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Sun Ray, parts 1 & 2 (Music Monday)
My favorite music is both technical and groovy, lyrically deep but catchy, smart in the studio and on stage. As far as I’m concerned, Mutemath is the total package. I’m not sure if they’ve ever gotten much attention, but I just discovered they did some live recordings for VH-1 (which still exists!) and you NEED to go find their cover of “Fallin'” by Alicia Keys, which I must add has a heavy dose of “House of the Rising Sun” mixed in. As excited as I am about that, an unlikely song has been haunting my thoughts these past few months: an instrumental broken into two tracks, called “Sun Ray.” Very smooth and chill, but with…
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Being Christian in America
My whole life I’ve been torn between two opinions of America. In one version, America is the endangered Christian nation. It was founded by godly men on Christian principles, but it’s being consumed by sin and faces imminent disaster. Christians need to engage with politics in order to restore America to its former Christian glory. Our prosperity is a testament to our goodness, but judgment is looming. This view is very patriotic, and it’s a story American Christians have been telling themselves for a very long time. The other America is just another nation, nothing special. If anything it might be called the Great Distraction. It wasn’t founded by Christians, it’s never been Christian,…
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God of Our Fathers
Today I finished reading 2 Chronicles, and I’ve really been impressed by this book. I’m not sure I’ve ever taken it seriously before; after all, it’s just a repeat of 2 Kings, right? Plus it’s tied to 1 Chronicles which is up there with Leviticus as one of the most stereotypically boring books of the Bible. Wrong and wrong. It’s only with 1 and 2 Kings so fresh in my memory that the beauty of 2 Chronicles jumps out at me, and 1 Chronicles sets the stage magnificently. I’ve been chomping at the bit to share this all week! If I were N. T. Wright, I might have titled this…
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Meditations on Inerrancy (Part 1)
Last year’s annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) was focused on inerrancy, a doctrine I’ve always taken for granted. But following a fascinating panel discussion from the contributors to the new Counterpoints Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy, I picked up the book and let it sit on my shelf a few months. In that time I’ve been wrestling with my bibliology (i.e. theology of the Bible) in a disorganized and plodding fashion. How ought I to think about revelation (the doctrine, not the end-times book) and truth and interpretation and authorial intent and . . . the list goes on. With that in mind and with my project to explore…
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The Bible as Literature
I’ve been reading through the Bible cover-to-cover for what is in some ways the first time in my life. I read all the books of the Bible for seminary (even translated a few) and growing up we read through the whole Bible every morning, randomly jumping around from book to book. But I can’t recall ever starting in Genesis 1:1 and persevering through all 66 books in conventional order. It’s been absolutely FANTASTIC. I’ve been journaling through the whole process, but rarely blogging. And it’s killing me! Because this stuff is too good not to share. So my hope in coming weeks and months is to be more vocal and hopefully spark some…
