Category Archives: culture

“The church’s unwitting capitulation to powerful cultural forces has caused it to lose its prophetic, other-worldly voice. We must remember that we are the people of the future formed by the past, and living in the present.” – W. Tullian Tchividjian

I got this quote from a missions conference recently… during the same session, I wrote these things down that I heard said…

‘We must not be so pipelined (tunnel-visioned?) in our vision to reach the lost that we lose sight of who we are as the Church of Jesus Christ.’ – This comment is aimed at causing the church to consider how its tactics to reach the lost have caused it to lose some sight of itself, who she is, and how she should live. I think a good challenge… then I, days later, in reviewing these ideas thought this…

The church should be involved in the world, in culture, flavoring the world, but this should be done in such manners which hold her true to who she is… The spotless bride of Christ.

Thus one must consider what is appropriate for this bride to be a part of? How can this be clearly seen day-to-day? The bride has mandates from her groom. To be holy as he is holy, thus demonstrating she is his. As a bride is set apart at a wedding from the guests, so is the bride set apart from the world by her robes of righteousness. This bride is set apart but not removed, indeed, after the wedding she may walk down the aisle and smilingly acknowledging some of the guests present. At the reception, she and her groom mingle with all present, thanking them for their participation, their presence, their friendship. She radiates happiness and joy. People are happy to meet her because of her joy. The friends that surround her. Some from the past, some new, some will be around in a few years, some will not… What is the impact of this day and its memory on them? How will her reaction to them impact how they view her and her groom? Would they, having seen her, cause them to wish to be friends with them? Consider these questions in light of the fact that if you are a follower of Jesus, you are the part of the bride of Christ…

How does these ‘unrelated ideas’ inform us about the impact of the church? What lessons can we learn from this? Several, I hope. I hope to consider these ideas in the future… The plan of the wedding. The cost of the wedding. The gown/robe she wears. The joy she shows. Her attractiveness.

My friend J.R. posted a thoughtful response to the execution of Saddam…

I commented this way…

“good thoughts man, i used to argue for capital punishment all the time… then i thought about it more deeply… i have felt and thought exactly the same kind of things that you are expressing… we should all ask ourselves is in regard to your closing thoughts, do we have all the answers? do we know enough? i know we think we do… but do we??? N.T.Wright has some interesting thoughts in his recent book _Evil and the Justice of God_… in Nov i heard him speak about the war in the context of this book and during the Q & A it was clear that many of the Americans (it was an all American audience in the DC area) really struggled with one of the concepts that he put forth: FORGIVENESS… now, that is not to say that there should be no consequences… but CAPITAL PUNISHMENT???? I dunno, man… thanks for getting the conversation going in my head and in the head of others… do we really know enough to kill? Oh, another study on this subject is the film ‘Capote’… but that’s another post and comment isn’t it?”

Here are some quotes from a page on which i have three flags in my copy of the book…

“Forgiveness doesn’t mean ‘I didn’t really mind’ or ‘it didn’t really matter.’ I did mind and it did matter, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything to forgive at all, merely something to adjust my attitudes about.”

“Nor is forgiveness the same as saying, ‘Let’s pretend it didn’t really happen.’ This is a little trickier because part of the point of forgiveness is that I am committing myself to work toward the point where I can behave as if it hadn’t happened. But it did happen, and forgiveness itself isn’t pretending that it didn’t; forgiveness is looking hard at the fact that it didn’t; forgiveness is looking hard at the fact that it did and making a conscious choice – a decision of the moral will – to set it aside so that it doesn’t came as a barrier between us. In other words, forgiveness presupposes that the thing which happened was indeed evil and cannot be simply set aside as irrelevant. Along that route lies suppressed anger and a steady distancing of people who no longer trust one another. A much better plan is to put things out on the table, as indeed the New Testament commands us to do, and deal with them.”

Okay, that’s too much quoting… this is too long a post… I need to think more… but the death of Saddam raises this question: is capital punishment okay? I’m not sure anymore…

Jesus died to forgive sin, which can enable us to be forgiving too… if we are willing…

was a pretty awesome day… i transfered my prayer list into my new moleskin daily calendar (thanks Jo), listened to some great music AND I discovered that I could listen to the New Years Day concert from Wien (Vienna) live on WVTF, but I enjoyed the WHTJ broadcast of Walter Cronkite hosting the concert in the afternoon in an edited with some great visual images from Wien… my dream is to be in attendance on New Years Day in Wien before I die…

At a meeting last week a colleague was talking about a conference he went to on prejudice… he said the presenter said at the beginning that we are all prejudice… AMEN – finally, someone said it… OK, this post isn’t about prejudice, it’s about movies… ANYWAY! He said the presenter told them to watch “Crash“… I did… I was enthralled. ‘nuf said.

Whilst (I love the word whilst) looking for “Crash”, I saw “Capote” on the shelf… I had seen it on the shelf before and wondered about it… see, I’m old enough to remember the hu-bub about In Cold Blood, the book about which this film depicts the writing (what kind of grammar was that ?)… (OH, both of these are films, not movies… I should post about what I mean by that sometime) SO, ANYWAY… my wife and I watched “Capote” — disturbing, very disturbing… at so many levels… the philosophy, the deceit, the violence. the emotional baggage EVERYONE in the film is carrying around – – in body as well as mind and emotion — I DO NOT recommend it… the darkness of the thing… I expected Frank Peretti–esqe demons to jump out at any moment with their talons deep into the shoulders of EVERYONE! Can you read Romans 1?

I have never heard Handel’s Messiah in its entirety live before… until last night…
when younger daughter (thank you Becca) treated mom and I to said performance… IN THE NATIONAL CATHEDRAL!!
it was simply inspiring… to hear the words of Scripture put to such phenomenal music… I was so pleased especially because the printed program had the words so that, if we chose (I did), we could read along as the words were sung… at one point I thanked God for the worship experience…

You have made such a thing as us;
Who, even in a fallen state
Can still make marble shine,
Columns rise, roofs cover,
Instruments sing and
Voices resonate
to Your great glory;
For it is only You who
Can be truly glorified.

To God be the glory, Amen.

ok, so today I had the day off… I did some errands for a couple of hours… mainly ceo stuff… then i went to Greenberrys to grade some papers – not a table in sight… left, went to get meds… dr. has me on daily aspirin… i guess you know what that means… went to the video store… why do we call stores that rent mostly dvds “video stores” – old habits die hard i guess… so ANYWAY… rented and watched Archangel with Daniel Craig (the latest Bond) and loved it… looked to have been filmed completely in former Soviet Union… I thought I was back in Kyiv! Lots of historical stuff mixed with conspiracy theory, Moscow style – – – most significant line: “When you leave Moscow, you see how bad the real Russia has it.” I think most of Eastern Europe is like that… SO, I took it back to get a credit and the lady asked about it… I told her I loved it ‘cuz I’m into the whole Eastern Europe thing… good commentary about modern Russia… I do recommend it IF you can find it… THEN, later, when I picked up Chinese for dinner, I got National Treasure (turn your sound down before clicking this) which was just good fun! fairly mindless (unlike the above Archangel) adventure based on conspiracy and regaining the family credibility… haven’t seen it? I suggest it for fun, with some interesting historical factoids.