Random Thoughts / (Friday) Saturday Photo

God's Sovereignty
Frank Turk from TeamPyro made the following comment (no.46) regarding "the Sovereignty of God:"

One of the real comforts of the Christian faith is that things happen to us on purpose and not because God’s not minding the store. I don’t have to know all the parts of the Rube Goldberg machine to have confidence in the things I don’t see or perhaps could never understand: all I need is the fact that God’s decree is still the principle upon which all things exist, and He is in fact doing good to me.

Actually, the post and comments are pretty good. What was intreresting--from what I read--was the congenial banter (for the most part) between the different camps.

I have a friend who is an Elder in a Restoration Movement Christian Church; I attend --for lack of a better label-- a reformed SBC. He and I disagree on this issue. Dale would most likely see God's sovereignty as "God could control everything, but decides only to influence...God’s sovereignty is self-limited. God could control things, but to preserve human freedom, he will not intervene in the affairs of men to the degree that the human will is decisively bent in one direction or another."¹ (Dale may actually lean some to the left of this statement.)

I would say that "God’s will plays a providential role in causing all things. In other words, all that happens happens because God did in some sense will it, but secondary causes are usually the instrumental cause behind the action. In the case of your socks, you chose them because you decided to, but it was also part of God’s will. God allows evil as it is part of his imperfect will to bring about a perfect end, but he is not the instrumental cause of evil."¹

Although we don't see eye-to-eye on this subject, we enjoy discussing it, questioning each other on the "finer points," and attempting to shoot holes in each other's theology. We are friends, brothers in Christ. We both put our hope in the atoning sacrifice of Christ's death on the cross, the power of His resurrection and the future, physical return of Jesus Christ to this earth to gather His saints. We are both Christians...we just disagree as to how we got to this point. Not a deal breaker as far as friendships go.

Marketing
I'm writing this post as I sit in McDonalds. It's Saturday morning and everyone at my house sleeps in. I can't stay in bed much past 6:30 AM, so, this morning, I got up, packed my laptop and camera and went out for "breakfast" (I use the term loosely when talking about McD's. REAL breakfast involves eggs, grits, and biscuits-n-gravy. I don't get that kind of breakfast very often, but when I do...it's GOOOOOOOD!)

Anyway, I'm sitting at McD's watching all the people come and go and I'm looking at their logo (on my coffee cup). Pretty simple. Not really that impressive...but it accomplishes exactly what they intended. It identifies them. You know a McD's when you see it--even half a mile away. In fact, you don't even have to be able to read to know it's McD's. Take any three-year-old in America, probably most of the world, and drive down the street and they'll pick out the McD's 10 times out of 10!

A logo is a powerful thing. It tells people who you are. It identifies your company. In less than a second, people associate you with --for example-- "they have food. Coffee. Cold drinks. Hamburgers and french fries. Salads (for the health conscious crowd) and sundaes (for the dessert conscious crowd). Take a look at the following logos. You should be able to identify everyone and know immediately what they sell. Don't tell me marketing/advertising doesn't work.

(L to R) (In case you need help): Nike, Target Stores, Radio Shack, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Shell Oil, Pepsi, Citgo, and Audi

Friday (Saturday) Photo

¹ For the sake of "full disclosure," the quoted definitions were taken from this blog post.