SolaFire

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. (1 John 5:21, ESV)

God abhors idolatry. To worship anyone or anything other than the True God should be abhorant to us. Still, we are drawn to worshipping idols as moths are drawn to flame.Is this not our situation? We are gathered together at the foot of the mountain, waiting for our Deliverer to return. We have been told what to do, and how we are to wait. Then, finally, we hear something. It is a voice that speaks clearly and sounds certain. “Gather your gold and bring it to me.” This command is not from on high, but comes from an earth-bound source. Mass-media Aarons, whose intent is to please our vanities rather than God’s design, call out to us winsomely. They take our gold and fashion for us pretty gods - gods that promise us more gold, greater pleasure, better relationships, and beautiful bodies. These gods care about making us happy now, rich now, comfortable now. They are so much more approachable than the scary God who answers with thunder on the mountain. They are so much more permissive than the holy God who won’t even let us touch His mountain. We prefer to worship these made-up gods, because they are gods made in our image. They care about us and our glory, almost as much as we do.

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. (Colossians 3:5, ESV)

For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. (Ephesians 5:5, ESV)

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The electronic-super-highway-interweb world is subtle in its lures. On the internet, the whole purpose of having a website is to attract visitors who will buy your shoddy little goods or read your pathetic little thoughts. (This site, by the way, is completely free of the former, but is up to our metaphorical cheekbones with the latter.)

How do you get the shoddy goods buyers and pathetic thought readers to your electronic door?

Shameless self-promotion.

OK, content is also important. However, you can have the best content on the interweb and still not get the folks to come until you do the self-promotion. Google won’t help you, because Google works on the principle that your site is worth sending someone to if other web sites already have links going to your web site. You have to be known and liked by important people if you want other people to know and like you. It is all very much like high school. It’s also very much like THE WORLD.

Which brings me to why you see a link on our side-bar to Pyromaniacs. We like them. They are estute writers who always find interesting things to say in an insightful way. They have great graphics and do all sorts of satire as well as straight commentary. They have nice pictures to look at when you are tired of reading. We like pictures.

No doubt someday we would have linked to them when we got around to linking to other important sites that we like on the interweb. But we linked to them now because, on the interweb, they matter. A LOT. And, very generously, they are making a limited-time offer that they will link to us if we link to them. If we expect anyone but our best buddies to read anything on this site, we need to do that kind of self-promotion. At least for a while.

So why does it make us feel creepy? Because promoting ourselves is discouraged in Scripture. A LOT.

Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person, and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place.’ But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 14:7-11, ESV)

This site is all about God’s glory, not ours. Our desire is to bring others to understand His marvelous grace and unsurpassible mercy. Our goal is to provide a forum for those who wish to praise His Son and defend the truth of His wonderful Word.

To attract folks to read and contribute, we need to do more than just provide people something inspiring to read or an opportunity to write. We need to let people know we are here. I hope that we will not do so in a way that detracts from God’s glory. Even so, while we do things to promote the site, we might feel just a bit sick to our stomachs.

It is not good to eat much honey,
nor is it glorious to seek one’s own glory.
Prov. 25:27 (ESV)

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SolaFire is dedicated to to the praise of (God’s) glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:6)

For now, everything is pretty rudimentary, so please be patient if the little tabs above don’t work, for example. We have relatives who are the same way.

Our focus will be Christ and His work of salvation as summarized in the Five Solas of the Reformation. Even if you don’t know what that means, please feel free to join in the discussion.

If you look over the right, you will see a place to register. After you register, you will be sent a password by e-mail. This takes a few minutes as the tiny electronic mail carriers drive their tiny electronic mailtrucks over the billions of miles to your house. After that, you can log in (in about the same place) and start living the dream.

By the way, you have to log in to post your own “article,” but don’t need to do so if you want to comment on someone else’s.

I fully expect that we may discuss serious topics but that we will not take ourselves too seriously. Even so, I pray that this site brings glory to the name of Christ.

Our intention is to be around for a while– either until Christ returns or until our three year lease is up, whichever comes first (of course, I personally hope it is the former, even though I prepaid and can’t get a refund).

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