Unthinking imitation

An enormous danger to the Church is an unthinking Christianity that slips into society's patterns of living without investigating their validity. We should fear bandwagons that draw in participants who haven't really thought through the significance and meaning of a particular movement for their lives. Marva Dawn Truly The Community

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, however the most dangerous form of discipling. Cookie cutter thinking forces others into molds and springs into judgmentalism when they refuse to conform to what we think they should. We do violence because the one who transforms is the Holy One, the mold is not what we think but Christ himself. Max Lucado talks about finding your sweetspot, like in a tennis racket if you play the ball or life out of that zone power, strength and skill come. Enjoyment and pleasure flow from playing there. This is the older aspect of calling. We have corporate callings as communities and also personal ones.

Whether it is imitating or taking on the values and methods of surrounding culture without careful thought to implications and language, or simply imitating and using Christian songs without thinking of the worldview they embody. Just because another Christian wrote a song does not mean we should taking it and use it without adequate theological reflection about its suitability. I am saddened to find people serving outside their sweet spot and they haven't thought about what is happening to them. They are living off their own energy rather than the joy found inside playing from the right place. I continue to argue that a need is not a call - a call is from God and from within the spirit. A calling if found it its life giving qualities. A need is gap someone is trying to fill.

I have never found it work to read a Bible passage, think and pray about it and choose a worship sequence. In fact it is life giving and affirming, to do the preparation, to use the songs and hymns personally and to run rehearsals and ultimately facilitate others. In fact , I miss it currently, though enabling others to get closer and find God is very satisfying. Finding your place, your calling requires energy but when you're playing out of your sweet spot you have life, energy, joy, fun, and you don't feel tired during it. Work is the sweat of the brow and effort and willpower; serving inside your calling brings life, energy from beyond self, and is worship.

With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. 2 Thess 1:11

Refractions of light

I'm starting to review books and this is my first for Navpress.

Often the internal life of an artist is not easily accessible and yet Makoto Fujimura in Refractions: a journey of faith, art, and culture allows us to meet him in a very intimate way. I have followed his blog for a while and this book is a gem. He is an artist working in the space between the East and the West and working with mineral pigments, which catch the light and bend it in many ways, just like the essays in this book.

Makoto Fujimura is one of those one in a million people. As a visual artist, as Japanese American, as someone living in the shadow of Ground Zero, as man of faith and committed to community and culture, it is possible find at last someone, something authentic. One small flash of that authenticity is “Art cannot be divorced from faith, for to do so is to literally close our eyes to that beauty of the dying sun setting all around us”.

Refractions is not something you read through and feel you’ve done the book. It is not a work of fiction nor is it a textbook about faith, religion or art. It is about the internal spiritual journey, seeing, thinking, reflecting and refracting.

Trapped into Amusing ourselves

The Church stands at a critical juncture in history. More and more persons are becoming dissatisfied with the experience of liberal culture and the Christian community could offer an alternative society. We must ... understand the nature of the technological milieu in which we live in order to grasp more fully the kind of alternative that is necessary ... a myriad of factors have caused persons to become more and more isolated from one another. Marva Dawn Truly The Community

Last week I read about Dr Arig Sigman's article in the Biologist, the journal of the British Institute of Biology, which claimed the lack of real-world social interaction could make you more susceptible to cancer, dementia, heart disease, diabetes, influenza, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus etc. I also read some responses noting the weaknesses in Sigman's research but not refuting it.

But this week Baroness and Professor Greenfield, who is the director of the Royal Institution, a great scientific organization, has voiced her concerns that internet-obsessed children are losing their ability to concentrate and communicate away from the screen. Effectively the children's brains are being rewired. Greenfield is a professor of neuroscience and not a half baked politician. The British newspaper the Telegraph notes that a study from last year has showed that internet use can improve brain functioning and speed up general decision-making but the cost is loss of empathy and the ability to think in abstract terms. Furthermore there are possible connections with autism to be investigate.

It is twenty years since Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. He argued deeper than Marshall McLuhan not merely that the medium is the message but media inherently reduces messages. Thus a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Writing especially about television he comments that things are reduced down to entertainment. We have been reduced to the soundbyte.

I wonder about the internet. My posts are generally short. What am I exactly doing here? I'm trying not to be a blipvert. But the medium does reduce and limit. Rather I suppose I am wondering out loud and hoping someone might start or continue to think critically about the world around them.

Charles Colson, in Christianity Today in 2006 titled an article 'Soothing Ourselves to Death Should we give people what they want or what they need?' Poignant strong stuff.

I admit I prefer traditional hymns, buteven so, I'm convinced that much of the music being written for the church today reflects an unfortunate trend—slippingacross the line from worship to entertainment. Evangelicals are in danger of amusing ourselves to death, to borrow the title of the classic Neil Postman book. This trend is evident not just in theater-like churches.

I'm not sure if Colson is over-reacting but he is reacting to something which can be bad. self-indulgent emotionalism. I wrote about worshi-tainment when I started this blog and it still remains high on my radar. Tim Keller writes in the foreword to a book I've just finished (review to follow) that worship without the quality is intrinsically self indulgent because it excludes the stranger and the nonbeliever who have no relationship to those playing/leading nor to the God being worshipped. Whatever the medium, whether music, powerpoint, internet, etc, we need to understand what it is doing lest our ignorance and perhaps even our sins are visited on the next generation. Lest we become merely a reflection of our surrounding culture rather than an alternative.

Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true wisdom. All who obey his commandments will grow in wisdom. Praise him forever! Psalm 111:10

For The Audience of One- Chapter 4

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 4 The Fruit of Worship – Healing

Again the need for honesty before God is important. It allows us to be open to the healing and transforming power of God. If you struggle here, do talk to others you trust including your pastor. If your church has a healing ministry there is no shame rather freedom if you would take issues to that ministry.

1. What surprised me if anything reading these few pages?
2. What are my expectations of worship and what are the fruits of worship?
3. Are there desires in my life/heart that attracted to what is being said about worship?
4. Can I name the things in my brokenheartness?
5. Go back to read John 8:32 and ask God to give you his freedom.
   

Living Simpler

Could you live on 1,500 dollars? not a month but a year! $1,500 for one year for groceries, household items and personal care expenses. This is for real - see it here. The family of four is in the US news and they are a coupon family in the main. I am not sure about really how healthy their diet is given the amount of prepared foods they are using but it's an interesting thing in a recession and an age of consumption. Fox news here reports so far they are on 125 dollars a month.

How much simpler can you live? I try and live pretty simply in many ways. Though my computer etc have taken up money recently and a number of hobbies/projects also. Perhaps these I need to keep a tighter reign on. I know students who are living on 60-70 dollars a week and I pretty well match their level. Though currently my travel pass is costing me money.

I wonder where does that saved money go? The tension is already that global economies are unstable and in recession because people aren't buying consumer items in sufficient volume. Capitalism and the free market depends on consumption. There is something wrong here and yet if we all lived like the Spooner family, then whole economies would collapse. Is there a balance?

This weekend, I was talking with an international student about cost benefit analysis when thinking about civil engineering and environmental impact and risk. Current discussions have indicated that the Szechuan earthquake may have been caused by a large dam and it's lake sitting over a fault line. The benefits of water management over the risks of such an event. Cost benefit is an important thing to have in mind. Saving money is only one aspect, what we do with the money we saved is also something important. How we use that money is also important! Laying up our treasures in the right place is important. However making sure the heart and mind are in the right place first is very important. Perhaps this is where balance starts.