I, like Big T, have a wise younger sister.

As has already been said by better men than I, my sister is smarter than me. And sweeter. Which, if you know me, you know isn't that hard, and if you know my sister, you know how much of an understatement that is.

Don't forget that sleep is not a sin. Please get some rest.

(from an email)

I am continually amazed by Easter

So I learned a verb for Latin today. Shocking, I know. Anyhow, this verb is "pasc," and it means basically to bring livestock to food. Being the diligent (albeit ignorant) Lordship student that I am, I wondered if this was where we got "Pascha" from. Pascha, in case you don't know, is another name for Easter, used frequently in the Orthodox church. So I jumped to Google and typed in Pascha. According to OrthodoxWiki (which any Greek person can edit, so you know it's right), it's a transliteration from the Greek, which is transliterated from the Hebrew for Passover. Cool. Yet still I wonder. So I break out ye olde Whitaker's Words (a free Latin translator) and typed in Pascha. It popped up with "Easter, Passover." Yea, verily, this I knew. So I typed in "pasca" on a whim. Pasca means water mixed with vinegar, a traditional drink of Roman soldiers in the field and the drink of slaves. 

If your reaction at learning this is at all similar to mine, you're clapping hands over mouth in wonder. Because Easter is all of these. Easter is the new Pascha, the true Passover, when the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, is poured out on us and protects us from judgment. It is the time of pascamur, when we are led like sheep to the manger, to eat of the Body that was placed there for us. It is when we remember that Christ drank pasca for us on the cross, when He took our place, the place of a slave, and drained the bitterness from our cup. Yet we also remember that He drank the pasca because He was the conquering Warrior, who was in the field because His work was not yet finished. 

Anyhow. Our God has an incredible way of tying things together. He is the Master Storyteller. 

I wish you a happy holiday

Happy Casimir Pulaski Day. 

In other news, this should surprise anyone who has spent their entire lives locked in the storm cellar. As a side note, I just love it when the BBC gets all self-righteous on American news. It is really, truly amusing.

And the other breaking story in "New News," da Dow is doing not so good. 7000 is, apparently, the bottom of the bucket for stock markets. And Washington is giving another $30 billion imaginary dollars to AIG! Which also makes me laugh.

By the by, Slumdog Millionaire is incredible. Danny Boyle is among the greatest directors of all time. His ability to tell a story is simply unfathomable. I'll be posting a more substantive review soon.

I got crucified in ashes.

So tonight I went to my first Ash Wednesday service ever. Some people may wonder how this could possibly be the case. To them I say, visit a Southern Baptist church and you will begin to realize. We are really good at emptying bathwater, and especially good at the accompanying activity of baby-chucking. 

Anyhow, for you all tonight on this Ash Wednesday, I present a multivarious fare of life lessons and observations from the past weeks. 

1. I miss seeing news footage of Mardi Gras in Mobile, especially the mug shots. 

2. This shouldn't make me laugh, but oh how it does!  

3. Sir Joshua Reynolds, master British painter and President of the Royal Academy, writes the following: One advantage, I will venture to affirm, we shall have in our Academy, which no other nation can boast. We shall have nothing to unlearn. (Discourses on Art, Discourse 1) And that makes me smirk the wise, knowing smirk of one who knows something the speaker doesn't. 

4. My favorite two commonplaces from week-before-last:

Swede: The [Lordship] quiz is so simple and my mind is just so complex!

Swede: The lordship quiz is like coming in here with all your armor on and ... well ... 

Claire: You realize it's a sumo wrestling match. 

5. Well, now, who'd have thought?  The funniest thing is that you can hear the indignation in the cracking of their voice. 

6. This may become the goriest action movie ever made.

7. I don't even believe this mess. For crying out loud.

8. You know you've been doing too much school work and too little sleeping when you start responding to people in Latin, only stopping when you realize that you don't know the word for narrative. This is, of course, a purely hypothetical situation. 

9. I found this very interesting. 

       Gen. 3:7 (ESV) Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 

      Matt. 21:18-22 (ESV) In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, "May no fruit ever come from you again!" And the fig tree withered at once. 

      Matt. 25:41-46 (ESV) Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food ... and these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

10. I'm just glad that the little sidebar of followers now calls itself Google Friend Connect. Otherwise, who knows how I might try to connect with them. 

11. Ladies and Gentlemen, I announce, with great trepidity and hopeful expectation, the appearance of an incredible blog. Behold the Jons.

12. A quick little free-verse I jotted down at some point during week-before-last's Disputatio. Not good but begins to get my point across:

sprinting with a leather bag

slosh-burned

two til and sprinting past waiting hatchbacks

a dollar lighter

but it's this heavy water 

gives me wings. 

Thank God for Americano Fridays. 

I know it's been a while

...since we've been regularly posting. It's been a crazy week and there looms another on the horizon. Just hang on. We'll make it through somehow, I promise. In the meantime, a rundown on the importances and random things of life as I have seen them, in no particular order. 

1. This is incredibly creative. To think I just used legos to build massive castles full of fighting midgets. 

2. From Florida this week. A woman gave birth to the baby she was trying to kill while in the abortion clinic, and the nurse threw it away. In the garbage. The most frightening line of the article is this, regarding what is basically described as a surgical version of a spear: "We don't use these in terminations [anymore]." 

3. Quote of the day, from Oscar Wilde. "One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar." Poor little gnostic. 

4. I can't wait to see these at Walmart, piloted by obese men buying Diet Coke. 

5. Speaking of the WalBeast, who in the world thought it would be a good idea for them to sell roses?! Seriously. What kind of man buys his wife roses from Walmart? I mean, I know what kind of man buys his wife roses from Walmart, the same kind of man that stuffs her stocking with Skoal and Moon Pies for Christmas. But I mean, just come on. 

6. This is pretty epic. Careful cause there's a few very violent/bloody/disturbing images on there, so don't go clicking on the "objectionable content" labels. 

7. One of the coolest misspellings ever: "90 minuets in heaven"* Also an awesome name for an album. 

8. I just started listening to All These Things That I Have Done by The Killers. One wonders how men responsible for such lyrical drivel as Somebody Told Me could come up with "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier." 

9. And this makes me abundantly happy. They should have bulletproof pocket protectors and short ties. 

*this was referring to the book 90 Minutes In Heaven

I answer my own question

So here's my answer. Why are there poor? Well, it's my fault. And it's yours. I hope it's the fault of every single one of you. It's President Bush's fault, it seems to be Obama's fault, Clinton claims it's his fault, but I'm not so sure that we can blame it directly on bin Laden, Hussein, or even the serpent. 

The poor are the Church's fault. I come very close to believing that when I stand before the Judgment Seat, God will ask me "And how about that guy you saw under the bridge and didn't stop for on January 6, 2009? What did you do about that? Hmm. Well, what about . . . " 

Most of us have heard Mr. Doug Jones's take on the gravity of economic sins. I'd agree with that. Too many preachers use the divorce rating among Christians as a barometer for the Church (this is not at all to justify or reduce the importance of marriage as holy and sacred; divorce is horrible, but we fail to realize that poverty and hunger are equally horrible tragedies). What about the number of people below the poverty line? What about the number of deaths by starvation in the US? What about the number of thefts carried out by desperate parents?  I'm not even touching Africa yet. I'm just asking you to look at what is happening in our own backyard. 

Christ said that it wasn't the healthy but the sick who need the doctor. The gospel dies in upper middle class Suburbia. It explodes in the projects. While popular European Christianity (and, some argue, even American Christianity) begins to die, the faith is growing by leaps and bounds in China, Pakistan, India, Africa, and the Middle East. Could it be because the Catholic church did so little to relieve the abject poverty of the natives that South America has never been stable and prosperous? 

What I'm saying is this: the Church is to disciple all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Trinity. We preach the Gospel and disciple the nations by living out the faith. We start living like Christians, and people will start noticing. Spurgeon once said, joy is our missionary. As Pastor Wilson said, you don't reach atheists by debating them; you get to them by having them over for dinner. Theology doesn't save people; the Gospel does. St. James applies this to giving when he says "If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?" Too often Christians talk about God's love to an atheist as if it's this ethereal emotional thing that couldn't help anyone even though, deep down, it really wanted to. God's love is not a pretty, teardrop-eyed, softly-glowing-in-the-snowy-moonlight sort of thing. It's visceral, physical, and sometimes it looks like a toothless, legless, drugged up old man in a wheelchair who hasn't had a bath in a month. If an atheist looks over and sees a Christian volunteering at a soup kitchen every Thursday, when you start picking up homeless guys and buying them dinner, when he sees you sacrifice for those less fortunate, he'll be ready to hear about that love. That Love that will turn the world upside down. 

Giving to the poor is the Church's responsibility, its duty. We can't expect the government or other agencies to do it, however willing President Obama may be to do so. The poor are out there because we Christians are letting them be out there. Every family that starves to death is an indictment on Christianity; every homeless drug addict is condemnation. And who knows, perhaps the day the Church ends poverty will be last day of all? 

I ask a very leading question

This has been on my mind recently. 

Why are there poor?

And answers like "sin" or "Adam in the Garden" are copouts. I mean, here and now, in 2009, why are there still people who cannot buy food? 

P.S. Sorry we've been so out of touch recently. Family has taken priority. Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and that you all watched that guy Robbie Maddison almost kill himself in 14 different ways, and then drop the mighty-mighty-f-bomb on live ESPN TV. American entertainment at its best, folks. 

I respond.

Friends, Americans, Countrymen (and all you international types too), a gauntlet has been thrown down. 

I am referring, of course, to the last post, which features a stunning portrait of myself, along with sundry gibberish. The only proper response to such behavior is to post another cooler, more generally awesome, and somehow better-looking picture of myself to top Rob's.

I leave you to judge how well I succeeded. 

But I jest. Nay, the real response must be to Rob's incredible claim to harbor abused words. As indeed he does. If by harbor you mean beat, bend, and violate. Rob claims to shelter misused words, and does so by further misusing and abusing them. One imagines his similar shelter for abused dogs including such friendly items as whips, over-tight muzzles, and cattle prods (I jest, of course, Rob loves dogs - medium rare). Despite my redneck upbringing, my Southern heritage, and years of bad influence, I refuze too right sentence's "like" this won hear. It gives me a headache. 

Also, and on a separate note, as Josiah deftly pointed out below, and as Theresa predicted, I missed two of my calls on films if we're going by Rotten Tomatoes. As I went with the RT the first time, I'll stick by them now, although I note in passing that they've been wrong before. Looks like Valkyrie passed and Bedtime Stories washed. I had such hopes, but I should have known the minute I saw Courtney Cox was involved.

Well, all, the world is made new. The world of orphans, divorce, rape, murder, oppression, cancer, and the stomach flu has already been reborn, renewed, and remade, just not yet. Praise to our Christ, the God-man. Merry Christmas, even if it's late. 

P.S. Rob is really an animal lover. He has more love for dogs than almost anybody I know. Which makes it all the more rad and hysterical that I make him out as a dog hater. And yes, I totally said "rad" so I could use the label "I said rad." While we're at it, sigma. Got another one. 

I am 80 hours and 41 minutes from home

So I wanted to post again, mainly so I had something to do besides homework. And I have the attention span of a drunk 2 year old right now, so we'll be doing another several random points of information that hopefully inform and start to entertain.

1. Over the last two nights, I have got 7 hours of sleep. There have been more than 120 ounces of soda involved, which doesn't sound like much until you realize that that translates to more than 600 milligrams of caffeine. Now I don't know much, but since I can't hold my hands steady right now, I'm gonna say that it's a little imbalanced. As I slurp away on my Wheatberries fountain drink.

2. This makes me laugh.

3. I have "errands" to "run" for the first time in my life. I mean, of course I've made a grocery run for my mom, I've picked up drinks for parties, I've even made trips for the sole purpose of banking. But I have a to do list which involves cleaning out fridges, buying Christmas gifts, discussing thermostats with building supers, etc.

4. I'm not sure what to make of this. Apocalypse: yeah. Nic Cage: heck no. I do, however, know what to make of this. And that is: frippin amazing.

5. Thom Yorke has the voice of an angel.

6. Jon Tollefson's poetry does, indeed, make the English language look like a cat. One whose fur he strokes the wrong way, just to watch the fireworks. And those fireworks make me laugh great peals of laughter.

7. You know you've been up north for too long when 17 seems balmy.

8. Last night I think I caught 30 minutes of sleep doing Latin flashcards; like thirty seconds each time I changed slides. I learned so very much.

9. Two days left, people (sorry, Jeremy). Let's Stoke these bad boys.

I catch the general public up

So it's finals week for most of the collegiate world, and we are no exception. While I have plenty of work left to do and it's pretty early, I thought I'd take a sec and update everybody on what's been going on. 

1) Not to toot my own horn, but so far I'm batting 1000 on my movie predictions. The Day The Earth Stood Still got panned so badly it made Twilight look good. 

2) I think if I nail every one of my prophecies regarding upcoming film, somebody should buy me lunch. 

3) So it was a little chilly tonight: 

4) This excites me to just short of no end. 

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE HD

5) The word "epic" hasn't really been creeping into the general vocabulary of our class so much as violently hurling itself, leaving behind it a trail of devastation and laughter. 

6)  Rob and I will be running like madmen (at least, I will be) down the concourse of the New Orleans Airport towards nine or so frantically waving people in approximately 114 hours and 48 minutes. Not that I'm counting. 

7) I am very much looking forward to Tim Tebow running all over the OU defense and destroying that poor sap that got the Heisman. 

8) Blackberry waffles hot off the iron, topped with cold syrup, and flanked by pepper bacon and cheese scrambled eggs, is pretty much the ultimate brinner. 

I got tagged

Okay, so, a while back, Faith of Viva la Vida fame tagged me on her blog. Here's the rules: you list six random things about you, you call out six people you know to do the same. And the unwritten rule is, of course, unlike chain emails, if you don't do it you're sorta the tacky guy on the block. And I ain't that guy. So here it is.

1. I could not stand pizza until the summer after I turned 15. Until this year I hated spaghetti and lasagna. I've never been able to comprehend people's desire for guacamole.

2. I love vinyl records. Rob and I collectively own almost thirty LPs, and they are the way of the future. That's right, the future.

3. Rob and I have a running dare that we won't turn on the heat in our apartment. He said "So when are we gonna turn the heat on?" I responded, "whenever you get cold." He then said: "I can last as long as you can." To which my obvious response was, "and I can last longer than you, so I guess we're good."

4. I have an unreasonable, unpredictable, and totally irrational love for the band Journey.

5. Until this past August, when I moved into the apartment, I've never had my own room. I always shared one with my two younger brothers or sister (at least, as long as I can remember). And, perhaps even weirder, (unless you know my brothers, both the painfully cool Kanaan/Mark and the tragically hip Khristian/whatever annoying name I can come up with) I enjoyed it immensely. I think I'll make my children do the same.

6. My grandaddy makes the best BBQ in the world, and my grandmother makes the best fried chicken. This is the grandaddy who dipped my pacifier in Dr. Pepper when I was but a tyke. I also vividly remember the two times in my life that they have not had DP in their fridge. Those were tragic days.

Okay, so that's it. You now know 6 extremely random yet important factors in my life. I think my favorite part of this list is the descriptors of my brothers. You can commonplace me if you'd like. (sarcasm alert - I really don't think you should, it's not all that great) The beauty of it is, if you know my brothers you know how very, very true those words are. Kanaan is (at least to my nerdy self) always cool, often painfully cool. And Khristian, well, he's just always tragically hip. And yes, you can say that your grandmother or mother or cousin Suzie makes better fried chicken than my grandmother. Just know, deep down in your heart of hearts, that you're wrong. Really, objectively, utterly wrong.

Oh yeah, six people. Hmm. Most people I know that read this blog don't have one. But, all the same, here goes. You guys can post your six in the comments section. And make it interesting, people. Surprise me (Trey, not too much). That said, if you refuse, I'll understand, I'll just call you girl names for the rest of the time I know you (except for Antkowiak - I won't do a thing except ask why, and then in a completely non-aggressive tone of voice).

Bobby Lee, Trey, Will Hughes, Mark (yeah, you Kano), Jeremy Sauder, Tyler Antkowiak.

I am going to shutup

The Dow is down 486 points, the S&P is down 52 points, and the NASDAQ is down 98 points. Curtis was right, and I was oh-so-very wrong. Not a real big surprise, considering my knowledge of economics. 

Anyhow, I'm not going to conjecture about why this happened, except to say that I don't really know who these "investors" are. Seriously, does anybody know? I also don't think that it was because people are realizing that Obama's just a politician. They've only had 18 hours to realize that, and I think it'll take more like 18 months, and that may be optimistic. 

Separate and tangentially related: Barack Hussein bin Ladin Jong Il Ayatollah Chavez Castro Stalin Obama is probably Muslim and he was probably born in Kenya, he's consorting with terrorists, and he just might have gotten rid of his grandmother (all things that, if Fox News haven't actually said yet, have been hinted in that particular lack of subtlety that seems to be their trademark), but he's going to be the President of the US of A unless something really crazy happens. So let's drop the blatant ad hominems and stick to criticizing his position, not him. I respect President Bush, I despise the war in Iraq. I love my friends, I hate their sins. Okay? So no more name-calling or other irrelevancies that do no help to anyone, vishte?*

*- That said, let's not get too terribly huffy and prissy. Let's laugh like Christians if something genuinely witty and still respectful comes along. Cue the Colbert, people.  

I play the prophet

Tomorrow, around 8 or 9 PM CST, the major news media is going to realize that this is a much closer race than anyone wants to say. States like Idaho, New York, Kansas, and Oklahoma will go exactly as polled. CNN's predictions, though, that Obiden will lap McPalin on electoral votes is just dang ridiculous. Virginia will not go to Obama, and neither will Montana or North Dakota. I'm having trouble seeing Washington going that way as well. I think Palin will swing a large portion. North Carolina is another easy shot for the Reds. We may have another state (a la New Hampshire in y2k) that's up in the Blue Northeast that ends up swinging over. The big problems will, as always, lie in the swing states. What will be interesting though, is that this election will do roughly what the 2000 election did. Ohio and Pennsylvania will be split between Dems and Reps. Ohio will again go to the Red and Pennsylvania Blue. The battle will end up in Florida, like it always seems to, and this is where Wolf Blitzer will get all shrill and flustered. 

All of a sudden he and the rest of the "best political team in the frippin universe"™ will realize that their polls were wrong. Here's the thing about Florida, Alabama, and Georgia: more than half of the people who will vote for the Republicans no matter who is running are the working class heroes that anarchist musicians love to sing about and then love to hate come November. They are the trailer-living, gun toting, beer drinking rednecks who would hang up on any pollster in the world. But they'll show up tomorrow, and Wolf Blitzer and Anderson "The Grease" Cooper will shake their heads in sadness, and swear blue streaks on and off of cats when commercial breaks come. 

Come 12 am on Nov. 5th, we'll be no closer to a result. This one will take days, more likely weeks. The battle will start in the courts, and we'll see how it goes from there. It will be quite interesting to see how Charlie Crist (FL governor), a democrat, will react when his sponsor John McCain (they have a long track record together) and his party's nominee are both fighting over his state's votes. It'll be a very amusing couple of weeks

N.B. I have made at least two dozen controversial claims unfounded on any sort of real data except my own, limited experience. Most of this is sheer conjecture. But I do really think it's what will happen. May God, as Pastor Wilson said this Sunday, give us mercy and not justice. 

I dip my big toe in the dungpit that is the 2008 election

Alright people. Open poll. Put in the comments who you will try to make the most powerful person in the world come November 4 and why.*

If you feel like it, try to convince me to agree with you. I'll be voting in what is arguably the biggest swing state in the country, the Sunshine State of Florida itself. I'm also trying to figure out whether I'm going to write in "No" for President (as the right Reverend Rob Hadding is doing), or "Stephen Colbert" (for reasons that should be easily visible - namely, the sheer beauty of voting for Colbert).

Oh, and if your name is Trey (or even if it isn't), feel free to rant and rave about whom you hate the most in this election. Just attempt to avoid profanity/obscenity as much as possible.

*NB - I don't actually think that the President of the United States is the most powerful man in the world, but he's close enough. Search out your beef with me elsewhere.

I am Young

I've had these thoughts running through my head for a couple weeks now, and I actually scribbled a little of the last part on the back of my lordship notes. Anyhow, no further adoing. 

Youth

I wonder what it is like to be old and white-whiskered,

For as yet I am young, and wisdom 

Laughs merrily at me from afar as I chase her, 

Ever-stumbling. 

My life is but new-started, 

My days are few, fresh, and hope-full. 

Yet my nights are heavy with thoughts and people and 

Times remembered. 

What will it be to remember even more?

And then my friends not gone away but  

Gone, their laughter forgotten from the world, 

Their song silenced. 

Nevermore, quoth the raven, and nevermore will 

The things I remember exist again, and time 

Will come when no one remembers 

Except me. 

For in remembrance a person lives, somehow, 

And the only true death in this world, as 

The Greek said, was being finally and utterly 

Forgotten. 

The song of our youth will be silenced soon 

Nevermore to be sung again, 

Nor shall there be any who remember the 

Glory of its joy. 

Joy we feel in life, in the blood that 

Pounds in our veins, joy in love, hoped 

And yet unseen. Joy in life yet unlived, joy in  

Joys yet untasted.

And behind it all we wonder, sadly. 

When will it end, when our friends will go, 

When our love will be parted, when our joys are all 

Remembered?

Of a time, I sit and think. 

And when I do, I think mostly tragic thoughts

For life is so here, so present, so much around and in me 

I can’t imagine less before than behind.

Laughing is enough sometimes when thinking of life’s vanity, 

Yet tears seem more appropriate when I 

Think about life, and about death, and how much of 

Each is in each. 

Life is full of death, ours and others and 

Ours in others, and death, we know, is naught 

But renewed, reinvigorated, reborn life 

Age after age. 

And so we cannot but sing, laugh, dance, and drink, 

We cannot but joy in Christ. For we remember, 

Though not with our eyes, when He was us and died, 

When we were Christ (though not yet) and lived. 

Let us feast like lunatics, rejoice like imbeciles, 

Dance like madmen, and love idiotically all the days of our vanity. 

For we are drunk on the wine of life – 

We are young. 

I was convicted

So on Sunday I was sitting in church (go figure). Come time to pass the sacrament, Pastor Wilson gave his weekly exhortation. It was incredible. We've been discussing Augustine and Calvin in Lordship and how we as Christians not so much as partake in Christ as be Christ. We die when Christ dies, we live when He lives. By His humility we are exalted, in His defeat of death we are victors. And then this little minute talk by Pastor Wilson synthesized these thoughts and practically applied them in a way that convicts me more every time I read it. God help me to be consumed as I have consumed.

Exactly So
Last week we considered the truth that we do more than consume in this meal—we are consumed as well. If the entire congregation is the loaf, as St. Paul plainly teaches, then we are—all of us—both eating and being eaten. We consume and are consumed.

Christ gives Himself to us, certainly. But we also surrender ourselves to Him in this partaking. The head of the body communicates, just as the body does. And as each part of the body eats, so each part of the body is eaten. My life for yours.

This sounds noble, and quite lovely, in this context. We are all seated in church, the bread and wine are on the table, and we have just finished worshipping the Lord. But this reality, this table, governs the next six days, and it does not leave any spaces. My life for yours feels quite different when the kids are tearing off in six different directions, when your business partner is being difficult, when an old friend appears to be losing it, when someone in the church badmouths you, when you can’t get all your work done and others aren’t helping, and when you feel misunderstood by everybody.

When such moments come—and there will likely be a number of them in the next six days—you will feel like you are being consumed. But then you should think to yourself, "ah, exactly so. I offered myself for that, just this last Sunday."

I thought of my Dad

When I read these quotes from the one, the only, the great Vince Lombardi.

"A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall."
One word, three letters. NSA. We've gotta get a rugby club on.

"If you can accept losing you can't win. If you can walk you can run. No one is ever hurt. Hurt is in your mind."
I hear my Dad saying "Ain't nothin but a thang" when I bashed my thumb, skinned my elbow, or did anything generally hurtful while working.

I had my modern conceptions of fairness blown far, far away

So I'm perusing - no, strike that, try break-neck speed reading - Augustine's City of God, and I come across a quotation of Genesis 17:13-14:

[God spoke to Abraham] "He who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money must be circumcised, and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant."

Let's get this straight: a baby boy who is not circumcised by his parents has already broken the covenant with God. If he dies at nine days old and has not been circumcised, he dies outside the covenant of grace. Whoa.
Then Christ comes and renews the covenant, replacing circumcision with baptism. But does this change the principle? Obviously there is enough condemnation in original sin to damn a babe in arms. Again, the burden must be on the parents.