I’m doing a lot of moving around the city and country this week, not to mention I have a really good friend from Richmond visiting all this week (and longer perhaps), so I’m not going to be as frequent with the blog this week (if at all). Sorry I’m a little late in getting this out. But, good things are in store in the weeks ahead: I want to get back to my Bible Study blogs, I have an article I’m working on for By Whose Authority?, and I have some posts in the works for this site that are a little more substantive than I’ve been posting recently. Also, I’ll be moving some of the Creation/Evolution discussion from Reform & Revive over to this site. So, check back next week and I’ll be back in full swing.
I just wanted to plug a new website that I am now contributing to. It’s a site from the newest fellow Westminsterdropout I’ve met, Allison Quient. It’s a site called “By Whose Authority?” and it’s an ecumenical blog where people from varying theological perspectives write and discuss their respective views. From the site:
This blog is devoted to addressing questions of Church authority and other doctrinal issues surrounding the Protestant, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. Our hope is to foster a charitable and winsome dialog in the pursuit of God’s truth.
I haven’t written anything yet, but I’ll try to put up a post on the site in the next couple of days. You can be sure I’ll let it be known here on this blog when that happens. But in the meantime, please go and read some of the posts that have been put up so far. They are pretty phenomenal.
This was a journal entry of mine from yesterday. Yes, this is how some of my entries look. I’m also in the process of writing a new album called Skeptics & Saints and this might end up being one of the songs, so consider this a preview.
I know we’ve all had the followng experience: you’re in a group of people and someone makes a really good joke or pun. Someone else in the group builds on that joke and the laughs increase. Someone else does it. This repeats itself over and over again as people build on the joke. Eventually, the topic changes and the conversation moves on, but your mind is still churning, trying to figure out something else you could have said while the joke was going. Sometimes you think of something that would have been truly brilliant and inspired if you had just thought about it a minute and a half earlier. You consider saying it anyway.Whether or not you end up saying the joke says a lot about you, but either way you end up feeling pretty stupid. You either say it and it’s awkward, or you don’t say it and then feel like an idiot for having exerted so much time and thought to a joke you knew you could never tell. Why did I go through this whole scenario?
Because I had a thought today that I wanted some feedback on. I can’t remember what started it, but this morning I was thinking about some political idea and became more and more impassioned about it. I was angry and zealous, and felt like I had articulated in my mind the perfect flow of thought and nuanced argumentation that would convinced even my most ardent naysayers. I then thought (of course):
I should put this on my blog!
But then I felt a little absurd. I felt that same absurdity one feels when the joke has already passed. And this feeling struck me as a bit odd. Has the national “joke” that is Politics passed (at least for a time)? Are we really in a relative political peace right now, where impassioned zealous political debate seems out of place?
I mean, the health care thing has quieted down, people seem to at least appreciate the time and consideration that’s being put into a decision on Afghanistan before it’s announced, the economy seems to be at least evening out if not moving back up now, and the biggest political frustration right now has to do with the administration’s opinion that Fox News isn’t a legitimate news organization. Heck even things that you would think would cause uproar hasn’t. Gay rights marches, talks with Iran, and the occasional “tea party” (I’m shaking my head right now) are reported on with a relative ho-hum sort of attitude.
Maybe I got too used to the absurdities and loss of decorum that have ruled the both sides of the political world since last November (I’m having flashbacks of a particular outburst during a speech by the President). Maybe I’m just a bit too late to get in on the joke. Or maybe I’m just a fighter by nature and I feel weird when there’s nothing for me to give my opinion on that seems relevant and timely. Maybe I should learn to be content writing/thinking about seemingly inconsequential-to-everyday-life things like theistic evolution and the eternality of Hell. But let me just ask all of you:
What’s the big political story right now? Am I missing something? Is the joke still going on, or has the punchline already passed? Is the world finally settling in and learning what the rhythms of everyday life in an Obama world looks like? What do you think?
With that out of the way: now that the epic Beauty series is done, what on earth am I going to do with my blogging time?Well, I want to bring in some structure.If you look to the sidebar on the right, and scroll down a little bit (not yet!) you will see a section containing my favorite “Reads”, “Listens”, and “Watches”.I really want to start promoting those things.So, I hereby introduce:
My Fav Mondays
Every Monday, I will take another podcast, website, TV Show, Musical artist, or book and write about it.I’ve been wanting to support and plug these things for a while now, and this blog is a perfect platform on which to do that.It’s something that may be actually helpful to you, the reader, and these are topics I am naturally passionate about.It’s a win-win.So, starting next Monday, I will begin what I hope becomes a popular ritual for us all.What will I review first?Who knows?Heck, I don’t even know.Until then . . .
In 2009 I did a seminar at my old church, Epiphany Fellowship, on the topic of Beauty. I spent about nine months doing research, reading, talking, and thinking before offering it to the community. I then separated my overall talk into the series of blog posts you’ll see below. A year later, I updated the main manuscript with some expanded thoughts. Those blog posts represent the material before the update.
On this page you’ll find the audio from the talk and the updated manuscript,, as well as a special appendix I put together offering a complete breakdown of every word in both Greek and Hebrew that the English Standard Version of the Bible translates as “beauty” or “beautiful”, broken down by frequency. Along with those words (and all their forms), I’ve offered the most literal definition of each so you can easily see the huge range of meanings that the Biblical words for “beauty” carry. I hope it’s helpful. You don’t need any knowledge of Greek or Hebrew to understand it or get something from it.
Hey, just wanted to write a quick note letting you all know that my new article is up on GoingToSeminary.com. This is Part 2 of a very unofficial series I’m doing on Truth and Doctrine. The first part went up about a week and half ago, and had some great feedback on it. This article is getting mostly positive feedback, though maybe I wasn’t as clear on this one. I would love some more feedback. By the way, Beauty Part 10, should be up in the next few minutes. Here’s the link to the GtS article:
Well, that was exciting. I noticed a huge jump in visits to my site and saw that I was getting traffic from Derek’s main page. So, I jumped over there and saw that he has a blog feed going. It linked to the article I wrote last week on his thoughts on art in a recent interview. No doubt the feed just crawls the web for keywords and puts up links to any ol’ page that finds his name in the title. I doubt he has actually read any of my stuff. So far I only know of one “celebrity” that’s commented here.
But still, I thought it was cool. My little 15 minutes . . .
btw- “Beauty” part 9? On the way in a few minutes.
The Mockingbird blog did a great interview with Derek Webb that was published today. It seems like every interview he’s been doing has consisted of the same content, but this seems to have a few original questions in it. It’s really enjoyable.
This was my favorite quote from the whole thing. It’s a very biblical view of “Christian art” and it resonates well with my recent article on the Beauty of Art, so I thought I’d share it with all of you.
As an artist, my job is to look at the world and tell you what I see. Every artist, regardless of their beliefs, has some way that they look at the world that helps them make sense of what they see. A grid through which they look at the world which makes order out of it. For me that’s following Jesus, for other artists it’s other things. It could be anything, but every artist has that grid. Most Christian art unfortunately is more focused on making art/writing songs about the grid itself. As opposed to writing songs about what you see when you look through the grid. I’m more interested in looking through the grid and telling you what I see.
In other art news, I can stop listening to the new Pete Yorn/Scarlet Johanssen duet/compilation album Break Up. It’s pretty phenomenal. Expect a review here in the coming days. You can listen to the entire thing online here. I know Scarlet’s received a lot of crap about her voice and singing ability, especially after her solo album of Tom Waits covers called Anywhere I Lay My Head. Personally, I love her voice. I think it’s amazing, refreshing, and seductive. Here, try this random single she did called “Last goodbye” (I have no idea where it’s originally from. Sorry.):
Enjoy the quote, links, and audio and let me know what you think.
It’s part one of two on a little series I’m writing on doctrinal changes while in seminary. As I said then, I’m more concerned about this next article than this one. If it even comes out. In an hour and a half I have been called upon by the “Vice President of Advancement” and “Associate Professor of Systematic Theology” of Westminster Theological Seminary, David Garner to grab some lunch. I have no idea what the topic of conversation is (and the one time I’ve asked, he never answered), but I’m optimistic. He has always been one of my favorite professors I ever had and has one of the most pastoral, worshipful, Christ-centered hearts I’ve ever seen in a man. I look up to him greatly as a pastor, preacher, teacher, husband, and father.
But, he is very much on the side of the issues at Westminster that I am not. So I’m wondering what this is about. I haven’t been that vocal against WTS have I? I feel like whenever I have I’ve always made it clear that this is my opinion and I that I know I’m still young, arrogant, and don’t know anything. I don’t know. We’ll see. I may let you all know. But, in the meantime, read and enjoy the article “Letting Seminary Doctrinally Change You” at GoingToSeminary.com. Here it is:
I encountered one of the most fascinating things the other day.In the picture above (click for a larger version), you will see a search I recently did on Twitter for “npr”.I was trying to find their various Twitter accounts so I could follow, get news updates, and the like.I was shocked to see that with 1,448,766 followers, NPR’s Politics account is by far the most popular.NPR News is a distant second with only 123,086 followers.
Why is that?
This has been giving more pause than it should.Why are there more than ten times as many people wanting to follow NPR Politics than NPR anything else?Of course, there are many factors I don’t know that could contribute to these results.The Politics account could be the oldest account, and the News one being a relatively new one.They all could have been started around the time of the election.The Politics account could have been advertised more.I don’t know, but still: would those variables fully account for the inequality?
Are Americans really that much more interested in Political news as opposed to general News?Actually, maybe.I know that prior to this election, I only got obsessed with politics for the five or so months leading up to voting night, and then dropped it like a bad habit the next morning.But not this time.For some reason unbeknownst to me, I have kept up with my political engagement – perhaps increased it, in fact.My personal addiction to NPR, The Economist, the Politics section of the New York Times and Slate magazine, various editorials and opinion columns, and all things Social Justice-y has only increased since November.
Could this be a reflection of the amount of hope and anticipation a completely new guard promised to bring?That Americans freely ascribed to?That all of us knew was needed?Perhaps.Personally, I think that the academy is moving past postmodernity into what I’m currently calling “neo-pragmatism” (some good friends would rather call it “critical realism”, and they have some good points).But either way, I feel like modernity preached to us the mind, postmodernity the heart, and now “neo-pragmatism” the legs.In short, I think people are seeking a “whatever works” approach.The great fulfillment promised by the previous two major philosophical epochs never happened, so now people are willing to do whatever it takes – throw off any convention, question so many presuppositions, and change ideologies – in the hopes that something might actually effect change and lasting growth in our lives.
Perhaps this simple Twitter search is a reflection of this?Maybe there really is a much greater interest in the mechanisms of change in the world because people know we need it, they want it, and want to know how their leaders are trying to help them accomplish it.Need I mention more than Obama’s campaign-winning slogan?It wasn’t Ideology you can believe in or even Truth you can believe in.It was Change.And politics is much more likely to accomplish change than news (for better or worse).
I think we’re right in looking for change.I think we’re right in looking for that which will actually be readily applicable in our everyday lives.I think we’re right in looking for what works.
Some may have read my post yesterday about my upcoming article on GoingToSeminary.com. Well, I also mentioned that the site was changing servers all day yesterday, and in the process they lost a few articles . . . including mine.
They’re still down with posting it, I just need to send it to them, which I am about to do right now (here’s a lesson for all you bloggers out there: always do your writing in some other program and save a copy on your hard drive). But, this being the case, I have no idea when it will actually go up. Hopefully in the next couple of days.
But not today. I’ll let you all know when it does. And . . . I am currently working on the next Beauty post to put up in the next hour or so. See you then!
Yep, it’s a double-post sort of day. (let’s just say I’m making up for Labor Day.) But this is a personal one. I’m asking for some prayer.
At publication time for this post, the site GoingToSeminary.com is currently changing servers, so it’s down. It was just bought by the somewhat Lutheran and fully online Rockbridge Seminary, sold by my good friend (and former campus minister) Ryan Burns of Design Simple.
As some of you know, I am a Contributor for the site, and my articles have tended to be pretty weighty. I don’t know why. It hasn’t been purposeful. I suppose when I think of seminary it tugs at my urgent pastoral heart more than the light, fun, twentysomething heart; and this has been evident in the posts. From what I can tell, my last article “Realizing Seminary’s Not For You” has received more comments than any other single article that I can find on the site, and those comments were fiery. I got blasted from every side (and defended by many – thank you all, by the way). A couple of people even compared me to an unfaithful Israelite who saw the giants in the Promised Land and got scared. Another, in light of my severe disappointment in Westminster Theological Seminary as an institution, said that apparently I don’t know good doctrine when I see it. In short, it caused some controversy. I really try not to seek such controversy, and I never thought that post would spurn such heated discussion.
But –
Tomorrow’s another story. Tomorrow my new article is going live on the site and I’m fairly sure this one will ruffle some feathers. In fact, I’m shocked Rockbridge went ahead and decided to post it. Kudos to them. It will be very easy for this article to be misunderstood on both sides: those that think I go too far, and those that think I don’t go as far as I am in fact trying to go.
The article is a discussion of how to let seminary doctrinally change you. To do this, I very consciously employ postmodern thought into my own thinking and advocate others do so as well. It’s very touchy and I am not wholly confident that I phrased myself as articulately as a more experienced writer may have been able to. I guess we’ll see over the next couple of days.
But, I’m actually not as concerned with this article as I am with the follow-up article I am about half-way through writing. In the first article I lay out the responsibilities for the seminarian in this respect; in this second one, I talk about the responsibilities of the healthy seminary institution. And in doing so I am directly taking Westminster to task for how they have abandoned the principles I lay out in this first article. I’m sort of doubting Rockbridge would run it on the site, but who knows? Westminster’s a competing institution and Rockbridge is marketing themselves as a seminary for the 21st century, so we’ll see.
All that to say, look for my article tomorrow at GoingToSeminary.com, and please pray for me if you could. I’m still young and arrogant, and I need the spiritual support. I’ll also link to the article tomorrow. Until then . . .
Look at that face. That’s Max Lucado. And I just reviewed his new book Fearless. You can find the review here at Reform & Revive. Some of you may have read my “Review Preview” and now are wondering why on earth I’m putting up this little post, just to send people somewhere else for the review.
Well, that “Review Preview” got a lot of hits due to search engine traffic. That means that this site will appear sooner in a search for the book than will Reform & Revive. But, seeing as reviews of this sort are much more in line with the mission and purpose of R&R, rather than that of this bog, I thought it was more appropriately posted there, and not on this blog. So, I’m putting up this post on the off chance someone meanders here due to a search engine. So, if you have fallen victim to such an off-chance, you can find the review at my webzine, Reform & Revive, found at the link below:
By the way, for those that have stopped by for the next part of my Beauty series, you will find the next installment here tomorrow. Probably. Well, technically, my review of John Navone’s book Toward a Theology of Beautycounted as the “next installment”, but I’ll write another tomorrow.
I’m a book reviewer for Thomas Nelson Publishers. A few weeks ago I received a pre-publication copy of Max Lucado‘s upcoming book “Fearless“. I hate so much about Christian “culture”, especially its commercialism, cheesy cliches, seemingly naive treatment of the fallenness of the world, and an inability to know and apply a deep understanding of the Gospel. For years, admittedly, Lucado has stood in my mind as a representative of much of this. I have, with little engagement with his material (other than his children’s books), tagged him as such a man; and in a certain way, he is the cheesy, cliche-ridden, mass appealing writer I have assumed (as is evidenced by this official site for the book), and the official trailer found below:
Let’s just say it’s been a big change going from Francis Turretin, John Calvin, and Herman Bavinck to Max Lucado in a matter of months. Anyone that knows me knows that it has been a long journey through many frustrations with mainline evangelical culture to teach me how to love the Bride of Christ. And I’m still learning. I have belittled her, talked her down, mocked her, and ridiculed her in the most shameful of ways.
And this book has been a healing process for me. Not giving away too much of my upcoming review when the book’s released, I just want to say that this book is amazing. Save for the first few chapters, I have been shown that even amidst bad jokes, inadequate metaphors, “simple” writing, and an over-commercialized release (including shirts, calendars, mugs, study guides, DVDs, children’s books, teaching curricula), there can be poetry, depth, a real exploration of the human condition, and beautiful articulations and applications of the deepest, most precious truths of the Gospel. Lucado has shocked me. And taught me. And helped me. And stirred me for this God, His Gospel, and all that it supplies us. Though I may be going against the fine print in my publisher’s agreement in doing so, I want to share with you all my favorite few paragraphs from the book so far:
A calmer death would have sufficed. A single drop of blood could have redeemed humankind. Shed his blood, silence his breath, still his pulse, but be quick about it. Plunge a sword into his heart. Take a dagger to his neck. Did the atonement for sin demand six hours of violence?
No, but his triumph over sadism did. Jesus once and for all displayed his authority over savagery. Evil may have her moments, but they will be brief. Satan unleashed his meanest demons on God’s Son. He tortured every nerve ending and inflicted every misery. Yet the master of death could not destroy the Lord of life. Heaven’s best took hell’s worst and turned it into hope.
I pray God spares you such evil. May he grant [you] long life and peaceful passage . . .. But if he doesn’t, if you “have been given not only the privilege of trusting in Christ but also the privilege if suffering for him” (Phil. 1:29 NLT), remember, God wastes no pain.
Amazing. Look for my review September 8. In the meantime, you can order the book here, and read some of the ebook here.
Look at that face. That’s 
I’m a book reviewer for 
the long way home 