The created world is to be prized for its usefulness, loved for its beauty and esteemed as the gift of God to His children. Love of natural beauty which has been the source of so much pure music, poetry and art is a good and desirable thing. Though the unregenerate soul is likely to enjoy… Continue Reading
Over the last few years the world has gone on to woo the Church (about like water woos a duck!) and has won her heart and hand in what seems to be a case of true love. The honeymoon is still on and the church is now the pampered bride of the world. And what… Continue Reading
Religious music has long ago fallen victim to this weak and twisted philosophy of godliness. Good hymnody has been betrayed and subverted by noisy, uncouth persons who have too long operated under the immunity afforded them by the timidity of the saints. The tragic result is that for one entire generation we have been rearing… Continue Reading
MUSIC. There is about music a subtle charm that no normal person can resist. It works to condition the mind and prepare it for the reception of ideas, moral and immoral, which in turn prepare the will to act either in righteousness or in sin. The notion that music and song are merely for amusement… Continue Reading
A.W. Tozer is found in places where he probably wouldn’t have been invited to preach. His books will be found on the shelves of the charismatic church and the conservative, the Reformed and the Wesleyan, the fundamentalist and the seeker-sensitive. Tozer’s writings were of such penetrating clarity that they resonate with people of very different… Continue Reading
We have studied some statements by Shai Linne and boiled them down to four propositions. 1) Rap is a medium. 2) Media are morally neutral until informed by content. 3) Christ’s act of redemption means that even media formerly used for evil can now be used for God’s glory. 4) This is what Shai Linne… Continue Reading
In Shai Linne’s statements, we identified four propositions: 1) Rap is a medium. 2) Media are morally neutral until informed by content. 3) Christ’s act of redemption means that even media formerly used for evil can now be used for God’s glory. 4) This is what Shai Linne is doing with rap. Last post, we… Continue Reading
The following abridged discussion took place here. Credo Mag: In the past you have been criticized for redeeming such a “depraved genre” as hip-hop. What is your response to this criticism? Shai Linne: Arguments against “depraved genres” are ultimately arguments against redemption itself, because depraved genres are the products of depraved human beings- who need… Continue Reading
Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible”, describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”: make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words… Continue Reading
Once there was a man who lived as a worshipper of Lord Smiley-Face. He grew up singing the smiley songs to Lord Smiley-Face, and faithfully attended his weekly worship services. Lord Smiley-Face was, as you might imagine, a grinning deity, who was most pleased if during worship his followers grinned, giggled and displayed cheerful, chipper… Continue Reading
Leviticus 14:21-22 But if he is poor and cannot afford it, then he shall take one male lamb as a trespass offering to be waved, to make atonement for him, one-tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil as a grain offering, a log of oil, 22 “and two turtledoves or two young pigeons, such as he… Continue Reading
To understand reality, a child must think. Thinking that brings understanding is not the thinking that a cow does when it notices a car passing its pasture. It is the kind of thinking about ideas. To think about ideas, a child must know language. Language is the technology of thought. Language, as we are using it… Continue Reading
The Passion Since blood is fittest, Lord, to write Thy sorrows in, and bloody fight; My heart hath store; write there, where in One box doth lie both ink and sin: That when sin spies so many foes, Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes, All come to lodge there, sin may say, No… Continue Reading
Visitors that attend my church are often introduced to the seemingly obscure practice of fumbling for a hymnal, finding a page, and according to some, mumbling the words into the book they are peering into. In an era of affordable projectors, Powerpoint and similar software, surely insisting upon hymnals is like insisting on horse-drawn buggies… Continue Reading
This time, in the words of Richard Weaver: “He is therefore trained to see things under the aspect of eternity, because form is the enduring part. Thus we invariably find in the man of true culture a deep respect for forms. He approaches even those he does not understand with awareness that a deep thought… Continue Reading
“Being real” is all the rage in Christianity now, and some folks are sure that no one had thought of it before they did. As far as they are concerned, for two millennia Christians have been “playing church” and “hiding behind ceremonies”, and performing “empty rituals”. Consequently, they see it as their goal to expose… Continue Reading
In a striking work published a century ago the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce pointed to a radical distinction, as he saw it, between art properly so-called, and the pseudo-art designed to entertain, arouse or amuse…[He was] right to believe that there is a great difference between the artistic treatment of a subject matter and the… Continue Reading
“Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight!”—Phillips Brooks. That there were in the world multiplied millions who had never heard of Christmas did not matter to our poet for the purpose of his poem. He was expressing an emotional fact, not a statistical one. Throughout the Western world we tend to follow the poet and approach Christmas emotionally… Continue Reading
Paul Gerhardt (1606-1676) is regarded by some as Germany’s greatest hymn writer. His near-absence from many modern hymnals surely stands as testimony to our chronological snobbery. Nevertheless, a mostly untouched (by modern hands, at least) treasure-trove of Gerhardt hymns still exists for the hungry seeker. “Immanuel, to Thee We Sing” is one of his Christmas… Continue Reading
Some of us deeply appreciate A.W. Tozer’s writings on, well, just about anything. Tozer also wrote some poetry, which while not masterful, is a good attempt at meaningful hymnody, and that by a busy pastor. It ought to encourage those of us who have tried our clumsy hands at the task to keep at it.… Continue Reading