As I continue in this short series on worship, spurred in large part by two excellent posts by Tim Challies, I’d like to interact with one particular comment he made in “What We Lost When We Lost the Hymnal.” Challies helpfully points out that, when we lost the hymnal, we lost an established body of songs. Hymnals were updated only every decade or so, which means songs were chosen carefully and introduced slowly. He writes…
As I mentioned in my last post, I’d like to offer a series of short reflections on worship, spurred in part by two interesting posts by Tim Challies (1 2). I don’t intend this to be a polemical series, but do want to offer some thoughts on the ongoing “worship wars.” Thankfully these have stilled for the most part, but I’m not always sure why the ceasefire. In many cases, I don’t think it has…
Recently Tim Challies put out two excellent blog posts on “What We Lost When We Lost Our Hymnals” and “What We Gained When We Lost Our Hymnals.” The posts are balanced (as the titles suggest) and thoughtful. I think he is correct when he suggests that it would be unwise to return to the hymnal on the one hand, and equally unwise not to think through the implications of losing the hymnal on the other.…
Yesterday, Ezra Klein of Vox interviewed Yuval Hariri, the Israeli author of Sapiens and his latest, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. In Homo Deus Harari envisions humanity’s future (including its likely end) with specific focus on technology and artificial intelligence. Near the end of the interview, Harari makes this claim about religion generally, and Christianity in particular: You can think about religion simply as a virtual reality game. You invent rules that…
We have a baby just learning to walk. Like all children who are taking their first steps, when she moves too fast, she stumbles. She is at her best when she is slow and deliberate, for now at least. I think the same could be said of all of us. Move too fast, and you’re liable to stumble. Slow down, think carefully, choose deliberately, and you’re likely to fare much better. Now, this isn’t a…
In the short essay “After Ten Years,” which serves as prologue now to Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes an astute observation: It is one of the most surprising experiences, but at the same time one of the most incontrovertible, that evil—often in a surprisingly short time—proves its own folly and defeats its own object. That does not mean that punishment follows hard on the heels of every action; but it does…
As I mentioned last week, we are currently living in a culture of division and hostility. Our desire to vilify our political opponents has led many to accept and promote #FakeNews and #AlternativeFacts. We are more wedded to our ideology than to reality, in other words; more committed to our narrative than to truth. This all feels fairly depressing, I admit. But the current backlash against #FakeNews and #AlternativeFacts also presents us with a…
#FakeNews. #AlternativeFacts. There seems to be a lot of buzz these days about the media we ingest and whether or not we can opt-out of reality. For Christians, that brings with it a tremendous opportunity, as I’ll try to explain in my next post. But it also carries with it a clear and present danger. Now, I feel a bit like Jude in wading into this topic. Like him, “although I was very eager…
I saw a meme on some social media outlet or other this past week lamenting the state of our culture, specifically that Duck Dynasty aired for four seasons, whereas Cosmos aired for just one. The complaint, I gathered, was that our culture comprises more fundamentalist ignorami than scientific rationalists, which probably explains why we’re in the mess we’re in (and you’re welcome to define that mess as you like). Now, before I press on,…
Now that I’ve started to identify my idols, what next? How do I fight idolatry in my life? How do I learn to treasure Christ more, to value supremely only that which is supremely valuable? On a handful of occasions I’ve tried to learn some form of artwork or other—drawing, painting—usually with spectacular ineptitude. The most enjoyable part of the process, though, is reading the manuals that purport to teach you in four easy…