Nice little video, along with great lyrics and music, from M. Ward.
There is nothing new under the sun – we all share, to one degree or
another, the desire to know – why! A broken heart, a long night, and
how do we stay in the light? Good questions all – questions the beg for
an interior life that is so hard to find in our day. Quit, stillness,
calm – the attitudes for and the results of being present with God.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
“Because in fact, we are slipping back fast into something like the ancient world. We are slipping back towards a world of narrow tunnel vision of religions and superstitious practice, a world where lots and lots of people have their lords and god, their practices and their mysticisms, that do not really relate to each other. We are slipping away from the idea that there might be a faith that would bring all human beings together. We are slipping back socially and internationally into the assumption that there really are such differences in human beings that we can forget about God’s universal righteousness.”
Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, during Bible studies delivered at the 13th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, Nottingham 2005
Kenda Creasy Dean in her new-ish book, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church, describes the primary “faith” of American teenagers as “Therapeutic, Moralistic, Deism” rather than a form of the enduring Christian Faith. This description of the faith-system (as much as it can be a formal “system” at this point) comes out of the results and analysis of the National Study of Youth and Religion project.
Both with Rowan and Kenda, these are pictures of where we are culturally, particularly among the emerging generations, and what is to come within the culture and within our individual lives as believers or not. How are we ready?
“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
– Harriet Beecher Stowe
Great song by “Fatty Gets A Stylist”
At the end of the video, the uniforms worn by the marching band are the same as the uniforms we wore in high school marching band.
For Christianity to offer a true alternative in society, it does NOT mean that we mimic back to the culture itself, though dressed up in churchy garb or verbiage, in order to try to make people feel good about themselves or out of the Church’s collective insecurity regarding the culture.
Here is another one! I am just amazed at what some people have to endure, and yet come to such places. Then there are others, who seem to suffer little, yet come to nothing. What enables some to do such as this young guy and others to come to nothing or realize not a hint of their potential?
Michael Jackson vs Mr. Bean from Pascal Blais Animation Studio on Vimeo.
Here’s another one.
Carving the Mountains from Juan Rayos on Vimeo.
What fun!
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Image via Wikipedia
ere is an interesting review of Henry Kissinger’s new book, On China, in this past week’s edition of Newsweek, entitled, “Dr. K’s RX for China.” (Accessed 5/31/2011) (NYT’s Book Review)
Image via Wikipedia
“The Old Testament does communicate to us and it was written for us, and for all humankind. But it was not written to us. It was written to Israel. It is God’s revelation of himself to Israel and secondarily through Israel to everyone else. As obvious as this is, we must be aware of the implications of that simple statement. Since it was written to Israel, it is in a language that most of us do not understand, and therefore it requires translation. But the language is not the only aspect that needs to be translated. Language assumes a culture, operates in a culture, serves a culture, and is designed to communicate into the framework of a culture. Consequently, when we read a text written in another language and addressed to another culture, we must translate the culture as well as the language if we hope to understand the text fully.” [Italic emphasis the author’s, Bold emphasis mine]
The Lost World of Genesis One, John H. Walton (Donners Grove: Intervarsity Press; 2009, p. 9)
I think, also, that when we consider passing on the Faith to new generations we must consider how best to translate the Faith, as well as the lessons of Scripture, to that new generation. We have to understand the emerging culture in which these new generations reside – and the emerging culture is not the same as ours, the adults who are making the decisions.
