Isn’t that an awesome piano? It’s called the Pegasus, and it’s made by the Schimmel Piano company in Germany. The modern exterior houses a traditional (as in non-electronic) grand piano. Though “traditional” doesn’t normally include a hydraulic lid or ergonomic keys with a slight curve. I think my church needs to get one. Are you paying attention, Pastor Tim?
I am halfway through The DaVinci Code. I’ve really enjoyed it…until last night. It’s the part where Langford and this British expert guy explain the conspiracies to Sophie. Constantine, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and lots of humanizing of Jesus are part of this discussion. And in his efforts to build a credible plot for his story, Brown resorts to rewriting history.
I like historical fiction. James Michener’s Poland and The Covenant place fictional characters into accurate historical contexts. Michener doesn’t change historical events. He only injects made-up persons into those events and lets us be entertained (and educated) as we watch his characters interact with those events.
Clive Cussler does something similar with thrillers. In Treasure, he imagines that the great Egyptian library at Alexandria was not destroyed, but was smuggled off to the Americas, where Dirk Pitt, of course, locates it. Each of his books takes some well-known story from history (the Titanic, Amelia Earhart, and the final days of Abraham Lincoln, as examples), creates an alternate but plausible scenario, and weaves it as a subplot into his contemporary thrillers. It’s a form of historical fiction, and I like it.
Biblical fiction does the same kind of thing, taking a familiar Bible character–Joseph, Sarah, Mary Magdalene, and others–and generating a full story about their lives. The story remains true to the tidbits we know from the Bible, but takes liberties in filling in the gaps.
Then you have fiction which creates what is called “alternate history.”For instance, a writer says, “Let’s pretend that the Germans won World War II. Here’s a story about a resistance group in London fighting the Nazi occupation.” The author rewrites history in order to create a new context. You could do the same thing by imagining that Napoleon conquered Russia during a particularly mild winter, or that Robert E. Lee won at Gettysburg and marched on to sack Washington D. C., and slavery was legalized throughout the USA. In such cases, the author only pretends that historical events turned out differently. (It’s also akin to last Saturday night’s hysterical opening to Saturday Night Live, which presented an alternate universe in which Al Gore won the election, and all the things which would be different as a result.)
Dan Brown tries to have it both ways, and in the process shows enormously flagrant intellectual dishonesty. He creates the context for his novel by rewriting what undisputed history tells us about the Dead Sea Scrolls, Constantine, Opus Dei, the Priory of Sion, DaVinci and his paintings, the life of Christ, and much much more–and yet, he insists that the events he cites are true. Imagine Michener writing Poland around the contention that it was the Poles who actually invaded Germany. James Michener has no doubt turned over several times in his grave over Brown’s literary transgressions.
I’ll finish the book. But Brown plays dishonestly with the rules, adjusting reality to fit his story while denying that he’s doing it. And that really really honks me off.
And I haven’t even gotten to the really good stuff yet.
Elliott is gone, and I actually felt sad about it, after seeing the video thingy they do before singing “You had a bad day” (which is a nice touch, don’t you think?). Yet I’m glad he’s the one who departed, and not Kat or Taylor. It should be a good final next week. I figure Taylor will win. But I may end up rooting for Katherine. I’ll be happy with either. As if I’m the be-all target demographic of American pop culture.
I’m always grateful when someone provides a biblical insight into something pretty basic to my faith, but which I, despite 50 years in the church, hadn’t heard before. This doesn’t happen a lot. But it did happen a few days ago when I read a blog entry by Michael Hines called “Biblical Worship.”
The whole post was excellent, talking about the sabbath and the intertwining of sacrifice with worship throughout the Old Testament. It provided a fine lesson in Bible history. The part that gave me a Eureka moment was, “The sabbath day was not set aside as a day of worship. It was, instead, a day of rest.” And then he quotes Exodus 20:10-11, which says exactly that. It doesn’t mean you can’t worship on Sunday. But he explained how people went to the temple to offer sacrifices during any day of the week, and that worship and sacrifice occurred together.
He brings it all together in the New Covenant with Romans 12:1, which says we are to make our bodies living sacrifices all week long, “which is your spiritual act of worship.” Suddenly, a bunch of things came together for me and fit snugly.
I thought of Willow Creek, where the believers come on Wednesday and Thursday for their worship service, or preaching service–at any rate, the counterpart to what most of us do on Sunday. I attended one of those services a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. But it felt odd (to me) doing this particularly thing during the middle of the week. Willow still holds services on Sunday, but those are outreach oriented, geared more for nonbelievers. But now I realize (dumbly) that Sunday wasn’t designed for worship, but for rest, which I’m confident includes watching football games. ALL of the days were designed for worship. (I’m sure I’ve heard these same ideas articulated in countless sermons. My sudden enlightenment probably speaks more to my attention span and general intelligence than anything else.)
Anyway, it’s a wonderful piece, and I learned a lot about something I assumed I was already knowledgeable about. Those surprises are nice.
I shall continue hoping that, tonight, Mr. Tumnus goes bye-bye and breaks Paula “The Flake” Abdul’s heart. However, he obviously has a fan club. So it’ll probably be Kat who exits.
Which would be too bad. She has come on very strongly the last few weeks, finding and displaying personality (which was missing earlier in the season). After her performances last night, I think I want her to win. Even over Taylor.
Yeah, I’ve got McPheever. What a sad, sorry life I lead.
I can’t believe I stayed up until 2:15 watching basketball. It was worth it, because my Phoenix Suns won in double overtime. But I’m gonna pay for it today, I’m afraid. Getting too old for this college-like nonsense. Throughout the playoffs thus far, the Suns games have gone past midnight. I’ve been watching until I can’t keep my eyes open, which is usually in the third quarter. Then I go to bed. But last night I saw the whole game.
The Phoenix Suns is (I realize, Mom, that that sounds ungrammatical) the only pro team in any sport that I have consistently rooted for since I was a kid. I’ve had my flings with the Vikings and Dolphins in football (now the Colts, of course), and with the Lakers and Kings in basketball (and now the Pacers, of course). But the Suns have always been on my rah-rah radar.
It goes back to my high school days in Arizona, when the Suns spent a preseason week at my school practicing and then held an exhibition game. I wrote about that previously.
Last night, the Suns looked tired. Or was that me, as I occasionally nodded off? Whatever. They were a well-oiled team against the Lakers, but now have trouble hitting threes and they make an uncharacteristic number of errors. Now they’re up 3-2 and they have three days before the next game. That’ll be good.
It’s the NBA playoffs, the Cavaliers are battling the mighty Pistons, and Larry Hughes, one of the top Cav players, isn’t suiting up. In fact, he’s missed two games. His younger brother Justin died last Thursday, and he’s taking care of family business and mourning. He’s not playing on national TV because “That’s what Justin would have wanted.” No, he’s somewhere in St. Louis dealing with a gut-wrenching loss, and the attitude of the Cavaliers is, “If Larry comes back–fine. If not, that’s fine, too. But we’re leaving him alone.”
Good for Hughes, and good for the Cavs. Last November I wrote a blog item about athletes who experience a death in the family, but don’t miss a game because they argue that the family member would have wanted them to play. Which I don’t buy.
Larry Hughes could have gone to any college, but he stayed in St. Louis, his hometown, because of his brother’s condition. He turned pro early, in 1996, because his family truly needed the money, being overwhelmed with enormous medical bills and facing a heart transplant (which Justin got the next year). He took a trade to Cleveland to be near the Cleveland Clinic, a major heart center.
Now Justin is gone, and Larry is taking time away from the team to be with his family and to grieve. And the Cavs have no problem with that. In fact, today the whole team is attending the funeral in St. Louis, rather than preparing for the next crucial game.
It’s nice to see proper priorities every once in a while.
On Sunday we had a number of visitors. I met most of them. Two were young singles recently out of college who moved into town and are checking out churches. Both probably feel somewhat alone, moving into a new city by themselves. This was the first visit to Anchor for both of them. The fact that they are checking out churches, trying different ones, tells much about them.
The guy graduated a year ago from a Christian college in another city. He’s originally from around Cleveland, and just started a new job here in Fort Wayne. He found Anchor through our website. A lot of people do, we’ve found. If a church doesn’t have a listing on the web, they should. The girl graduated from Huntington University a year ago and moved to Fort Wayne in March. A wonderful girl with a UB background.
Both will probably decide on a church and become active there. They struck me as those kinds of kids. I don’t know if either will settle down at Anchor. But I’m delighted that we made them feel very comfortable and people spoke at length with both of them. Because I know that if they’re checking out other churches, they’ll encounter some where they slip in and out, and nobody seems to notice. At Anchor, we notice. And that makes me smile.
This Friday, May 19, is our annual “Battle of the Bands.” Probably 500 kids and young adults will descend on Anchor. After music practice on Thursday night, we’ll clear all of our musical instruments and equipment from the platform, and stack up all of the chairs in the sanctuary and shove them against the wall.
I think I can guarantee that nothing like the Battle of the Bands occurs in any other UB church. We’ll have a dozen “hard-core” bands competing for free studio time. Each will have 15 minutes to do their best stuff, and four judges will evaluate them by a number of criteria, from musical proficiency to crowd reaction.
The lyrics…well, it’s mostly shouting. A few actual words leak out, but you’ve got to be listening pretty close. The dress code is basically black. Tattoos, black T-shirts with a band’s logo (and sometimes cuss words), interesting hair, multiple piercings, lots of kids smoking outside. The center of the sanctuary will clear out and become a mosh pit. No seating. Everyone stands throughout. A couple rent-a-cops will patrol the area.
I’ll be there, and Pam will be taking money at the door. This will be our fourth Battle of the Bands. If you’re in the area Friday night, stop by. Doors open at 6 pm. It’ll be a unique experience. Bring your own ear plugs, because I’m not sharing mine.
Yesterday I spouted off about the lyrics of today’s worship songs–that they are all vertical (between me and God), and rarely address horizontal issues (relationships with other Christians, reaching out to nonChristians). Now, my youth group days (the 1970s) featured plenty of vertical songs: “I Just Came to Praise the Lord,” “He is Lord,” “God is So Good,” “Let’s Just Praise the lord,” “Something Beautiful,” “O How He Loves You and Me,” and Keith Green’s “O Lord, You’re Beautiful.” Most of these don’t hold a candle to the wonderful songs being written today, like “Worthy is the Lamb,” “Once Again,” and “Amazing Love.” I’ll take today’s vertical songs.
But I wish more songs, with just as much quality, could be written about the body of Christ and the lost. I’m talking about songs designed for congregational singing. And we had many of them in “my day,” that being the 1960s and 1970s.
Evangelism
In my youth group days, we constantly sang about salvation and the need to reach the lost. We exuberantly exhorted, “Get all excited, go tell everybody that Jesus Christ is King.” Another song, “Freely,” instructed:
Freely, freely you have received,
Freely, freely give
Go in my name and because you believe,
Others will know that I live.
Then there’s the straightforward “I’ll Tell the World,” which said:
I’ll tell the world that I’m a Christian
I’m not ashamed, his name to bear
I’ll tell the world, that I’m a Christian
And take it with me everywhere.
I’ll tell the world how Jesus saved me
And how he gave me life brand new
And I know that if you trust him
That all he gave me he’ll give to you.
We also, of course, sang “This Little Light of Mine,” in which we promised to shine our light all over our town, our school, our country, etc. The much-maligned “Pass It On” (which I unashamedly loved) says:
That’s how it is with God’s love,
once you’ve experienced it.
You want to sing, it’s fresh like spring,
you want to pass it on.
Another oldie said, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.” Who is “they”? Nonbelievers, of course. And then we had, “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.” In other words, if you’re saved, tell others about it.
The Church Body
We used to sing Lanny Wolfe “God’s Wonderful People,” which said:
I love the thrill that I feel when I get together
with God’s wonderful people
What a sight just to see all the happy faces,
praising God in heavenly places
We sang “Bind us Together.” We proclaimed, “We are One in the Bond of Love.” And we celebrated, “I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God.”
Those are just some of the songs I remember singing as a youth, songs with a horizontal emphasis. I can’t cite, offhand, a single current worship song which talks about the body of Christ. I love “If We are the Body,” by Casting Crowns; but that’s not a song you sing corporately. And only a few songs have an evangelistic emphasis:
We are the voice in the desert crying,
“Prepare ye the way of the Lord….
And these are the days of the harvest,
the fields are white in the world,
and we are your laborers in your vineyard,
Declaring the Word of the Lord.
Hymns are filled with lyrics about salvation: “Send the Light,” “Lead Me to Calvary,” “Just As I Am,” “I Surrender All,” “Rescue the Perishing,” “Since Jesus Came Into My Heart,” “What a Wonderful Change,” and many more. And songs about the church: “Bless Be the Tie that Binds,” “The Church’s One Foundation,” “I Love Thy Kingdom Lord.”
And then there’s “Onward Christian Soldiers,” which brings the church and evangelism together:
Like a mighty army, moves the church of God
Brothers we are treading where the saints have trod
We are not divided, all one body we.
One in hope and doctrine, one in charity.
Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
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Copyright © 2013 Steve Dennie | All rights reserved
