love of and respect for language and its power. You must understand how to construct a world solely through words, to use language to persuade other people to imagine and inhabit that world, accepting its rules, systems and ways. Politics usually comes down to words too. Elections are generally won by the people who can tell the best story about the world — or about a world, one that does not yet exist."

The Hustle reported how speaking a second language can change your mindset.

Words, words, words…Unherd writer, Freddie Sayers, has used some of his favorite Swedish words to illustrate what has made that country’s approach to the pandemic different. He argues that Swedes have many shared "habits and values that are commonly deemed morally good and too precious to give up.” He concludes that British and American culture is fractured which, he says, might explain why the "response in those countries has been so uncertain and the debate so poisonous."

Protests have broken out in Thailand where speaking against the monarchy is a crime. 

Speaking of speaking out: Chinese science fiction authors are using their stories to critique the Chinese Communist government and its goals. Through fictional dystopic worlds, these writers are exploring the results of ubiquitous surveillance, the growing divide between classes and the demographic implosion from China’s "one child” policy. This article suggests that Chinese sci-fi could serve as a warning to the West.

To a different power play...Often described as “Europe’s last dictator” President Lukashenko of Belarus is appealing to Vladimir Putin for help as his own citizens call for him to quit. But with another suspicious tea-poisoning death of a Putin detractor, he may need to keep friends close.

Opinions on the recent Democratic Virtual Convention vary to say the least. But one thing has become clearer. An article at The Week argues that Democrats, in priding themselves on their “big tent,”really have nothing to unify them beside their determination to remove Trump at any cost. The writer suggests that the intra-party differences have been put aside but will resurface no matter what the result in November. 

Albert Mohler advised his listeners this week to pay close attention to what is being referred to when media describe candidates as “moderate.” Let’s just say, it’s not their stance on moral issues that is being referred to.

Musician Nick Cave recently wrote a blog post in response to a reader's question: What do you think of cancel culture? His answer was that its primary characteristic is that it is devoid of any mercy. 

"As far as I can see, cancel culture is mercy’s antithesis. Political correctness has grown to become the unhappiest religion in the world. Its once honourable attempt to reimagine our society in a more equitable way now embodies all the worst aspects that religion has to offer (and none of the beauty) — moral certainty and self-righteousness shorn even of the capacity for redemption. It has become quite literally, bad religion run amuck."

He worries “a force that finds its meaning in the cancellation” of ideas threatens all creativity, as "uncomfortable ideas” fuel a new way of seeing the world. Rev. Fisk’s musings about a coming dark age don’t seem so far-fetched sometimes...

James Lindsay, who is somewhat of an expert in the lunacies of woke culture, wrote a [very] long, but worthwhile blog post last week, outlining why Woke folk will not debate you. Here’s a TL:DR summary of his points: 

He argues that the truly Woke presume the "system itself hates people like them and has always been rigged to keep them and their views out.” 

Making it even harder, Lindsay has found that most disagreements he has had with Critical Theorists are dismissed as illegitimate. The rule seems to be that unless you agree with the Woke system, you cannot actually "disagree correctly.” Yes, it’s that crazy. 

Finally, if you are still following along, “The Woke ideology is so sensitive to the moral taint of being associated with moral undesirables” that you're probably a racist by association.

Lindsay concludes by saying, "The hard truth is this: if you don’t yet understand this, you don’t know the fight we’re in or have the slightest idea what to do about it.” Echoing some similar themes, an interview from The Federalist podcast this week, argues that in standing against the tide of “Woke" Critical Theory, we might have to stop playing nice. Spencer Klavan says:

"Conservative people get this wrong. We think if we can just point out one more logical inconsistency in Woke philosophy…the incoherence of materialism with Gnosticism” that those overtaken by social justice, critical race theory, BLM and identity politics will come to their senses. Klavan says it won’t work. "Nonsense is the point. [Saying] 2+2=5 is the tactic to put us on the back foot.” 

He quotes C.S. Lewis, “A man can’t be always defending the truth; there must be a time to feed on it,” and suggests that, while you won’t argue the Woke out of their wokeness, the way to shake them out of it, is to "offer people something truer and better.” Now that is something that Mad Christians can help with!

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Rev. Fisk - you may get to this in your past SMChill, which I'm still listening to, but I wanted to pass on a concern for you: the fact that vaccines increasingly are developed using cell lines from aborted fetuses, and that the 3 front runners in the US for COVID-19 vaccination all use that technology. Below is a document I have used for various purposes (for a letter to my congressperson, an email to my base chaplain etc). It's got reference links at the bottom, because without references one might think I was making things up. People are getting spun up about the wrong stuff, masks encroaching on civil liberties etc; where is the pro-life moral disgust directed at this completely unnecessary approach to vaccine development?

Little Bird

🏫 Gotta laugh or you'll cry: back to school or not?

🥼 Invisibility just got a bit closer. Well, at least for the military.

💈 The NBA has appointed 6 official barbers to work in a COVID “bubble."

💾 Some 747’s still operate using floppy disks. But you needn’t be alarmed!

🇯🇵 Tokyo is experimenting with transparent public restrooms (they do go opaque once you lock the door).

Let us pray:  Almighty God, whom to know is everlasting life, grant us to know Your Son, Jesus, to be the way, the truth, and the life that we may boldly confess Him to be the Christ and steadfastly walk in the way that leads to life eternal; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.