We continue with the next three aspects of experiencing beauty in creation. Immediate Response After contemplating beauty receptively, we experience an immediate response, which is usually unpremeditated and almost instinctive. This immediate response is not the final judgement of the soul upon what it is encountering, only its initial reaction. To take this superficial reaction… Continue Reading
Why are there such different “tastes” among people? Is the debate over music in worship simply a “preference issue”? Are matters of music, dress, recreation merely matters of “personal style”? We have tried to sort out the meanings of the word “taste”, and have seen two distinct meanings. The first is the act of judging,… Continue Reading
Taste is never shaped in isolation. We learn to love what we love from our family, our church, our school, and our society. In other words, taste is largely shaped by culture. Culture can be defined as T. S. Eliot suggested, “the incarnation of a religion”. At the heart of any culture is Richard Weaver’s… Continue Reading
Even atheists used to believe in good taste. The infamous David Hume wrote in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals “In many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by… Continue Reading
De gustibus non est disputandum, said the ancient Romans. There is no disputing over taste, meaning that in matters of personal taste and preference, there can be no profitable dispute, and therefore there ought to be none. There’s much truth to that. If you’re a fan of murder mysteries, and have no time for fantasy,… Continue Reading
Since this series has dealt with “mangled” words such as tolerance, freedom, and authority, I was tempted to include elitism among them. Elitism, though, is really a misused word inseparable from the word authority. When the meaning of authority is mangled, be sure that a sorely maimed and deformed version of the meaning of elitism… Continue Reading
This week I am studying Psalm 34, and the two instances (one noun, one verb) of a Hebrew word for “taste” (טעם) caught my attention. Since discussions of “taste” frequently accompany discussions of the topics addressed on this website, I thought that it might be useful to share a bit regarding the biblical usage of… Continue Reading
When the topic of music and worship comes up, a favorite slap-down argument against thoughtful discrimination of music is that pastors need not study music to be faithful pastors. It is beside the point to say that pastors need not become art critics. If their vocation is that of shepherding the flock, it is manifestly… Continue Reading
How are we to worship God? We should worship in all of life, but we have been told most explicitly to worship God corporately through the following: – The reading of Scripture – The preaching of Scripture – The singing of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs – The offering of public prayer – The observance… Continue Reading
Faulty worship is not often a topic of discussion in today’s Christianity. Many Christians seem to think that God is only concerned that our hearts are sincere in our worship of Him. However, from a biblical perspective, that is just not correct. Don’t misunderstand me; God is concerned about the heart of worship. Isaiah 1… Continue Reading
I was pushed to write a series on discernment when I heard a famous evangelical pastor define discernment as the ability to see, allegedly by the Spirit of God, obscene things on a kind of imaginary “movie screen.”1 I also wanted to respond with sound exegesis to the opinions of some that any extra-biblical moral… Continue Reading
To this point, the passages studied in our series on discernment have been pretty straight-forward. Whether Philippians 1:9-11, Romans 12:1-2, or Colossians 1:9-10, each passage has clearly taught the importance of discerning the will of God. In each context, knowing the will of God (which I define to be discerning God’s will as to how… Continue Reading