Calvin: Faith

For unbelief is so deeply rooted in our hearts, and we are so inclined to it, that not without hard struggle is each one able to persuade himself of what all confess with the mouth: namely, that God is faithful.

.
Institutes, 3.2.15 (Battles p.560)

#21 Baker Street

OK, I know I'm not going to convince anyone of my cutting edge style with this one but....in terms of perfectly constructed tracks, this gets my vote.

There is of course the sax, which through overuse on adverts etc has become maybe too well known, but it's a great riff (originally planned for guitar, and only accidentally recorded for sax when the guitarist didn't show up). There's the searing guitar solo (best on the album version, rather than the single). But also, it's got an idea: the forlorn seeking for something, the answer so near yet so far.

Anyway, here it is: Spotify LastFM

Kendall: troubles

However, as we have seen, when one set of troubles subside, new ones replace them. You may ask, "Why does God allow this to happen?" Well, I think He has two reasons: First, we grow best when we experience some suffering. Jesus is more real to me in times of pain, but when everything goes smoothly, I coast along, and then God says, "RT, I don't have your attention now, do I?" Second, God allows us to face frequent trials because He does not want us to become too attached to this earth. He wants us to set our sights on our eternal destination.

RT Kendall, A Man After God's Own Heart, p193.

The ironic clock

Every technology has embedded spiritual consequences. The mechanical clock was created by Benedictine monks in the 13th century. It was designed to create more regular prayer intervals to enhance our devotion to God. The mechanical clock also gave birth to the Industrial Revolution and capitalism, because it created measurable, uniform time units to break up your day into. So a technology originally designed to enhance devotion to God also enhanced our devotion to mammon.

Shane Hipps, CT interview 5th May 2009.

#20 Every Breath You Take

Just a quick one as I am not, technically speaking, really here.

Leaving aside it's somewhat sinister overtones (this is Sting we're talking about), I just think this is one of the best crafted, well balanced, and warm sounds ever. It resonates on a deep level (which is why I think the disturbing aspect of the lyrics is often overlooked). One of those great moments.

Every Breath You Take on LastFM

#19 Take the Long Way Home

Bang up to date again. From Supertramp's biggest commercial success Breakfast in America, which produced two other huge singles. This is an atmosphere song - not deep like Mintie's last one. More a song to play in the car, a soundtrack for a tiring day when things aren't so good.

Mind you, I ought to add, that avoiding issues doesn't help in the long-term - just that 5 minutes driving to Supertramp probably won't hurt!

Last FM
Spotify

#18 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

Sorry - a bit late for finishing the third quarter of our mid-life crisis.

Surprisingly little to say about such a monster success really: I'm not a huge U2 fan, and only own The Joshua Tree. But I think it's a great album - and maybe U2 suffers for me in that, not only are the first three tracks their zenith, but actually they are three of the greatest tracks of the last 30 years. Getting everything in one go like that (although I also like Pride and bits and pieces from All That You Can't Leave Behind) has probably stalled me going much further with them. Still, there you go:

Spotify

Civil War 5: Darwin again

In other words, even before there existed a secularisation in the US brought on by new immigrants, scientific acceptance of evolution, the higher criticism of Scripture, and urban industrialism, Protestants during the Civil War had marginalised themselves as bearers of a religious perspective in the body politic.

Noll, p.161

Civil War 4

This is one of Mark Noll's summary paragraphs and puts clearly the damage done to theology by the war:

But the Civil War was won and slavery abolished not by theological orthodoxy but by military might and a hitherto unimaginable degree of industrial mobilisation. Although the war freed the slaves and gave African Americans an equal claim to citizenship, it did not provide the moral energy required for rooting equal rights in the subsoil of American society or for planting equal opportunity throughout the land... [the war] did not offer clear moral guidance as to how the mobilisation could be put to use for the good of all citizens. The evangelical Protestant traditions that had done so much to shape society before the war did possess theological resources to address both America's deeply ingrained racism and its burgeoning industrial revolution. But the Civil War took the steam out of Protestants' moral energy...The theology that had risen to pre-eminence in the early 19th century continued to work effectively for vast multitudes in private; but because of its public failing during the war, it had little to offer American society more generally in the decades that followed the war.

Noll, p.160

300!

Well, I wondered whether this blog would be short lived. But my online scrapbook seems to be growing.

It is traditional for me to now say: thanks Minternational!

Invocation 2

The main body of the prayer of invocation, I see as the petition "Hear us in the name of your Son". The relationship between Father and Son is the basis of the Christian approach to God...Christian worship has its logic in the doctrine of the Trinity. It is profoundly trinitarian. Our worship is part of the relationship between the persons of the Trinity. It is part of what has sometimes been called the inner trinitarian conversation. It is part of the homage of the Son to the Father. For this reason, therefore, we worship in the name of the Son. The relationship goes in both directions. Our prayer is part of the outpourng of the love of the Father to the Son. It is in Christ that we share in the fellowship of the house of the Father, that we sit at His table and are fed by His bread and share his cup. Our worship participates in the love of the Father to the Son and in the love of the Son for the Father. When we proclaim the gospel in Christ's name, baptise, and teach what He has commanded in His name, this is part of the obedience of the Son to the Father. But it is also part of the Father's glorification of the Son. In the ministry of preaching and teaching that we perform in Christ's name, Christ is glorified. Human hearts are changed and disciples are made of all nations - and thus the Father is setting all things under the feet of the Son, so that at last Christ is Lord of all. The Invocation therefore, has as one of its cardinal concerns this relationship between the Father and Son.

Old, p.16

Calvin: OT temporal judgments

Reading through the Bible in a year actually increases the sense of physical judgment in the OT, which is far from comfortable. Today read these words from Calvin which are an interesting thought-starter in this area:

Thus as God's benefits were more conspicuous in earthly things [the land, harvests, peace etc], so also were his punishments. The ignorant, not considering this analogy and congruity, to call it that, between punishments and rewards, wonder at such great changeableness in God. He, who was once so prompt to mete out stern and terrifying punishments for every human transgression, now seems to have laid aside his former wrathful mood and punishes much more gently and rarely. Why, on that account, they even go so far as to imagine different gods for the Old and New testaments, like the Manichees! But we shall readily dispose of these misgivings if we turn our attention to this dispensation of God which I have noted. He willed that, for the time during which he gave his covenant to the people of Israel in a veiled form, the grace of future and eternal happiness be signified and figured under earthly benefits, the gravity of spiritual death under physical punishments.

Institutes 2.9.3 (Battles, p.452-3)

He gets everywhere...

Although they have had a go at the quotation in order to emphasise their product. It should read:

You can't get a book long enough, or a cup of tea big enough, or a book long enough, to suit me.

Civil War 3 (providence)

Another interesting stress point concerned Providence. Not only were many on both sides claiming authority from the Bible, they also believed that God was involved in human affairs. This led to commentators and preachers from North and South interpreting events, battles, decisions etc within the context of what God was doing - and with a great deal of certainty too.

But as the war dragged on, fatalities increased, and deeper complexities became apparent, this certainty in providence also became an issue of weakness. Contradictory interpretations, hideous turns of event...and then even after the war, both sides interpreting the outcome as endorsing their view - either as total vindication, or as discipline on a sinful people.

In the midst of this, maybe it was natural to slide towards thinking the real resolution of the war was not God but force of arms, organisation and management, and industrial mobilisation? And so 20th century America?

#17 There is Only You

Posting early for Easter, this is one of my favourite Christian songs ever.

The Smalltown Poets not only have a great name for a band, but really that's their sound too: it's so unassuming it's easy to pass them by. But repeated listens draw you in to one of the most sincere and thought provoking bands around.

There is Only You is a great song about our hearts and God. It's just such a same that it is not available to listen to online, and I have to post the video instead. Especially as the video, as nice as it is, really has absolutely nothing to do with the song (except perhaps the human tendency towards selfishness). So, below are the lyrics and may I advise clicking on Youtube, then clicking back here to see the words, rather than letting the video suggest what the song is about? Also, sorry you can't get the great bass-work on here...

Growing more uneasy with every question asked
It seems you're jealous of my interests
And the graven things I've cast
Waking resolutions of twenty years or more
That I would disallow golden cows my favor anymore

Your wishes set in stone, I broke the first of ten
I've cleared this temple out come take your place again

There is only You
There is only You

Tiptoe from an awkward scene
Not fooling anyone
Am I dumb enough to kneel with my accusers
Or brave enough to run

Petty daggers bounce weakly off my back
I'm leaving breathless gods and secrets in my tracks
Your wishes set in stone, I broke the first of ten
I've cleared this temple out come take Your place again

There is only You
There is only You, believe me
There is only You
There is only You

To a thousand generations
Of the faithful man
You will show Your favor Lord

There is only You (Love earth can't replace)
There is only You, believe me (Heaven can't erase)
There is only You (Find me on my penitent face)
There is only You

Calvin: theft

Calvin expounds the commandments very broadly, and this one for the 8th commandment is a helpful example:

For he who does not carry out what he owes to others [money or honour or good work etc ] according to the responsibility of his own calling both withholds and appropriates what is another's

We will duly obey this commandment then, if, content with our lot, we are zealous only to make honest and lawful gain; if we do not seek to become wealthy through injustice, nor attempt to deprive our neighbour of his goods to increase our own; if we do not strive to heap up riches cruelly wrung from the blood of others...On the other hand, let this be our constant aim: faithfully to help all men by our counsel and aid to keep what us theirs...

Institutes, 2.8.45-46 (Battles, p.409-10)

#16 I Heard it Through the Grapevine

I'm no Marvin Gaye aficionado, but I think this has to be one of the nearest-to-perfect singles ever produced. I don't know what it is, but the atmosphere, production, understated backing...somehow it all works to perfection. That's it really.

Spotify
LastFm

Alongside its quality is, maybe, also that I first heard it in the way it was originally heard: on an old Dansette box record player, with a scratchy 45rpm single (re-released for the jeans commercial, and with a big hole in the middle because we could go down to Braddicks Emporium and by ex-juke-box singles for 10p!)

Civil War 2

Another of Mark Noll's suggestions as to the nature of the theological impact on the authority of Scripture is fascinating. It seems to go like this:

1. The pro-slavery argument was very simple and straightforward: just read the passages of Scripture that plainly talk about slavery - they never condemn it.
2. The abolitionist preachers turn to their Bible to proof text and find this is basically true, and start talking about the overall emphasis of the Bible being respect for all people, demonstrated through loving action. This sounds a bit like not having a good response to point 1, and when seen in the context of a rising liberalism which states the Bible is great but it has bits which more developed peoples need to reject - well, to people who take the Bible seriously it starts to sound like anti-slavery = anti-bible. Support abolition and you will abolish the Bible as well!
3. The more nuanced anti-slavery biblical arguments (which require historical knowledge and a more careful reading of scripture) eg. the disparity between ancient Israelite slavery and the US mass-industry + kidnapping and dehumanising; the fact that Israel were only allowed to buy people from outside the chosen nation - so who are the heathen now? And even if we can identify them, why don't we set them free when converted to Christianity and therefore un-heathened? These required much more thought and theological reflection than the previous two positions.

Noll contends that common-sense and suspicion of those in authority were American characteristics: and as these arguments did not lie plain on the surface, and required intellectuals to articulate, they are suspect.

So, Christians missed the strong argument because it was subtle...and then took extreme positions as a result. And a theological disagreement could then only be resolved by war. War instead of nuance...

#15 Allentown

Only ten left to go!

Jumping forward from Minternational's last one, we get really up to date and trendy - all the way to 1982.

The big problem for Billy Joel in the UK is that he only had one massively successful album really: Innocent Man which was in a sense a 'concept album': a tribute to the music he grew up with in the 1960s. But this one big exposure made most people assume he was a latter day rock 'n' roll wannabe. This pigeonholed him and completely missed the point of what he did - piano based lyric-driven pieces.

I'm not sure which, if any, of his albums would make my list, but the number of individual songs that could be picked is huge, and selecting one is difficult. I've gone for Allentown because it kind of covers several aspects of his work: melodic, lyrical and with a point (mass unemployment in the early 80s).
LastFM
Spotify

I almost chose one which was not a big hit and probably remains an invisible album track:
Vienna

Repentance

It is important to consider how the gospel affects and transforms the act of repentance. In 'religion' the purpose of repentance is basically to keep God happy so he will continue to bless you and answer your prayers. This means that 'religious repentance' is a) selfish, b) self-righteous, c) bitter all the way to the bottom. But in the gospel the purpose of repentance is to repeatedly tap into the joy of our union with Christ in order to weaken our need to do anything contrary to God's heart.

Tim Keller, All of Life is Repentance

Free Church Lent?

Given our free-church tendency to ignore the church calendar, especially any difficult bits, I couldn't help wonder if someone from our sector was behind this.
(from Imago Fidei)

Freedom

To be modern is to be torn in two. We celebrate freedom as if we can do anything we want, if we put our minds to it. At the same time, we bemoan the way our genes, our childhood, and social forces determine everything we do. When we grow bald, lose our temper, or get laid off, experts tell us that we really have no choice in the matter. Life is preordained by factors that outflank our feeble will. Yet at the same time we celebrate will power as if everything is contingent and subject to our control. The decline of providence has left us intellectually schizophrenic. We define freedom as the opposite of submission and obedience but end up feeling hardly free at all.

Stephen H Webb, Books & Culture, 31st March 2009

I really don't know...

...what to say about this:

http://pastorinabox.com/about.php

Civil War: America's Darwin?

Just started reading The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll. Only read the first few pages but a thought (unsubstantiated at the moment) struck me.

I think Noll's argument will be that the US Civil War accelerated the loss of the Bible perceived as authoritative in America. The crux: both sides of the slavery debate equally claimed the Bible as justifying their position. Suddenly, what many had assumed with confidence was a book which gave clear moral guidance for all of life, was now being used to argue two utterly opposed points of view. And this led to one of the most devastating wars in history. This shook belief in Scripture, and also opened the door for some to claim the Bible was OK but could be trumped by other matters of principle.

This sounds similar to the effect of Darwinism on Victorian Britain. And then: given that the majority of Americans today believe God created the world, it occurred to me that Darwinism has not had the same effect in the US as in Europe; at least not to the same degree. And yet the effective loss of Scripture as dependable for all society is similar. Perhaps the Civil War was, to some degree, America's Darwin?

Calvin: uses of Law

Given all the things I heard as a young Christian which denigrated the OT Law, it's nice to read Calvin on it and how he isolates three continuing purposes of the Law:

1. It makes clear to us that we have no righteousness before God, and so removes all pride in ourselves and drives us to God for mercy.
2. It restrains wickedness in humanity - in particular, people who do not want God but are afraid of His wrath against sin, and so moderate their behaviour. This benefits society. (And arguably this is what we see unravelling in the UK now)
3. For Christians it helps us to live according to God's will, exhorting us to progress.

Luther: assurance

Martin Luther once said, "I am so glad that God said He 'so loved the world...that whosoever believeth should not perish', because even if God had said that He loved Martin Luther , that if Martin Luther believed Martin Luther would not perish, I would be afraid He was referring to another Martin Luther."

Quoted RT Kendall A Man After God's Own Heart p 170

#14 Roll Over Beethoven

Here's one for the weekend.

OK I'm aware that there was a long period of time when owning an ELO album was not something to be admitted in public; borrowing Out of the Blue required a brown paper bag. I'm not for a moment suggesting they were deep and meaningful (although, alarmingly, I had a friend who said he was deeply moved by their lyrics - he was very intelligent, had a significant job and, worse, he meant it). But they were (after a certain point, and especially in the Jeff Lynne years) relentlessly cheerful and great fun to hear and watch - oh for a band that lands in a giant spaceship!

So...Roll Over Beethoven in the annals of fun rock was like a planetary conjunction: Chuck Berry rock'n'roll referencing the contrast with classical music, meets the rock band with classical pretensions - oh for a band that plays cellos on their heads! Just how pretentious can be seen in the Roy Wood years (for evidence that they were on herbal throat tablets, try this - is this really the man behind Wizard?). This is the band, believe it or not, that Lennon said represented a direction The Beatles would have taken if they had stayed together.

Anyway, here's the version I'm used to: LastFM Spotify
And here is what I have just discovered is the album version.
Not 'arf!

Invocation

The God of Scripture is not the God of a thousand names. The inventing of glorious names for God is not regarded as an open field for human creativity. That Jesus should teach us to invoke God as Father was a messianic act of unique significance. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is God's prerogative to reveal His name.

Hughes Oliphant Old, Leading in Prayer, p12&13

Caffeineated spiders

Apparently this is absolutely legit

Trials of calling

Perhaps God has chosen you for a task that no one can do but you. Is he trying to get your attention? Is he testing your mettle. God was right in choosing you, but you justify his choice by the way you react in times of trial. Do you despair, indulge in self-pity or become angry with God, or do you find your strength to overcome in him alone?

RT Kendall, A Man After God's Own Heart, p.169-70

Caffeinate

On the basis that no matter what anyone says about coffee, one is still likely to drink it - here are some figures on what's likely to fuel/fry your brain most. For me, more than one cup of filter coffee in any 2 hour period and I start to oscillate, bodily, and talk fasterandfastandfaster. So I'll stick with where I am. But notice the pointlessness of energy-boosting-fizzy drinks compared to an espresso!

In milligrams of caffeine per ounce of beverage:

• Coffee (brewed): 13.44
• Coffee (drip): 18.12
• Coffee (espresso): 51.33
• Coffee (instant): 7.12

• Coca-Cola Classic: 2.88
• Diet Coke: 3.75
• Dr Pepper: 3.42
• Mountain Dew: 4.58
• Red Bull: 9.64

#13 Sold Me Down the River

Over halfway!!! So time to up the volume...

Change was three songs to long and got a bit samey, but was still good for at least two reasons:
1. It encapsulated the Angry Young Welshman, bitter at what had happened, but trying to find hope (eg A New South Wales)
2. It had several guitar-hero-I-want-to-be-a-rock-star moments.

Here's my favourite: Sold Me Down the River (only on Spotify cos I want the album version with the big instrumental break)

Sayers: cross shock

It is curious that people who are filled with horrified indignation whenever a cat kills a sparrow can hear the story of the killing of God told Sunday after Sunday and not experience any shock at all.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#12 Music for a Found Harmonium

I've been mulling over where to go next, especially as Minternational's songs have all been taking a definitely meaningful turn...and quite a few of mine aren't...errr...quite so meaningful. So I have paused on the loud and shallow for a moment, and cheated by going instrumental.

There was a time when mostly everything I listened to was instrumental: multi-layered, long, involved pieces. It might be the sound-colour synesthesia, which means the more layers and activity, the bigger the 'pictures' (I could get quite spaced out as a teenager on long, complex compositions). That hasn't changed but is more dilute with other kinds of stuff. The Penguin Cafe Orchestra isn't a 'band' I have submerged myself into as much as some others: it's generally not as layered or developed BUT some of their short pieces are great.

The mind behind them was Simon Jeffes, who sadly died from a tumour many years ago. Trying to find a way between the structure of classical music and the limitations of the rock format, he became influenced by ethnic music - and somehow it all got fused together in dreamlike tracks. The story behind the band's name is lovely: lying on a beach one day, he suddenly found he was writing a poem in his mind:

I am the proprietor of the Penguin Café, I will tell you things at random...

He goes on to describe the freedom of spontaniety etc. And the Orchestra is the in-house band for this cafe.

As usual I could have chosen a number of tracks, but I have plumped for the archetypal PCO track - which I first heard on a film trailer in the late 80s, and tracked it down; more recently a guitar version was used on the re-launch adverts for the ill-fated MFI furniture company.

So here is Music for a Found Harmonium. But also check out, Perpetuum Mobile (which is one of those tracks running through my head whilst trying to work out God's plan for our future, over the last 18months)

Herbert: An Offering

I read this through the other night and was initially bemused. I suspect most poems seem like verbal noise until read several times. By the third time through I realised this was a profound presentation of uniting the heart in a life of worship to God:

Come, bring thy gift. If blessings were as slow
As men's returns, what would become of fools?
What hast thou there? a heart? but is it pure?
Search well and see; for hearts have many holes.
Yet one pure heart is nothing to bestow:
In Christ two natures met to be thy cure.

O that within us hearts had propagation,
Since many gifts do challenge many hearts!
Yet one, if good, may title to a number;
And single things grow fruitful by deserts.
In public judgements one may be a nation,
And fence a plague, while others sleep and slumber.

But all I fear is lest thy heart displease,
As neither good, nor one: so oft divisions
Thy lusts have made, and not thy lusts alone;
Thy passions also have their set partitions.
These parcel out thy heart: recover these,
And thou mayst offer many gifts in one.

There is a balsam, or indeed a blood,
Dropping from heav’n, which doth both cleanse and close
All sorts of wounds; of such strange force it is.
Seek out this All-heal, and seek no repose,
Until thou find and use it to thy good:
Then bring thy gift, and let thy hymn be this;
 

                         Since my sadness
                         Into gladness
Lord thou dost convert,
                         O accept
                         What thou hast kept,
As thy due desert.

                         Had I many,
                         Had I any,
(For this heart is none)
                         All were thine
                         And none of mine:
Surely thine alone.

                         Yet thy favour
                         May give savour
To this poor oblation;
                         And it raise
                         To be thy praise,
And be my salvation.

#11 Heartbeat City

Not really reflecting the depth of Minternational's last selection, this track is by post-punk new-wave electro pop The Cars. However, they were pretty clever and a lot of fun and (this is important) they barely moved whilst on stage, preferring robot arms with TV screens on them to do the visual dynamics. And one profound item in their favour: they proved you could be really geeky looking and still be a rock star and marry a supermodel (look up Rick Ocasek). For me, that was inspiring. Ah! The 1980s!

I liked lots of their stuff, but this is probably my favourite - one of those mood-moments I suspect, it's a staring-out-the-window, or urban commute in the dusk tracks.

Only on Spotify and youtube I'm afraid.

http://open.spotify.com/track/0a8IsvS3FmdKQKZZRrVdn7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOIfVvDeu24


(if you want a sample of their more cheerful stuff try You Might Think)

#10 Home Town

I was very impressed with Pressing On. No.10 isn't much like Dylan though.

I bought the best of Joe Jackson on the strength of having heard Is She Really Going Out with Him? and Stepping Out. But this song stuck with me. I suspect it was my time of life (!) - about 20. The album contained 19 Forever which resonated with my awareness that actually that wasn't going to happen. And then Home Town: about how as we grow older and get caught up in so much stuff we just forget what lies at the foundation, what used to be...

Of all the stupid things I could have thought
This was the worst
I started to believe
That I was born at seventeen
And all the stupid things
The letters and the broken verse
Stayed hidden at the bottom of the drawer
They'd always been.
And now I plough through piles
Of bills, receipts and credit cards
And tickets and the Daily News
And sometimes I just . . .
Wanna go back to my home town

And how we just don't bother, the past seems so small - but we have lost something.

We're never married
Never faithful,
not to any town
But we never leave the past behind
We just accumulate
So sometimes when the music stops
I seem to hear a distant sound
Of waves and seagulls
Football crowds and church bells
And I . . .
Wanna go back to my home town

Strangely, I now once again hear church bells, seagulls, and waves!

This really is an all-time favourite and it deserves to be well known (but isn't!) - here it is.

Parabolic

A friend of mine is, I think, a good poet. Here's one of his I like:

On this October beach, as the pale sun sinks,

the mind’s tide slides back across the naked shingles,

and the flotsam and jetsam of some thirty years,

till I am the skinny silhouette of a lad

skimming stones with his dad:

stooping together to look for the best ones;

hooking them into the sling of the finger;

copying the slope of his stance, the swoop of his action;

trying to make them skim, like him.

But sometimes a stone that seems the part,

sits flat in the palm, fits fine in the finger,

will fail at the first

as it slices a cynical slot in the water

and sinks like the stone it was from the start.

Though such a stone can skip

a beat, loving to leap through the falling dark,

tracing its single spectacular arc

above the horizon’s straight, grey axis.

Yet best of all is sometimes when;

One, two, three, four, five sixseveiniten;

it bounces beyond the logic of number,

walks on the water, slides to a standstill,

and winks a watery eye at the frowning sky;

defying density,

momentarily.

Copyright Martin Yates

#9 The Sound of Silence

Well, we have crossed the 1/3 mark with me and minternational living out our mid-life crisis in a cheap and harmless manner...

I went through a minor Simon & Garfunkel stage a long, long time ago. This song remained lodged somewhere in my head. There's something about it that seems to stop time, with a spine-tingling effect.

I'm sure it must be locked into its 60s cultural background, but to me it is a song which seems to fit many times and moments: that sense of dislocation, and isolation and search for meaning. The idea that things fall apart but maybe in the sound of silence the centre can hold.

Or maybe that's nothing to do with it and I've been overdoing the herbal throat tablets.

However, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway wall", whatever it means, gets me every time.

Here it is.

Watts: public prayer

A man ought not to be so confined by any premeditated form as to neglect any special infusion, he should so prepare himself as if he expected no assistance, and he should so depend upon divine assistance as if he had made no preparation.

Isaac Watts, A Guide to Prayer

Ortberg: evaluation

On one hand, some people refuse to ask any questions about effectiveness at all, on the grounds that facing up to ineffectiveness would just be too painful. They run on the "if I can help one fainting sparrow back to the nest, it will all have been worth it" standard, a standard by which it is very hard to fail.

If I'm not good at something, it's best to find it out clearly and early, grieve my inadequacy, and move on to more fertile possibilities. How many congregations—and pastors—and pastor's spouses—live in misery year after year because someone won't face the truth about where their gifts do and do not lie. How many of us don't grow because we are afraid of honest feedback. Truth is always our friend.

On the other hand …

Is there anything we don't evaluate to death? And I suspect the reason is that we are desperate to make sure we are perceived to be successful.

Yea, though we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Performance, we will take another survey.

John Ortberg, CT Leadership, 16th February 2009

Calvin: comfort of providence

Calvin's discussion of providence is fascinating. He is trying to deal with the same kinds of questions that anyone today would, who believes in the sovereignty of God and yet also sees cause and effect as a reality and not charade. Overall, it reinforces my growing sense that the only way I can get through the question without my brain catching fire, is to say that God is absolutely sovereign AND AT THE SAME TIME life, decisions, consequences etc are all also authentic. I'm placing it in the same category as a number of other issues, which deal with the interface between time/humanity/finite reality and God/eternity/mystery.

But here's a great thing about Calvin (apart from his freedom in calling opposers rude names and not feeling bad about it): there is in his systematics a constant pastoral aim. So here's a bit that I liked:

And since it is uncertain what will be the outcome of the business he is undertaking (except that he knows that in all things the Lord will provide for his benefit), he will aspire with zeal to that which he deems expedient for himself, as far as it can be obtained by intelligence and understanding. Yet in taking counsel he will not follow his own opinion, but will entrust and submit himself to God's wisdom, to be directed by his leading to the right goal. But his confidence will not so rely upon outward supports as to repose with assurance in them if they are present, or, if they are lacking, to tremble as if left destitute. For he will always hold his mind fixed upon God's providence alone, and not let preoccupation with present matters draw him away from steadfast contemplation of it.

Institutes, 1.17.12 (Battles p.222)
empahsis added.

-charist

I heard about U2charists a couple of years ago, and had forgotten all about them til this (INMHO) great comment at Ref21.

I wish I had thought of that! But I didn't, so I'm jumping on the bandwagon now.

I would like to propose The Huey-Lewis-&-the-Newscharist: where a lot of middle-aged men dressed as Marty Mcfly proclaim in music and movement that God is The Power of Love, that the church should resist enculturisation because, as we all know, It's Hip to be Square; where we can share our wealth because We're Doing it All (for my baby), whilst feeling confident in the preservation of the saints (as we're Stuck With You), and restore Golden Bells to its rightful place, because we want to Get Back in Time.

Well, as someone says, you get the idea with that. Feel free to contribute a -charist in a comment!

Calvin: providence

...God's providence does not always meet us in its naked form, but God in a sense clothes it with the means employed.

Institutes 1.17.4 (Battles p.216)

#8 No Myth

Music became all pervading from around 1984 to the early 90s; it's not really much less so now, it's just that gradually it stopped being the thing which filled up the empty bits of my life - as Jesus, the Bible and actual real people began to do that. By 1989 this process was yet new and frail! So I was still buying CDs on a weekly basis, reading Record Collector, spending non-working Saturday mornings at the second hand record shop (I got a copy of "The Rock Encyclopaedia", and was reading through, buying stuff along the way) - and watching music programmes.

One morning I saw a video for a song, and went out and bought the CD. The album was March by Michael Penn (yep, Sean Penn's brother). It's a worthwhile and unusual album, and the single was "No Myth". What a great song. I have absolutely no idea what it's about, even after 20 years, but it's just great. With this chorus:

what if I were Romeo in black jeans
what if I was Heathcliff,
it's no myth
maybe she's just looking for
someone to dance with

and a bridge like this:

Sometime from now you'll bow to pressure
some things in life you cannot measure
by degrees;
I'm between the poles and the equator
don't send no private investigator
to find me please
'less he speaks Chinese
and can dance like Astaire overseas

What more could you want? Here's the track ; and here's the video - but please give it a couple of listens before watching, so you can get your own idea of it - the video sort of sticks in the mind. I saw it once 20 years ago, and can remember it (but then my head is like a useless- information magnet), especially the bit where you find out where the band is located...

Calvin: future dreams?

Indeed, sleep itself, which benumbs man...suggest not only thoughts of things that have never happened, but also presentiments of the future.
Institutes, 1.15.2 (Battles p185)

#7 The Way It is

Somewhere between minternational's last one and John Reuben, lies the period of my life when I discovered music. I'd had bits and pieces and a fad of rock'n'roll prior to this, but somewhere around 14 years of age it started to take on an importance almost equivalent with books, as I wasted my formative years hidden in my bedroom. Listening to new stuff on Radio 1 (all of which would now only be played on Radio2!), joined the tape library and started obsessively pirating tapes, borrowing albums (likewise ripped off), all started here.

But this one I bought because I really liked it, and arrived home with the album.

There was something eery about the piano riff, and compelling about the virtuoso playing; the album seemed to waft warm American plains-country into my stuffy room; and the subject matter was really the first inkling of something which is now a big interest: slavery, the slave trade, the civil rights movement.

So here it is: redolent of the warm summer evenings of my youth!

And while I'm at it, I'd also recommend Across the River.

#6 Nuisance

I probably wouldn't have a John Reuben album on my list, because (to me) they're too patchy. BUT he has produced some top singles over the last years.

OK so it probably seems unlikely that there would be rap in my list...but that 1995 album, previously referred to, started chipping away at my certainty that rap wasn't really music. And then I heard a single on a sample CD which I thought was great. The single was Do Not by John Reuben, so I got the album as an introduction to a music company. John Reuben is a Jewish Christian rapper from Ohio - and he is sometimes brilliant and often funny.

Anyway, this post probably should have been Do Not, but I've gone with the more accessible, Nuisance (2005) - which is not available on Lastfm, so here's the video. It's also cheerful!

One thing about him is the way he takes a 180 degree direction from a lot of rap, which is often self-centred on the artist. Instead, there's a lot of humility and fun in Reuben's stuff.

But please also try Do Not; and if you need a bit of encouragement, try No Regrets and Hindsight (sorry, can't find a track for this on the net).

Watts: heaven reaching back

Just read the hymn "Come we that love the Lord" and this verse called out an echo inside:

The hill of Zion yields
A thousand sacred sweets,
Before we reach the heavenly fields,
Or walk the golden streets.

Isaac Watts

Gregory on the Trinity

I cannot think on the one without quickly being encircled by the splendour of the three; nor can I discern the three without bring straightway carried back to the one.

Gregory of Nanzianzus, quoted Institutes 1.13.17 (Battles, p141)
originally from On Holy Baptism

#5 Avalon

Same era as minternational's last, but a bit of a different style...

This could have been Streetlife or Oh Yeah or maybe Slave to Love - but Avalon I think is the one, if I was stranded (hahahahaha) that I would take from Roxy Music.

Nostalgia: I first heard it on Moonlighting, of all things, when at the start of an episode, everything suddenly goes to slowmotion as Bruce Willis, entering the office lift, turns to watch a woman pass him by and grab the lift ahead of him. I didn't know, but it was Demi Moore whom he had just married and was a kind of Hollywood injoke. But the music stayed in my head; and later when picking up a cheap copy of the Best of Roxy Music, there it was.

So for 20-odd years it's been a one of those atmospheric, laid-back but slightly (typically Bryan Ferry) bittersweet songs.

Anyway, Lastfm bizarrely links to some other song by someone else, so here's the video (which is OK, but doesn't help much).

Yancey: contrast for compassion

The same week that global wealth shrank by $7 trillion, Zimbabwe's inflation rate hit a record 231 million percent. In other words, if you had saved $1 million Zimbabwean dollars by Monday, on Tuesday it was worth $158. This sobering fact leads me to the third and most difficult stage of prayer in crisis: I need God's help in taking my eyes off my own problems in order to look with compassion on the truly desperate.

(as below)

Yancey: economic collapse

If I pray with the intent to listen as well as talk, I can enter into a second stage, that of meditation and reflection. Okay, my life savings has virtually disappeared. What can I learn from this seeming catastrophe? In the midst of the financial news, a Sunday school song kept running through my mind:

The wise man built his house upon the rock …
And the wise man's house stood firm.
The foolish man built his house upon the sand …
Oh, the rain came down, and the floods came up.

A time of crisis presents a good opportunity to identify the foundation on which I construct my life. If I place my ultimate trust in financial security or in the government's ability to solve my problems, I will surely watch the basement flood and the walls crumble.

A friend from Chicago, Bill Leslie, used to say that the Bible asks three main questions about money: (1) How did you get it? (Legally and justly or exploitatively?); (2) What are you doing with it? (Indulging in luxuries or helping the needy?); and (3) What is it doing to you? Some of Jesus' most trenchant parables and sayings go straight to the heart of that last question.

Philip Yancey, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/january/29.80.html

#4 The Edge

A bit early for the benefit of board members, here's number 4. Ooh it's becoming a struggle! The things I have to leave out or push onto the hypothetical album list!

Anyway...I used to have a very poor view of Christian music, for two reasons: in the late 80s a lot of Christian music available in the UK was poor. Newly converted, for me the thought of a smiling Christian wearing a guitar on a rainbow strap was fearful - give me proper secular stuff. The second reason grew out of the first: the almost subconscious conclusion that all Christian music was tame or bad or cheesy or basically pants. And this is the real problem, because I found that actually there are really decent, professional, talented Christian musicians - but a lot of people cease judging the music on its merits and write it off because of it's religious atmosphere, afraid of being associated with it. More fool them.

With some symmetry, there were also two things that changed my view. The first was Michael Card - a theologian-poet who did not fill albums with "Jesus we love you, yes we do, we really do, honest etc etc" and his tunes were good too (not much oomph - that came with the second thing, in 1995, and the album that probably changed Christian music forever).

So, he's not big on energy, but also no cheese, no lack of musical ability, no soppy lyrics. Instead: depth, meaning, warmth, reality. Of several songs I could choose, the one I would hold on to (especially on a desert island) is The Edge (1994). It sounds good, but takes suicide as its theme, yet in the most hopeful way: it's the song of someone who came close to the edge but has seen it as a lie - reality is God, His promises and a better persepective than times of darkness permit. It's a good song for any dark time, when we start to feel failure is inevitable, and need to realse God wants us to fight...

I promise I will always leave
The darkness for the light.
I swear by all that's holy
I will not give up the fight.
I'll drink down death like water
Before I ever come again
To that dark place where I might make
The choice for life to end.

Stephen to Lazarus

A few days ago, a good friend and I were discussing a person who favoured praying for dead people to be raised. Being the experienced ministers we are, we were, naturally, befuddled. Anyway, strangely enough I then happened to read this from Lewis:

Stephen to Lazarus
But was I the first martyr, who
Gave up no more than life, while you
Already free among the dead,
Your rags stripped off, your fetters shed,
Surrendered what all other men
Irrevocably keep, and when
Your bttered ship at anchor lay
Seemingly safe in the dark bay
No ripple stirs, obediently
Put out a second time to sea
Well knowing that your death (in vain
died once) must all be died again?

Poems, CS Lewis, p125

Herbert on worrying about the future

Some lines from "The Discharge"

Only the present is thy part and fee.
And happy thou,
If, though thou didst not beat thy future brow,
Thou couldst well see
What present things requir'd of thee


They ask enough; why shouldst thou further go?
Raise not the mud
Of future depths, but drink the clear and good.
Dig not for woe
In times to come; for it will grow.

...

Things present shrink and die: but they that spend
Their thoughts and sense
On future grief, do not remove it thence
But it extend,
And draw the bottom out to an end.

God chains the dog til night: wilt loose the chain,
And wake thy sorrow?
Wilt thou forestall it, and now grieve to morrow,
And then again
Grieve over freshly all thy pain?

Either grief will not come:or if it must
Do not forecast.
And while it cometh, it is almost past.
Away distrust:
My God hath promised, He is just.

#3 Chem 6a

This is a bit early as I can't post for a day or two. And it's a departure from Blondie...

I heard Switchfoot in 1998 (I think) when we ended up with a pair of free tickets to a Delirious? concert. They were pretty good, but were in the height of their radio-1-moody-look. The support band, however, were quite different: 3 Americans who looked jolly happy to be there, and played expertly, AND did the Chuck Berry jump at the end of big numbers. On the way out I bought The Legend of Chin album. Now this was before major label success/MTV awards/Spiderman2 etc etc so at this point the band were manning their own merchandise stall in the foyer! So yes, I have a signed copy of the album AND I have shaken hands with Jon Foreman!! I haven't washed since. Come to think of it I didn't wash before either, but that's besides the point.

Anyway, this could have been one of several songs, but I went for opening-guitar-riff-I -wish-I-could-play - Chem6a. It's not on LastFM, so here's the video:

Chem 6a

Calvin: word & Spirit

For by a kind of mutual bond the Lord has joined together the certainty of his Word and of his Spirit so that the perfect religion of the word may abide in our minds when the Spirit, who causes us to contemplate God's face, shines; and that we in turn may embrace the Spirit with no fear of being deceived when we recognise him in his own image, namely in the Word. So indeed it is. God did not bring forth his word among men for the sake of a momentary display, intending at the coming of His Spirit to abolish it. Rather, he sent down the same Spirit by whose power he had dispensed the Word, to complete his work by his efficacious confirmation of the Word.

Insitutues 1.9.3 (Battles p95)

(Is Calvin here calling the Bible the 'image of the Spirit'?)

Applying the Bible: Samson & the church mice

Since reading books to my children, I have discovered that 80% of titles are cheaply produced nonsense which I suspect are promoted by supermarkets and nappy companies. Thankfully there are many great books and I have gained several favourite authors - probably 50% of which are out of print (I don't think I will ever get another copy of The Tough Princess before my two are too old for it).

Anyway, amongst the truly great stories we have read, one of the most outstanding is The Church Mice books, which I remember from Jackanory in the 70s. Needless to say, being so good, they are, therefore, out of print - which is a crime. Originally conceived as a series of books looking at different buildings in a town and the stories therein, the first - which was set in the church - was so successful (and hilarious) that Graham Oakley just wrote and illustrated more of those.

Not only do children love it, and adults find a load of stuff in there for them, but they show that cats and mice can be very good at reading, understanding and applying the Bible. Arthur is a lone mouse in the church; but the church cat has been listening to the preacher and has taken a vow...

#2 Only a Dream in Rio

A bit of a contrast to my #1 and The Blue Nile, but a song I would like to have with me if I was stuck on a desert island.

My childhood friend discovered James Taylor when Never Die Young came out in 1987 (I think). And as we shared music constantly, so I got a bit interested too. Never quite to the extent he did, but enough to find the classics. So this could have been Fire and Rain or Carolina in My Mind or There's Something in the Way She Moves. But I've settled on Only a dream in Rio for pure atmosphere.

This link gives the studio version and a live performance.

Calvin: you big softie

He really ought to stop faffing about and put it bluntly....

I know what certain rascals bawl out in corners in order to display the keenness of their wit in assailing God's truth. For they ask, Who assures us that the books that we read under the names of Moses and the prophets were written by them? they even dare question whether there ever was a Moses. Yet if anyone were to call in doubt whether there ever was a Plato, an Aristotle, or a Cicero, who would not say that such folly ought to be chastises with the fist or the lash.

Institutes 1.8.9 (Battles p88)

Those were the days....

Calvin: Scripture

Read Demosthenes or Cicero; read Plato, Aristotle, and others of that tribe. They will, I admit, allure you, delight you, move you, enrapture you in wonderful measure. But betake yourself from them to this sacred reading. Then, in spite of yourself, so deeply will it affect you, so penetrate your heart, so fix itself in your very marrow, that, compared with its deep impression, such vigor as the orators and philosophers have will nearly vanish. Consequently, it is easy to see that the Sacred Scriptures, which so far surpass all gifts and graces of human endevour, breath something divine.

Institutes, 1.8.1 (Battles p 82)

After the bus...

In the wake of the bus adverts in some UK cities, Christianity Today just ran this great cartoon.

#1 Five Miles Out

NB. These tracks won't be appearing in any order (a la Fluff Freeman countdowns), as we decided that was too hard to work out and made our brains hurt. We'll also try to link to some online version of the track for further study and academic research....

So here we go....

Well, I thought I would get this over and done with at the start...Mike Oldfield will turn up a lot more often and with more credibility if/when we do Albums. He's not best known for his ability with 3 minute singles, being more at home with 25 minute tracks, but he did occasionally turn out singles (he was being forced to by Virgin) that were really good (INMHO).

'Five Miles Out' musicifies a near fatal plane journey in a light aircraft over the Alps. By this time Oldfield had a band and they were being transported to a venue when they were hit by a terrifying storm. Unlike most of his singles (with lyrics that sound like 6th form poetry) this one describes something real; it also cleverly weaves in themes from side A of the album (the 20-odd minute instrumental; listen carefully, and you can also hear, in the first 20 seconds, the theme from Tubular Bells, which turns up, semi-concealed, in lots of his work).

So, I'm kicking things off with a song that has been stuck in my head for over 20 years. Here's the video which, despite being the beginning of Oldfield's use of early computer equipment - with which he fiddled for years like a teenager in his bedroom on a ZX81 - actually looks like a video made by a teenager fiddling in his bedroom on a ZX81.

Top 25 of two rock dudes

From tomorrow, Minternational and myself will be posting on Tuesdays and Thursdays a track from our personal lists of what we feel is the best stuff ever. Basically we are two middle-aged men recapturing our misspent youths during our coffee breaks. So feel free (dear audience of millions) to watch as we learn one another's tastes and leave edifying comments (= are very rude to each other)...

Augustine: judgment

If now every sin were to suffer open punishment, it would seem that nothing is reserved for the final judgement. Again, if God were now to punish no sin openly, one would believe that there is no providence.

Calvin: creation

...the most perfect way of seeking God...is not for us to attempt with bold curiosity to penetrate to the investigation of His essence, which we ought more to adore than to meticulously search out, but for us to contemplate Him in His works whereby he renders himself near and familiar to us, and in some manner communicates Himself...It is also fitting, therefore, for us to pursue this particular search for God, which may so hold our mental powers suspended in wonderment as at the same time to stir us deeply. And as Augustine teaches elsewhere, because, disheartened by His greatness, we cannot grasp Him, we ought to gaze upon His works, that we may be restored by His goodness.

Institutes 1.5.9 (Battles p 62)

Books

I love books. I love to buy new books, collect old books, and cover my walls with books. Books are the scholarly jolts that begin my day and the literary nightcaps that bring my day to a close. Books are my hot chocolates, my Irish cream coffees, and my hot lattes with extra shots of espresso.

Tony Reinke
http://spurgeon.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/tip-1-capture-reading-time/

Calvin: piety

I call 'piety' that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of His benefits induces. For until men recognise that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by His fatherly care, that He is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond Him - they will never yield Him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in Him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to Him.

Institutes, 1.2.1 ( Battles p41)

Christmas culture

A few days before the summer solstice—Stephen Hawthorne's first Christmas in Bolivia—he saw women selling moss in the street, and he bought some for a manger scene. He and his wife arranged their Nativity figures on the moss, put some lights around it, and thought it looked lovely. Soon, members of the evangelical church they attended dropped by. "They were absolutely horrified when they saw what we'd done," says Hawthorne. "We said, 'What's the matter?' They said, 'This is idolatry.'"

Oddly enough, Hawthorne says, when he and his family visited one of the churches that condemned manger scenes, "We in our turn were horrified to see this huge blow-up figure of Santa Claus on top of the church. It was a lesson to us about how people give meaning to symbols."

Susan Wunderink, Christianity Today

At this time of year...

I like to get my t-shirt out. Humour me.

Providence

Understanding and applying the doctrine of divine providence will be absolutely essential for any church leaders...One reason is that an understanding of providence will help them to fight the temptation to despair, or give up, in the face of the challenges ahead.

Reeder, From Embers..., p168-9

Character

Circumstances do not dictate our character. Instead they reveal it and provide the opportunity to refine it. A good leader does not use bad circumstances as an excuse, but as an opportunity for great things to happen by God's grace.

Reeder, From Embers..., p166

Success

As Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones once said, "The worst thing that can happen to a person is to succeed before he is ready." And when we get to heaven, perhaps we will discover that God worked overtime to keep success from us to preserve us.

RT Kendall, A Man After God's Own Heart, p75

Retracing the Bethlehem Road

I think it is probably a device for telling stories of modern life in Israel, but this still looks very interesting at Christmas time.

Stevenson: I know how he feels!

Next day we made a late start in the rain…We had now brought ourselves to a pitch of humility in the matter of weather, not often obtained except in the Scottish Highlands. A rag of blue sky or a glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the rain was not heavy, we counted the day almost fair.

An Inland Voyage, by RL Stevenson p.35

Tripp: aging idolatry

So our struggles with physical aging are the struggles between idolatry and grace...

Yes, outwardly I am wasting away, but I have real hope and real joy, because inwardly I am being renewed every day. What my life is really about can never be weakened by age or destroyed by years!

Lost in the Middle, p102

Tripp: being there

I have discovered that a significant part of my job is to stand in the middle of people's lives with them and be used of God to give them eyes to see. My job is to help them come out of hiding and to look through the fog of fear and destruction. My job is to help them see the powerful hand of a loving Redeemer who is not confused, uncaring or inactive.

Lost in the Middle , p.73

Tripp: weak hearts

In times of trial, it is our hearts that are under attack, and it is our hearts that get revealed. It is important to know our hearts, to assess where they are weak and vulnerable to temptation, and to do what we can to guard them. Remember, the decisions we make in moments of difficulty are not forced on us by the situations we are in but by what our hearts think and desire in the middle of them.

Lost in the Middle, p.67

Tripp: bad decisons

This, too, is a danger of the midlife struggle. In moments of disappointment and disorientation, in the grief of regret and the sadness at the death of our dreams, we are very vulnerable to making decisions that will add further trouble to the trouble we are already experiencing.

Lost in the Middle, p.66

Apparant activity

Faced with a player sending the ball towards them at 80 m.p.h. or more, the goalkeeper has only a fraction of a second to decide how to block the shot. It’s a fearful challenge: 4 out of 5 penalty kicks score a goal.

By analyzing data on more than 300 kicks, the researchers calculated the action most likely to prevent a goal being scored. Surprisingly, it is standing in the center of the goal and doing nothing until the trajectory of the ball can be seen. This resulted in a 1 in 3 success rate — far higher than the average.

Yet goalkeepers almost never act in this way. They typically try to guess the ball’s direction before the player’s foot has actually made contact with it, diving left or right to try to be in the right spot when the ball arrives. Neither is a good option. Diving left resulted in success 14% of the time; diving right only 12.6%.

Why then is it so common to act in a way that is even less successful than the average?

The researchers suggest that the answer lies in the goalkeepers’ emotions and the response they meet from others after failing. By taking action — even if it’s neither rational nor likely to be successful — they can at least be seen to have done something.

If they stand and wait until the ball is kicked and then fail to stop it, they feel worse because of their inaction; and others are far more likely to criticize them for not appearing even to try. It’s better to try a poor action than try a better — but seemingly passive — response if both fail; even though the “inactive” response is more rational and based on a better likelihood of success.

Lifehack March 5th 2008

Getting things done

The key to getting things done is to consistently get things done. It is about building a new habit and making it so much a part of you that you don’t have to think about how you’re going to get it done and what you’re going to do to psych yourself up for it; you just sit down and complete it.

Motivation is important, but I’d contend that it’s not a big part of how much you complete. It can certainly affect you on an off day, but if your problem is repeated, regular procrastination, your problem isn’t motivation. It’s bad habits...

...Discipline, which is at the core of building new habits until the associated actions don’t require discipline in order to be executed, is like a muscle.

Joel Falconer (Lifehack, October 27th 2008)

Praying violins

James Boice said learning to pray is a little like learning to play the violin with the virtuosos. No instrument sounds worse in the beginning stages of learning; it's all screech and scratch. But if the student is determined to play well, he checks the program guide for the classical music station and notes when the violin concertos will be aired. He buys the score for each concerto and does his best to play along. At first he sounds terrible. As time passes, however, he begins little by little to sound more and more like the virtuosos. But all along, as he groans on his instrument, the orchestra plays the music beautifully—his poor performance is caught up and completed in the music of the masters.

Ben Patterson (on praying through the psalms), CT Direct, 24th October 2008

If only! (simplicity)

Simplicity in life...is evidenced by the ability to live an uncluttered life with focus, creating margins in life by learning the principles of effectiveness, Learning to say no by having bigger yeses is the key to simplicity in life. Instead of doing a lot of things efficiently, it is important to do the right things for effectiveness.

Harry Reeder, From Embers to a Flame, p.86

Tripp: disappointment

...we find midlife hard because it is hard! We struggle with the plan because it is not our plan. We are disappointed because we age. We are dissatisfied because our dreams slipped out of our hands. We are discouraged that, in our sin, we failed many, many times. We are disappointed that good things come to an end and people move on. Midlife exposes how much we struggle with the fact that God completes his work of redemption in us by keeping us in the middle of all the harsh realities of the fall.

Lost in the Middle, p62.

The Happiness Paradox

"the more directly one aims to maximize pleasure and avoid pain, the more likely one is to produce a life bereft of depth, meaning, and community."

quoted Ortberg (see previous post)

...which sounds a lot like CS Lewis view of joy:

Only when your whole attention is fixed on something else...does the "thrill" arise...It's very existence presupposes that you desire not it but something other and outer.

Suprised by Joy, p.136

Knowing your following

In our day, I think, we are seeing more accurate ways of understanding the gospel. But we need clarion calls of directness to help people respond today.

When Jesus walked the earth, the call "Follow me" was easily understood. People would actually, physically, bodily, walk with Jesus. People knew if they were following.

When the church formed, the call to follow Jesus was easily understood. There was an alternative community that met daily, that radically transformed people's financial lives, social lives, time, learning, allegiances, and hope. People knew if they were following.

In our day, that experience has become so diluted and enculturated that people have a hard time knowing.

The availability of life, with God, in his favor and power, as a gift of grace we receive by repentance and trust, through the death and resurrection of Jesus—that's the gospel with power. What needs still to be done is to find ways to express this with great clarity and simplicity, ways to help ordinary people know for sure they have made the great decision, the great commitment of their lives.

John Ortberg, Leadership online, October 20th 2008

Herbert: The Size

Inspired a bit by Doug's current series of posts on poetry, and following on from yesterday's post on midlife...well, it seems to me that when the frailty of life is very present, then the strength comes from heaven. Herbert wants us to let the blessings from above pour into the here and now, when our present experience of life is insufficient for us:

Content thee, greedy heart.
Modest and moderate joys to those, that have
Title to more hereafter when they part,
                                 Are passing brave.
Let th’ upper springs into the low
Descend and fall, and thou dost flow.

A principle to live by

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Robert J Hanlon

Tripp: what we live for

Midlife exposes what a person has really been living for and where a person has tried to find meaning and purpose. It has the power to reveal the significant gap between a person's confessional theology and their functional theology. What we say we are living for on Sunday may not, in fact, be the thing that has taken daily rulership over our hearts. And when these things which rule us are taken out of our hands, we tend to become angry, fearful, bitter or discouraged. We will experience a loss of identity and a flagging of meaning and purpose.

p.51

(I find this a facinating insight: from a Christian perspective then, the range of emotions that might come to us in midlife can actually be caused by the limitations of aging compromising the things we were really living for. It's showing us what was really at the centre, instead of Christ (because aging does not effect our ability to have a fulfilling life with Him; but it does, for example, stop us from feeling physically invincible, when our knees start to give out! So, to some degree our hope was actually just a teeny weeny bit, in being physically strong, in being a bloke (if you are a bloke that is). So my knees are helping to tear down idols, which means I can be stronger in the inner man even though the outer man perishes! This certainly, for me, adds another layer of meaning to 2 COR.4:16ff. It's just that "I'm being saved by my knees!" doesn't sound as cool as I hoped).

Tripp: life living us

There is a way in which we don't live our life, but our life lives us. We just get carried along by its locations, relationships, situations, responsibilities, opportunities and activities without stopping very long to look, listen, and consider. Huge chunks of time can pass virtually unnoticed.

p.49

Tripp: exposure

The struggles of midlife expose the true health and character of the relationships to which God has called me...

...everything we do is somehow shaped by who we think we are and what we have been called to do...

...midlife crisis is a struggle of identity and responsibility, and it exposes weaknesses in these area that have existed for a long time but are aid bare during this passage of life...

p.37

Tripp: little boxes

Instinctively, we organise things into the little boxes that we carry around in our brains. Sometimes we are wise enough to see that our boxes are too little or too few, but often we are quite skilled at squeezing our story into whatever boxes we happen to be carrying around in our minds. In doing so we fail to recognise how important and influential this interpretative function is. Life will always look like the categories you bring to it, and what you do will always be determined by the way you have organised your understanding of your own story.

...The overgeneralised category of 'adult' tends to ignore the fact that a human beings we are always in some kind of process of change...

Lost in the Middle, p34,35

Mid-life

I remember hearing Rob Parsons say there is no point in waiting til your children reach their teens before reading a book on teenagers - you have to start much earlier. That made a lot of sense to me. So on that basis, although I am not having a mid-life crisis at the moment (at least...I don't think so...am I?) I need to plan ahead for it. I don't simply mean making sure I have enough money for an Austin Healey; I mean by reading about it - so I have started Lost in the Middle by Paul Tripp, and the first 50 pages have been great. So I intend to start posting the bits that really strike me.... His essential point seems to be that mid-life itself is not a crisis, but that mid-life exposes issues that were there before - especially our wrong interpretations of life:

...we do not live by the facts of our experiences, but by the ways that our interpretations have shaped those facts for us. The difficult disorientation of midlife is not because the passage itself is disorienting. Whatever trouble midlife brings to us is essentially caused by the wrong thinking we bring to it. Suddenly we see things about ourselves that have been developing for years but went by unnoticed...

p.33.

The Shack

The Shack has engendered a huge amount of attention. For some it seems to have been a revelation (including Eugene Peterson who likens it to Pilgrim’s Progress). It has, on the other hand, attracted criticism for being a very imperfect view of Christianity and tending towards universalism. It’s really good, it’s really bad.

FWIW, here’s my opinion: it’s neither. It’s just not that good or that bad.

The story behind the story is great: homespun tale for family and friends becomes global publishing phenomenon, through efforts of said friends who have to form a company to deal with success. But the novel itself is a good deal more ordinary.

Without giving too much away, it seems to be a novelised attempt to present Christianity to a post-modern, suffering world. A man who cannot recover from a terrible event gets an opportunity to talk to God about it - and in the process God is revealed as compassionate and purposeful. So where do the radical, new, unexpected bits come in?

Good question because, I dare to suggest, there aren’t many. The answers the book suggests are actually fairly traditional evangelical apologetics. For example, in understanding why this event could happen: it’s a broken world where bad stuff happens, God works through bad events to bring about a greater purpose, He still loves you despite the appearances of the situation (witness His nail scarred hands) and is not distant. Along with this comes the usual stuff about God never forces anyone to do anything, but basically you could read similar themes in books on providence, suffering and theodicy. Perhaps putting it into novel-form, these ideas can be communicated well to those who would be resistant to other forms. But it isn’t new or radical; although it does lapse into what I would think of as a leap in the dark when God reveals that the victim of the crime was accompanied by Him through the experience, that she was conscious of this and therefore wasn’t scared. So there is a theological answer, and a sentimental one: good things will come (fine) and they didn’t suffer fear (not so fine or realistic).

There does seem to me to be a note running through it which I also found in some emergent stuff: the author appears to be reacting against a kind of church background. The main character learns the Trinity is a loving communion, that God cares in sorrow etc and reacts as though church has never taught him these things. Many of us have been in churches where, actually, we have always heard this. So, although not stated explicitly, it does imply the same idea as, say, Rob Bell, that probably all churches are like that and we need something new and different. (Which is a remarkably narrow view for allegedly open-minded people.)

So, having said all this, what’s good and bad in my illustrious opinion?

GOOD

• Trinitarian - at least to a degree - which not a lot of writing has been in recent decades. OK, so the Trinity seems to include two females, but I think this is largely a literary device to shake our preconceptions about God. I don't think it works well, and I think if you were looking for an exposition of the Trinity here, you will leave disappointed and confused. But I don’t think the writer set out to portray a feminist God. And critics don’t seem to notice that one member of the Trinity appears as male again at the end of the book.
• Compassionate: it really is trying to provide answers for hurting people.
• Biblically Literal (in some senses anyway): so, for example, it clearly holds the garden of Eden and the fall to be true. Absolutely shocking in this day and age.

BAD

• God is very cuddly. Now, what I mean by this is: cuddly to the point of not really having any other attributes. Admittedly, it is a book about how God’s love impacts our sorrow, but even so I could not imagine The Shack’s Jesus speaking the words of Revelation 1-3. In fact I couldn’t imagine this Trinity saying a great deal of the harder sections of the Bible. And when Mack, the central (human) character raises the question about OT violence, no real answer is made. If William Young is reacting against churches that major on judgment I can see why. But someone who read this book as an introduction to following Christ, is going to get a big shock later on when they read the whole Bible.
• It’s not strong on the Bible: it’s there, it’s referred to, it’s even stated we can hear God speaking through it - but it does seem somewhat relegated.
• Going back to cuddliness, this Jesus is so chummy and ordinary that His divinity is almost entirely lost, even though it is stated. The author’s theology implies he feels Jesus is completely and eternally limited by His human nature - which may be a reaction to the way-too-divine Jesus many emergents critique. But even so…
• Is there universalism? Possibly. The author has an unlimited atonement position, and because this is repeatedly emphasised it may wrongly seem imply he is universalist. It’s a bit too fuzzy to say for sure.

So what kind of book is it? It’s not a great book, because the writing is not up to, say, CS Lewis. This is evident for example in a sequence towards the end which resembles the final sections of Perelandra. I know which will stand out in my mind for the longest. But neither is it a terrible book. It may in fact open up helpful avenues for discussion. Would I buy it for a non-Christian friend? Maybe, if other routes had failed.

Badger.

Not the gospel

The gospel message is not that' God so loved the world that He inspired a certain Jew to teach that there was a good deal to be said for loving one another'.

Donald Coggan

Finally!

Back on line....