Blog and Mablog
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Culture and Politics -
Politics
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Written by Douglas Wilson
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Wednesday, 02 May 2012 07:07 |
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Suppose a measure is before your state legislature to build a bridge over a river in your town. There are ardent Christians in your town who think this is a good idea, and ardent Christians who want to leave well enough alone. Surrounding these pro and con Christians are the unbelievers who also, not surprisingly, divide up into for and against camps.
Some of the "in favor" secularists want to build the bridge because they want to make money, money, money, while the hipster antis do not want to disturb the river god any further than we already have. The Christians who are for and against divide up into another two groups (we have now cut that pie into four quarters). Some of the pro Christians fall into the money, money, money school of thought, and some of the anti Christians wish that Jesus were a little more green friendly, like the river god is.
But there are other Christians, both for and against the project, who came to their conclusions in a conscientious biblical manner. They are not contaminated by other people around them doing it wrong. To do anything right in this world is to run the risk of being misidentified with people who are doing the same thing for the wrong reasons.
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Read more... [The Problem With Their Syncretisms]
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Liturgy and Worship -
Musical Exhortation
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Written by Douglas Wilson
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Thursday, 03 May 2012 11:53 |
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Let me begin this post with a list of the last twelve songs I listened to (at the time of writing), somewhat randomly, and working backward:
(Sittin On) The Dock of the Bay by Sara Bareilles
Build a Levee by Natalie Merchant
29 Ways by Marc Cohn
Lake Charles by Lucinda Williams
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room by John Mayer
Slow Turning by John Hiatt
Cajun Moon by J.J. Cale
Moment of Forgiveness by Indigo Girls
Walkin' Daddy by Greg Brown
Sundown by Gordon Lightfoot
Give Me One Reason by Eric Clapton and Tracy Chapman
Boulder to Birmingham by Emmylou Harris
Having made that point, if there was one, last night Nancy and I went to hear the NSA choir perform Mozart's Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, which was of course glorious. It is kind of hard to fathom how all of that came out of one guy's head.
I mention this evening before and morning after musical contrast in order to make the point that it is not really a contrast. There is no tension between these different sorts of music for different occasions, any more than there is tension between cereal for a breakfast and a steak dinner for an anniversary.
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Read more... [Mozart and Vince Gill]
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Liturgy and Worship -
The Lord's Table
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Written by Douglas Wilson
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Saturday, 05 May 2012 07:15 |
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Everyone gathered here, although we are gathered in Christ, is still aware of our remaining sinfulness. We are, in addition to this, aware of our sins, those which we have committed, and which we have confessed at the beginning of this service. Some of those sins are egregious, as man reckons them, and all of them are egregious in the sight of a holy God.
Because of those sins, we are often tempted to shrink back from this Table, as though we do not deserve to come. Of course we do not deserve to come—that is the whole point. Anybody here who thinks he deserves this meal has wandered into the wrong building, the wrong service, the wrong religion.
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Read more... [The Seal on Damnation's Vault]
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Liturgy and Worship -
Exhortation
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Written by Douglas Wilson
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Saturday, 05 May 2012 07:14 |
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It is easy to drift into the mindset that is willing to become virtuous, provided the virtues drift our way. We would welcome them, we think, provided they took the initiative, and came to us. But the Scriptures tell us to pursue godliness. In the game of virtue tag, we are “it.” Righteousness, godliness, faith, love, and all the rest of their friends, must be chased.
This requires two things—a decision to do it, and a willingness to expend the effort involved. Some are nervous about talking this way, because they believe it might encourage Christians to think that we are saved by grace through faith, but that we have to finish the job of sanctification through some kind of autonomous human effort.
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Read more... [The Game of Virtue Tag]
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Culture and Politics -
Sex and Culture
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Written by Douglas Wilson
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Wednesday, 25 April 2012 06:54 |
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We live in a highly politicized (and therefore dishonest) culture, and this means that before you decide whether you are for or against any proposed measure, law, or pr campaign, you have to look past the language. "Hate crimes" is code. "Anti-bullying" is code. Invariably it turns out to be code for some aspect of the radical egalitarian agenda for human sexuality.
Things are so bad that the Left has lost almost all sense of irony or self-awareness. During the Q&A at the Bloomington event a week and a half ago, I was being asked about my blog defense of "bullying" at school. I had written a post defending the use of a phrase like "that's so gay," and it was read back to me by a questioner in a way calculated to make me ashamed of my defense of bullying, which it wasn't. The post the questioner quoted from is here, and a couple of other related ones are here and here.
Anyhoo, I was explaining that, of course, I was against actual bullying, the real kind. In the course of this answer I used an example of mean girls ganging up on another girl, and I said something like "suppose they are being really catty and bitchy . . ." As soon as I said "bitchy," there was an audible gasp throughout the room, and one woman starting yelling something along the lines of "Bitchy! What the effin' razzum skazzum effin' hate-monger effin' HATE!" She apparently had a problem with the language I had been using.
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Read more... [A Whipped Up Tolerance Mob]
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