Why Music is Powerful (even when the lyrics are ridiculous)
My students often think I make absurd claims. Here is one they sometimes struggle with: “The music is the power behind the throne. Good lyrics cannot redeem wicked music.” In short, my argument is that music has a spiritual quality. It has the capacity to bypass rational discourse (and your worldview filters) and go straight to the subconscious. Music speaks the language of emotion. Emotional memory is chemical graffiti, spray painted on the walls of the subconscious. That’s
No Church is an Island
Each age has its blind spots. […] These usually come from some sort of adaptation to or infiltration of the problems of the society around the church into the church itself. […] Sadly, the church often seems to twist and manipulate biblical teachings, usually out of context, to support secular views it already holds, because of having accepted the opinions of the day and age around it.[...] But always the price paid for being infiltrated (from inside or outside) is one that p
PRODUCT PLACEMENT | WATER: Aqua Panna
I have recently determined that my new-favorite water is Aqua Panna. Supposedly it is bottled at the source somewhere in or near the Alps in Italy, but who really knows about these things. What I can say myself is that is has no trace aftertastes of minerals or chlorine, which of late I had been increasingly noticing in my other bottled water brands. Most significantly, I think, is the glass bottle. Plastic has a taste, which I think has to be created from some sort of leachi
We must know what we are...
Before we can pretend to do anything about the present, we must know what we are, what the world is, and yes, what God is. Construction of a civilization that knows little or nothing of these deeper realities can only make things worse. […] We are not simply to devote ourselves to politics and economics or to making a living, however valid these are in their own spheres. […] [W]hen everything human is defined in terms of utility or pleasure, the enterprise of knowing what w
Of Theology and Fortune Cookies
My fortune from today’s lunch reads... “There are no bad days; some are just better than others.” Generally speaking, I have lived the sort of life where this has largely been true. Yet, I know others have faced great hardship, pain, and tragedy. So too might I before I pass from this earth. I do not, therefore, wish to trivialize the theology, or the reality, of bad days. What might King Solomon have said if he had cracked open my cookie today? Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 (KJV) 1 To
